Ed Bott's Windows Expertise

At CES 2007 (nearly a year-and-a-half ago) my Windows Vista Inside Out co-author Carl Siechert and I visited (separately) with Ricavision, which was pitching their Windows SideShow-enabled Media Center remote control. The idea is awesome. You can, in theory, browse your entire music collection on the device display and control music playback without having to turn on a TV or monitor. You can also browse your collection of digital photos. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to offer a demo. The demo unit had been damaged in shipping or something. But I was allowed to hold the (non-functioning) device.

A few months later, I contacted the company’s PR person asking about the status of the product and got a terse reply informing me his company no longer had the account and that the product had been delayed.

In the year since then, the company has made some truly bizarre decisions, which I outline in the extended text of this post. The story offers a case study in how not to treat customers.

Read more on Ricavision shows how not to run a beta program

By and large, Dell’s driver repository works pretty well. But on at least one score lately, it’s been failing, and I’m not sure why.

Last week, Microsoft pushed out a new IDT audio driver via Windows Update. IDT is the company that bought SigmaTel, which makes a lot of the audio chips used on motherboard-based PC sound solutions. So if you have a SigmaTel audio system, that IDT driver should have been for you.

Except it didn’t work. On the one and only system where I installed that update here, it wiped out my audio completely. And a lot of Dell customers had the same experience, based on the uproar in the Dell Community message boards.

The solution, as it turned out, was simply to install the correct driver. But finding that driver was harder than I expected. For some reason, Dell is not linking its master SigmaTel driver file to the many PC models that use this chip. For example, when I went to look for an updated audio driver for my XPS 420, I was offered driver version 6.10.0.5511, released in June 2007. But I knew better and used version 6.10.0.5515, released in February 2008. I’m sure it’s the right one, based on this installation screen that came up at the beginning of the setup process:

The driver package I was offered, using Dell’s numbering scheme, is R157052. The driver I downloaded is R173209. It is a unified 32- and 64-bit driver package and in fact, it even applies to my Inspiron 530. How do I know that? Because when I look at the advanced system details report for the Inspiron 530 I see that it is a DXP061 model, which is listed in the Dimension section of the screen above. (Follow these instructions to see what model number you have.)

This driver also allows you to install Vista Service Pack 1 on a Dell system that would otherwise be blocked by the older SigmaTel driver. So, if you have any of the following Dell models, go get the R173209 update:

Dimension/XPS:
5100, 5100C, 9100, C521, DC051, DM051, DM061, DV051
DXC051, DXC061, DXP051, DXP061, E521
XPS 420, XPS 710, XPS 720, DXG061

Optiplex:
210L, 740

Precision:
380, 290, 490, 690

I seem to be doing this once a quarter. (The last time was in January, just after CES.) If you’ve never seen this feature before, go read the original rules here.

And without further ado, here’s this Friday’s random top 10:

1. Until The Day I Die, Steve Earle, Transcendental Blues
2. Down Home Waltz, Buck White, Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza
3. Little Red Corvette, Prince, 1999
4. El Paso, The Grateful Dead, Road Trips, Vol. 1
5. Can’t Find Me Brother, Red Plastic Bag, Rebel Soca
6. Never Again, Richard Thompson, Small Town Romance
7. John Saw That Number, Neko Case, Live at the 930
8. Desolation Row (Alternate Take 1), Bob Dylan, No Direction Home (Soundtrack)
9. Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart, Bruce Springsteen, Tracks (Disk 3)
10. Mbola Tsara, Rossy, Putumayo Presents the Best of World Vocals, Volume 1

Ironic note: A different version of Neko Case’s John Saw That Number was on my last installment.

So what’s on your list?

Off to see Wilco tonight.

I’ve just published the latest installment in my Fixing Windows Vista series over at ZDNet.

Fixing Windows Vista, Part 3: Top Troubleshooting Tools

I’ve been working on this piece for weeks. Here’s a sample:

Today’s conventional wisdom, based on more than a year’s worth of relentless negative publicity, says Vista is hopelessly broken. In fact, my experience says the exact opposite is true. I proved the point in the first installment of this series, where I restored a sluggish $2500 Sony Vaio notebook to peak performance in a few hours. And I think anyone with a modicum of PC smarts can do the same.

In 2008, there is no excuse for a PC maker to ship a Vista-based system that is anything less than fast and reliable. Sadly, many of them still do a terrible job, loading new PCs (especially notebooks) with outdated drivers, crapware, and overbearing security software that can result in a terrible Vista experience.

If you unbox a new PC and it performs like a slug, you’re likely to just live with the frustration (and maybe even blog about it), because everyone knows that Vista sucks. Right?

Wrong.

I believe you have every right to expect excellent performance from Windows Vista, and I’m going to back that conclusion in today’s post, the latest in my Fixing Vista series, with details on how to use Vista’s built-in tools to find and fix the problems that stand between you and an excellent Vista experience.

I’ve also put together a screenshot gallery illustrating all the tools and techniques I discuss:

The Ultimate Vista Troubleshooting Toolkit

If you’ve got comments or questions, leave them here and I’ll try to answer them as soon as I can.

I use Outlook 2007 and love it. I use Windows Vista x64 and love it. But the combination has one annoying, longstanding bug: The Adobe PDF previewer is broken.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work: If you have installed Acrobat Reader 8.1 (or any edition of  the full Acrobat product line), the installer adds a PDF previewer. If you use Outlook 2007 to open an e-mail message that contains an attachment in PDF format, you should be able to preview it directly in the e-mail message window without having to open an external program. Here’s an example:

(By the way, that button is a safety feature. In this day and age, you don’t want to automatically preview a random PDF file that arrives in your e-mail inbox. It helps that Outlook runs in low-integrity mode by default, rendering scripts and plug-ins unusable. But still … don’t change that setting!)

For months, I haven’t been able to get that feature to work on my x64 system, even though I have 8.1 versions of both Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Standard installed.

The fix, it turns out, is to install Tim Heuer’s free Foxit PDF Preview Handler, a little gem of an add-in that I’ve encountered before and had forgotten. An XP version is available as well.

After you click the Preview button, here’s what it should look like:

Download links are in Tim’s blog post introducing the add-in. I encourage you to read his post before you install or use this product.

Yahoo Music just delivered this gem to my "Recommended Albums" page:

I tend to like music in this genre? I do not think so. Someone’s algorithm needs a little fine-tuning.

In the comments to an earlier post, TJ asks a question that I get frequently:

my sister got office ultimate 2007 and was wondering if i can install it on 2 computer?

The short answer is yes, but the longer answer is probably not in the way you think. The license for all versions of Office 2007 except Home and Student edition are very clear. (To view your license, open any Ribbon-based Office program, click the Office button, click Word Options, select the Resources tab, and click About <program_name>. For Outlook, click Help, About Microsoft Outlook. In the About dialog box, you’ll see a View the Microsoft Software License terms link.)

For any retail edition of Office 2007, the details are in sections 1 and 2:

1.     OVERVIEW.  These license terms permit installation and use of one copy of the software on one device, along with other rights, all as described below.
2.     INSTALLATION AND USE RIGHTS.  Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device.  That device is the “licensed device.”  A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate device. 
a.    Licensed Device.  You may install and use one copy of the software on the licensed device.
b.    Portable Device.  You may install another copy on a portable device for use by the single primary user of the licensed device.

This is actually a pretty customer-friendly policy, in my opinion. If you have a desktop and a portable PC (or two portable PCs), you can install and use the software on both devices. But those terms apply only if they are your computers, where you are the "single primary user." Under those rules, installing your sister’s copy of Office 2007 Ultimate on your computer would be a violation of the license terms.

For an OEM copy of any Office 2007 edition, the option to install on a second device is not available.

Office 2007 Home and Student Edition has a separate license policy, which allows the software to be installed and used on up to three computers within a single home for noncommercial use. If you and your sister live in the same household and you are not using Office for business purposes, she could get that edition and you could indeed install and activate the software in full compliance with the license agreement.

Update: In the comments to this post, Serdar has this follow-up:

One tough question I get asked a lot which I have no answer to: What constitutes "business use"? If someone has a home business or is self-employed, do they need to buy the business editions of Office?

The relevant portion of the license agreement for Office 2007 Home and Student (section 2a) reads as follows:

You may install one copy of the software on three licensed devices in your household for use by people who reside there. The software is not licensed for use in any commercial, non-profit, or revenue-generating business activities.

If you are self-employed, the license terms clearly do not allow you to use Home and Student Edition on your work computer. For that, you need to buy any other edition. [Update 2: Except an Academic edition, as Peter Ortner notes, correctly, in the comments.] If you have a home business that is truly a business, then the same applies. Everyone has to read the agreement and decide for themselves how it applies. My personal opinion, not given as legal advice, is that the reasonableness test would say you could use this for volunteer tasks on behalf of a non-profit (as long as you weren’t involved in the day-to-day running of the organization). And I think the same test would say if you occasionally sell something on eBay or take an occasional writing job for which you get paid, that’s OK as long as you don’t consider it a business but a sideline or hobby.

Frankly, I’m happy that the license agreement doesn’t try to spell out this line in excruciating detail and leaves it up to the customer to make a good-faith decision about abiding by the license agreement.

The comments on my latest ZDNet post, Fixing Windows Vista, Part 2: Taming UAC, have been interesting.

First, to address a question from my buddy Dwight Silverman, who notes that he wrote about the "fade to black" tweak back in March 2007 and I said it was a bad idea. I still don’t recommend it unless the behavior is so annoying that you’re considering disabling UAC completely. Shutting off the Secure Desktop is better than shutting down UAC completely. As I note in the Talkback section, one of my Windows Vista Inside Out co-authors has a Lenovo notebook that is dog slow at the Secure Desktop transition. On that system and that system only, he is willing to disable Secure Desktop. Of course, I’m sure he’d rather have a video driver that works properly. (Lenovo, are you listening?)

One question that has come up a couple times in the TalkBack section over there is how you can tell whether a program is misbehaving in regards to UAC. One common mistake programs make is trying to write to a system location, such as the Windows or Program Files folder. You get to do this when you first install a program, which is why you have to approve a UAC consent dialog box when you run a program’s installer. But if you see this button in Windows Explorer, you know that there’s a UAC issue:

Read more on Finding programs with UAC issues

Over at ZDNet, the second installment in my Fixing Vista series is now up:

Fixing Windows Vista, Part 2: Taming UAC

In it, I explain why User Account Control (UAC) isn’t a set of simple "Are you sure?" dialog boxes like some people think, and also offer three alternatives to turning it off completely.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

My monthly MSDN delivery arrived today, and I did a double-take when I saw one green-bordered DVD. It’s labeled "Windows Vista, with Service Pack 1 (x64 and x86) (English)."

And sure enough, when I inserted the disk into a nearby PC and stepped through the first few installer steps, I reached this screen:

Look closely and you’ll see an assortment of x86 and x64 versions, all on the same media. That option certainly isn’t available with any of the Vista retail or OEM media I’ve seen in the past. With Vista Ultimate, you get two DVDs in the package, one x86 and the other x64. With other editions, you get x86 media (or x64, if that’s the one you ordered) and have to ask Microsoft to mail you the other media.

I’m completely sold on Vista x64 these days. It’s fast and driver support issues have been nonexistent for me (your mileage may vary, of course). I hope this is a trend and that x64 will become easier to find and install in the future.

Has anyone else seen any of these hybrid disks before?