vLite:Free utility slipstreams SP1 with Vista

The Croatian college student who created software to shrink Windows Vista's footprint has updated the program so users can build installation media that integrates Service Pack 1. Dino Nuhagic updated his free vLite utility last week and then again yesterday to support "slipstreaming" of SP1, Microsoft's recent update to Vista. Dubbed vLite 1.1.6 Beta 2, the newest version now includes a "Service Pack Slipstream" action item that lets users merge SP1's changes with the files on an original, or RTM (release to manufacturing) install disc, and then produce an .iso file of the blend that can be burned to DVD and used to install Vista with the service pack included.

To slipstream SP1 with Vista, users need a copy of vLite, the 32-bit- or 64-bit SP1 stand-alone installer that Microsoft posted last month to its download site, and a blank DVD disc.

Nuhagic has labeled 1.1.6 as a beta. "Consider this [slipstreaming] feature a true beta test," he said in a post to his blog last Friday. "Let's give it more time," he said today in an interview via instant messaging when asked to describe the stability of the slipstreaming function. "I will name it 'final' after some more feedback. I mean, I did try it and it works, but you never know."

ChangeLog

Vista SP1 failed to spark migration

Microsoft's latest efforts to persuade customers to upgrade to its much-maligned Vista operating system have met with a cool response from users. Historically, Microsoft's first service pack for one of its marquee products – such as Windows – provides the impetus for users to upgrade. As Gartner analyst, Stephen Kleynhans recently noted, customers see SP1 as the sign that the OS has reached maturity and is ready for enteprise deployment.

But even the offer of free support for using installing Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) and tools to lower implementation cost, the user response has been one of stony indifference. Vista SP1 includes a number of fixes for bugs that have plagued the operating system, as well as improved support for drivers. It initially became available to download from Microsoft's website and will be included as part of the Window's Update feature from mid-April.

vnunet.com

Released : Windows Vista Service Pack 1

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is an update to Windows Vista that addresses feedback from our customers. In addition to previously released updates, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues; supporting new types of hardware; and adding support for several emerging standards. SP1 also will continue to make it easier for IT administrators to deploy and manage Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Five Language Standalone version can be installed on systems with any of the following language versions: English (US), French, German, Japanese, or Spanish (Traditional).

Vista SP1 overview

Will XP SP3 Slow Vista`s Adoption?

Analysts say that the more secure, stable and reliable Windows XP is, the less reason businesses have to upgrade to Vista in a hurry. The upcoming release of Windows XP Service Pack 3 will further slow the rate of business adoption of Windows Vista by extending the life of the older operating system, some analysts say.

Microsoft quietly released Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 to the masses Feb. 19. But the company finds itself in a Catch-22, given its need to provide comprehensive security to protect its large installed base of business customers still running XP while, at the same time, encouraging those customers to upgrade to the new Vista operating system. But the more secure, stable and reliable XP is, the less reason they have to upgrade in a hurry.

eweek.com

Realtek High Definition Audio Codecs R1.78

Realtek HD Audio Driver support all of Realtek HD Audio Codec in Windows 2000 /XP /2003 /Vista (32/64 bits)

Download: Windows 2000/XP/2003(32/64 bits) (Executable file) | Mirror 1 | Mirror 2 | Mirror 3Mirror 4 | Mirror 5 | Mirror 6
Download: Windows 2000/XP/2003(32/64 bits) (ZIP file) | Mirror 1 | Mirror 2 | Mirror 3 | Mirror 4 | Mirror 5 | Mirror 6
Download: Vista Driver (32/64 bits) (Executable file) | Mirror 1 | Mirror 2 | Mirror 3 | Mirror 4 | Mirror 5 | Mirror 6
Download: Vista Driver (32/64 bits) (ZIP file) | Mirror 1 | Mirror 2 | Mirror 3 | Mirror 4 | Mirror 5 | Mirror 6

Realtek

Microsoft's new Service Pack 3

Microsoft® Office Project Server® 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) represents a major evolution in security for Project Server 2003. It further hardens Project Server against potential attacks and other security threats. This service pack also includes fixes that have been previously released as separate updates for Project Server 2003.

Download: Project Server 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Download: Project Server 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Multilingual User Interface Pack

Microsoft® Office Visio® 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) represents a major evolution in security for Visio 2003. It further hardens Visio against potential attacks and other security threats. This service pack also includes fixes that have been previously released as separate updates for Visio 2003.

Download: Microsoft® Office Visio® 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Download: Visio 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Multilingual User Interface Pack

Microsoft® Office Project® 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) represents a major evolution in security for Project 2003. It further hardens Project against potential attacks and other security threats. This service pack also includes fixes that have been previously released as separate updates for Project 2003

Download: Project 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3)
Download: Project 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Multilingual User Interface Pack

Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3) represents a major evolution in security for OneNote 2003. It further hardens OneNote against potential attacks and other security threats. This service pack also includes fixes that have been previously released as separate updates for OneNote 2003.

Download: OneNote 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3)

EasyBCD 1.7

A new version of EasyBCD, the popular award-winning Windows Vista Bootloader Editor that lets you easily configure dual-boots between Windows Vista and older versions of Windows, Linux, OS X, and BSD, has just been updated to version 1.7.

EasyBCD 1.7 has some brand new features to offer and a number of bugfixes. Some of the bigger changes:

* Full WinPE 2.0 support. Supports both WMI Ramdisk files from local and removable disks in addition to extracted ramdisk images.
* Ability to open non-system BCD stores and save changes to there. Includes modification of BCD stores from networked machines!
* Complete UI re-design.
* Rewritten NeoGrub for Linux-less GRUB.
* Support for GRUB-less Linux.
* NTLDR-free booting for DOS-based operating systems

EasyBCD 1.7

Vista Battery Saver

Vista Battery Saver can help you save up to 70% of your battery life by disabling the Aero effects and the Windows Sidebar whenever your laptop runs on batteries, or is reaching a certain battery capacity. The features are automatically re-enabled when you plug your notebook into a power source.

HomePage

XdN Tweaker 0.8.7.6

XdN Tweaker is a free tweaking program for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Vista. It sets itself apart from the other tweak programs though by not being filled with options, settings, and "tweaks" that are actually normal options and menu settings of other programs. It tries to fill the gaps that other tweak programs overlook. Instead of just being another way of doing something you could do yourself just by clicking on "options" or "settings" in Windows, it offers features that Windows normally wouldn't allow you to do without digging into the system registry. Depending on if you run the program under Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Vista, different options will be available to you (works with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows).

Features:

* Changes the number of Folder views Windows saves.
* Resets the folder views Windows has saved.
* Add/Remove classic Windows 2000 user control panel icon.
* Disable/Enable ATI Catalyst Control Center right click on Desktop (only for use if you have an ATI video card and have the Catalyst Control Center installed).
* Disable/Enable ‘SendTo’ right-click menu.
* Allows you to adjust and tweak TCP/IP settings.
* Disable/Enable ZipFolders.
* Disable/Enable the Outlook Express/Windows Mail splash screen.
* Put the File menu above the Back/Forward buttons in IE7.
* Remove or Replace the Search box in IE7.
* Disable/Enable User Account Control prompts under Vista.
* Disable/Enable the “- Shortcut” text under Vista.
* Attempt to force Vista to better save folder views.
* Disable/Enable Windows Media Player Explorer context menus.
* Add/Remove “Take Ownership” to right-click menus under Vista.
* Disable/Enable the Documents item on the Classic Start Menu.
* Changes “Delete” to “Search…” on Recycle Bin.
* Turn off the annoying full screen “black” UAC prompt.
* Enable Classic Search in Explorer and Internet Explorer.
* Disable/Enable Shutdown Reason dialog under Server 2003.
* Disable/Enable Windows scanning AVI files for thumbnails.
* Remove/Restore hidden ASPNET user that prevents auto login.
* Add “Tweak UI” icon to Control Panel (if installed).

What's new:
- added option for "Copy To" and "Move To" right click extension
- added the Right Click II page to Vista
- removed Sound control tool in XP/2k3
- misc gui updates, text changes and corrections


For Windows XP and 2003, the .NET 2 Framework is required!

XdN Tweaker Page

Loading multiple drivers via USB in Vista Install

Windows Vista brings one very welcomed change in the install process of this highly troublesome OS. With Vista, you have the option of pre-loading third-party drivers from a removable storage device such as a CD or even your trusty flash drive. Yes, this is a somewhat decent attempt at finally making the floppy drive a thing of the past. However, this feature is not without its share of flaws. After quite a number of Vista installs, some of which involved loading more than one RAID driver, I have come across a number of very annoying issues that most would want to be aware of.

Whether or not it is needed to actually install the OS itself, it is always best to load all your third-party controller drivers during the install process. This will eliminate a number of issues you may encounter when attempting to load them after the installation is complete. With Vista, this is highly recommended right now as I have encountered quite a number of RAID driver issues when attempting to install a device after the Operating System is already running.

Full Tutorial...

New tool enables loading of unsigned drivers in Vista

A new software tool has been released by Linchpin Labs that allows the loading of unsigned and legacy drivers on Windows XP, 2003, and most importantly Vista.

One of the system management and control methods that Microsoft implemented with Windows Vista is requiring system drivers to be digitally signed before they will load properly within the system. If a user or administrator wishes to load an unsigned or legacy driver, they will either need to reboot into a limited functionality mode or just do without the functions that the driver would have provided.

As others have pointed out, this step will do nothing to prevent malware authors from being able to load their drivers into the system. Either they will exploit the lax jurisdiction and corporate oversight of various countries to establish a corporate shell and gain legitimate digitally signed driver certification, or they will just exploit weaknesses in already-signed drivers.

TheRegister

Apple Safari 3 Beta for Windows

At the end of 2005, Microsoft decides to discontinue Internet Explorer for Mac support and now in mid-2007, Apple Incorporated decides Safari is coming to Windows. Safari will join iTunes and QuickTime as the third Macintosh application officially ported to the Windows platform. At Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco today, the company announced the availability of the Safari 3 beta for OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Some of our users are testing the browser with absolutely no problems while others are finding bugs that range from install failures and crashing to incorrect web site rendering and ridiculous memory usage. Safari 3 will most likely go final in time for Leopard’s release in October of this year. Apple is touting Safari as being able to load pages roughly twice as fast as Internet Explorer and 42% faster than Firefox. Is Apple pulling typical marketing antics or are the numbers dead on?

Safari 3 Beta

Driver Magician Lite 3.26

Driver Magician Lite is freeware, it identifies all the hardware in the system, extracts their associated drivers from the hard disk and backs them up to a location of your choice. Then when you format and reinstall/upgrade your operating system, you can restore all the "saved" drivers just as if you had the original driver diskettes in your hands. Driver Magician Lite works with all versions of Windows 98/SE/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/x64.

Driver Magician Lite Home Page

McAfee: Search results can be dangerous

McAfee is reporting that some web search companies are better at filtering out bad links than others: Google has improved over the past year, AOL has the safest search results on the Web right now and Yahoo is the riskiest. In McAfee’s latest study, published Monday, the company concluded that about 4% of search results were found to be risky, compared to last year’s 5%. Yahoo's poor performance is due to a spike in the number of sponsored links that McAfee deemed risky. When looking at organic links alone, Yahoo actually had the best results of any of the five search engines, returning risky links just 2.7% of the time.

Google returned risky results 3.4% of the time, compared to last year’s 5.3%. AOL on the other hand, gave risky links 2.9% of the time, an improvement over last year's 5.3%. Yahoo, formerly one of the safest engines evaluated by McAfee, jumped from 4.3% in 2006 to 5.4%. Microsoft's MSN also took a step backward, jumping from 3.9% in 2006 to 4.2% in 2007. Ask.com went from 6.1% to 3.5%.

McAfee's study looked at the first five pages of search results provided by AOL, Yahoo, Google, MSN, and Ask.com for about 2,300 widely used keywords. It then compared those links to its Web safety database, which records sites that are associated with things like spam, online scams, Web attacks, and risky downloads. The most dangerous subjects to search for are words related to digital music and tech toys, as they return risky results nearly 20% of the time.

InfoWorld

TeraCopy 1.1

TeraCopy is a compact program designed to copy and move files at the maximum possible speed, also providing you with a lot of features.

TeraCopy features:

* Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.

* Pause and resume transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.

* Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.

* Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.

* Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

* Windows XP/Vista

Home Page

Vista got cracked - AGAIN

A hacking group calling themselves “NoPE” managed to create and release a hacked version of Windows Vista on a DVD. Surprisingly, this version requires no activation and no serial number, the same as those versions of Windows XP that were distributed as bulk with HP computers within corporations. After installing, it seems that your copy is already activated and you’re even granted access to the download repository so you can update your system files.

So we’re right on the tracks of Windows XP, the early years. Microsoft comes up with an ingenious system (at that time, product activation), crackers bypass it. Microsoft fights back, crackers evade the complicated protection measures and round we go. To feed your curiosity, here’s a picture of the DVD NoPE is distributing (click thumbnail to enlarge).

Read More...

AOL Previews Silverlight Gadget

AOL is planning the first Windows Vista gadget that takes advantage of Microsoft's new Silverlight cross-platform media player technology: the AOL Social Mail Gadget for Vista provides one-click access to e-mail, AOL Instant Messenger service, photos and video directly from the Windows Vista desktop. The gadget is designed to scan the user’s inbox and identify which five people they communicate with most often. The user can add or remove people from his or her "A-list" and with a single click can email or IM people on the list directly from the desktop. Viewing videos and photos without opening a separate application is also possible.

The AOL Social Mail Gadget will come with two skins (surfboards and guitars) but is also has the capability of using custom skins. AOL is shooting to have a full-scale beta test within the next couple of months and a release version later in the year, according to Ben-Yoseph.

InternetNews

SanDisk + Microsoft BFFs around software stuffed memory

Microsoft and SanDisk have inked a deal to create USB flash drives and memory cards with built-in software and user preferences to replace SanDisk's existing U3 Cruzer line.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will develop new software and SanDisk will cover the hardware for the products.

The hardware/software pairing will allow customers to carry applications as well as their customized Windows interface on a flash storage device.

SanDisk rep Mike Lanberg said the disks will let users access their encrypted financial, corporate, and personal data on public or shared computers without leaving the information behind when they leave.

The partnership will replace and expand upon SanDisk's current application-launching flash storage line, U3. The offering is expected to be commercially available starting in the second half of 2008. The U3 line will be sold and supported until the new release, Lanberg said.

SanDisk said its partnership with Microsoft will allow the applications to be more tightly integrated with Windows operating systems, as well as enhance data security. The flash storage drives will support both XP and Vista.

Read More...

EasyBCD - Vista bootloader modification tool

EasyBCD provides an advanced GUI that makes it relatively easy to modify the Windows Vista bootloader, allowing you to add and remove entries to it for dual booting with other versions of Windows, as well as Linux/BSD, Mac OS X and other operating systems. Depending on your system configuration, creating a multi-boot system can be as simple as clicking a few buttons (but it may also require copying and editing of system files). The program can backup and restore your current boot settings, allowing you to undo any changes if you run into problems.

http://neosmart.net/

Creative ALchemy

Creative ALchemy Project allows you to run your favorite DirectSound3D games on Windows Vista as the developers intended - with full hardware accelerated 3D Audio and EAX support! This is done by translating DirectSound calls into OpenAL. In order for this to happen, a couple of files need to be installed into each game directory. This is handled automatically by the ALchemy installer - but can also be performed manually by advanced users.

Requirements:

• Windows Vista
• SB X-Fi * series soundcard with native OpenAL 1.1 Support * Excludes SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio

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