One of the most useful and user friendly features of Windows 7 is the HomeGroup feature. HomeGroup takes the burden out of sharing files and printers on a home network. You have the ability to quickly and easily connect two or more PCs running Windows 7, while automatically sharing your music, picture, video, and document libraries with other people in your home.

I have had my wife’s notebook connected via HomeGroup to our main PC for a while, so when I finally got my notebook I was hoping to be able to do the same thing. Unfortunately when I tried to connect to the HomeGroup with the supplied password it failed, I immediately assumed that the password was incorrect and went to the main PC to change the HomeGroup password and it resulted in the error “Windows cannot set up a homegroup on this computer”.

After digging around I noticed that Event Viewer had been throwing an error for a while related to the Peer Name resolution, specifically: “The Peer Name Resolution Protocol cloud did not start because the creation of the default identity failed with error code: 0x30630801”.

After reviewing the services “Peer Networking Group” was stopped which itself is a service that … “Enables multi-party communication using Peer-to-Peer Grouping.  If disabled, some applications, such as HomeGroup, may not function.” Aha!

Unfortunately any attempts to start this service resulted in another error message “Windows could not start the Peer Name Resolution Protocol service Local Computer. Error 0x80630801: 0x8063080”… aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

My Solution:

1. First ensure that you have “Show hidden files, folders and drives” folder option enabled.
2. Open the following folder as an administrator: “C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Roaming\PeerNetworking”.
3. Delete all the contents and restart your PC.
4. Delete the existing HomeGroup (if you have one).
5. You should be able to successfully create a new HomeGroup!

Please note, there is no implied warranty for on any solution I provide on this blog … ever. This worked for me on my PC, and I could not find an official solution. If you try this and your PC starts doing crazy things I will not be held responsible in any way shape or form and I am not likely to spend too much time offering help or resolution outside the general comments I provide on this blog.

I am the on call PC expert for my entire family and most of my friends, this works for me most times but dealing with every single version and permutation of all those virus software products leads to an additional layer of discovery which has the unfortunate effect of wasting my time. So once the 6 month trials are up I quickly try to intercept my families attempts to go Best Buy and purchase software and gently nudge them onto a single virus protection source, namely Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE).

I switched to MSE less than a year ago, and that time I was a huge fan of AVG Free, however, I noticed that AVG would make it increasingly difficult to find free version of the software and the pop ups telling you about subsequent updates never pointed to the free version, I grew tired of that constant struggle. Additionally, in terms of performance, my anecdotal assessment of MSE is that it has less of a memory footprint while actually “idol” and also while running “Quick” and “Full” scans.

Today Microsoft announced the beta for the next version of Microsoft Security Essentials. New features in the beta include:

• Windows Firewall integration – During setup, Microsoft Security Essentials will now ask if you would like to turn the Windows Firewall on or off.
• Enhanced protection for web-based threats – Microsoft Security Essentials now integrates with Internet Explorer to provide protection against web-based threats.
• New protection engine – The updated anti-malware engine offers enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.
• Network inspection system – Protection against network-based exploits is now built in to Microsoft Security Essentials.

I probably will not push everyone to the new beta yet, but I will try it out on a couple of PCs and see how it goes. You can download the beta here (you will need a Windows Live ID).

Related Posts:

• Rescuing a Friend

This is the first direct look at Windows Phone 7 series. I am impressed!

My contract with Alltel (now Verizon) is pretty solid so I cannot consider another phone for at least another year. That means, for good or for ill, I am stuck with Windows Mobile 6.1. While I did take a brief look at WM 6.5, there really was not much of a reason to switch anyway. For mobile phones there has been much ado about the apps available for other platforms. If like me you are mired in another contract and want to try some decent apps for free I have compiled my list of favorites:

Skyfire – Simply put Skyfire is the best mobile web browser I have ever used. This puppy handles Flash with ease, You Tube is accessible and even useable. I have been on board with this browser since early beta version were available. At this point it is difficult to use any other browser, my only concern is the underlying technology routes all traffic to the Skyfire servers that includes passwords. Needless to say I would not do mobile banking using Skyfire. Get it here!

Bing – Live Search recent rebranding to Bing has finally trickled down to the mobile world and while there are no substantive improvements, this app is still worth considering if you you want to get the best Gas Prices, Maps, or local searches in your vicinity.

My Phone – This was already a solid product during the beta release, helping with the task of phone backups. Well they added the ability to share photos on you favorite social networking sites. To round this out they have added a couple of premium features (at cost to you) that allow you to locate a lost phone, or even wipe data from a stolen phone. Real nice!

Windows Live – Again this an existing app found on most Windows phones, however, there has been a nice refresh that adds a lot of polish and also bring the app in close relation to the Windows Live experience on line. If you have a Windows Live account and use Live IM then this is a compelling upgrade for your phone.

Microsoft Tag Reader – With the Microsoft Tag application, just aim your camera phone at a Tag and instantly access mobile content, videos, music, contact information, maps ... nothing to type! Of all the apps I believe Microsoft Tag reader has the best chance of changing the way we interact with our our environment using our phones, just have to wait and see if this really catches on.

Netflix - Only really useful if your a member of Netflix but still … Managing a Netflix account while mobile has never been easier!

With the release of WM 6.5 and WM Marketplace getting a list of top rated apps is really easy, unfortunately there is some artificial delay in letting WM 6.1 join the fray. Until then (late November?) I hope you find this list marginally useful.

How many times have we had to solve the shared printer scenario at home, or simple file sharing within a home network (I am assuming most of us have not setup a full blown windows network).

Windows 7 finally resolves this issue with a simple shared key…

Windows Mobile 6.5 is much more touch friendly this is one of the first decent demos I have seen since I have seen.

Windows Mobile 6.5 Running on HTC

When I signed up for the Microsoft My Phone service I thought “this might be pretty cool”. Backup all my critical phone data, contacts, pictures etc. Once I got past the the initial sign up and slow beta rollout process, I was greeted by a 200MB storage limitation, what is this 1997? … I have a 2GB memory card! I also have 25GB of SkyDrive space in the cloud, why the artificial restrictions.

As my data began to Synch it then became clear that this service only cares about what is actually stored on the main memory of my phone, it completely ignores everything about the memory card. I am not sure about other mobile OS’ but for Windows Mobile Phones storing anything in the main memory makes no sense as it will be completely lost if you have to upgrade or even reinstall the operating system and there tends not to much to space to spare.

So exactly what got backed up on my phone? Text messages, and a few jpegs that are included in the default installation. Even my contacts are stored on the memory card. I think my back up strategy will continue to be a mixture of Live Messenger Mobile (for contacts) and Live Mesh (for everything else).

UPDATE: There is an option to include storage cards, reinstalling this application… Live Mesh is still better I can sink photos and videos directly to my PC.

When I signed up for the Microsoft My Phone service I thought “this might be pretty cool”. Backup all my critical phone data, contacts, pictures etc. Once I got past the the initial sign up and slow beta rollout process, I was greeted by a 200MB storage limitation, what is this 1997? … I have a 2GB memory card! I also have 25GB of SkyDrive space in the cloud, why the artificial restrictions.

As my data began to Synch it then became clear that this service only cares about what is actually stored on the main memory of my phone, it completely ignores everything about the memory card. I am not sure about other mobile OS’ but for Windows Mobile Phones storing anything in the main memory makes no sense as it will be completely lost if you have to upgrade or even reinstall the operating system and there tends not to much to space to spare.

So exactly what got backed up on my phone? Text messages, and a few jpegs that are included in the default installation. Even my contacts are stored on the memory card. I think my back up strategy will continue to be a mixture of Live Messenger Mobile (for contacts) and Live Mesh (for everything else).

I have lamented on many occasion the lack of Calendar synch support within the world of Windows Mobile and Windows Live. While I do believe that calendar synching is a non trivial task, I never thought it would be a show stopper (I think this may have more to do with killing a cash cow). It appears that Google has just released Google Sync for Windows Mobile (they licensed Exchange ActiveSync from Microsoft).

This is a great move for Google as the Trojan horse here is the contact list synch that comes along with the calendar synch. You may or may not have noticed that your contact list in Gmail has been slowing revamped into your who’s who list. Whoever controls your contact list controls the world! ;)

I had not heard of the concept of shimming until I started looking at Windows compatibility and the problems that arise when trying to shoe horn applications from old operating systems to new ones. An application shim is a compatibility layer that fools a legacy application in to believing it's running in an older operating system.  For example, a shim will tell a legacy application that it is running in an 16-bit color and that it's running with all the privileges Windows has to offer, when in actuality, it is not. 

Shims intercept an applications attempt to modify the hard drive or registry that would ordinarily require root permissions, those requests are seamlessly redirected to temporary locations on the hard drive and registry.  This means that unmodified legacy applications will run under Vista with the same poorly vetted code, but Vista (or Windows 7) will not complain about the obvious security ramifications of some of these calls.

I was recently having some problems with setting up POP email at home and I wanted to verify what port were open and I realized that TELNET did not appear to be installed. As we are not using Vista at work I do not tend to have much need to dig past the obvious stuff for very long.

Apparently Vista installs without telnet by default and you must explicitly enable it:

• Open ‘Control Panel’ and select ‘Programs’.
• In the left column, select ‘Turn Windows features on or off’.
• Check the box next to telnet, and wait...

I ran a quick telnet command (telnet mail.someplace.com 25) that clearly showed that port 25 was being blocked by my cable provided router. After asking them to open it I was sending emails like it was going out of fashion.

I was starting to see some significant slow down in the performance of my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Basically reading and writing files to specific directories was way slow. I know I had documented this issue before and noted that the issue was related to SONAR's insistence on storing all the metadata files for each project (of which I have hundreds) in a single directory. While my knee jerk reaction at the time was to simply delete some of these files, the Wizard (aka EdO) noted last time that this was probably an issue with the Windows 8.3 naming convention.

In case you do not know the 8.3 file naming convention is a relic of 16 bit computing and it helps modern operating systems (32 bit and above) produce filenames that MS-DOS or 16-bit apps may access. The problem with this archaic naming system is that Windows literally scans all the files in a given folder to ensure that it does not produce a duplicate. This scanning may become noticeable once you have tens of thousands of files in a single directory.

In order to disable this behavior on Windows 2000 and Windows NT you can go to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem – and set the value to 1.

For Windows 2003 and Windows XP there is a slightly easier way i.e. the File System Utility (FSUTIL). This command line application will quickly allow you to verify and\or configure a variety of file system related parameters. In order to update 8.3 setting use the following:

FSUTIL behavior set disable8dot3 1

For additional FSUTIL commands check out this site.

NOTE: If you happen to be using any 16 bit applications they will stop working.

By the time you read this blog entry the word ‘Azure’ may have a different meaning for most search engines. What is Azure? Well lets see what Microsoft says …

The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

Azure reduces the need for up-front technology purchases, and it enables developers to quickly and easily create applications running in the cloud by using their existing skills with the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment and the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to managed code languages supported by .NET, Azure will support more programming languages and development environments in the near future. Azure simplifies maintaining and operating applications by providing on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage web and connected applications. Infrastructure management is automated with a platform that is designed for high availability and dynamic scaling to match usage needs with the option of a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Azure provides an open, standards-based and interoperable environment with support for multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and XML.

 

Microsoft also offers cloud applications ready for consumption by customers such as Windows Live™, Microsoft Dynamics™, and other Microsoft Online Services for business such as Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint® Online. The Azure Services Platform lets developers provide their own unique customer offerings by offering the foundational components of compute, storage, and building block services to author and compose applications in the cloud.

Turning into a developer who is fundamentally focused on HTTP rather than C:\Windows may just pay off. You can register for the community preview here. Exciting times!!

I love the HTC Touch, an easy to use cost appropriate smart phone that makes pretty good use of Windows Mobile 6. Unfortunately there are two really big problems with my particular version of HTC Touch. First there is no WM 6.1 upgrade for the Alltel version of the Touch. So my browsing experience, by all accounts, is not what it should be.

One of the things that really turned me on the Touch was its integration with the Windows Live Service cloud. My contacts and emails are made readily available on my phone, but there is simply no calendar synchronization with Windows Live Services, this is not even available with the WM 6.1 upgrade. I think it is misguided attempt to get me to purchase more Office software
(Outlook), but that is not going to happen.

NuevaSync is a a third party applications that I found that reports to provide calendar synchronization with Google Calendar, I would prefer to stick with the Windows Live services but I will do what is easy and appropriate.

When crashes occur in the Windows XP environment there has always been this aggravating error reporting popup that allows you to decide to send this information to Microsoft. As a good Windows citizen I chose to send reports zealously ... anything to help keep my operating system of choice as stable as possible. After about the 30th time I realized that this was not something that I wanted to do every time.

I recently got this updated popup message that informed me that they have been storing my error. Now this should be noted as a marked improvement, because I generally do not want to send reports while I am dealing with a crash of any kind.

I was then hopeful that it would contain an option to always send the report and stop asking me every single time ... no luck ... I am just going to opt to Never send these reports and transform my self into an unresponsive citizen of the Windows world.

I am taking a much more active look at the mobile\smart phone scene. I have been very happy with the quality of service provided by Alltel, however, I purchased the cheapest phone  I could at the time (text is painful, no camera, no IM, no blue tooth) and so I am way behind the technology curve. Our contract is up soon and we are eager to get a much better phone. I am eyeing the HTC Touch which seems to provide all the cool things I need with the exception of WiFi, apparently they dropped WiFi when they converted it from a GSM to CDMA model ;(

As this is a Windows Mobile Device I should be able to upgrade to the newest version (6.1) which was announced officially today. The main update that I am interested in seeing is the full Silverlight support which I saw a brief demo of during this years Mix.

According to the press release Microsoft has updated IE Mobile to support Adobe's Flash and H.264 streaming, which will make it possible for Windows Mobile devices to act more like regular browsers (iPhone nailed this concept out the gates). WM 6.1 will also make it easier to view full screen Web pages.

As I become more and more comfortable with Vista the number of unsigned software that I am using is starting to grate on my nerves. I am not sure if I am more annoyed with the developers or the OS that keeps reminding me (even when I tell it not to remind me).

There is quite comprehensive article on signing of .NET applications, however, what the article does not go into is that getting a valid certificate from a 3rd party is not free. I can create a test certificate, but the application will have a test certificate that is not verifiable. What, pray tell, is the point of that!

The perfect scenario for me is to use a Uri that I own as the point of verification, that way I can have and own a certificate that is publicly accessible! So as long as you believe that my site is mine, by extension you can trust that I own and control the certificate at that Uri!

Please submit all ideas for this scenario here!

When using previous incarnations of Windows, the windows key + 'R' combination was indispensable as a short cut to all things that were found in C:\windows\systeme32. Within Vista, however,  there has been a marked attempt to bring in all programs into this shortcut loving world by presenting and alphabetized list of all your installed programs by simply pressing the windows key.

I noticed today when I type 'n' in the run command prompt Microsoft Visual C# Express was at the top of the list despite that fact that it clearly does not begin with the letter 'n'. Clearly this violates the alphabetic order that the list is supposed to be presented in, but I think I am to blame as interprets my previous fat fingered errors as a preference to select Microsoft Visual C# when I click 'n'.

Not sure why this is, but now I just want to figure out why notepad2 will not go to the top of my list!

I spent some time yesterday installing the new Windows Live suite of products which primarily consists of Live Writer, Live Mail and Live Messenger. I have been completely confused with recent changes in Microsoft branding i.e. the change from MSN to Live. This latest release of products, however, is a great attempt to bring together products that help users take advantage of the Live experience.

What was fascinating for me was the integrated installation process, the idea of a single application pulling down the latest betas was something that I have not seen before. Each time the installation of a component was completed you were given a short cut to launch the application from within the installation screen ... nice!

The main change to Live Writer that I found was the integration with Live MSN SoapBox, you get automatically logged into SoapBox and any videos you uploaded become automatically available for insertion ... unfortunately I have none, and if I did they would probably be on YouTube (you can also use URLs for video insertions).

I spent a little time messing with Live Mail, but I have got so use to using Gmail and Hotmail (web) that I could not see the reason in pursuing this any further. There are few nice integration points with Messenger so I may set this up for my wife. I liked the RSS integration but could not find the OPML import function and I was not going to import my 50+ feeds manually!

Overall this marked attempt at integration is working for me, I will test it out for a few weeks and see if I am onboard!

P.S. Live Mail smells a little like Outlook Express ?!?! not sure how I feel about that!

I hop on my wife's laptop every opportunity I get, I think the Vista UI is just super slick. I was adjusting the volume and noticed that I could adjust the relative volume of all the open applications that required sound.

This is just a better way to live! I hope Corillian\CheckFree\[Next take over company name here] lets us upgrade soon.

I just finished updating Windows Desktop Search (WDS) to version 3 (I had version 2.6) and there is a marked difference in performance. I am also really impressed with the UI of the Windows Search Desk bar. I was hoping this would be free a free floating affair in the style of SlickRun and Google Desktop Search ... no dice.

Another marked improvement is the fact that Outlook 2003 is now completely indexed if you do not like Outlook in the search you can always switch that off. In previous versions only the C:\documents and settings folder was indexed and now you can chose the specific folders to index.

The options to specify which file types to index actually uses a GUI now (hooray!), instead of the previous semi colon separated list that you had to manually add to.

I am not sure when this update happened but I am convinced that I have been struggling along with version 2.x needlessly for too long.

This morning I was sent some news about our company which apparently was extremely sensitive. As I was reviewing the document I was given the option of installing the Windows Rights Management software. Curious about where this was going I clicked next and completed the installation.

Apparently what I just agreed to was the Information Rights management of Office 2003. This apparently allows granular control of Office related files and emails.

Using IRM in Office 2003

IRM in Office 2003 relies upon Windows Rights Management Services to provide core functionality. Nonetheless, IRM is fully integrated into Office 2003 applications, and it is a simple and natural extension of the content creation and collaboration process with which users are already familiar.

Consumption – The recipient opens the document or file as usual. Behind the scenes the application communicates with the RMS server to determine if the recipient has been given rights to access the file. RMS validates the user and issues a use license. The application renders the file and enforces the rights.

IRM in Outlook 2003 E-mail Messages

IRM can be used in Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 to prevent e-mail forwarding, copying, editing or printing. Protected messages are automatically encrypted during transit, and when rights are assigned to the message by the sender, Outlook 2003 disables the restricted commands. Office 2003 documents attached to protected messages are automatically protected as well.

The document in question was detailing information on future mergers and acquisition. My curious nature got the better of me this time ... never again. I actually printed the attached document, and now I wonder if big brother now knows there is a rogue copy in the wild.

As is the case with most developers we serve the dual purpose of tech support and help desk for our extended family, for me that has extended to most of the people in my Church. I burned the lion share of today disinfecting a laptop that would barely boot and that I simply refused to give access to the Internet.

The owner of the laptop is notorious for infecting machines but I think on this occasion all records were broken. I was able, this time round, to identify the source ... Morpheus!! (notice I have not even put a link to this site as it should be considered the gateway to the lower levels spyware). Morpheus is a file MP3 sharing software popular with people who know no better. It is easy to install but is almost impossible to get rid of and it attracts and\or purposefully spreads several variations of viruses and Trojan horses. During the trouble shooting stage I noticed that I was unable to run CMD.exe or TaskManager, it was pretty bad in there!

After a lot of research and about 6 hours, I was able to not only rid the machine of the Trojans (all 1500+ of them), but I was also able to get the machine up to a decent level of security.

To all friends and family out there who happen to read this blog I am going to provide the following links that will allow all of you to empower yourself with a reasonable level of security to any PC for FREE ... so here goes.

AVG Free Edition - AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition is a free anti-virus protection tool developed by GRISOFT for home use.
Spybot - Detects and removes spyware, a relatively new kind of threat not yet covered by common anti-virus applications.
Adaware - Popular anti-spyware product for computer users around the world, with nearly one million downloads every week.
ZoneAlarm - Automatically makes your computer invisible to anyone on the Internet, Systematically identifies hackers and blocks access attempts.

I have been using some combination of the above software for the past 4 years and I have had zero infections during that time. Coupled with just avoiding crapware like Morpheus and not going to suspect website's ... and Gmail's spam filter is the best I have ever seen. It catches more than 99.9% of all spam without blocking friendly email, not sure how! My Hotmail account treats everything as suspect until I send or respond to the email address.

Safe Surfing!!

"Silence is a source of great strength."- Lao Tzu

In my last post I mentioned the Windows Experience Index (WEI) on my HP Pavillion DV6000 notebook was 2.2. As I wrote it struck me that it seemed to be awfully low. In fact it dawned on me that I had checked this WEI on the same machine in Circuit City and it was 3.1! I went back to the store and confirmed that I actually purchased the right model, and that I had not somehow been tricked into purchasing a lower model. After being convinced that the model numbers matched I decided to give HP support a call which is where this story gets interesting.

Now I know I should have low expectation of level 1 tech support but considering I have been developing and supporting software solutions for almost 10 years I need to feel someone is as talented and committed (tooting my own horn) as me! So I get through all the initial tell all of the meeting and this guy actually has no idea what Windows Experience Index is! I try to explain that this is a part of the Vista OS and that it is not actually a separate program for which I can supply a version number. After being left on hold for about 10 minutes he comes back finally convinced that I am actually telling the truth.

After about another 10 minutes of waiting he gets back on the phone and lets me know that there is an known issue with HP machines and the Vista OS' ability to detect the correct Index for various components. I was this close to sending my machine back after what amounted to a great first day. If I do not see an update for this issue soon, I still might!

"You can learn from anyone even your enemy." - Ovid

I purchased my wife a HP Pavillion DV6000 notebook this weekend, I think I would have preferred to get the Sony Vaio but that ended up being a bit pricey. After removing all those HP craplets that are littered throughout the system I started to look a little more closely at the the Performance Information, specifically the Windows Experience Index.

I found the Windows Vista blog that helped to explain in more details what these arbitrary numbers would mean in relation to the actual user experiences. My lowest number was in relation to the 'Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero' at 2.2, this seemed kinda low and coupled with the fact that I only have 1 Gb RAM (2 x 512MB sticks ... how frustrating) the overall experience was surprisingly snappy. I am very happy with the Vista feel, I am just loving the eye candy.

I love the concept of Gadgets and am looking forward to creating a good Google Notifier. I am not sure I like any of the Gadgets that represent Gmail so far. I would have thought that most companies would be making Gadgets with a friendly digital signature to give us that warm fuzzy feeling as we install ... but alas the only Gadgets of note were signed by Microsoft.

I became painfully aware of the confirmations required for every single installation\uninstallation that I performed. It got to the point that I was not even reading the messages which surely is the whole point of the added security.

I checked out the file system briefly which now consists of the much more succinct "C:\Users\[YOURID]", I never like the "C:\Documents and Settings\YOURID".

What else ... oh ... with they have given a well deserved face lift to all the games and added a couple of new ones. I absolutely love the addition of the 3D chess game, it allows you chose the type of Board and pieces, but I really wish we could use cooler characters ala Star Wars.

Now I was little disappointed that Zone Alarm has not updated its product to work on Vista. Aside from that I give the first day of Vista two thumbs way up!!!

"We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us." - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Within 24 hours I had two separate conversations about PC crashes that resulted in the loss of nearly all data. This got me frightened, and realized that I have not completed a legitimate backup of my system since I upgraded my PC's hard drive.

For a quick and dirty solution all I actually needed was to backup my digital music files so that I could recover from a catastrophic hardware failure. As I had no money in the budget I decided to rely on the XP's Backup Utility.

Now with XP Home Edition this is not installed by default and will have to be updated manually. You do this by going to D:\VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP on the XP Home CD and installing the NTBACKUP.MSI. XP Professional will have this installed by default.

I did not use the Wizard but the Advanced Option is pretty straight forward. Select the folders that you want to backup and/or the System State and away you go! To backup my critical files, which include a metric crap load of wave files (and excluded system state), took an 1 hour 48 minutes. At almost 14 gb of information that was not bad at all.

If you are so inclined this application can be set up from the command line, but I did not have the time to get into that ... the sky was falling for me!

The biggest drawback for this solution is that I could find no way to make the backup file conveniently sized for burning to CD, however, as I have an  additional drive connected this was no big hassle for me.

Backup Utility also gives you the opportunity to Append or replace the backups, and also provides the ability to execute Incremental and Differential backups.

There remains no excuse for anyone out there to lose critical data! Unless you have the resources for a RAID configuration you may want to consider this stop gap solution!

"Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not." - Henry Fielding

With the release of Vista I am very seriously considering the upgrade ... I have only a few peripherals that I am worried about, but what is of greatest concern to me is whether my home based PCs can handle the transition. In the past Microsoft has always grossly underestimated, IMHO, the required hardware specs.

So this time round instead of making an educated guess (AKA suck it and see) I downloaded the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor! This application starts to scan your hardware and verifies which version of Vista, if any, is right for you. In addition it scans your software, and peripherals for potential issues.

For my laptop, Upgrade Advisor recommended the following:

The Advisor allows you to save a report and complete a checklist of TODO's, a lot of thought went into this and because Windows is an open bucket for virtually any hardware, and therefore driver (unlike the Mac), this kind of application is critical to upgrade success.

"Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not." - Henry Fielding

I have wanted to have a peek at Windows Vista for a while, but simply do not have the daring to install it on my well preserved home machine. Well here is a comprehensive, but slow, alternative for you techies without spare hardware. You can preview Windows Vista Business Edition via Virtual Labs. You can check out many of the key features e.g. Schedule Automatic Backups, Restore Old Files, Windows Side Bar, Gadgets and much more.

You may also want to install Office 2007 on your own machine for a 60 day trial, be warned after 60 days you will no longer be able to create, save or print files and I am not sure about rollback options.

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land." - Gilbert Chesterton

I have a miniature music studio at home and I am pushing the limits of the Windows XP machine I purchased a year or so ago. I have 512Mb of RAM and 2 x 40 gig hard drives installed. The first and obvious steps are to throw in at least 1 gig RAM and get 160 gig hard drive. This would mean me burning at least $160 which may not happen until after the Christmas season.

There are quite a few tweaks to the XP environment that enable you to get every last bit of processing power available. I found this MusicXP site that goes into step by step detail on what to tweak and what the effect of the tweak will be. I am sure these tweaks would be useful even for hard core gamers. Someone should write an application to help do this, may be store your previous settings and then enable them once your liaison with musical production is over for the evening. Maybe that someone should be me!

"Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist." - Gilbert Chesterton