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Jun 29

Make XP Look Like Vista For FREE

Posted in: Microsoft, mod, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on May 20, 2006 by CyberNet.

How To Make Your XP Machine Look Like Vista For FREE

Vista Transformation Pack 4.0 was just released and it does a great job of giving your XP machine the Vista look. In December last year Windows Blinds released a new version of their software that was designed to provide Windows XP with transparent effects, however, it wasn’t free. That is where the Vista Transformation Pack comes into play. It is free and does a great job of giving my machine a look similar to Vista. It doesn’t have the powerful transparency effects for every window (as seen on the window to the right in the screenshot above) but does have enough transparency to make me happy. The greatest thing is that it is free!

It does have uninstallation options in case you decide you want to get rid of it, so there really isn’t anything to lose. However, when you install the software it has to overwrite some system files (it modifies things like the boot screen) so Windows will prompt you stating that your system files have been changed. It will ask whether you want to change them back or leave them, so just leave them if you want the system to function properly.

The software is also nice because it allows you to choose what you want it to change. If you don’t want it to alter the boot screen then you just have to uncheck the “Boot Screen” box during installation (the boot screen is kinda ugly, see the screenshots link below). This is a very nice piece of software.

Update: Here are the steps you need to take to adjust the transparency of the windows:

Right-click on the Glass2K icon in your system tray and select “Settings”. Now check to see what your keyboard shortcut is (I changed mine to be Ctrl + Shift).
Open the window that you want to adjust the transparency of, like Windows Explorer or Notepad for example.
Use the shortcut above in conjunction with a 0-9 number key. 0 means you want no transparency where 9 means you want the most transparency. If I wanted a window with no transparency I would press Ctrl+Shift+0.
That’s all! I don’t believe there is a way you can do this for every application at one time so you will have to perform this for each application individually.

Download The Vista Transformation Pack (14.61MB via RapidShare)
Nice Screenshots
Forum Discussion

Update:

There is a newer version of the Vista Transformation Pack available here.

Update 2:

The newest WindowBlinds, version 6, will be making XP look eve more like Vista. While it does cost a little money the big benefit is that it supports blurring much like Vista’s Aero.

New Vista Transformation Pack 5 Available

Make Sure To Activate Windows Vista Beta 2

Windows Vista Cursors For Windows XP

Retrieve Shadow Copy Backups in Vista

Jun 18

Microsoft to malware: your AutoRunning days on Windows are numbered

Posted in: flash drive, FlashDrive, Microsoft, security, Today's Chili, update, usb, usb drive, UsbDrive, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

Beware, malware. The Windows AutoRun updates for Vista and XP SP3 that Microsoft released in February have so far proven successful in thwarting your file corrupting ways. Although Windows 7 was updated to disable AutoPlay within AutoRun for USB drives — freezing the ability for a virus to exploit it — the aforementioned versions had remained vulnerable up until right after January. Fast-forward to the period between February and May of this year, and the updates have reduced the number of incidents by 1.3 million compared to the three months prior for the supported Vista and XP builds. Amazingly, when stacked against May of last year, there was also a 68 percent decline in the amount of incidents reported across all builds of Windows using Microsoft’s Malicious Software Remove Tool. There’s another fancy graph after the break to help illustrate, and you’ll find two more along with a full breakdown by hitting the source link down under.

Continue reading Microsoft to malware: your AutoRunning days on Windows are numbered

Microsoft to malware: your AutoRunning days on Windows are numbered originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jun 2011 21:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CNET | source Microsoft | Email this | Comments

Jun 17

Windows Animated Cursor Vulnerability Patch Available Tomorrow

Posted in: Apple, Hacks, Microsoft, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on April 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

Hackers Microsoft will be releasing a critical security update tomorrow (via Windows Update) to patch what is being referred to as the “Windows animated cursor” vulnerability. It almost sounds hard to believe that an exploit can occur from something as simple as a mouse cursor, but as CNet points out it is definitely possible:

There’s a new Microsoft Windows vulnerability caused by an unspecified error in the way Windows 2000, XP, and Vista handles animated cursors. Animated cursors allow a mouse pointer to appear animated on a Web site. The feature is often designated by the .ani suffix, but attacks for this vulnerability are not constrained by this file type so simply blocking .ani files won’t necessarily protect a PC. Successful exploitation can result in memory corruption when processing cursors, animated cursors, and icons.

Most of you probably won’t have to worry though, because a large percentage of our visitors are using either Opera or Firefox as their browser. This vulnerability only applies to Internet Explorer 6 or 7 on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista. However, if you’re using IE 7 on Vista and you have the User Account Control (UAC) enabled then you are also fine. When you have UAC enabled it will force IE 7 to run in “protected mode” which is helpful at preventing unwanted attacks such as this one.

Microsoft learned about the vulnerability back in December 2006, but the attacks didn’t start appearing until the middle of last week. The severity of this is what prompted Microsoft to push out the patch even sooner:

This update was previously scheduled for release as part of the April monthly release on April 10, 2007. Due to the increased risk to customers from these latest attacks, we were able to expedite our testing to ensure an update is ready for broad distribution sooner than April 10.

While it is unfortunate that this vulnerability even exists, I guess it does demonstrate two things:

Internet Explorer should not be used by casual computer users because they are the ones who are most likely to get taken advantage of.
The User Account Control in Vista may actually be more beneficial than I thought. I used to keep it disabled, but as of about two-weeks ago I re-enabled it and I’m actually surprised that it hasn’t annoyed me. I’m confident that I can recognize a suspicious website or file when I see one, but the attacks are getting so advanced these days that I don’t want to take any chances.

Image Source: University of Texas

Big Day For Microsoft Tomorrow: Patches, XP SP1, And IE7?

Microsoft’s December 2005 Patch Tuesday

Firefox 3 Vulnerability Found in 5-hours

Microsoft Has Released A Patch To Fix MCE In Vista 5270

Jun 13

CyberNotes: Mount ISO Images in XP & Vista

Posted in: CyberNotes, Features, Freeware, Software, Today's Chili, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on August 05, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

Windows only
One trend that I’ve noticed as bandwidth and hard drive storage space continues to grow is that sending CD/DVD’s over the Internet is becoming a preferred way for distributing media. These files are typically in an ISO or BIN/CUE format, which most people will then burn to a CD/DVD before using them. The good news is that you can easily save the time and money involved in doing this by using a free virtual drive application.

How do you mount an ISO image? It’s actually really simple if you have the right tools. What they do is take an ISO image, BIN/CUE file, or any other supported format and displays it as a virtual drive on your computer. The drive will look just like any other CD drive in Windows Explorer. One of the huge benefits of doing this is that reading/copying files from the “CD” in this way is much faster than using a physical CD-ROM drive.

There are several free applications floating around the Internet that can do this, but you should be aware that some of them (Daemon Tools, etc..) might install spyware/malware on your machine. Luckily there are three great freeware solutions that you can trust, and that’s what we’re going to cover today.

–Virtual CloneDrive (Homepage)–

If you want a no-frills solution for mounting images Virtual CloneDrive is what you’ll likely want to use. It supports all of the common image formats including ISO, BIN, and CDD, and is capable of mounting the last used image file upon startup. You can have up to 8 virtual drives at any one given time, but the nicest feature would be the fact that you can mount an image simply by double-clicking on the file.

virtual clonedrive.png

–MagicISO (Homepage)–

MagicISO (commonly referred to as MagicDisc) can do everything that Virtual CloneDrive is capable of plus some. It supports up to 15 simultaneous virtual drives, can automatically mount the last used image file, compress ISO images (which really just converts it from an ISO image to UIF), and more. Plus you can create ISO images from a CD/DVD!

Here are some of the filetypes it supports when creating or mounting images:

Creating: ISO, BIN/CUE, NRG, or UIF images from a CD/DVD
Mounting: Not only does MagicISO support the ISO image format, but it also supports over two dozen other popular formats: UIF, BIN/CUE (CDRWin), IMA/IMG, CIF (Easy CD Creator), NRG (Nero Burning ROM), IMG/CCD (CloneCD), MDF/MDS (Fantom CD), VCD (Farstone Virtual Drive), FCD, LCD, NCD, GCD, VaporCD (Noum Vapor CDROM), P01/MD1/XA (Gear), VC4/000 (Virtual CD), VDI (Virtuo CD Manager), C2D (WinOnCD), BWI/BWT (BlinkWrite), CDI (DiscJuggler), TAO/DAO (Duplicator), and PDI (Instant Copy)

The only thing this seems to be missing is the easy double-click to mount an image file that Virtual CloneDrive supports. To mount a drive in MagicISO you’ll want to click on the System Tray icon, go to Virtual CD/DVD-ROM, hover over one of the virtual adrives, and then choose the “Mount” option.

–StarBurn (Homepage)–

You might recall us writing about StarBurn as a free CD/DVD/Blu-ray burning application, but it’s also capable of mounting an ISO image! Once you have the StarBurn software running you’ll notice that there is a StarPort option located on the toolbar (also in the Action menu), and clicking on that will initiate the StarPort wizard. From there you can mount or unmount an image file on a virtual drive.

If you’ve been wanting a nice freeware application for burning CD’s and DVD’s I highly recommend picking this up. The fact that it doubles as a virtual drive manager makes it extremely worthwhile.

Note: This software tries to change your browser’s homepage during the setup process, but getting around it is as simple as unchecking a box.

–Overview–

It’s good to know that you’ve got options available to you should you decide that you need a virtual drive management application. Each one of the free solutions I’ve mentioned above caters to a different type of need: Virtual CloneDrive is simple and intuitive, MagicISO is powerful and lets you create images from CD’s, and StarBurn doubles as a CD burning application. Pick the one that benefits you the most, but it’s not like you can’t easily download one of the other free alternatives if you don’t like how one of them handles.

CyberNotes: Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

Jun 10

Windows XP users will finally need to upgrade to enter the iCloud

Posted in: Apple, itunes, Today's Chili, Windows XP

This got a bit lost amid all the WWDC 2011 hubbub earlier this week, but Apple quietly delivered a bit of bad news to steadfast Windows XP users with its iCloud announcement. Unlike its MobileMe service and recent versions of iTunes, which have somewhat surprisingly supported Windows XP all this time, use of Apple’s iCloud service on a PC will require either Windows Vista or Windows 7. Of course, XP users shouldn’t feel too bad about being left behind — as TUAW notes, Apple’s only extended support for the Mac version of iTunes 10.3 back to OS X 10.5, which was just released in 2007 (when Windows XP was already starting to tell other upstart operating systems to get off its lawn).

[Thanks, Stephen]

Windows XP users will finally need to upgrade to enter the iCloud originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source TUAW | Email this | Comments

May 27

Official Windows XP SP3 Release Date

Posted in: Microsoft, Release Date, Screenshots, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows XP

This article was written on February 06, 2008 by CyberNet.

XP SP3 Release Date

There has been a lot of buzz around Microsoft’s announcement that Vista SP1 has been sent to manufacturing, but it won’t actually be available to the public until March 2008. The reason for the delay is that there are some driver compatibility problems for some users, and Microsoft is trying to figure out the best way to isolate the people who will have troubles with the Service Pack.

All of this news has come while Windows XP SP3 has been brewing on a backburner, and Microsoft has been very reluctant to provide any status updates for XP SP3. That’s not surprising since they want to draw as much attention to Vista SP1 as possible, and that’s also a good reason that Vista SP1 will likely ship before XP SP3.

A French site called PCInpact (English translation) got their hands on the screenshot that you see above which indicates that Windows XP SP3 will launch on March 24th, 2008. I’m not sure how accurate that date will be considering that they also have a similar screenshot for Vista SP1 which indicates a February 18th release date, but Microsoft has already clearly said that it won’t be available until the middle of March.

At least we know that Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about XP SP3!

Thanks to Nicolas for the tip!

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May 22

AltTab Mouse Shortcut

Posted in: Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Today's Chili, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on February 24, 2008 by CyberNet.

Ever since I released the Vista Flip3D mouse shortcut I’ve received a few emails from people who still prefer the Alt+Tab application switching (especially XP users who don’t have Flip3D). I have since modified my Flip3D AutoHotkey script, and spun it into a different variation that works great with the Alt+Tab key combination.

What this standalone (no-install needed) application does is execute the Ctrl+Alt+Tab key combination when you press and hold the left mouse button, and then press the right mouse button. The Alt+Tab application switcher will appear on the screen until you click on one of the windows that you want to switch to:

AltTab Mouse

This should work in any version of Windows that supports the Alt+Tab key combination, and it can easily be set to start with Windows by placing it in your Startup folder located in the Start Menu. You’ll know this is running when you see the Vista-like orb in the System Tray, and you can temporarily disable the functinoality by right-clicking on the icon. Enjoy!

Here’s the one line of code needed for anyone looking to add this functionality to their own AutoHotkey script:

~LButton & RButton::send, {lalt down}{lctrl down}{tab}{lalt up}{lctrl up}

Download the AltTab Mouse Shortcut

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenters I found out that this script doesn’t work in XP since there is no Ctrl+Alt+Tab command. I’ve created a version that does work with XP, and it can be downloaded here. To use the XP version press and hold the left mouse button while you continue to press the right mouse button to switch between the windows. When you release the mouse buttons you will immediately be switched to the selected window. This version will also work in Vista if you would rather have this behavior over the “click to select” method mentioned above.

Helpful Tip: Vista Flip3D Mouse Shortcut

CyberNotes: Override & Modify Keyboard Shortcuts on a Mac

Helpful Tip: “Open in New Tab” Keyboard Shortcuts

Calibrate Your Mouse

May 13

Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition not seen in Android File Transfer, Windows usability is spotty

Posted in: Android, GalaxyTab, Google, hands-on, issue, Mac, os x, OsX, problem, samsung, Today's Chili, Windows, windows 7, Windows XP, Windows7

You know what’s cool? Handing out 5,000 Android tablets to your most loyal developers at Google I/O. You know what’s not cool? Handing out 5,000 Android tablets that can’t have files loaded onto them. Believe or not, that’s exactly what happened at this week’s I/O conference, where hordes of developers were handed a Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition that cannot currently interface with OS X, and has a whale of a time doing so with Windows 7. During our initial preview of Music Beta, we noticed that our MacBook Pro (OS X 10.6) wouldn’t actually recognize the tablet, even after installing Android File Transfer. Given that we didn’t actually need that functionality for the purpose of said article, we threw it on the backburner.

For those unaware, Android File Transfer is a small app that’s required to transfer content between OS X and Android 3.0. Avid users of Froyo and Gingerbread may be appalled that any Honeycomb device they buy will require a piece of software to interface with it, but hey — there it is. At any rate, it seems to us that the latest build of Android File Transfer doesn’t include the device ID for Samsung’s heretofore unreleased Tab 10.1; if you’ll recall, the standard edition of this thing isn’t slated to hit consumer hands until June 8th. Regardless of what tricks we tried (installing a Mac version of Kies Mini, for example), we couldn’t get a single Apple in our stable to recognize the thing. In one instance, a Mac viewed the device as a “Samsung Modem” within the Networking pane — that’s as close as we could come to getting the two to mingle. AllThingsD‘s Ina Fried said her Tab 10.1 LE was merely recognized as a camera-like device within Aperture.

Over on the Windows side, things are only marginally less awful. We’ve had a couple of Wintel boxes outright refuse to play nice with this “mysterious USB device,” while others required multiple reboots and driver searchers to finally mount it as an external storage device — and only with USB Debugging disabled. The upside is that those with patience (and a Windows 7 rig) can look forward to a single method of transfer, but it’s certainly less than ideal.

We’re surmising that Google’s cooking up a new version of Android File Transfer as we speak that’ll take care of the compatibility issues, hopefully long before consumers start seeing these in early June. But for developers in the here and now? Stop wasting your afternoon trying to figure out why your Mac just won’t cooperate, and give that Win7 system a little love.

Update: After a bit of additional digging, we noticed that it’s possible to access the Tab’s file system from a Mac or Windows PC by using the Android SDK, putting the tablet in USB debugging mode, and running ddms. It’s not the most convenient solution if you want to quickly and conveniently transfer some content to / from the device, but it should work until AFT sees an update. Alternatively, we’re hearing that XNJB — an older open source project originally built for Creative Nomads — enables files to be transferred whenever it’s in a good mood.

Galaxy Tab 10.1 Limited Edition not seen in Android File Transfer, Windows usability is spotty originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 May 2011 15:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 12

By Popular Request: Dell Brings Back Windows XP

Posted in: Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows XP

This article was written on April 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Dell Windows XP

The first result from the Dell IdeaStorm site has finally been implemented, but it doesn’t have to do with Linux. In fact, it has to do with another operating system…Windows XP. Just when you thought that Dell had completely phased Windows XP out they have now started to bring it back for consumers.

I remember checking out the Dell site shortly after Vista launched and noticed that they had switched everything over to Vista. A few weeks later they decided to bring back Windows XP for business users, but still had Vista as the only option for home users. As a result of the IdeaStorm site Windows XP has been added back onto the following computers:

Dell Inspiron Notebooks: 1405, 1705, 1505, 1501
Dell Dimension Desktops: E520, E521

When visiting those pages you’ll see a quick comparison chart (pictured above) between Windows Vista and XP…with Vista taking the cake. The systems all include Windows XP Home Edition with an optional upgrade to XP Professional for $149.

I am happy to see Dell listing to the feedback of their users, but they are definitely trying not to promote Windows XP. To choose from Windows XP systems you either need to use the direct links above, or on some of the Dell pages you’ll see a small link in the sidebar that says “Still looking for Windows XP?” that you can click. I thought that they could just add XP to the list of operating systems to choose from when customizing a computer, but apparently they didn’t want to do that? The only reason I know of why they did that is because they didn’t want someone inadvertently choosing XP just to find out later that their new computer didn’t come with the latest operating system.

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Apr 23

CyberNotes: A Visual Tour of Windows 1.01 – Vista

Posted in: CyberNotes, Microsoft, Software, Today's Chili, Windows, Windows Vista, Windows XP

This article was written on February 18, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Monday

Over the course of the years as Microsoft has launched new versions of Windows, there have been three things (among many, really) that have consistently changed: the start-up screen, the calculator, and the program manager/Start menu. Thanks to a site I recently came across called Guidebook Gallery, I was able to get screenshots of all three from most versions of Windows starting at 1.01. Today’s CyberNotes will be a visual tour – just click on the first image to get started and then use your arrow key to scroll through all of the photos. All I can say is that I’m glad Microsoft decided to add a start menu and change the calculator along the way because I’d hate to be looking at the one they started with in Windows 1.01, in Vista!

Windows 1.01