Windows Vista setting up Vista

Charles ... I believe I finally found the perfect setup (for me) for Vista. For a firewall I'm using "Vista Firewall Control" by SphinxSoftware (www.sphinx-soft.com) which I believe you recommended. (Thank you very much, excellent program.) It allows even the most insignificant system or software package access to the internet to be controlled. It is very simple and works very well. For virus protection I use Nod32. I've used it for some time and it is excellent and I think one of the best on the market. For Vista itself, I'm using "Vista Manager" by Yamisoft (www.yamisoft.com). Vista Manager gives excellent control over a great many Vista settings. It certainly makes things much simpler.

One thing I can't find an answer to so far. Every time something is installed Vista goes through the authorization requests on the screen. Is there anyway to kill those notices. They are rather silly simply because if I am signed on as the administrator they arn't needed and If I'm not then I can still click on "Continue" and continue. Where's the control in that.

New subject:

I found this on the web somewhere. It isn't mine. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Vista about 8 times so far in an attempt to set it up so I could control it and have followed these instructions and they have worked great. I have Vista on a separate hard drive so I did not have to do the partition part.

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Uninstall

After playing around with Vista for a few days, you may want to remove it from your system, and reclaim the hard drive space. Microsoft has made this step very simple as well.

1. Boot your computer in to Windows XP.
2. Ensure you have the Vista DVD image emulated or in the DVD drive.
3. Go to "Start" and "Run ". Type in "x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force" (without quotes, and replacing x: with the drive letter of your Vista DVD).
4. Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone.
5. Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed.
6. Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on your XP drive's root folder (C, these were backup files of your previous bootloader, now no longer useful.
7. Optional: Restart to ensure it still works.
8. Use your partition software to merge your partitions together.
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There are other files and/or directories that are deposited on the root directory of XP by Vista that can be removed other than those noted above but I'll wait awhile and be sure before listing them here. If they are left there they do no harm and take up little space. I didn't pursue this because I reinstalled Vista fairly quickly for more research.

In addition, this site:
http://duggmirror.com/software/BlackViper_returns_Windows_Vista_Services_breakdown/
has a great list of the services and their functions. It helps in shutting down some of the ones that slow down the computer or simply are not needed. Sorry folks, I can't supply a definitive list of the ones not needed or slow down the computer. That seems to be a shot in the dark.

If you're involved with experimenting with Vista be sure to backup, backup, backup. I use Acronis true Image v10 and backup my entire hard disk. I can literally throw my hard disk in the trash, install a new one, restore the backup and boot and I'm back where I was. Makes a full mirror image. Takes about 8-10 minutes to backup the whole disk. Works perfectly.

FYI, I'm running Vista Ultimate.

Giles

 

The Administartor in Vista differs from that in XP. There are two levels. The normal default, which users are in after a basic install, does not give all the neccessary permissions. There are several ways of obtaining those extra permissions. I am logged on as an Administrator, with no user account, I have no nags. For example, you could use this in order to install programs and customise your Vista and have a user account for every day use. In the early stages of Beta testing, I began to write a doc with hints, mainly collected from many different pages on the web. I subsequently had to keep amending this, as MS moved the goalposts. The hints included logging on as the True Administrator.The final edition, which included a couple of useful programs, I posted up on a hoster. It is being freely used around the web now, which was the intention. Some of the hints are intended to lower the security level, use these as you will. None of the hints will crash your OS - they have been put to the test many times by myself. If you are interested, it is sitting on:
http://www.divshare.com/download/222626-c6b
No registration is reuired - it is a free download.

 

Hi Giles,

Nice hearing from you again. A big thanks for all the info.

I came across Vista Firewall Control when trying to add outbound blocking to Vista's firewall which turns out to be cumbersome to say the least.

I use NOD as one of my AV's - not on Vista though. In Vista I use AVG free - so far very smooth and trouble free. NOD has a forum at Wilders: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/index.php As an FYI, NOD is beta testing a suite, and as with KAV, will still have a stand alone AV.


Hello uhaligani,

Thank you for the resource. So far I've kept UAC enabled. Anything that makes it easier to run non Admin is to the good, running as Adimin is the source of so of much trouble in XP.

Regards - Charles