Rob Garrett - Blogs

Recently - I finally decided to take the plunge with Vista Media Center Edition and High Definition Cable TV....  I've been a fan of MCE for some time, and up until February this year I'd been using Vista MCE with a standard analogue cable line into a dual receiver Hauppauge tuner card and doing relatively well.  Those of you following ...

I purchased a USB to RS232 Serial cable so I could hook up my GPS unit to my laptop and found out that installing the driver on Vista 64 was problematic.  Disabling driver signing verification with the following command at an elevated prompt, followed by a reboot, enabled me to install the driver. BCDEDIT.EXE /SET NOINTEGRITYCHECKS ON ...

Are you tired of waiting around for Vista to copy your files, did XP seem so much faster at performing the same job?  You're not alone in thinking there is a problem with the current RTM version of Vista.  MS claim that they'll fix the problem in Vista SP1 (whenever that is) but for now they're keeping quiet about a hotfix.  ...

For a few weeks now I have been puzzling over why my CDRW/DVD ROM driver refuses to load under Windows Vista.  I naively assumed that I needed to find a replacement driver from the manufacturer (IBM in my case), or perhaps my drive was bad.  After replacing my laptop docking station and the drive unit , I could still not mount the ...

It's been a busy, busy couple of weeks, and I've not been posting, but I had to mention my new purchase of an 8GB USB flash drive from AData.  Yes, you read that right 8GB!!! Wow, I remember when I thought 512MB attached to my key chain was impressive.  This little puppy is 200x speed with a 30mbs read and 20mbs write speed, which ...

Check out this video of my Vista desktop.  DreamScene on Windows Vista Ultimate Extras allows users to play full motion video as background wallpaper, but Stardock DeskScape goes one step further, as an addition to DreamScene, by allowing users to set ''Dreams'' as their wallpaper.  [Youtube:pEg4q56ONdM] Does anyone know if a ...

Microsoft has ramped up the security in their latest operating system - Windows Vista, which means that developers now have to pay more attention to certain security constraints imposed by the operating system when developing applications.   Those of you readers who have read my prior posts on User Access Control in Vista (and the ...

Cable Labs is really putting the screws on OEM users, who like to home-brew their media center PC on the cheap.  To view and record HDTV content on a new Vista MCE PC, the following is a list of required components (thanks Chris Lanier): 1) Vista Home Premium or Ultimate2) HDCP Video Card3) Special BIOS w/ OCUR bit set4) OCUR ...

  Then and Now Microsoft Windows XP™ initially creates all user accounts as local administrators. Administrators have full access to system-wide resources and can execute any privileged operation. Microsoft guidelines suggest that users run day-to-day tasks under a least privileged account (LUA), however many users prefer to ...

Presently, users of the Microsoft Windows™ operating system have had to face several challenges to secure the integrity of the data residing on their computer. Users have had to cope with the vast slew of malware, including viruses, spyware, and root-kits, which typically cause damage to data and/or applications residing on the user’s desktop ...