Yearly Archives: 2007

Vista SP1 (Beta) and ATi Drivers: Not a Great Mix

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
10

Continuing our line of Vista SP1 stories, we’ve been testing the leaked version of Windows Vista SP1 and have some interesting results with regards to the WDDM layer.

Since Vista RTM, one of the biggest sources of consternation and BSODs on Windows has been the graphics drivers. From ATi to nVidia, hardware manufacturers were very late in the game, not producing final drivers until January and February (3-4 months after the official release); and even then, their quality was definitely sub-par with what we’d come to expect with Windows Vista.

Perhaps we’re being unduly harsh here – after all, Windows NT driver developers had had over a decade of testing and real-world experience with the NT graphics driver subsystem, and here they were, required to learn anew everything from writing the drivers to getting them to work with Vista’s new (and stringent) driver protocols and more. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that driver-development teams at both nVidia and ATi just weren’t up to scratch.

Since then, bug reports have diminished as the list of issues and incompatibilities slowly were slowly vanquished, one by one – with nVidia undeniably in the lead. nVidia’s lead in driver reliability has grown even further with SP1: the same ATi drivers that were working just fine under RTM with the same hardware (and running the same games) are now BSODing under Windows Vista SP1.

Obviously no one is to blame here – not yet, anyway. Windows Vista SP1 isn’t even in beta yet (though it certainly isn’t alpha!), and ATi’s drivers weren’t intended for use with anything other than Vista RTM and its immediate updates. It’s quite simple, actually: if you’re a gamer using ATi and interested in checking out SP1, think twice before you act. And remember, forewarned is forearmed.

Thoughts on Windows Vista SP1

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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As we’ve previously covered, a pre-beta build of Windows Vista SP1 has been leaked to the internet recently, and we’ve been busy checking it out. You’ll be glad to hear that, so far, we like what we see.

Rather than mucking through paragraphs of text and observations, here are some quick and to-the-point tidbits about what seems to have been improved so far:

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Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3 Betas Leaked: A Bad Week for Microsoft?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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It’s probably very safe to say that Microsoft’s [[MSFT]] two upcoming service packs are the most eagerly-awaited products due to ship out of Microsoft’s camp anytime soon, at least as far as most end-users are concerned..

Windows XP SP3 has been through the (rumor) mill for a couple of years of now, with enough fake leaks and “this-is-what-it’s-going-to-be” downloads plaguing the net for quite a long time. Most people looking forward to Windows XP SP3 are hoping to get that last bit of performance boost and maybe a reliability update or two – and to resolve a couple of outstanding issues that have been patched but never officially released; addressing some software issues, chronic bugs, and hidden nasties. But, for the most part, Windows XP SP3 is intended to wrap those hundreds of patches, hotfixes, and security releases that have been released since Windows XP SP2 first made it’s (much-welcomed) presence known on August 6th, 2004.

Windows Vista SP1, though, is – without a doubt – what’s on everyone’s minds today. Ever since the fiasco (a.k.a. Vista RTM) that was pre-maturely (yet after much delay) released on November 8th, 2006; Windows Vista has been plagued with endless issues from terrible hibernation support, FireWire issues, HD-Audio problems, unexpected crashes and reboots, incredibly slow I/O and LAN activity, buggy UAC, and a lot, lot more.

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Ubuntu 7.04: Fiesty or Feisty, Which is it?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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Ubuntu is a great Linux distro and all, but couldn’t they have chosen a better code-name for the latest version!? As everyone knows, geeks and nerds are the worlds biggest obsessive-compulsive, nit-picking grammar-Nazis, and they’re also the ones (at the moment) most likely to be using Linux. So, why on Earth is Ubuntu 7.04 called Feisty Fawn and not Fiesty Fawn?

Out of all the Fxxxxx Fxxxxx names Mark Shuttleworth’s Canonical Ltd. could have picked for their all-the-rage Linux distribution, it had to be the (only?) one that breaks the infamous i-before-e rule, didn’t it?

‘I’ before ‘E’, except after ‘C’, or when sounding like ‘A’, as in “neighbor” or “weigh.”

 

Everyone who speaks English was made to memorize that as a child (well, if you’re British you would’ve memorized it “neighbour” instead, but that’s not the point ;), yet here we are: grown coders using software built on exceptions to grammatical laws!

Let’s take a quick look at some of the other names Ubuntu could’ve used:

What wonderful code-names! What beautiful, grammatically-sound, alliterations! Maybe they just didn’t notice the grammatical misnomer – plus, there’s always next time. Here’s hoping for more great Ubuntu releases with gramatically-correct names!

Bootsect.exe Modifies the Bootsector Not the MBR!!

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
45

We’ve noticed a lot of people posting questions both in our support forums and in the Windows Vista newsgroups having issues getting bootsect.exe to do their bidding. Bootsect.exe is a command-line utility that ships on the Windows Vista DVD intended to repair a non-booting Windows Vista install – except it doesn’t always seem to work.

The problem that most people seem to be having can be traced back to single, simple fact: bootsect.exe does not modify the MBR: it only fixes/repairs the bootsector of your Windows Vista partition. The MBR is like a “global bootsector” that tells the BIOS where in the hard-drive it should look for a bootloader. The bootsector, on the other hand, is like a partition-dependant MBR – each operating system can have its own bootsector to tell your system how to boot it.

The source of all this confusion is that during the Longhorn/Vista beta program, quite a number of builds were shipped with a version of bootsect.exe (originally dubbed `fixntfs.exe`) that modified both the MBR and the bootsector.

However, in the Windows Vista RTM build and Longhorn Server builds following that, bootsect.exe is a command-line utility used to repair the bootsector and only the bootsector – it won’t get your MBR to use the Vista BCD/Bootmgr. In order to do that, you’ll have to boot from the Vista DVD | Repair Options | Command Prompt.

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iReboot 1.0 Released

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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NeoSmart Technologies is proud to announce the release of iReboot 1.0 – our first “helper app” for EasyBCD. iReboot is a minimalistic (taking up only 400KB of memory!) taskbar utility that lets you intelligently choose which operating system you’d like to reboot into.

iReboot interfaces with the Vista BCD (so the Vista bootloader is a requirement) and sets the operating system your PC will boot into the next time you restart. Instead of pressing Start | Shutdown | Restart and waiting 10 minutes for Windows to shutdown, your BIOS to post, then racing to select the right operating system from the bootloader before it times out; you just install iReboot, right-click your taskbar and pick the OS you want to boot into – then go out, get a cup of coffee, come back and find it already there.

iReboot, like all other NeoSmart Technologies’ projects and services, is freeware. If you’d like to donate to ensure continued development and help us cover our mounting expenses, please do so (the donation tracker is right there in the sidebar).

And, without further ado, the download link:

Download iReboot 1.0

[support] [beta thread]

How to: Install the Vista Bootloader on Windows XP

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
45

Ever since Windows Vista came out, a lot of hype has been going around the new bootloader. That’s the hype that drove us to create EasyBCD, and that’s the same hype that’s been driving people to ask all around the web: “Is it possible to install the new Windows Vista bootloader on a non-Vista machine? Can I get XP to use the new Vista bootloader? How can I install the Vista bootloader on my XP-only machine?”

First, a disclaimer: In order to use the Vista bootloader, you’ll need some licensed Vista files. The only legal way to get these is by already having Windows Vista legally installed on another machine and grabbing the files from there. Kapish? Second, the answer: Of course you can. And here’s how!

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Managed Pointers to Managed Objects (or Aliases for Objects) in C# and Visual Basic .NET

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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One of the biggest advantages of managed frameworks/platforms like Microsoft’s .NET Framework (and it’s Linux-counterpart, Mono), and Java is that you, as a developer, have a choice of not mucking around with pointers. To be totally honest, with Java you’re forced not to – in C#, it’s a choice you have to make.

There’s plenty of good reasons for not using (unsafe!!) pointers, but that’s not the issue here. The question is, what if you want something to “point” to another object, and synchronize it’s value automatically, without resorting to unsafe pointers? There’s actually a quite simple answer using just a single line of C# code.

Whereas in C++ you could write something like what appears below, in C# you’d have to declare it as unsafe, then jump through a hundred hoops to get it to properly point to a managed object:

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How Do you Like your Interviews?

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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NeoSmart Technologies is planning on doing a series of interviews with certain members of the online community, and we were wondering how you would like to see them done.

What’s your preferred format? Length? Style? Text or Audio? Personal or Professional? Let us know what you like so we can give it you!

[poll=5]

Wikia’s Outrageous Exploitation of the Human Race

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
3

It’s official, Jimmy Wales has gone too far. The founder of Wikipedia is famous for tapping into users to generate content and traffic, building the internet’s largest chain/web of user-generated content and information. From the million+ articles written by users to the billions of incoming links that have given Wikipedia its super-human search result rankings, Wales has clearly mastered the art of human exploitation more than anyone ever has.

Most people are content with things the way they are: after all, it’s for a good cause! Go ahead and exploit humans, we agree, if the end result brings as much benefit and knowledge to the world as Wikipedia did and does. However, earlier this year, Wikipedia did a couple of things that created an outrage in the online community, by banning contributing sources to Wikipedia from getting the credit they deserve.

Now Wales is at it again, this time though, it’s not the greater good that’ll be benefiting: Jimmy Wales is now using end-users to bring in the cash!

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