So, "How am I doing?" Here's the picture.....

This may not look like much to you, but this is the test that determines whether or not your computer is able to show you the fancy Aero graphics and transparency features in Windows.

If your score drops below "3" for Graphics, then you're not going to enjoy the fancy effects, and you might as well be running XP Pro, or Millennium, or Windows 98SE. And I can hear you asking, "How would that old coot know the answer to that - he pre-dates the invention of nuclear fission, and he's even older than the electric typewriter!" - Maybe so, but I ain't dead yet, Kiddies, and the reason I know these things is because I spend 'way too much time here playing with my computer, and it's only nine months old. In fact, it's less than nine months old, and already its graphics card has failed this test, and had to be replaced. And even the new one, with twice the built-in memory of the old one, just barely passes the test itself. And it has 512 Mb of memory on it. Just for the benefit of you youngsters out there, my first old Dell Optiplex desktop only had 128 Mb of Ram for the whole chicken-plucking thing. So here's this new graphics card now with four times the memory that my whole first computer had.

"And how long ago was that, Ancient One?" you're asking.... Well, now, Gomer - let me think. It was away back in the good old days of August, 2004. Actually not all that long ago, really. So technology is flying right along. Graphics cards today need more memory than whole PCs did five years ago. So if you're hoping to run a cutting-edge operating system like this soon-to be-released Windows 7, you'd better make sure your hardware is up for it, and just because you just got it a few months back, that doesn't prove a thing. Because - we don't know whether or not the guys who built it stuffed it full of old parts that were left over from the launching of the first space flight to the moon. You just can't leap to conclusions on that. I know, because I learned it the hard way. I bought a new computer that has parts in it which date back to four and five years ago, when we were still thinking of graphics in terms of scratching lines into a soft flat rock..... Any questions?

This just in from Microsoft.....

Here's the opening paragraph from a friendly newsletter from Microsoft's Windows 7 team -

"Windows 7 Release Candidate: How's it going?


Thanks again for downloading the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). Your testing is very important -- having thousands of people use the software helps us make sure we’ve tested thousands of hardware and software combinations. So if you haven’t already installed the RC, please go ahead."

I can remember a few years back after sending a frustrated email to Microsoft's help service, getting back from them a very condescending reply, which left me with no doubt that they were the undisputed experts, and I was the impertinent ignoramus questioning their methods and motives of doing whatever they deemed best for us unwashed masses of computer wreckers out here in the more uneducated corners of cyberspace.

Normally, I would have fired back a sharply-worded caustic comment, but for some reason, I decided not to. Instead, I toned that down and actually got a conversation going between me and an actually quite nice gal named Sally. Sally asked me to tell her what I would really like to see in an operating system, and that just about blew me off my chair, because until that point, Microsoft's reputation for friendly public relations left - to put it mildly - something to be desired. As this back-and-forth progressed through several exchanges of emails, Sally and I were able to have a very informative conversation, and she actually seemed to appreciate some of my suggestions, which she said she would like to pass along to her superiors. And who knows? Maybe that's how it all begins... two people getting past their own egos and moving on to a place where there can be a meeting of minds and an actual well-intentioned spirit of co-operation.

I know I'm making much of a newsletter sent out to users around the world by a company that rules the world in its own field of endeavor, but this newsletter tells me that there's been a change of heart at Microsoft, and an acknowledgement by them of the importance of having us ordinary non-experts out here helping them, in our own simple ways, to do whatever they are doing just a little better than they might otherwise be able to do without our involvement. Together, we're all making a difference, not just in someone's bottom line, but in how we all feel about each other, and in how we are all able to work together creating something better for all of us. I hope we continue in that spirit of cooperativeness even after this testing program has been concluded.

Snob Hill gets another modest cottage....

If this seems a bit less than perfect to you, it's because I was getting out near the bitter end of the doubler's ability to boost this zoom lens on the Canon G9. But it does a good job, all things considered. This new home is only about four streets below the top level of homes up there on the high side of West Vancouver, where, if you have to ask "how much?" then you can't afford it. That's a whole alternate universe up there. They even have their own security patrols to keep the tourists from getting too attached to it. If you stop to take pictures, the Nervous Nellies hang over their railings and pray you're not one of the bad guys. They can do anything they like up there, except get up and down the streets when it snows. Fortunately, us unwashed peasants down here in the lowlands don't have any of those problems. And we can see that view any time we like on Google Images. Just type in "British Properties" or "West Vancouver".

It's half-past May and......

....what, exactly, is the meaning of all this nonsense? Even the skiers are on the golf course. With their snuggies on, I betcha. Welcome to the start of the next Ice Age, Kiddies....

Windows 7 and Shockwave Player

If you go onto the Adobe site for the player, you'll get a blunt rejection telling you that your system is not supported. I'm here to tell you that your system IS supported, and Adobe doesn't know its ass from its elbow about what Windows 7 is capable of running. They're the guys, after all, who sabotaged their own Shockwave Player back between versions 10.1 and 11.0 when they took out most of the little Xtras plug-ins, like Swadcmpr.x32 which decompresses sound signals, and without which, your attempts to run the program will result in nothing more than a sharp warning about missing plug-ins. Thanks a hell of a lot, Adobe!

The cure for all this is to look for and hopefully find a legacy version of Shockwave such as a version 8 or 9 or 10, which will have all its little bits. There's also that website address I listed in a previous blog (below) which can provide missing Xtras plug-ins if you already have the player itself - although why you'd want the player inoperable without the plug-ins is a mystery to me.

The other trick, and the one I used tonight to get Shockwave back into Windows 7 and working again is simple. I have it on my XP Pro machine, and simply copied it onto a CD, and downloaded that into the Windows 7 machine. Voila! Shockwave, working in Windows 7. So don't believe those who say it can't be done. If I can do it, so can you, and so could Adobe if they got off their complacent flabby posteriors and got on the ball. Would I lie to you?

Here's what a new graphics card can do.....

Windows 7 was working a lot better than my 9-month-old computer was, as I found out when I got this new ATI Radeon HD-4350 graphics card put into it yesterday. I'm sure a lot of the guys in those forums complaining about problems with Windows 7 don't even realize that it's their own cheap and nasty hardware that's causing the problem.

Windows 7 is a cutting-edge operating system, and it was never meant to ride on a donkey!

So make sure you've got a graphics card with its own memory built in - about 512 Mb of it, if you really want to see this software take your breath away. And it will, if you're like me. Some of these new pictures for the backgrounds that come with it are so realistic, you'd almost think you were right there, looking out a window at it. And that's why it's called Windows, I betcha. - Enjoy your day, Everyone!

Dear Mr. Microsoft: I'm sorry! It wasn't your fault....

A couple of these blogs lately have been critical of Microsoft and Windows 7's latest versions, and I want everyone to know it wasn't the fault of the folks at Microsoft. I'm sorry I created a wrong impression about the problems I was having with the display and no DWM enabled. The fact is, my relatively recently-purchased Nvidia graphics card simply wasn't up to the task at hand, and as the development of Win-7 progressively improved, my graphics performance got progressively worse, until it failed the Windows Experience Index tests completely.

Today, it only took about ten minutes at my favorite repairman's computer shop to pull that old card out and put in a new ATI Radeon HD4350, and once i loaded it with a driver approved for both Vista and Windows 7, my graphics problems were suddenly history. So I want to apologize to the folks at Microsoft for implying it might have been their problem. We among the great unwashed masses tend to do that all too often, I suspect. They are a large target, and we're a bunch of snivellers who don't like to admit we didn't have our own acts together.

While I'm ranting on here, let me also say that Windows 7 looks really impressive on a rig that has a decent graphics card and an up-to-date driver for it. So don't be like me and put down the software until you're sure your hardware can handle the latest goodies coming down the road from Redmond. You could end up apologizing for it, just like me.

Still learning how, at my age....

Today, and it's still today just barely, (11:35 PM) I tried something I wouldn't have dared just a few months back. I divided this hard-drive into two separate partitions, and then installed yet another build of Windows 7 on the newly-created empty half of it.

The above is what the "computer" window looks like with two operating systems on it, and the smaller window just shows the build number of this second one. I also made another interesting (at least to me) discovery - once the two systems were installed, instead of spending a lot of time dressing up the new clean install of build 7068 with all its programs and the documents folder full of stuff, I tried something else. I got wondering if I could simply go onto the original partition's O/S, and copy folders from it, and then go back into the new partition's O/S and paste those into similar folders there. And the answer is, "Yes, you can!"

This probably only works if the two O/Ss are compatible, of course, but these are both very nearly identical versions of the same Windows, so it worked out very well. And here ends our lesson for today, Kiddies....and if you're asking yourself "why would he do this?" the answer is "Just to see if I could..." Life's just one long learning experience, after all.

New Desktop for Mother's Day....

Thanks to Windows 7 RC and a little editing of their theme. And here's the scoop on the term of the license on it. By the time this runs out, the retail versions will be in the stores, and I will never need to revert to Vasta Vista. And I'm just delighted about that.
Happy Mother's Day to all you Moms out there in the blogosphere.

Another handy program....Hardware Monitor

There are others, like Speedfan, but this one, CPUID Hardware Monitor shows the most information in an easy-to-read form. It also is reasonably accurate, if any of these gadgets really are, considering that they're all getting their information from 20-cent detectors in the hardware inside the box. As a Microsoft expert said about that, if we want accuracy of better than within ten degrees, for example within one degree, the devices would cost more than your whole computer. He may have been exaggerating a little, but we get his point - these are only approximate, so don't get too hung up on them. And you'll notice among my icons on the side, our old friend Dr. Watson has returned from wherever, and he's still alive and well in Windows 7, believe it or not. Who'd-a-thunk-it? Gee! all the way from Windows 95/98SE.

Fixing a problem with Adobe Shockwave Player

Today, after re-installing Windows 7, I couldn't get the Shockwave Player to work, because a message popped up saying "Your system is not supported". I laughed, because it worked fine last week with the same system it has today. However, there was a problem, after I once more downloaded the so-called "full" version of the Shockwave Player Installer. In these newer ones,the Adobe people have separated out the many little Xtras plug-ins that made it all go nicely. So the full version really isn't, unless you add those Xtras. I like to play a little board game from the British Museum's Ancient Egypt site, and for that, I need all the Xtras. Maybe you have the same sort of problems these days with Adobe's stuff. Their left hand doesn't know what their right hand is doing. So here's where to get all those extras you need - and when you start to click the little window, and another pops up for something else, just keep on clicking until you get the whole three downloads or so. The website is as follows:-
http://www.junction-18.com/plugins/xtras.htm
Once those are installed, your Shockwave Player will work just fine. Mine does.

Need a shortcut arrow manager/remover?

This is the one I use, and it really works. If you look at the image below this one, you'll see that the shortcuts have big arrows on them, like we don't know what they are. Now look at this image above, after using the Vista Shortcut Manager. Looks better, right ? So get one!

How about this for a background ?

This is one of the built-in Windows 7 backgrounds. Reminds me of the Flower Power days....
Back when men were men and the gals were naturally double-breasted.

Adding your own theme into Windows 7....

I may have gone over this once before, but in case not, here I go again. In other operating systems, like Vista or XP, before you could install your own home-made theme, or use any other 3rd-party one, you first of all had to hack the registry to replace three existing DLLs with new ones that you got from the web. If you didn't do that, you had to find a program to do it for you and most of them cost about $20 or so.

The good news is that Windows 7 includes various themes which install not just one background "wallpaper", but display several in a sort of slow and programmable slide-show arrangement. How this helps you install your own is because you only need to install your own series of images into the right folders in the right place, and yours will work just like the original equipment ones do.

Select several images you want for a changing set of backgrounds, and number them in order as you would like them to display. Then, enable the showing of hidden files & folders, so that you can find the ones you need to access. Go to Users ->(Your name) ->AppData -> Local -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Themes. In that folder, create a new one for yours, give it a name, and inside it create another folder named "DesktopBackground" (all one word, without quotes) and into that one, put all your images. After those are in there, and showing, choose "Select All" on the "Edit" menu, so that they are all chosen, and then right-click anywhere on those selected images, and choose "Set as desktop background". Your theme is now in use. And you can do the same to make others, and you can save each on the main page for them when you right-click on the desktop and choose "Personalize". So have fun, Folks.

P.S. - I call this theme "Clouds01" and there's 11 images in the batch, set to change every ten minutes.

Another day, another O/S installed.....

This is getting to be a habit....but I'm getting good at it. Trouble is, it takes a lot of time to get everything back to where I like it. At first, i thought I could save time by copying stuff onto disks, and then just downloading that back onto the newly-installed O/S, but I quickly discovered that it doesn't work with a lot of programs, because they've got those rigged so that you can't move them from one system into another without going back to their site for a fresh copy of it. So the idea of putting things on disks only works for stuff that doesn't involve programs - except for a few that don't seem to mind being moved around. But those usually aren't the ones you really need to get working again. So it takes some time. And I've tried a couple of registry hacks to get that Desktop Window Manager enabled, and they worked, but only for about one second at a time. It comes on and goes right back off again. Yet two days ago, using this same version of this same O/S, everything worked just fine. So it isn't likely my hardware. Very strange. Anyway, Windows 7 beta, Build 7077 has once more replaced the Windows 7 RC, Build 7100. And yes, I'm still having fun :) - and I'm going to wait a while, until they get the bugs out of that RC version before I tackle that again. Hell, I might even just wait until Win-7 hits our local stores. I just hope they don't improve the thing to death before that happens.

So, what do I think of the Windows 7 RC ?

Thanks for asking. I'll try not to swear while I answer that. I think it needs a lot more work, starting with fixing the Desktop Windows Manager showing as being 'disabled' constantly. And it would be very nice if it actually showed more than a black and empty screen, devoid of taskbar, mouse, or anything else after it boots up.

The only way I could get it to show me a normal log-on screen and desktop after booting was to put it into Sleep Mode, and then wake it up out of that. When it comes out of that, it shows the normal log-on screen and background, but who the hell wants to go through all that bullshit to get it up and running, only to find that the fancy Aero transparency graphics won't work, because the Desktop Windows Manager is disabled?

I tried going onto Microsoft's site for Desktop Windows Manager, but I got an empty page with a notice reading "too busy". So I said "The Hell with this!" and grabbed my old XP Pro CD, and right now it's busy re-formatting the hard-drive on that computer, so I can put back onto it something that I know will work. Like Windows 7 beta Build 7077, for example. I should have left it alone on there yesterday, and I wouldn't be having this problem today. Sometimes, cutting-edge technology just plain sucks!

Another useful freebie....

This is probably the best of the top-rated bittorrent clients, if you're into file sharing over the P2P exchange system. It's light, it's very configurable, it helps you set the correct speeds, it doesn't hog resources (like Vuze) and it's a freebie. What more could we ask? If you download music or stuff like ISO image files, then this is the one to use. It has all the features that we're told are the ones everyone wants, and it works. I've used it and I know.

More helpful programs.....

While I was house-cleaning the other computer's clogged XP system yesterday, one of the first things I did was get the latest versions of the Wise Disk Cleaner and Wise Registry Cleaner from the above website. Both of these come in freeware versions as well as the paid-for ones, and the freeware works very well. It scans through your system, and locates items like registry keys for programs that no longer are on the machine, and other temporary stuff that can safely be turfed, and then it separates these into two groups: safe to delete, and not safe to delete. It will then delete those safe-to-delete ones, and keep the others. These even come with a feature for 'one-click cleaning', so that if you click on that icon, the process is all automatic, and all you need to do is wait for it to finish (it's quick) and then do a reboot. These are handy programs, especially if your operating system has been in use for a while and may have collected some useless clutter.

Spring-cleaning Windows XP Pro....

I've been most of the day, off and on, working on XP to clean up the files and the registry and get it in shape a bit better. One problem with all that is the time it takes to look for advice on how to do something, and then making sure it's done like the directions said, and then finding out whether those actually worked or not. Usually, they do, but sometimes not - as when the instructions were written for a previous version of Windows, and the writer hasn't told us which version was being described in the helpful instructions. There you are, looking through your setup for something that isn't there, and then just by accident, you find out that the writer is talking about Windows 98 or Millennium, and you've been assuming it was all about XP. That's one case where reading the directions doesn't help.

But I hasten to add that there's a whole lot of really valuable - I might even call it invaluable - help on the internet for just about anything that goes wrong with your computer. If you've got the time, then they've got the story. There's hardly-ever a 'quick fix' though. It usually takes about three days to solve the average thorny problem this way (just kidding!) or at least it can seem that way.

While messing with XP's registry and such today, I also found and used another guy's answer for the sometimes-disappearing volume icon in the system tray. You'll notice on the left in the picture that there's a couple of more icons in the bunch. One for the volume control, and one for Winamp, my favourite media player - and the best freebie you ever saw! But getting back to the volume control for a moment, if you have any problem with a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't volume icon in the system tray next to the clock, here's what to do: Go into C:\Windows\System32 and scroll away down to the S's, and look for a file called 'sndvol32.exe'. Right-click on it, and select 'create shortcut' and then look probably at the bottom of that System32 window for your new shortcut with the same name, and drag that out onto the desktop. Go into your personal stash of icons and select a nice one for it, then rename it 'Volume' instead of 'sndvol32.exe', and you're in business. Now, no matter what goes on in the system tray, you've got a volume control handy. And it's easier to hit with your mouse pointer than the little one on the slimline (windowblinds) version of Winamp up top.

It's May, already....

And the neighbour's back yard is looking very nice. If I had their email address, I'd send them some pictures. They spend a lot of time working on the place, and it shows. People who live in high-rises like this one really appreciate a view like this, because we can't grow anything but older in here.

Speaking of 'growing older' that's all I did this morning, while I thought I was being really smart and downloading a torrent image of Windows 7 RC1. After four hours of plodding along downloading the ISO Image for it, and then turning that into a DVD suitable for using to install it, I discovered that it was one of those torrents that are infected by a Trojan - so I had to scrap the whole thing and then carefully scan the computer to make sure it hadn't been infected.

So instead of getting the jump on the public release of the RC on Tuesday, I spent what became a nervous morning making sure I hadn't turned loose a Trojan on my system. So the moral of the story is that 'haste makes waste', and I should have just settled for waiting until next Tuesday like I will be doing now anyway.

Downloading a torrent file using a torrent client like uTorrent.exe (one of the best of the top 10) can be a great way to share files over the P2P system, but it does have its hazards as I learned. Luckily, I've got three different security programs to grab the bad guys as they arrive, and today I needed them. I don't know why I got myself into all that anyway, because the build 7077 of Win-7 is working just fine, and from all reports, there aren't that many changes between it and this coming release candidate anyway. Nothing I can't get along without for another few days, for sure.