Windows XP – Page 3 – Paul's Tech Talk

Microsoft Releases MS08-062 to the Public a Month Early!

PaulOctober 29, 2008

Vulnerability in Windows Internet Printing Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (KB953155)

This update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the Windows Internet Printing Service that could allow remote code execution. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts.

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This update is rated Important for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2008. For more information, see the subsection, Affected and Non-Affected Software, in this section.

The security update addresses this vulnerability by changing the way that memory is allocated within the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) service. For more information about the vulnerability, see the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) subsection for the specific vulnerability entry under the next section, Vulnerability Information.

[via Microsoft Bulletin]

Now from what I understand, if you have a Network attached printer on your system this would make you more vulnerable to someone taking control over your system. So this patch is supposed to fix that. I am recommending to all to update this and fix this update ASAP. I do not know if you don’t have one what that would do so just install this update, because you will undoubtedly still be runing the Internet Printer Protocol even if you don’t have a printer.

Help stop those slow boot up!!

PaulOctober 24, 2008

I was searching for a program to help boot up my system a lot quicker. I came across this little program call Startup Delayer. In a nutshell, it allows you to pick which programs to start up first and then lets you decide how many minutes between each program that is asking to load.

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In the best way possible you can download this program and use it for yourself. Although they seem to be having a little server problem right now. Go download Startup Delayer, and decide for yourself.

Windows XP/ME/Vista and 2000 compatible

Silverlight 2.0.31005.0 Is release today.

PaulOctober 21, 2008

I woke up this morning and found there was an update. I thought to myself this isn’t the second Tuesday, that was last week. So I click on my update tab to see what it was all about? Wouldn’t you know it, an update to Silverlight 2.

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I will be looking into the new Microsoft Silverlight. I have heard on the wind, that this might be due to the PDC coming Oct 27-30. This has something to do with Windows 7, I’m almost sure of it. I am sure as you can see this is most interesting. I’m also sure this has to do with some security fix but why push it out now when there is no need too. This update effects Windows Xp/Vista/and 2000 so we will see what they have in mind the coming weeks.

Running old programs on Vista (tips and tricks)

PaulAugust 20, 2008

So We’ve talked about how to get Vista to shut down better. So I thought we talk about getting Windows XP programs to run on Vista and be more stable. You can do this with Windows XP, ME, 2000, NT,. and 95 programs.

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Run the program in compatibility mode — This is something Vista comes with now for running old programs in Vista. To do this you will have to do some minor things. Go to where the program is and right click on the program. Select properties>compatibility. Select “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” Select windows Operating System that you think would work with the program.

Run the program as Administrator — This is a really good tip and trick to sometimes get programs to run with vista. It goes hand in hand with the last one. Right click on the program and select “Run as Administrator”. I find some old programs don’t know about the kernel protection in Vista and you need to give them permission to use the kernel for the program to work.

Give the program special access — Yes this one takes a little skill but should fix some of the problems with vista and old programs. Right click on program and select properties. Select security, and then select the group you want to associate with it. I always suggest putting it in the administrator group because of the problems with Vista and the kernel.

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These few tips and tricks will greatly increease the likely hood of a old program to run in Vista. Now remember if you have a Vist x64 Version you might need to do the Run as Administrator more than not. I am not sure why I just know it is sometimes required. Let me know what other tips and tricks you use with Vista and I’ll be sure to pass them along!!

You can do more with Steam and Half-Life 2 now!!

PaulJanuary 2, 20084 Replies

So I’ve been Playing Half-Life 2 and Enjoying it so much. I’ve had a problem with Vista popping up and saying “The igfx video driver has stopped responding and has recovered!”. Which means this, that the game goes black and stops being played. It’s an annoying Vista flaw, I am thinking that if it wasn’t Vista it wouldn’t of happened. I’ve got the Minimum system specs for the game. DirectX 7.0 Compatible, 512 Megabytes of Ram, 128 megabytes Video Ram Card(some supported cards here but I don’t have one of those cards!), and Windows NT/XP/2000/98.

I did a little research and found out that the game was only using 256 megabytes of ram. How do I know? I went into the Taskmanager Manager and looked at hl2.exe (it was around 254 megs of memory!). So that got me thinking, I have 1024 megabytes(1 gigabyte memory) and I was using 256 megabytes of that for video. Well I still had over 700 megabytes of memory to use.

I did some digging and found this great article about Steam and Commands that I could put in to force Half-Life 2 to co-operate. The article is from the Linux Community and using the WINE engine to help people to play Half-Life 2 with Linux. This little option is available to most of the Steam community. To use these commands, one must do some stuff check farther down for details. These commands are:

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Command Line Commands

-heapsize [Kilobytes]: This command tells Half Life 2 to allocate more RAM to the game system heap, where it can be accessed by the game to improve performance by storing more game information in RAM and hence reducing loading pauses. The default heapsize is 64MB, however you can safely allocate around 128MB (i.e. -heapsize 128000) for most systems. You can use higher values if you have more RAM, but I don’t recommend exceeding half your physical RAM (e.g. for 1GB RAM, set heapsize of 512000).

-console: Speeds up the loading of Half Life 2 at startup by not loading up the background 3D graphics on the main menu and instead loading up a blurry background picture and the Half Life 2 console open. Note you can close this console using the ‘~’ key.

-width [pixels] -height [pixels]: Using these two commands you can set a custom resolution in Pixel Width x Pixel Height (e.g. -width 640 height 480 starts HL2 with 640×480 resolution). Make sure you choose a resolution supported by your monitor and with the correct ratio of width to height (usually 4:3).

-dxlevel [version]: Using this command allows you to force Half Life into only using the specified DirectX version for shaders. For example, use -dxlevel 70 to force Hardware DirectX7.0 level support for shaders. This means a reduction in image quality but an increase in performance. Other values include -dxlevel 80 -dxlevel 81 and -dxlevel90. Note that this only works if you choose a DirectX version which is lower than the current one supported by your graphics card. See the Hardware DirectX Version option under the In-Game settings for more details.

-refresh [Hz]: Specifies the refresh rate the game will use upon loading. This is normally not required as your system should already use the optimal refresh rate at your chosen resolution. However if this is not the case you can force it to a specific refresh rate (e.g. -rate 85). Make absolutely certain that the rate you are trying to apply does not exceed your monitor’s capabilities otherwise you may damage your monitor – especially if you change resolutions and forget to change this option.

-novid: Disables the intro video so that Half-Life 2 loads a bit faster.

[Via Linux and Open Source Blog]

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Now what I used to make Half-Life 2 a more enjoyable game was to go into steam program and Right click Half-Life 2 and select properties Then select : “Select launch options” and I added this:

“-console -heapsize 512000 -dxlevel 70“

Now let’s clarify some of this:

the heapsize I set that to add more memory for Half-Life 2 to make it around 512 megabytes. I then told it to Use only DirectX 7.0. Now when Direct X 7.0 was out you could only have 128 megabytes of Video so that was fine. I’ve got 256 megabytes of shared video memory, I Just told it to use only 128 so it actually helped out the game performance. I Got a more stable game to where I could play for hours without any annoying glitches and got to see the story line. I will say you shouldn’t use this particular setting unless you have enough memory. I think Vista is having trouble with Direct X 10.0 because the change of the game was surprisingly smoother. I am not sure why it works I just know it does. I hope this helps other gamers out with this little problem, I’ve had with Vista and all.

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