Ask Your Vista Questions Here.

He can try to get into safe mode by pressing F8 and going into safe mode and that is an Admin Account and he can configure the password that way.

 

Thank you Borhan, we'll give that a shot.

 

safe mode didn't work. Thank you for the suggestion though. Are there any other possible solutions?

 

WHAT?! Not Mac OS X, Linux. Open source

 

Mark Russinovich (microsoft) has seen the light

 

@The_Fiend

I love that comic it gave me a laugh so early in the morning. thank you.

 

Safe Mode no longer accesses the Admin acct because it's turned off by default in the security settings.

Check your PMs.

 

The Pit BLOG April 2007 The Illusions of Vista

I was talking to an old friend the other day and he confided that he was once a magician. Wow! And of course, I asked him to share some of the cool secrets of the trade. Although we've known each other for over a decade, he was not forthcoming. In fact quite the opposite. Apparently, there is a secret code among magicians that they can only share with each other. That said, we all know that there really is no magic, just slights of hand that make things seem different than they might appear. Which brings us to Microsoft's latest operating system - Vista.

During the development of our latest product, Disk MD, we did considerable analysis of Windows Restore Points. These are files that store important system information that enables us to restore critical system information to an earlier point in time. In Windows XP, we learned that these hidden files are usually between 20-50MB big, and frequently the source of disk fragmentation. Enter Windows Vista. Presto! These same restore points now average around 2GB--100 times bigger. Now that's some magic. In fact, our lab tests have seen Vista restore points exceeding 8GB! That's like turning a mouse into an elephant.

The problem is that although Harry Houdini might need an elephant to hone his craft, I'm not sure that I want one in my garage. Who needs an elephant anyhow? Can it mow the lawn? Or at least do the dishes? Shouldn't there be some benefit to having our hard drives clogged up with multi gigabyte archival files?


Our research shows that Vista Restore Points can reach 8GB in size. More than 400 times the size of XP Restore Points.
The answer is Yes, No, and Maybe. All versions of Vista (Home, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate) have a new feature called Volume Shadow Copy. Now instead of tracking changes to your system files, Vista is now tracking EVERY change to every file. Big and small, important and irrelevant, every bit and byte is now being tracked by Vista. This is starting to feel more like Big Brother than David Copperfield. The primary reason given by Microsoft is that it enables us to look at previous versions of our files. If I had an Excel spreadsheet that I had made modified to the point that it was unintelligible, sometimes it is best to start over. Previous Versions make this possible. (Dave has some more thoughts on the implications of Vista's Previous Versions.)

Sorry to say, Houdini, but it's all a bit of a letdown. Plus this elephant is starting to stink. I usually archive frequently changed files by date, and when I err, I usually can find an old copy of a spreadsheet in my sent messages in Thunderbird. But it gets much better. Vista Home and Home Premium do not support Previous Versions. Although the data for Previous Versions is on your hard drive, Home users have no access. This is not magic, it's the Sorcerer's apprentice gone wrong and using magic he has not yet fully perfected. If you are storing my data on my hard drive, shouldn't I be able to look at it and access it?

This is where the real sorcery comes into play. If one upgrades to Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate, you can get access to all of your data. Bill Gates dons the pointy hat with moons and stars and magically gains the status of Wizard. He has now turned my data into money for him. Seriously. We have gone back and tested on multiple machines that only through upgrading can you access Previous Versions of your precious data.

Sorry Wizard Gates, I think that your magic spell may be a curse. What if we want to permanently delete a file? There is now a hidden copy of that file, that we are now unable to erase. Worse yet, if someone wanted to see my hidden file, they could upgrade my computer and see what I want deleted. Ouch!

Is there some magic spell that can undo this wicked curse? On the surface no. The only option is to deactivate Volume Shadow Copy, and you will get 15% of your hard drive back. The downside is that you will also lose your ability to do a normal XP style restore. The good news is that there is still a way for home users to permanently delete a file.


Turn off System Restore before deleting a file, and then run Disk Cleanup.
Here's our tip and there's no magic involved:

Turn off System Restore
Delete the File
Empty the Recycle Bin
Run Disk Cleanup
Turn on System Restore
Abracadabra! You now have a little more control over your new Vista computer...just remember the secret spell.

Keeping it real,

Rob

Editors Note: Although the tone of this article is light, there was a lot of serious research that went into this article. Many of the conclusions are very serious, and we had to check and double check our test results before making our claims. I want to thank D2 Worldwide for their help and assistance.

 

Mark is probably wondering why he sold out to Microsoft at this point, but then again who could blame him. He was doing it for free with Sysinternals.

 

Hi all!!!

A bit more of the same...

The Vista Backups That You Can't Have

just keeps adding up

 

is it possable to force windows aero on a laptop that does not offer the theme?

 

i may be wrong, but i think aero it's not available in vista basic, just in home premium and up.

 

Areo isn't available in basic. The only plausible reason for vista basic is that Microsoft can say that they offer vista for "as little as $100".

 

hey all!
i just found a new crack i think but what it does is uses legal commands that microsoft left in vista. according to microsoft using these commands isnt ilegal because there left in vista for Engineers to use.
this crack resets the activation back to 30 days every time you open it and as i said before uses cmd commands and a simple registry change on one of the keys from 0 to one.
link is http://www.gardenshed.co.nr/ enjoy a legally cracked version of vista... plus it works on any type of vista.

http://www.gardenshed.co.nr/

 

yes i heard about that crack aswell. some person in america got caught using it and microsoft couldnt do a thing to him because of them leaving the commands in cmd lol.
this is so funnny m$ should check there software a bit more lol jks they
done a gd job really.

My friends been using this 'crack' and hes got a fully working windows vista unlimited thingy and i think he set his crack to run every time windows opended or somthing like that.
its quite cool.

 

lol yeah thats true!
this crack does the same thing but makes it simpler for newbies . i.e you open the program and everything is done for you.
link is http://www.gardenshed.co.nr/

its quite easy to download and im using it now as we speak runs perfectly!!! i cant belive this is the first proper working crack that cant be patched silently by mS lol.

remember http://www.gardenshed.co.nr/

 

@simon01

That link is not active. Someone must have shut it down. I can't see the excitement about a crack since the OS is such a piece of $hit! LOL

 

Hey, i was wondering how to modify/rename properties of a song in Windows Vista. In windows xp, all you had to do was right click on the song, then click properties, then details, then click on the information you wanted to rename (ie. artist or genre) and type in whatever you want. That does not work in vista. Thanks in advance.

 

yeah I tried opening it also, got an error message.