Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

  Most people are blissfully unaware of all the absolute JUNK that gets run when Windows starts up, mostly due to registry entries installed by various programs, drivers, and what not. Much of this junk can be safely disabled. You can use Msconfig to do it. Here’s how: Hit the Windows Start button at the lower left side of your Taskbar. Click RUN, then enter “msconfig” and click OK. You’ll see four Tabs – the one you want is “Startup”. You can start disabling items by unchecking them. Some items will be automatically reinstalled on the next startup by windows or by necessary drivers. But you can disable a lot, and that means less memory usage and less resource-hogging. Here are the first two screens of mine:   You can see that I have most of it (from the first screen) and all of them (on the second screen) disabled, along with even more on the third screen (not shown). I could care less about Adobe Updater, Itunes, Zune and whatever. If I need to run Itun...

I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.   - Marshall McLuhan Jeesh! After months of having Windows Update not working because I volunteered to be a Beta Tester for Service Pack 1, I got an email from the MotherShip yesterday congratulating me for my participation, with links to the RTM real deal. You have to be very careful with this because on Microsoft Connect there are a whole bunch of links and what you want is the file that looks like this: 6001.18000.080118-1840_x86fre_Client_en-us-FRMCFRE_EN_DVD.iso make sure the .18000. build number is in there - that's the RTM. In FTM, you should see: "Windows Vista SP1 Client for X86 and X64 English and German" So I burned the sucker to a DVD and ran the Setup.exe off of it from within Windows Vista. Batman! The Upgrade option was enabled! Holy Jamoca, could this be the start of something good? You cannot "undo" an RC Vista Service Pack whose "View Available Updates" entry is gone by trying t...

OK, it's Microsoft Windows Update "Fun Time" again! KB929729 Security Update for .NET 1.1 shows up in Windows Update and guess what? It never goes away. It's like it's going to be there wanting to get reinstalled like FOREVER. The 1.1 service pack was an optional update that many users did not install, so the latest security update is doomed to fail. The security update did not search for the right version prior to installation so either you got a installation failure message or it "updated sucessfully" only to reappear as a needed update a few minutes later. If you are unfortunate enough to have .Net Framework version 2 or 3 without updating your service pack for version 1 your headaches just got worse, because the official "FIX" for this involves uninstalling ALL versions of .NET Framework and is quite painful. Fortunately for many the shorter "Fix" I detail here should work. NOTE: This is for Windows VISTA ONLY. 1) Instead of using...

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." -- Sun Tzu I have no issue with people who want Microsoft (and others) to make full disclosure about "Stuff" they do (or don't do) with your PC when you subscribe to Windows Update and similar services. That's just good citizenship to me. But it's possible to go overboard on this vigilante stuff. Here is an example: Microsoft updates Windows without users' consent This guy is basically making a big hullaballoo about Microsoft wanting to update Windows Update itself, in order to make it better and fix any bugs, but he's making it sound like it is some sort of "Stealth Install" that violates your privacy rights. Then at the end, he tells you not to roll back any of the updated files. Umm, who's kidding whom, pal? Oh, and here's another on eWeek from another Linux fanboy who's simply parroting the first guy and th...

Windows Update is great -- when it works. There have been a few slip-ups in recent months, and this is another one. What I got is basically the update failed to install. So, I resorted to installing the list of updates one - by - one. All worked except KB935807. FInally I downloaded the .msu from TechNet and installed it by double clicking on the file out of Windows Explorer. That worked, except for one thing - Windows Update keeps showing up in the Notification area, reporting that I need to install - you guessed it - KB935807! There's some "stuff" appearing on the web about this, lots of people are getting it, it's a patch for the firewall, which service I keep disabled since my wireless router -- like most routers -- already has one built in. (Yikes - how many firewalls do we need, folks -- really?). So far, this is the only "Fix" I've seen. I want to caution that I have not used this, nor do I know if it even works: Follow the instructions below 1. O...