November 9th, 2008

You are currently browsing the articles from MS Windows Vista Compatible Software written on November 9th, 2008.

TURN ON WINDOWS VISTA’S HIDDEN BOOT SCREEN

If you don’t want to go to the trouble of building your own boot screen, butaren’t happy with the default one for Windows Vista, there’s another solution: turn on Windows Vista’s hidden boot screen. It’s called Aurora, because it looks like Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights. To turn it on, run the MSCONFIG utility, and on the Boot tab, select “No GUI boot” and click OK. From now on, you’ll use the hidden Windows Vista boot screen (if you’ve previously replaced the winload.exe.mui file with your own boot screen, you’ll need to restore the original to see the Aurora screen).

Written by magakos on November 9th, 2008 with 2 comments.
Read more articles on Windows Vista Tricks and otherSoftware.

Windows 7 to allow PC backups to network share

One of the most compelling features of the Windows Home Server is the automated image backup to the network share. However if you find a home server a little too much (or expensive) like I do, then you’d be glad to know Windows 7 will make the job of making “Windows Complete PC Backups” at least half as easy by allowing you to backup straight to a network share.

Whereas in Vista you could only do a complete backup to hard disk or DVDs (with files you could backup to network share), taking it one step further to the network share makes it much easier to do backups especially since you can’t backup to the same drive as the operating system. And I don’t think anyone will juggle 71 DVDs to backup their 500GB hard drive. I guess now’s a good a time as any to buy a NAS device.

Written by Long Zheng on November 9th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and blog.

KDE4 Wallpapers for Windows

Size: 1600x1200

When installing KDE4 on Windows these wallpapers are bundled with the rest of the packages.

Written by silfiriel on November 9th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on otherSoftware and windows 7.

The Ultimate Dual Boot Worked!

Well, as I posted a little while ago, I was going to try to create the ultimate dual boot system - one where I could run my Linux install virtually, in Windows with VirtualBox, but have the option to reboot natively into the Linux install.

I did have to make a modification to my “original plan”. In order for you to access a RAW device in VirtualBox, you must first create a .vmdk file that points to that device. You can find more details on this in the VirtualBox manual, which is available for download on the VirtualBox downloads page, however, I’ll do a how-to post on this later (probably tomorrow, so stay tuned).

First off, I modified my initial plan, by just installing withing Windows in VirtualBox since I had to create that .vmdk file anyway. My initial plan of doing a Debian install didn’t work either. When I tried to boot from the install natively, I got a “Grub Error 17″.

I decided to try Ubuntu, just to see what would happen, and low and behold, it worked! I can now use my Linux install from within Windows using VirtualBox, AND I can reboot into the Linux install physically.

I only have one question…why the heck didn’t I think of this sooner?!?!

Written by jaysonrowe on November 9th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on virtualbox and otherSoftware and Ubuntu and Computing.

Manual Removal of Syshosts.exe

Syshosts.exe (W32.MyDoom.Y/Worm)
This is a virus detection. Viruses are programs that self-replicate recursively, meaning that infected systems spread the virus to other systems, which then propagate the virus further. While many viruses contain a destructive payload, it’s quite common for viruses to do nothing more than spread from one system to another.
Damage Level : Low/Medium
Distribution Level: Unknown
Aliases:
Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.w (Kaspersky Lab) is also known as: I-Worm.Mydoom.w (Kaspersky Lab), W32/Evaman.gen@MM (McAfee), W32.Mydoom.Y@mm (Symantec), Win32.HLLM.MyDoom.39936 (Doctor Web), W32/MyDoom-Y (Sophos), Win32/Evaman.C@mm (RAV), WORM_MYDOOM.GEN (Trend Micro), Worm/Mydoom.W (H+BEDV), W32/Mydoom.X@mm (FRISK), Win32:Mydoom-V (ALWIL), I-Worm/Mydoom.Y (Grisoft), Win32.Evaman.D@mm (SOFTWIN), Worm.Mydoom.Z-unp (ClamAV), W32/Mydoom.AA.worm (Panda), Win32/Evaman.D (Eset)
Kaspersky Tool:
Email-Worm.Win32.Mydoom.w Removal Download
BitDefender/Softwin Tool:
Win32.Evaman.A@mm Removal Download

File Not Found!!
Manual Removal Instructions
Recommend Removal from Safe Mode:
How to Start in Safe mode:
Restart your Computer, Press F8 Repeatedly, when your Screen turns on, Select Safe mode, press enter.
The Infected Files Can be Seen in these folders and names also Running in Tasks
End the Following Active Process Before Removal

%system%\wintasks.exe
%system%\MyNameIsEva
%system%\syshosts.exe

If you have any of these files in running process from task manger, end the process before removal.
Note: if task manager is disabled, Download the following file,Click to Download - Enable Registry.reg
Manually Remove From Registry
Click Start, Run,Type regedit,Click OK.
Note: If the registry editor fails to open the threat may have modified the registry to prevent access to the registry editor. Download and run this UnHookExec.inf, and then continue with the removal.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Wintasks,
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Wintasks,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\wintasks.exe and the value %SYSTEM%/wintasks.exe.

Search Registry For Virus File Names listed above to remove completely,
Edit Menu - Find, enter Keyword and remove all value that find in search.
Recommended Removal Tools:
Kaspersky Antivirus or Internet Security (Shareware)
Spyware Doctor (Shareware)
AVG Antivirus (Freeware)
Killbox (Freeware)

Written by FireFly on November 9th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on SOFTWIN and ALWIL and RAV and Syshosts.exe and FRISK and worm removal and Danger processes and device manager and otherSoftware and Removal and virus process and Windows.

Trying the Ultimate Dual Boot

I really hope this works…

So I’ve decided to go ahead with the dual boot setup, but with a twist (more on that twist later).

For my Windows install, I’m going with Windows XP Pro x64 Edition. I purchased my copy shortly after release back in 2005, and I’ve never had it installed more than a few hours at a time. It was actually released on my Birthday in 2005, and my purchase of it was to really “set-off” my shiny new Athlon64 system I’d built myself as a birthday present. I really didn’t know much about x64 technology at the time, and I had no clue what I was in for. I never did (at that time) get all of the hardware on that system working in XP x64, and it was that incident that started me really running Linux full-time (no dual-boot) since I wanted a x86_64 OS on my machine.

I really do think that XP x64 is an underrated OS - sure, it had a rocky start (it was way before it’s time), however times have changed, and there are plenty of x64 drivers, and tons of x64 native Windows software available. All of my hardware has drivers specifically for Windows XP x64, so I shouldn’t run into any compatibility issues at all. An interesting side-note for those who do not know, is that Windows XP Pro x64 Edition isn’t really Windows XP at all - it’s actually NT 5.2, which means it’s based from the 2003 Server code base. It’s a very solid and stable system.

Now, for the dual boot twist

I’ve never tried this before, but it seems like it should work in theory given the portability of Linux. What I’ve done at this point:

I’ve only got my 320GB SATA HDD connected to the machine right now, and XP x64 is installing. Once it is complete, I am going to shut down, disconnect that drive, and connect my 120GB PATA drive, and then Install Debian 5.0 (Lenny) with KDE 3.5 as the DE. I’m going to then go ahead and connect all of my drives, and boot into Windows (I shouldn’t see GRUB, Windows should just load).

Once in Windows, I can go ahead and format my 250GB drive for Data storage, and I can go download and install VirtualBox. VirtualBox allows using a Physical Disk as it’s drive for a Guest OS rather than an Image file if you choose, so I can create a Debian “Guest” in VirtualBox which can be booted either in VirtualBox from within Windows, or I can reboot and “Press F12 to Select Boot Device” to boot into that Debian install as a native instance.

Wish me luck!

EDIT: It worked with a modified plan. The follow-up to this post is here.