Windows Vista

2007-02Feb-21
New computers come with Windows Vista preinstalled. Here's my summary of replacing a desktop computer with a new machine:


  2. Windows Vista doesn't recognize the Logitech Cordless Click! Optical Mouse. A new Vista compatible driver is available here. That's the location of the German driver. The English one should be easy to locate, too.


  3. There's no Vista driver for the CanoScan N650U. The Windows XP driver seems to work just fine, though. The driver is available here.


  4. One of the most annoying features of Windows Vista is UAC. I applaud Microsoft to default to less privileged accounts. Since I'm running as a regular user on my computer for many years now, I'm really looking forward to have more software available to me that doesn't attempt to write in the program folder and respects my profile folders. However, why does UAC have to bring up an "Unverified publisher warning" every single time I launch a particular application? Once would be more than sufficient.

    As it turns out, there's a simple solution to that problem. The program folder contains an XML file that has the same name as the EXE with the extension ".manifest" added to it. You need to run an editor with administrative privileges, in order to edit the file. Removing the following block fixed the problem for me:


    <trustInfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
      <security>
        <requestedPrivileges>
          <requestedExecutionLevel 
            level="requireAdministrator" 
            uiAccess="false"/>
        </requestedPrivileges>
      </security>
    </trustInfo>

  5. 1 GB is definitely the absolute minimum amount of memory for a Vista computer. In the Dell default configuration of Windows Vista Business, all running applications consume about 650 MB of RAM. Once tools like Google Desktop kick in to reindex files, the number of page faults raises significantly.