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Location: Uranus Planet
Registered: 11 September 2007
Posts: 131
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quote: Originally posted by Aufklarer:
Vista has been giving a hell load of internet problems. At work, we haven't been able to connect any laptops running on Vista to our wireless network (which is supposed to be one of the best).
 This is probably the problem of driver, I also had this problem when I go from XP to Vista, I would have to look for new drivers compatible Vista and are not always available, I also have another problem that is that many of my video games that take up no problems in XP not start on Vista, my Joypad time is not working in most video games on Vista. But this does not mean that Vista is bad but on the contrary, Vista is the long-term supported by Microsoft, and contains more security options, but in any case you will always need an antivirus. A lack of Vista is that it uses a lot of RAM, and if you want to take advantage of its interface aero, you need to have a video card capable of acquiring all the visual effects of Vista witch mean you need a good video card. Here a few items from the manual: Vista Beyond the Manual Security quote:
Across the entire Microsoft spectrum of server and workstation products, IT security
has never been so critical to the future of businesses—and Microsoft knows it! This is
exactly why initiatives such as Trustworthy Computing (http://www.microsoft.com/
mscorp/twc) are championing wholly new approaches to code developing and security
testing, with security no longer an afterthought to development—instead it’s sitting
right at the top of the requirements list.
Vista is the first operating system release from Microsoft to benefit from this security-
centered pitch shift, meaning, right there under the hood, Vista is doing
everything possible to keep out the bad guys, protect your privacy, and make sure you
stay up and running even when the most formidable of new viruses are circulating the
globe.
One of the most obvious, in-your-face security enhancements in Vista is User
Account Control (UAC). At first glance, you’ll probably want to switch it off because
you are constantly bombarded with pop-up windows, halting your progress until you
authorize Vista to proceed. Even the simplest of processes, such as adding new users,
pops up the UAC dialog box, saying “Windows needs your permission to continue.”
The thing is, this is probably the single most effective way of stopping covert processes
from performing tasks in the background that you don’t know are running. Having
you, the user, authorize actions such as account changes means you will always see
when something is being modified. If the dialog box suddenly pops up asking you to
confirm you want to add a new user but you never started that task yourself, you can
be sure that some piece of malware on your system started to do it for its own subversive
needs.
Another new feature included in Vista is Windows Defender (previously known as
Windows AntiSpyware). This is an extremely effective anti-malware product, residing
in memory and scanning for unusual system behavior that might be a result of
spyware, adware, or other kinds of privacy-infringing services. In the same way an
antivirus product scans your file system on a regular interval, Windows Defender runs
full or partial system scans, either looking deep into the registry and file system or
performing a more simple scan of your installed services that might reveal potentially
malicious code. Windows Defender connects to Microsoft on a regular schedule to
check for malware definition updates or engine upgrades, so it keeps up-to-date with
the latest exploits.
Windows Firewall has also been revamped for Vista, no longer being constrained
to monitoring only inbound connections (probably the biggest drawback of previous
versions and the main reason why Windows XP users installed products such as
ZoneAlarm); it is now as capable as many of its rivals in protecting against unauthorized
outbound connections from your system that might come from worms, Trojans,
or other such malware.
Internet Explorer has a whole bunch of new security features and improvements.
Switching on Internet Explorer Protected Mode when surfing the Web prohibits web
pages from writing to anywhere on your system but the Temporary Internet Files
folder. In this way, malicious executable code cannot be dumped into the Windows
Startup folder to run the next time you reboot (a typical exploit instigated from
adware- or malware-containing sites). ActiveX Opt In allows you to completely
control the use of ActiveX code on your system, offering you a toolbar that allows you
to authorize its use when you need it rather than having it enabled all the time. The
Phishing Filter will check against an online database of registered web sites where
phishing attacks have come from in the past and will warn you that the site is
dangerous.
Windows Mail (the replacement for Outlook Express) incorporates a new Junk
Mail Filter akin to the one installed in Office Outlook. This provides you with
complete control over what does and does not make it into your inbox, with safe
sender and blocked sender filters and an email phishing filter that protects your inbox
from emails trying to lure you to a site.
Windows Service Hardening is a new paradigm determining how service accounts
are utilized by the system. Accounts attributed to services are derived on a least-privilege
basis rather than, as with Windows XP, service accounts running in an
administrative context that can be more dangerous if compromised. In this way, a
hacker could still compromise a service, but the hacker would no longer be able to take
administrative control of your system as a result of this.
Vista also incorporates one of the most-asked-for requirements that securityoriented
customers wanted: full disk encryption. Unlike the EFS, BitLocker Drive
Encryption encrypts and protects your entire system partition, including the operating
system files that you could not protect with EFS. BitLocker can use a Trusted Platform
Module (TPM) to increase security further since this TPM is a physically separate
hardware module for recording security keys that might be easier compromised in the
operating system.
Network Access Protection (NAP) is another new service used to keep an eye on
the patch state and security settings of Vista, warning you when you are falling behind
with your patching or when your antivirus signatures are out-of-date.
Enhancements to the file system in the form of the new Transactional NTFS (TxF)
allow Vista to roll back files where problems have been encountered during a file
system operation.
Finally, as mentioned, parental controls have been enhanced to allow concerned
parents to place restrictions on kids’ accounts, block access to inappropriate web sites,
stop the installation and playing of inappropriate games, and much, much more.
Performance and Stability quote:
There is no denying that Vista is faster at starting than Windows XP. This, put simply,
is because Vista is better engineered. You still have to wait for applications to become
available, but these applications’ initialization routines do not effect Vista since it
partitions its own start-up routines asynchronously from that of other applications and
scripts, having them execute in their own time as system background tasks. So, they do
not have any impact on the start-up and login process. Coupled with the new Sleep
state shutdown option (taking the best parts of Standby and Hibernate), Vista can
easily start from a seemingly off state (disk has stopped spinning, and so on) to fully
operational in less than five seconds. Quite impressive really!
The entire Windows Update experience has been significantly improved using
Restart Manager, which is a lot more intelligent than previous operating system–
patching technologies. The Restart Manager significantly cuts down on the number of
reboots required when you install a patch and makes patch integration seamless and
immediate (great news from a security standpoint).
One of the best performance enhancements in Vista is the Superfetch service (resident
and operating by default as a Windows service) that preempts users’ working
practices by learning how a user works and then keeping one step ahead in preloading
files before they are requested.
Improved input/ouput (I/O) cancellation support allows developers to better
capture and deal with an application service error; where previously I/O issues might
have frozen the operating system, I/O cancellation cannot eliminate the need for a
reboot to release the blockage.
Vista also includes a whole arsenal of tools for administrators and users for diagnosing
disk, memory, and application problems, as well as the reliability monitoring
services that send application problems to Microsoft to be analyzed and fixed in
collaboration with the application developer. Figure 1-5 shows the new Reliability and
Performance monitoring interface, with a much cleaner view of exactly what’s going
on under the hood.
Lastly (but by no means least), the Startup Repair Tool (SRT) can automatically fix
many common Windows start-up problems without rebooting; however, if it cannot
remedy the problem automatically, it starts Windows and runs the SRT in an enhanced
mode, allowing comprehensive diagnostic utilities to scan the Windows event logs for
the source of the problems before offering a fix.
Minimum Vista Capable PC Requirement quote:
1 - Processor : at least an 800MHz Pentium or equivalent (not too
much to ask by today’s standards); however, to really get good performance from
Vista, especially if you are planning on doing anything with large applications or
games, you’ll be looking at Intel’s Pentium 4 or Celeron chipsets running at speeds in
excess of 3GHz.
2 - RAM : 512MB.
3 - Video Card : Must support DirectX 9.0 or later with 32MB graphics memory.
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