Caldor

I use AnyDVD and CloneDVD for decryption and ripping. Its the most current. The others Ive found no to be up to date with the latest methods studios are using. Basically everyone else copies AnyDVD. Along with Vista, its the only software I'm prepared to pay for.

Its not too hard to revert to an old driver under safe mode, boot last known good or other methods to overcome a bad driver crashing the kernel. WHQL certification helped a fair bit for driver quality. Usually I'll upgrade to new WHQL releases for drivers.

http://www.betanews.com/article/DHS_finds_...ects/1200003935

Gibson barely scratches the surface on Vista security. The most significant point is that Vista is the first OS released by MS to go through the secure development lifecycle. Vista is what XP should have been. However, Vista had to re-educate users away from the problem of administrators by default and UAC has seen a backlash from people who dont know better. Too many people grown up on bad OS's from MS's past. Vista continues to have less security problems than Apple Mac, RHEL, Ubuntu etcetc.

Mate Im not using it anymore. Its still not robust. Crashes, sent down my windows reliability index. Its actually the worst browser helper object Ive ever installed.

The advantages to dyanmic prediction of kernel needs in Vista, especially with the "learning" of a users likely usage patterns, as you say does improve performance. The fact is, network performance on Vista SP1 and Win Server 08 is over 300% from XP. Sure MS used that metric to spin up its marketng but the science of it remains. As for boot times I respectfully dont accept your test results Humpty because honestly all of the tests Ive seen that showed Vista to be slower on boot than XP did not have comparable configurations. There is alot of things going on Vista that are not immediately obvious. There is numerous new things in the Vista boot process that make it faster. Not all of them are in the Linux kernel yet either. I encourage you to look at objective performance rather than subjective performance. Do some network tests and see the metrics for yourself I havent looked into any registry tweaks for Vista kernel behaviour.

I now run an opensource unified threat management network appliance - untangle on my gateway perimiter attached to a gigabit managed switch. I use free AV, standard Vista firewall on client machines on the private LAN. ClamAVs detection rates in recent builds rival kaspersky's. I think this is better than a plain router running NAT.

What nonsense. Vista and Win Server 08 have over 300% better network performance than say Windows Server 03 and XP when copying large files over a network. Its plain and simple PEBKAC on poor network file performance from the bloke. Now that NVIDIA has its act together with its drivers, gaming on Vista is better - not due only to DirectX10.1 but also importantly due to tri sli and quad crossfire that will only be fully supported on Vista. Why? Because DX9 is locked into rendering a limit of 3 frames ahead. The argument about DRM is a slippery slope. Patent pools *own* the multimedia. MS can either choose to: 1. Break the law and suffer billions in court 2. Not implement the technology and have customers complain 3. Try to negotiate with the IP owners and come up with a way of implementing the technology that keeps the IP owners happy about their copyrights. Chucking a Linux stunt of disregarding the law and doing it anyway is not a solution for a legitimate commercial entity. Its only a matter of time before Linux distros get hit with law suits for infringing upon IP owners rights. Theyve gotten away with it but as the desktop OS moves from a geekfest fringe thing to mainstream, theyre in for a shock. The main problem is Mums and Dads who dont like UAC - which ironically is MS's own doing in educating a generation of users what not to do when it comes to security. These days with dirt cheap dual core 2GB RAM etcetc machines the WEI score of bottom shelf gear is pretty high on Vista. Its not about performance - the "problem" is they want to use a personal computer as it was used in 1988.

And, important windows files in windows are protected by the operating system anyway. This is why virus' died out and the new wave started of worms and botnets - because protected systems files prevented virus' taking them over and fiddling with them. Malware had to resort to fiddling with browsers and with user mode type stuff because the real action on kernel mode in ring 0 cannot be messed with by a virus. Or for that matter, any win32 application like CCleaner cannot destroy/modify kernel mode protected system objects.

Yes I hope stability is better too. I dont use the 64bit browser as no browser helper objects I need are compiled for x64.

Depending on specifics, failed startup items can crash the kernel with user mode driver framework type apps Ive never seen ccleaners regcleaner come up with any important reg entries

This is computer science not computer superstition. Most of what CCleaner does can be seen from the ini files. Some if it is internally programmed and cant be viewed, but that stuff is mostly to do with browser cleaning. Its far too easy for modern society to blame someone else than to take responsibility for themselves, or indeed to study the problem in proper depth. What CCleaner does can be studied in some detail. A default CCleaner install has no possibility of doing anything remotely close to turfing a system in cleaning mode. If a user conducts *administrative* work using the tools like unistall/startup changes then they need to take responsibility for doing so......... Dont blame incompetence or unidentified malware on CCleaner.

Ive recently become to understand the importance of a UTM appliance on the home network perimeter. Sure Ive been involved with clients about enterprise UTMs and I thought that real solutions were five figures costing plus the ongoing support subscriptions. Well, Untangle has changed all that. This is the first, IMHO, truly integrated UTM that people can run on cheap hardware for very little money. Its far better to deal with nasties on the gateway than on your laptop or desktop, especially when many of you remain using relatively insecure OS's.

I dont use Firefox or Thunderbird. Until the version after gran paradiso FF doesnt compete with IE7 on Vista for default security features. I do use Paint.net, OpenOffice and 7-zip. They didnt mention Notepad++, ffdshow, imgburn or CCleaner. I allow myself to pay for two things - one the OS, and two, AnyDVD.

Vista x64

Friend of mine suggested a software solution such as IPCop, Smoothwall or similar. Matched to a semi managed 8 port switch like the Linksys which has a good price that might be the go. Any comments on this approach? Having a look around it looks like Endian is the go for a software approach. Two intel gigabit pci express nics and my old AMD 64 system would do fine.

Hi friends, So Ive spent a frustrating day after my wife was having problems with her MacBook pro wireless on our home access point. Turns out its an Apple bug (I really do hate Macs they should have left BSD alone), but in the doing Ive realised my home network needs uograding.... So here is my wishlist: Gigabit wan port Gigabit lan ports (8 would be ideal as then I dont need an unmanaged switch plus jumbo frames support) SPI Firewall, DOS/DDOS prevention (deep application inspections would be ideal too) SSL VPN passthrough or SSL VPN support PPPOE, ability to do RFC bridging for modem (ideal would be an inbuilt adsl2+ anex M modem) Proper logging Support for wireless repeating and bridging Good WPA2 with no performance loss (ideal would also be 802.x ontop of it) MAC level wifi restrictions Draft N 2.0 wifi (dual band ideal) Optional support for 3G fail over instead of loosing my voip if the isp goes down VOIP support - (ideal would be two analog phone ports and an fxo port just in case) Dont mind spending a bit of dollars for proper gear but dont want to have to afford a gigabit watchguard firebox Maybe Ill need more than one box thats always a hassle, and a seperate ATA for voip Ideas?

Congratulations Humpty

AVIsynth has filters and the power of scripting. While mencoder has its uses its not comparable - especially in colour space conversions and de-interlacing.

Vista does this dynamically

Yes, Merry Christmas to Piriform and the community here.

Humpty's right - just repair it

Three possibles 1. The CMOS has lost its boot settings and you need to re edit the cmos 2. The cmos boot settings are set to boot other devices first and you have a non bootable image in them 3. The cmos is fine and the boot device has become corrupted

I prefer the second hand nuclear missile bunker myself

People need to take responsibility for themselves......