Windows Vista Beta 1 Tips & Tricks

Published Date: Wednesday, August 4th, 2005
Last Updated: Sunday, August 21st, 2005

Welcome & Overview

Well it has been a long time coming, Windows Vista Beta 1 is here! It all started on November 19, 2002 with the leak of the first Longhorn build we would ever see, 3683. This build was simplistic and showed off some of the new features that we would be seeing in what was then called Windows Codename "Longhorn". Longhorn progressed into the 4000 series which looked pretty promising when we had a look at build 4008, but we were proven wrong when 4015 came out of the Redmond build labs. 4015 was officially dubbed "the build from hell" by myself and Nighthawk when we installed this and saw the massive memory leak that existed in explorer.exe. This trend continued into 4029 and later into the PDC build which bore the number 4051. Microsoft promised great things for PDC 03, but we were all seriously let down by a horrible build that leaked ram worse than 4015, as if that was possible. The scene moved on to build 4053 which was slightly better but still horrible. WinHEC 2004 bought the promise of a new Longhorn developer preview that was supposed to be SO much better than the previous preview. Build 4074 looked alright in demos but was also extremely disappointing. In August 2004 news surfaced that Microsoft was removing WinFS from the Longhorn, and on September 9th 2004 they restarted the Longhorn project based off the Windows Server 2003 SP1 kernel bearing the build number 5000. Fast forward to April of this year, the WinHEC 2005 conference. Microsoft handed developers a new Longhorn preview bearing the number 5048. One would think that after a year of no Longhorn that this build would be impressive. It was anything but impressive. The build was so severely broken in areas (sound anyone?) that it was not usable in any way shape or form. At this point we all began to think that Longhorn was a speeding train headed straight for a concrete wall. Fast forward once again to last week when Beta Testers and MSDN subscribers recieved the first Beta of Longhorn, now dubbed "Windows Vista" and carrying the build number 5112 . Beta 1 is leaps and bounds ahead of anything Microsoft has put in our hands before. This build is pretty stable right out the box which is a definite bonus. It does need some little tweaks and I also have some tips I wanted to share, so lets get going!

Windows Vista™ System Requirements

While Microsoft have not officially published requirements for Longhorn this is what we would reccomend as the minimum for a smooth running Windows Vista™ Install, these guidelines will allow you to run DWM (Glass).

2.4 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor or higher; 1.6 GHz AMD Athlon/Opteron/Athon 64 /Pentium M
Nvidia GeForce FX5200 or higher/ATI Radeon 9500 or higher
512+MB of RAM
8 GB of free hard disk space

Explorer Performance Tweaks

Click Start, Run. Type "control folders". Press OK.
Click the View tab. Modify the settings as shown below.

Check:

Always show icons, never thumbnails
Display the contents of system folders
Show hidden files and folders

Uncheck:

Automatically search for network folders and printers
Hide extensions for known file types
Use Domain Folder Sharing Wizard

Click Start, right click on "Computer", and click Properties.
Click on the Advanced tab. Under Performance, click Settings.
Uncheck these options:
Note: None of these options affect DWM functionality.

Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide tooltips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show shadows under menus
Slide open combo boxes
Slide taskbar buttons
Use a background image for each folder type

Close the Performance Options & System Properties dialogs.

Disable Unneeded Services

As I stated earlier in this guide, Windows Vista™ is pretty stable out of the box. The following list of services do not *need* to be disabled but I reccomend it since they only serve to annoy you anyway (Security Center, anyone?)

Disable the following:

Automatic Updates
Idwlog Service
Peer Name Resolution Protocol
Peer Networking Identity Manager
Pnrp Auto Registration
Pen Service
Security Center

NOTE: The Peer services are disabled because of a possible security issue with them and weird connections that have been reported when doing netstat -a.

Fix for 2 Boot Menus When Dual Booting With Another OS

This will get you down to only 1 boot screen.

It is really easy: On my system my main drive has two partitions. One for XP
and the other for Vista.

My XP installation is on C: and my Vista installation is on F:

I copied the F:\Windows\System32\winload.exe (Vista Installation) file to
C:\Windows\System32 (XP Installation)

Then I edited the boot.ini file as follows:

Original boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Longhorn"
/NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF /FASTDETECT /USENEWLOADER

New Boot.ini:
[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home
Edition" /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF /USENEWLOADER
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Longhorn"
/NOEXECUTE=ALWAYSOFF /FASTDETECT /USENEWLOADER

As you can see I just added the /USENEWLOADER switch to the XP Installation.

NOTE: Doing this may cause a code 10 error with Asus SCSI cards using LSI53C875 drivers. - Thanks Scott for the info.

Issue With Creative Sound Blaster Audigy Series Cards

There is an issue with the Sound Blaster Audigy series of cards (Audigy, Audigy 2, Audigy 2 ZS etc...) that consists of distorted and studdering sound when using the CREATIVE drivers.

To solve the problem download the KX project drivers HERE.

Other Possibilities Include using a modded set of Audigy 2 ZS Drivers that work with Audigy 1's and Live's. I have installed these drivers and the seem to work perfectly.

You can download those drivers from ngohq.com, but at the time of this writing the site is down. If someone is willing to host the driver file (22.8 MB) please contact me.

Issue with the Language Bar in Vista and Office XP/2003

So I tripped over a rather huge bug in Vista Beta 1 today. It involves that god forsaken language bar. If you try to change it to hidden in the control panel your computer will BSOD with an error in the video card driver file, which completely throws you off as to the cause of the crash. It also occurs at random when in MS Word doing something (My brother discovered that part of this evil bug). So the easy workaround is to disable the Language Bar, here is how to do just that (Method works on Office XP and Office 2003 Installations):

Step 1: Uninstall Alternative User Input
To uninstall the alternative user input feature, set the installation state to Not Available in Office XP Setup.

Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP: 1. Quit all Office programs.
2. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel. NOTE: In Windows XP, click Start and then click Control Panel.

3. In Control Panel, double-click Add/Remove Programs.NOTE: In Windows XP, click Add or Remove Programs.

4. In the Currently installed programs list, click to select Microsoft Office XP/2003 product, where Office XP/2003 product is the name of the specific Office product being used. If you are using a standalone version of one of the Office programs, click to select the appropriate product in the list. Click Change.
5. In the Maintenance Mode Options dialog box, select Add or Remove Features, and then click Next. This displays the Choose installation options for all Office applications and tools dialog box.
6. Click the plus sign (+) next to Office Shared Features to expand it.
7. Click the icon next to Alternative User Input, and then select Not Available.
8. Click Update.
NOTE: If you have multiple Office XP/2003 products installed, for example, Office XP/2003 Professional and Frontpage 2002/2003, you must repeat the preceding steps for each installed product.
Step 2: Remove Alternative User Input Services from Text Services
1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. In the Control Panel, double-click Text Services.NOTE: In Windows XP, click Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options, and then click Regional and Language Options. On the Languages tab, click Details.

3. Under Installed Services, select each input item that is listed, and then click Remove to remove the item. All items must be removed, one by one, except the following input service:

English (United States)- default Keyboard United States 101
Step 3: Run Regsvr32 /U on the Msimtf.dll and Msctf.dll Files
1. Click Start and then click Run.
2. In the Run dialog box, type the following command:
Regsvr32.exe /u msimtf.dll
3. Click OK.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for the Msctf.dll file.

Internet Explorer 7 User Agent String

This was posted over at the IE MSDN Blog. It outlines how to change the user agent string back to IE6 so that things like Microsoft Beta chats will work (they seem to puke if they detect IE7):

Simply save the following as IE7UA.REG. Double-click the file to merge it into your registry and restart the browser to see the change.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
“Version”=”MSIE 6.0”

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform]
“SV1″=-

You can easily undo the change by saving and merging the following IE7Undo.reg.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
“Version”=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\User Agent\Post Platform]
“SV1″=”"

You can test the change using a simple page that echos the User-Agent, e.g.: http://www.fiddlertool.com/useragent.aspx.