Vista disables Cool'N'Quiet on some motherboards

[YKhan]

AMD's Cool'n'Quiet support is supposed to be natively built into Vista
(no need for drivers). However, they are finding that C'n'Q setups
that were working fine under XP, no longer work under Vista. People
have been waiting for BIOS updates for their motherboards, and some
have found that the BIOS updates don't fix the problem.

Anyways, it was all a bit mysterious, but it looks like a bit of light
is finally being shown on it: it's Microsoft's fault. The Vole has
very quietly dropped support for ACPI 1.0 tables in BIOS, without
letting anyone know. The ACPI tables are queried by the OS to see if a
particular CPU has support for power management or not. So even with a
BIOS update, they may have still kept ACPI 1.0 tables, and Vista
simply and quietly ignores it. ACPI 1.0 was good enough for XP, so I
have no idea why it's not good enough for Vista.

This just goes to highlight why secretive organizations like Microsoft
should not be trusted. They do stupid random things and people have no
way of finding out what's going on. On Linux, this is not likely to
happen because they wouldn't be stupid enough to drop support for ACPI
1.0 tables -- they'd add support for the newer ACPI versions, but
they'd retain older support too. And if somebody dropped support for
something, somebody else could go into the source code and discover
the problem and fix it again.

People in wait state for AMD C'n'Q Vista driver
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38132

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

* YKhan:

AMD's Cool'n'Quiet support is supposed to be natively built into Vista
(no need for drivers). However, they are finding that C'n'Q setups
that were working fine under XP, no longer work under Vista. People
have been waiting for BIOS updates for their motherboards, and some
have found that the BIOS updates don't fix the problem.

Anyways, it was all a bit mysterious, but it looks like a bit of light
is finally being shown on it: it's Microsoft's fault.

Nope, it's not. It's the fault of the mobo manufacturers that simply
don't fix the crap they are selling...

The Vole has
very quietly dropped support for ACPI 1.0 tables in BIOS, without
letting anyone know. The ACPI tables are queried by the OS to see if a
particular CPU has support for power management or not. So even with a
BIOS update, they may have still kept ACPI 1.0 tables, and Vista
simply and quietly ignores it. ACPI 1.0 was good enough for XP, so I
have no idea why it's not good enough for Vista.

Microsoft has already made clear that Vista would require ACPI
2.0-compliant hardware and BIOS to work properly when they published the
first specifications over a year ago. Every hardware manufacturer that
got surprised by Vista RTM not supporting ACPI 1.0 any more is just an
idiot.

This just goes to highlight why secretive organizations like Microsoft
should not be trusted. They do stupid random things and people have no
way of finding out what's going on. On Linux, this is not likely to
happen because they wouldn't be stupid enough to drop support for ACPI
1.0 tables -- they'd add support for the newer ACPI versions, but
they'd retain older support too. And if somebody dropped support for
something, somebody else could go into the source code and discover
the problem and fix it again.

Yeah, sure. Happy little Linux world. Tell that the people that for
example can't get their notebooks to work with everything under Linux.
For example card readers are still prone to make trouble with Linux. But
in this case of course it's not Linux fault but the hardware
manufacturers who don't provide Linux support. Only when Microsoft is
involved it has to be different of course...

Benjamin

 

[YKhan]

Microsoft has already made clear that Vista would require ACPI
2.0-compliant hardware and BIOS to work properly when they published the
first specifications over a year ago. Every hardware manufacturer that
got surprised by Vista RTM not supporting ACPI 1.0 any more is just an
idiot.

Yet, somehow, the beta and RC versions of Vista were all supporting
and working with ACPI 1.0, right up until the end. Why disable such a
fundamental feature in the final version but leave them enabled in the
beta versions? You have all of these beta-testers reporting back to MS
that everything seems to be working fine, and then little do they know
that MS is planning to change at least one other thing without going
through a beta process. What's the point of doing betas, then? These
testers would've likely caught the problem, and Microsoft or the mobo
makers would've issued fixes beforehand.

Yeah, sure. Happy little Linux world. Tell that the people that for
example can't get their notebooks to work with everything under Linux.

And that is somehow Linux's fault? The hardware vendors that did
provide support for in Linux works without problems.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Venom]

Wait till you discover that Vista does not use NTLDR any more either.
Vista uses BOOTMGR instead and if you install Vista onto a computer with
more than just one hard drive in it, Vista will load BOOTMGR pretty well
wherever it likes. Not really much of a problem unless you clone your "C"
drive and BOOTMGR is not on it.

 

[YKhan]

Wait till you discover that Vista does not use NTLDR any more either.
Vista uses BOOTMGR instead and if you install Vista onto a computer with
more than just one hard drive in it, Vista will load BOOTMGR pretty well
wherever it likes. Not really much of a problem unless you clone your "C"
drive and BOOTMGR is not on it.

Also here's something else that's interesting. It looks like Vista (at
least the Home Premium) has an upper limit on the number of windows
you can open up, just 52 with Aero (and just 54 without).

Fudzilla - Vista has limit of 52 opened windows
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&Itemid=1

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

* YKhan:

Yet, somehow, the beta and RC versions of Vista were all supporting
and working with ACPI 1.0, right up until the end. Why disable such a
fundamental feature in the final version but leave them enabled in the
beta versions?

Because they were *beta* versions? It's quite common that beta versions
contain things that won't be there in the final version. And it's really
not that MS made a secret out of the fact that Vista RTM won't support
ACPI 1.0 any more.

You have all of these beta-testers reporting back to MS
that everything seems to be working fine, and then little do they know
that MS is planning to change at least one other thing without going
through a beta process. What's the point of doing betas, then?

The point is fining bugs and non-working features. Betas are *not* final
code, nor contain they everything that is in the final versions.

If that wouldn't be the case beta versions would be pretty useless...

These
testers would've likely caught the problem, and Microsoft or the mobo
makers would've issued fixes beforehand.

Nope. The manufacturers of these mobos were sitting on their arses for
over a year while the rest of the world was already aware that ACPI 1.0
is a dead horse. Still they didn't fix their crap.

And that is somehow Linux's fault? The hardware vendors that did
provide support for in Linux works without problems.

There are lots of examples where things don't work (especially with
notebooks) even if Linux has been officially supported by the hardware
manufacturer (and this also happened with big names like HP and
IBM/Lenovo). But yeah, here of course it's the hardware manufacturers
fault. But when mobo makers ignored the fact that Vista RTM doesn't
support ACPI 1.0 any more while it was well known over a year before
public release of Vista then of course it's MS fault.

Benjamin

 

[Gnu_Raiz]

* YKhan:
snip<

Nope. The manufacturers of these mobos were sitting on their arses for
over a year while the rest of the world was already aware that ACPI 1.0
is a dead horse. Still they didn't fix their crap.



There are lots of examples where things don't work (especially with
notebooks) even if Linux has been officially supported by the hardware
manufacturer (and this also happened with big names like HP and
IBM/Lenovo). But yeah, here of course it's the hardware manufacturers
fault. But when mobo makers ignored the fact that Vista RTM doesn't
support ACPI 1.0 any more while it was well known over a year before
public release of Vista then of course it's MS fault.

Benjamin

This is like a dead horse, beaten to a pulp, like a B movie I seen
which showed a monster truck running over a dead vampire 10+ times. At
the end you see a blood spot with an essence that their might be a
come back.

Just look at the news, seems a lot of people are upset at how Windows
phones home even if you decline to install the software, not good.
Defending a company who practices marginal ethics is not a very good
position to be in. Yes the motherboard companies are to blame for bad
support, but what exactly does M$ gain from leaving out backwards
compatibility to ACPI 1.0? More DRM control, or some other oddball
effect? Also we are talking about hardware support for cooling and
reduced wattage output which many consider a very good thing to have
support for.

With the new kernel model; ie developers offering to help hardware
companies make software drivers, which in my opinion gets rid of most
excuses if the company is really serious about Open Source. Which does
place the blame on hardware companies, why would I want to buy some
bug ridden non-free Windows only hardware if an Open Source
alternative is around?

Gnu_Raiz

 

[nobody]

Yet, somehow, the beta and RC versions of Vista were all supporting
and working with ACPI 1.0, right up until the end. Why disable such a
fundamental feature in the final version but leave them enabled in the
beta versions? You have all of these beta-testers reporting back to MS
that everything seems to be working fine, and then little do they know
that MS is planning to change at least one other thing without going
through a beta process. What's the point of doing betas, then? These
testers would've likely caught the problem, and Microsoft or the mobo
makers would've issued fixes beforehand.

Remember how it was with XP? The original release was more like 1st
Beta in its quality; SP1 looked like release candidate; and only SP2
became more or less production strength soft. It's not only MS doing
this - most software made by most companies out there, including the
stuff written by yours truly (gotta admit this), go through these
stages, some of it never even comes to production quality - Lotus
Notes, to name just one. If you want to name more - look at any
flavor of Linux, why the hell the end users have to edit the source
code in attempt (often futile) to make things work? MS is not the
worst offender out there. As for the poor Vista owners - well, they
paid (or pirated<LOL/>) for the privilege to work for MS as beta
testers ;-))))))
I am not even thinking of installing Vista before SP1 is out, unless I
_need_ it for my next project.

NNN

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

Anyways, it was all a bit mysterious, but it looks like a bit of light
is finally being shown on it: it's Microsoft's fault. The Vole has
very quietly dropped support for ACPI 1.0 tables in BIOS, without
letting anyone know. The ACPI tables are queried by the OS to see if a
particular CPU has support for power management or not. So even with a
BIOS update, they may have still kept ACPI 1.0 tables, and Vista
simply and quietly ignores it. ACPI 1.0 was good enough for XP, so I
have no idea why it's not good enough for Vista.

People in wait state for AMD C'n'Q Vista driver
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38132

While I'm usually a big fan of backwards compatibility, in this case I'd say
hardware manufacturers are at fault. If you desgin your products such that
it requires "undocumented features" to work then you get what you deserve,
burned (which has started happening more and more on the Windows platform).
On the whole I'd say what Microsoft is doing is probably a positive thing.
Let's face it, backwards compatibility is a source of many of their greatest
troubles... i.e. allowing third party apps to patch the kernel, take over
critical functionality the list goes on... While it's annoying now, in the
end it'll probably ensure a better more secure project going forward. I
guess I should say I'm writing this being in the uniquly lucky position of
A) having a modern system (I"m an enthusiest), and B) have an MSDN
subscription which was paid for me (I'm a developer). So I"m now running
Vista ultimite. I have to say over all it's a great expereince.

 

[know code]

If you want to name more - look at any
flavor of Linux, why the hell the end users have to edit the source
code in attempt (often futile) to make things work?

When was the last time you looked at linux? The last time I recall
having to edit source code to make something work could have been 4-5
years ago! Things have moved on a LOT since then.

Some of the stories about certain 'features' in Vista should scare the
hell out of anyone thinking about using it. It looks like Vista is just
one huge bloated piece of spyware that will never make it onto my desktop!

 

[Venom]

And I bet you get pissed off with this when you eventually discover it.
It installs with Vista and lives in WINLOAD.EXE in the System32 folder.
Let's see you try to get rid of it.

Threat Details

Copyright © 2007 Sunbelt-Software. Reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.

PC Tattletale
Type Surveillance Tool
Type Description Surveillance Tools are software applications that
monitor and capture data from computers including screenshots, keystrokes,
web cam and microphone data, instant messaging chat sessions, email, visited
websites, programs run and files accessed and files shared on a P2P (peer to
peer) network. Many Surveillance Tools can run in stealth mode, hidden from
the user, and have the ability to store captured data for later retrieval by
or transmission to another computer. A key logger is one simple, standard
type of Surveillance Tool.
Category Commercial Key Logger
Category Description A Commercial Key Logger is a program that
captures and logs keystrokes as they are entered on the computer for the
purpose of monitoring the user. The logged data, which may be encrypted, is
saved or sent to the person who installed the key logger. These applications
often run in stealth mode and are invisible to the user that is being
monitored. Such key loggers are sold commercially and may be used
legitimately if deployed by authorized administrators and disclosed to the
persons being monitored, as in a business environment. The use of a key
logger to monitor persons without their knowledge has been ruled illegal in
at least one jurisdiction.
Level Elevated
Level Description Elevated risks are typically installed without
adequate notice and consent, and may make unwanted changes to your system,
such as reconfiguring your browser's homepage and search settings. These
risks may install advertising-related add-ons, including toolbars and search
bars, or insert advertising-related components into the Winsock Layered
Service Provider chain. These new add-ons and components may block or
redirect your preferred network connections, and can negatively impact your
computer's performance and stability. Elevated risks may also collect,
transmit, and share potentially sensitive data without adequate notice and
consent.
Advice Type Remove
Description PC Tattletale is an advanced keystroke logger records that
records all keystrokes - including passwords, "hidden characters", and
ordinary keystrokes. It can even capture both in and outbound e-mails.
Add. Description PC Tattletale is a powerful chat recorder that
records all chat sessions & instant messages - capturing both sides of any
chat conversation or instant messages, including: AOL chat rooms and instant
messenger, ICQ chats, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and Trillian chat. It
features easy to read color coding for each "Chat Personality" recorded, and
can record up to 20 different chat sessions simultaneously. PC Tattletale
has "VCR like controls & playback", making it as simple as clicking the PLAY
button to watch screenshots captured when the victim was online.
Author Cyber Samurai Marketing, Inc.
Author Description PC Tattletale solves the problem of helping you
stay on top of what your child does, and is exposed to online when you're
not there to watch over their shoulder by giving you the tools and the power
to invisibly monitor your child and help keep them safe on the Internet
Author URL pctattletale.com/download.htm
Alias Spyware.PCTattletale
File Traces
%DESKTOPDIRECTORY%\ 5dpcttsetupfull791005.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ AutoUpdateClient.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ explorer.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ explorer32.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ msn6mngr.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ Netlogon.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ svchost.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ Wincmd.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ WinLoad.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ WinSysMngr.exe
%system%\ explorer32\ WinSysMngr32.exe
%system%\ PCTT.exe
%system%\ UninstallPCTT.exe
%system%\ winload32.exe
5dpcttsetupfull791005.exe
AutoUpdate.dll
CompControls.ocx
Netlogon.exe
pcttse~1.exe
pcttsetup.exe
pcttsetupfull790805.exe
pcttsetupfull791005.exe
svchost.exe
Wincmd.exe
winload32.exe
WinSysMngr.exe

 

[Gnu_Raiz]

And I bet you get pissed off with this when you eventually discover it.
It installs with Vista and lives in WINLOAD.EXE in the System32 folder.
Let's see you try to get rid of it.

Threat Details

Copyright © 2007 Sunbelt-Software. Reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.

PC Tattletale
Type Surveillance Tool

<snip>

Thats a feature as the developers would say! We need to protect you
from yourself, as you can not be trusted in doing the right thing
towards the **AA's.

It's funny that if everyone paid detail attention to what the eula's
say as well as what is running on their Windows system they would be
horrified at what is going on. Heck people are upset that a few FBI
agents have misused privacy laws, just imagine if they found out what
the the software they are using does.

Gnu_Raiz

 

[YKhan]

* YKhan:



Because they were *beta* versions? It's quite common that beta versions
contain things that won't be there in the final version. And it's really
not that MS made a secret out of the fact that Vista RTM won't support
ACPI 1.0 any more.

Yes, things are usually removed from final versions that were in beta
versions. But that usually refers to debugging code, such as
breakpoints, triggers, dumps, etc. It doesn't usually refer to removal
of functionality.

Functionality might be removed if a particular feature is so buggy
that it doesn't work, and there's no time to fix it. For example, MS
quite publically removed their new WinFS filesystem from the feature
list because it didn't work, and they couldn't fix it quickly enough
for release. Removal of that kind of functionality is quite related to
beta-testing and debugging problems. However, this is a first I've
heard of a feature being removed that was working perfectly.

Actually it isn't the first I've heard of Microsoft removing perfectly
working functionality without informing anybody. My brother does tech
support for HP, and he tells me that a program used to help sync iPaq
PDAs to PCs was mysteriously deleted from Vista, which used to be in
XP. So it's now upto HP to come up with a replacement for it. Even big
companies have to put up with Microsoft's arrogance.

The point is fining bugs and non-working features. Betas are *not* final
code, nor contain they everything that is in the final versions.

In this case, the final version contains *less* than what was in the
betas.

Nope. The manufacturers of these mobos were sitting on their arses for
over a year while the rest of the world was already aware that ACPI 1.0
is a dead horse. Still they didn't fix their crap.

There are cases where there is not likely going to be any further BIOS
upgrades, such as older P3 or Athlon XP systems. They may have been
part of the original beta test of Vista and they worked fine (even
with Aero, with a sufficiently powerful video card). The people who
beta-tested Vista may have been confident enough in Vista that they
decided to buy the final version, based on their good beta experience.
Little did they know that they were beta testing some other OS.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Benjamin Gawert]

* YKhan:

Yes, things are usually removed from final versions that were in beta
versions. But that usually refers to debugging code, such as
breakpoints, triggers, dumps, etc. It doesn't usually refer to removal
of functionality.

It does. It happened on Vista, it happened on Windowsxp, it happened on
Windows2000 and on every release before...

Functionality might be removed if a particular feature is so buggy
that it doesn't work, and there's no time to fix it. For example, MS
quite publically removed their new WinFS filesystem from the feature
list because it didn't work, and they couldn't fix it quickly enough
for release. Removal of that kind of functionality is quite related to
beta-testing and debugging problems. However, this is a first I've
heard of a feature being removed that was working perfectly.

ACPI 1.0 working perfectly? Yeah, right. It works so perfectly that AMD
and MS had to provide kernel patches for several CPUs with power
management like Athlon64/Opteron or Pentium-M/Core just to have
powermanagement working correctly. ACPI 1.0 is very old (probably around
a decade now), and just lacks functionality for modern hardware...

Actually it isn't the first I've heard of Microsoft removing perfectly
working functionality without informing anybody.

That's simply not true. Every developer who was part of MSDN should know
for over a year now that ACPI 1.0 is a dead end on Vista.

My brother does tech
support for HP, and he tells me that a program used to help sync iPaq
PDAs to PCs was mysteriously deleted from Vista, which used to be in
XP. So it's now upto HP to come up with a replacement for it. Even big
companies have to put up with Microsoft's arrogance.

What for? It would be enough for your brother just to stay current on
the facts. The program you mention is called Mobile Device Center and is
the replacement for ActiveSync in Vista. Yes, it has been removed from
the final version. Now you have to download it separately:

There are cases where there is not likely going to be any further BIOS
upgrades, such as older P3 or Athlon XP systems.

Which are probably the best systems for running Vista ;-)

They may have been
part of the original beta test of Vista and they worked fine (even
with Aero, with a sufficiently powerful video card). The people who
beta-tested Vista may have been confident enough in Vista that they
decided to buy the final version, based on their good beta experience.
Little did they know that they were beta testing some other OS.

Then these peoples should have used their brains. Someone who tests a
beta version and believes the final product will work exactly the same
is a moron.

Benjamin

 

[Carlo Razzeto]

When was the last time you looked at linux? The last time I recall having
to edit source code to make something work could have been 4-5 years ago!
Things have moved on a LOT since then.

Some of the stories about certain 'features' in Vista should scare the
hell out of anyone thinking about using it. It looks like Vista is just
one huge bloated piece of spyware that will never make it onto my desktop!

You know... It seems to me I keep hearing that argument with Linux, even the
last time I tried it 5 years ago they were saying the same thing... Not that
Linux is a bad choice, it certainly is capable of doing what most people
need it to (particularly people who just want to surf the web). But I do
wish the OSS community would take a step back, breath deeply and finally
admit that yes... They are *very* far behind Microsoft and Apple in the
desktop market. Once they can finally admit that to them selves, they can
start taking a better look at OSX and Vista and start creating their own
versions of the best parts of these OS's. Search functions, enhanced kernel
protection, better organized UI's (I have yet to see a version of X Windows
that appeals to me at all) the list goes on.

Carlo

 

[Tony Hill]

When was the last time you looked at linux? The last time I recall
having to edit source code to make something work could have been 4-5
years ago! Things have moved on a LOT since then.

His example of editing source code to make things work isn't very
correct, but the basic point he was trying to make is dead-on. I use
Linux fairly regularly, both at home and at work, and I find it to
often be the best choice for many situations. However I have yet to
see a distribution that wasn't FULL of bugs.

When MS released Vista they said they had 500 bugs. I would be VERY
surprised if there is ANY Linux distribution on the planet that could
pass the same level of Software QA with fewer than 10,000 bugs. The
only one I've encountered that might come close is the Debian 'stable'
branch, which is always 2+ years out of date. I gave up on Debian
'testing' and Gentoo because they were HUGELY buggy and never could
get any version of Redhat/Fedora working at anything resembling a
reliable system.

Right now I'm using SuSE, which seems ok, but it's still much, MUCH
buggier than any current version of Window (meaning Win2K, WinXP or
Vista). The Linux kernel is extremely solid, and certain key
applications are well tested and very reliable, but beyond that the
quality level goes downhill rapidly.

There are lots of things that Microsoft does that I don't agree with.
They make some really boneheaded design decisions which have
negatively affected the security of their systems, and IMO with Vista
they are going way too far with taking away a users control of their
own PC. However when it comes to a purely *quality* standpoint (ie
they follow their design correctly, even if the design itself is
stupid), Microsoft is WAY ahead these days. That wasn't always the
case (Win9x was *TERRIBLE* in this regard and even WinNT 4.0 was
pretty poor), but it is now.

 

[YKhan]

* YKhan:


It does. It happened on Vista, it happened on Windowsxp, it happened on
Windows2000 and on every release before...

Well, when I talk about "normal", I'm talking about normal software
companies and their beta test programs, which apparently doesn't
include Microsoft.

You might say that Microsoft shouldn't be included in the category of
a "normal" software company because those others don't do operating
systems development. But even ones that do operating systems
development, such as Sun, HP, or IBM, you can pretty much expect the
betas to be truly representative of the final product. Each newer beta
release gets closer to what the final release will look like, and
things don't magically completely disappear between beta and release,
as if the betas and release code were from completely separate
revision control systems.

For example, let's take Sun's Solaris as an example. Sun had one time
completely stopped development on the x86 version of Solaris and
sunsetted it. Sun later changed course and decided that x86 was a
course that it should follow. It brought the x86 code out from the
archives, dusted it off, updated it by two major version releases (it
had stopped developing after Solaris 8, and it brought it back with
Solaris 10), and added 64-bit x64 support to it. It started this
development about 3 years after Microsoft was first given the
specifications for AMD64, and it beat Microsoft out the door with an
x64 operating system by more than a year! And Microsoft's first x64
operating system Windows XP/Server 2003 x64 still never caught on due
to lack of drivers. What is wrong with Microsoft's software
development process that they are so ****ed up? Why should we buy
software from a company that has such a ****ed up software development
process?

ACPI 1.0 working perfectly? Yeah, right. It works so perfectly that AMD
and MS had to provide kernel patches for several CPUs with power
management like Athlon64/Opteron or Pentium-M/Core just to have
powermanagement working correctly. ACPI 1.0 is very old (probably around
a decade now), and just lacks functionality for modern hardware...

ACPI 1.0 is obviously not what was working, it was the support for
ACPI 1.0 that was in Vista betas that was working perfectly. Why pull
functionality from something that was working?

As for AMD or MS having to provide kernel patches to get power
management working, that was only in Windows XP, where the power
management functions in the CPU were added after the operating system
came out. And so they had to provide device drivers to enable the
support, quite understandably. But Vista is released after those power
management features have been around for a long while, so MS is now
building the features natively into the kernel. ACPI 1.0 was good
enough to let the kernel know that some form of power management was
present in the CPU, maybe not all of the latest advanced features, but
at least basic features could be enabled with it, which is better than
nothing. During the betas, people were reporting that that their
hardware remained as cool as they did under XP, which is not
surprising because it included the same power management support
inside it.

What for? It would be enough for your brother just to stay current on
the facts. The program you mention is called Mobile Device Center and is
the replacement for ActiveSync in Vista. Yes, it has been removed from
the final version. Now you have to download it separately:

<http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/devicecenter.mspx>

Which I am sure was the solution he was told to use. It's just the
whole idea of having to download something to get the same
functionality that used to be built into the previous version of
Windows is screwed up. Microsoft couldn't be bothered to put the
package into the Windows DVD?

Which are probably the best systems for running Vista ;-)

Hey, if they worked fine, then they worked fine. You just need enough
memory, and a DX9 video card and you're good to go, so a lot of those
systems fulfilled more than the basic requirements to run Vista. So
that's all that should matter. What's it of your business to make fun
of that?

Then these peoples should have used their brains. Someone who tests a
beta version and believes the final product will work exactly the same
is a moron.

I think you're so brainwashed by Microsoft-think that your logic
circuits have become scrambled. Just play back your own words in your
own head: beta software has nothing to do with the final software?
Prior to your indoctrination you would've likely laughed at a person
who said something like that. In the Microsoft universe, it's your
fault for buying Microsoft software, Microsoft is not responsible.
Every other software company is responsible for making sure their
software works, but not Microsoft. Microsoft only makes software
worthwhile of piracy, nothing worthwhile of payment.

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

His example of editing source code to make things work isn't very
correct, but the basic point he was trying to make is dead-on. I use
Linux fairly regularly, both at home and at work, and I find it to
often be the best choice for many situations. However I have yet to
see a distribution that wasn't FULL of bugs.

I wouldn't trust an enterprise to Linux. Solaris is the way to go.

Yousuf Khan

 

[YKhan]

And I bet you get pissed off with this when you eventually discover it.
It installs with Vista and lives in WINLOAD.EXE in the System32 folder.
Let's see you try to get rid of it.

Threat Details

Copyright © 2007 Sunbelt-Software. Reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.

PC Tattletale
Type Surveillance Tool
Type Description Surveillance Tools are software applications that
monitor and capture data from computers including screenshots, keystrokes,
web cam and microphone data, instant messaging chat sessions, email, visited
websites, programs run and files accessed and files shared on a P2P (peerto
peer) network. Many Surveillance Tools can run in stealth mode, hidden from
the user, and have the ability to store captured data for later retrievalby
or transmission to another computer. A key logger is one simple, standard
type of Surveillance Tool.

It's not installed by Microsoft, it's something that is installed
after the fact, as an application.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

Usually MS goes to great length to make buggy platforms work with the OS.
Since beginning, there were some workarounds to work with buggy PCI chipsets
and bridges, ACPI bioses, etc. Now they seemed to decide that enough is
enough and dropped those kludges.