For the past few months, I’ve been running into an annoying problem on several systems running Windows Vista. Even with 2GB or 4GB of RAM, I was running into odd problems when I had a large number of windows open (and I do mean a large number, typically 30 browser tabs plus five or more full-size productivity apps). Even though Performance Monitor and Task Manager said I had plenty of physical memory left, I was getting odd errors when I tried to open a new browser tab. I was also seeing strange symptoms such as windows that opened without menus, or dialog boxes that didn’t display the usual text and buttons.

As it turns out, the problem is more than a decade old, and the fix is a simple registry edit. I have the details, including a screen shot, over at ZDNet:

Vista Hands On #17: Solving a pesky resource problem

If you’re looking at a video card upgrade, decoding the model numbers for various graphics chips can be hopelessly confusing. A good resource to help cut through the clutter is this pair of tables put together by Gabriel Torres at Hardware Secrets:

ATI Chips Comparison

NVIDIA Chips Comparison

You’ll need to have some basic knowledge of clock speeds, memory interfaces, and other such technical topics, but the charts make it easy to see the difference in different product families.

Update: No more e-mails, please. The lucky recipient is an elementary school where a longtime reader and commenter works.

My last attempt to pass along a usable piece of hardware worked so well, I figure I’ll do it again.

For the past three years, I’ve had a Dell PowerEdge 600SC server running various builds of Windows 2003 Server here. It’s been a real workhorse, but it’s outlived its useful life for me. Which means it’s time to pass it along.

It’s got a 2.4GHz Pentium 4, plus 4GB of ECC RAM and a single 1600GB 160GB hard drive. (I will gladly toss in another 80 or 160GB drive or two – I have plenty of IDE drives hanging around.)

Now, this system was designed as a server, so it’s got a few design characteristics that make it unsuitable for use as a desktop. Like really limited onboard video, funky 5V PCI slots that don’t accept many standard cards, etc. In short, it’s not a hobbyist’s machine (unless your hobby is configuring servers).

Anyway, if you’re interested, send me a note and let’s talk. I could probably sell this on eBay for $200-300 but prefer to see it go to a good home, so extra points (and an extra discount) if you want to put it into service for a nonprofit or a school.

Would you pay your antivirus software company $29.95 a year over and above your existing subscription fee for “an extra layer of protection against Web robot attacks”?

Me neither.

Isn’t this what Norton AntiVirus is supposed to do?

I was going to go off on a rant, but Ryan Naraine already said it better than I could have:

It has to be the biggest con job in IT to convince consumers that they should pay a separate subscription for each of the above “protection” products.  So you pay for virus protection, then pay a bit more for spyware protection, and if those don’t work, buy an anti-rootkit package and if your PC still falls into a botnet, here’s your $29.95 anti-botnet tool.

Every time I think these guys can’t get any more shameless, they surprise me.

(Updated to add: I wish I could find a transcript of the wonderful “tootsie-frootsie ice cream” sketch from the Marx Bros film, A Day at the Races. This whole racket is reminiscent of the way Chico keeps selling Groucho extra tipsheets and code books when he learns that the ones he already bought aren’t quite complete.)

I’m trying to keep track of download locations for Vista-compatible drivers for common hardware types in a single location. To that end, I’ve set up the Vista Master Driver List page. The rules are as follows:

1. Only primary download locations (official sites run by hardware maker) are allowed. I don’t trust or recommend third-party sites that allow direct downloads of drivers.

2. Whenever possible, I’m linking to the information page or the search page rather than the driver file itself. Linking to the file runs the risk that you’ll grab the wrong driver, miss an update or a readme file, or bypass other important information that might be on the info page.

Suggestions and comments welcome. If you’re searching for a particular driver, let me know and I’ll track it down and add it to the list.

Robert McLaws says:

This may be news to Jessica Mintz of the Associated Press, but not every Vista user has been griping. … I haven’t had too many issues since RTM. I’m running with UAC on, and I don’t run into UAC prompts all that often. I’ve rarely had driver issues (except for the first few weeks when Acer didn’t update their US support site), and all three machines in my house are running it. Overall, I love Windows Vista, and I can’t stand touching Windows XP. Heck, my mom and kid sister use it every day too, and they’ve hardly ever called me about tech-support issues.

Good reading.

Way back in January, I saw a demo of Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista at CES. Around that time, the Yahoo Messenger Blog said: “Windows Vista will be available starting January 30, 2007 and we expect to have Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista available in beta a few months later.”

That was more than six months ago. So where is it? The Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista page still says it’s “coming soon”… I guess it all depends on your definition of “soon.” As of June 27, that target was still off in the distance:

… we’re working harder than ever on Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista.

You will be able to download a Beta version in the coming months. I wish I could be more specific with a release date at this point because I know how much anticipation our users have had for the entirely new Vista-powered interface.

It actually does look like a pretty cool project. So why is it taking so long?

I’ve been meaning to recommend IE7 Pro for a long time and just haven’t gotten around to it. So I was glad when this bit from Charles Arthur’s latest column in the Guardian reminded me:

What happens when you quit your browser, or it crashes, and you had lots of work on the go? That’s when you need session restoring – which brings back the tabs and windows you had open, and reloads them.

It’s so necessary, and obvious, that the most remarkable thing about it is that neither Internet Explorer nor Safari, the two browsers from the companies that dominate desktop OSs, presently have it.

In addition to session management, it has an ad blocker, tab management, a user-agent switcher, spell-checking, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Did I mention it’s free and that the developers update it regularly? I’ve been using IE7 Pro for months on Vista without any significant problems to report.

If you use IE7, this is a must-have add-in.

… Just to clarify, based on at least one comment, IE7 Pro is an add-on for IE7. It uses the standard Internet Explorer add-on hooks and security model. It is not at all comparable to full-blown tabbed browsers like Maxthon and Avant, which use the IE rendering engine but completely replace the interface with their own menus, toolbars, and functionality.

Long is “afraid of Microsoft fleeing back to the pre-Scoble stone-age.” The proximate cause is a list of suggestions for the next version of Windows, submitted by beta testers (I wasn’t invited). The next thing you know, a summary of the most popular suggestions, many of them impractical or unlikely or illegal, is being touted as the feature set for the next version of Windows. Which it isn’t. And the guy who posted the list on Microsoft’s Channel 9 forum gets chewed out publicly for doing “illegal stuff.”

I suppose it’s tempting here to do my best Homer Simpson Kent Brockman (D’oh!) impersonation and say, “I, for one, welcome our new Windows overlords.” But my take is simple: Talk’s cheap. The next version of Windows will be out in 2009-2010. A bunch of stuff in the current version needs to get fixed between now and then. If Sheriff Sinofsky can get his team to talk less and do more, that’s just fine with me.

It dawned on me the other day that I’ve been running Windows Vista and Office 2007 full-time since December 2005. During that time, I’ve cycled more than a dozen desktop and notebook PCs through my office, using each one for at least a few weeks and getting as much hardware experience as I could with Vista.

Since Vista’s release last November, I’ve been slowly upgrading and replacing most of the PCs I use for different tasks. Over at ZDNet, I share my current hardware specs in Hardware notebook: What I look for in a Vista PC. Here’s the short version:

• CPU – On a budget, get AMD. Willing to spend more? You’ll get more performance from an Intel Core 2 Duo or quad-core with at least 4MB of Level 2 cache.
• RAM – 1GB is enough, but the upgrade to 2GB is cheap and does wonderful things for performance.
• Hard disks – I recommend having at least twice as much hard disk space as you have data. Now that 500GB drives are in the $100 range, they’re an easy desktop upgrade.
• Video – Onboard video gets a bad rap. Current versions of onboard video from both Intel and Nvidia are perfectly capable of running Vista’s Aero UI at full speed. I recommend a separate GPU if you use multiple monitors. I’m not a gamer, but everything I read from the community says serious gamers should avoid Vista for now.

I’ve been using the same desktop PC – a Dell XPS 210 – for more than three months now. It’s been stable, fast, and mostly trouble-free. In that time, Vista’s Reliability Monitor has been a surprisingly effective way to pinpoint and troubleshoot problems, a topic I plan to tackle in a follow-up post, Meanwhile, here’s a snapshot of its performance for the last month (for more details, see the longer ZDNet post):

If you’ve been running Vista for more than a month, you can check your Reliability Index easily:

1. Click Start and type perfmon in the Search box.
2. Click the Perfmon.exe shortcut, which should be the only listing in the Programs category at the top of the Search Results list (you’ll need to supply an administrator’s credentials in the UAC box).
3. In the Reliability and Performance console window, click Reliability Monitor, under the Monitoring Tools category.

I have to admit, I was initially skeptical that this tool was more than a gimmick, but over time it’s proven to be a good indicator of a system’s health. In the example here, that steadily rising line is a good thing to see.

If you’ve been using Vista for more than a month, what does your Reliability Index look like? Anything about the data you see there that you find puzzling? Share your results and ask questions in the Comments below.