Windows Upgrade Stopped By DEP

While applying Microsoft's patches to a MS Windows Vista installating, the installer was stopped by Data Execution Prevention.

A screenshot was able to capture most of the message.

Faster Vista Booting

Press the start button and in the "Start Search" box type: msconfig

The "System Configuration" utility will run.

Choose the "Boot" tab.
Check "No GUI Boot". This will disable the splash screen during startup.

Click the "Advanced options..." button.
Check "Number of processors", and choose the highest number. This will allow multi-core (multi-CPU) processing during startup.

XP Memory Usage

While refreshing a Windows XP desktop, I noticed what would now be considered low memory usage. Compared to Vista desktops easily surpassing 1GB of memory usage, XP was using 81M while running IE. After patching, the XP memory usage increased to 107M.

USMint.gov Passwords

The US Mint website inexplicably disallows passwords that end with a number.

Windows Media Center Traps The Cursor

Running Windows Media Center (MCE) on Vista Premium with two monitors. When maximizing Media Center, the cursor would get trapped in the MCE window which made it impossible to work on the other monitor. Apparently this bug has been present since MSWindows XP, so it is a design feature.

MCEMultiMon (unzip it - no install program) provides a few commands to send MCE to different monitors and allows MCE to be maximized without trapping the cursor.

On this PC, the right monitor is #1 and the left monitor is #2. To make the program work properly, editing the configuration file to offset the window was necessary. The changes are in bold:
[Version]
Current=0.2
[Screen 1]
Enabled=1
Width=1280
Height=1024
X Offset=0
Y Offset=0
[Screen 2]
Enabled=1
Width=1152
Height=864
X Offset=-1152
Y Offset=0
[Screen 3]
Enabled=0
Width=1280
Height=1024
X Offset=2560
Y Offset=0
[Screen 4]
Enabled=0
Width=1280
Height=1024
X Offset=3840
Y Offset=0
[Default Screen]
Current=2
[Startup]
Run with Windows=0

The next feature of MCE that would be useful to change is to make the application volume control work for the application, and not change the volume for everything. For example, muting MCE mutes everything and this is not desired.

Blocking Web Ads

Firefox has add-ons to block advertisements. While these are effective within the specific browser, modifying the hosts file in MS Windows will provide a more complete solution that works in all browsers for all users of the PC.

Updating the HOSTS file in MS Windows Vista is described here.

Burn ISO To CD

I found isorecorder to be a handy utility to burn ISO images on MS Windows. Simply right-click on an iso file and choose "Copy image to CD".

Comcast DNS "Helper" Opt-Out

Comcast has started a domain name "helper" service that inserts a page of ads when a domain name does not resolve successfully.

Use this opt-out page to disable this new "feature". The page is accessible inside the Comcast network.