Windows XP SP3 hits Windows Update

It’s no secret that you could’ve grabbed a copy of SP3 off Microsoft’s server anytime in the last three months with nothing more than a simple registry hack (although up until this last week it wouldn’t have been a final release).

Gone however are the days of registry hacks, as Microsoft has released SP3 into the wild via Windows Update. As far as updates go, this one is pretty unexciting. Though I did notice a small boost in performance on most of the computers I installed it on.

This will certainly come in handy for anyone who builds/programs PCs, as now you don’t have to download 94 critical updates each time you install a fresh copy of XP, instead you can grab all those updates crammed into one download, copy it to a flash drive and save yourself a few hours work.

Vista Vs. XP

I’ve often wondered just how bad Vista really is on system performance, so recently when I purchased a couple of Acer laptops I decided to install XP on one and leave Vista on the other for a few tests. Basically I’m just running Geekbench and a battery life test, nothing crazy.

For the battery test, I merely pointed the browser to a URL set to auto refresh every 30 seconds and disabled all power saving features.

Both computers are the follwing:
Model: Acer Aspire 4715Z
Processor: 1.73GHz Pentium Dual Core
RAM: 2GB RAM

[ Vista ]
First, I ran Geekbench. The system scored a moderate 1911, but of course the system shipped with a bunch of bloatware, so in the interest of fairness I removed all the pre-installed software and ran Geekbench again, it then scored 1922.

The battery life gave out after 1 hour and 45 minutes of doing nothing but browsing the internet, that’s pretty sad.
[ XP ]
Running Geekbench on XP with no drivers installed, resulted in a score of 1939, only slightly higher than the Vista machine.

After installing all the drivers and re-running Geekbench I ended up with a much more statisfying score of 2168. Not as large of a difference as I expected, but still a noticeable improvement.

The battery life saw a huge jump though, ending with 3 hours and 14 minutes while browsing the internet.

Looking For XP Drivers For Your Acer?

Let’s say you just picked up that sweet Acer Aspire AS4715-4053 notebook for $499.99 at Newegg, but it’s not living up to your expectations due to Windows Vista. Good news! It’s a little known fact that Acer still provides XP compatible drivers for most of their machines, not all but most. So if you happen to be looking for Acer drivers, try their European support site.

I checked and they do offer XP drivers for the Aspire AS47150-4953.

[ Drivers and Utilities (Acer EU) ]

Samsung Q1 Ultra

I’ve been going back and forth and whether or not I should buy a UMPC. Now one could argue that I don’t need one, and they’d be right‚Ķ but I can dream!

If I did buy one, I think I’d go with the Samsung Q1U-V. The base specs are decent for a UMPC (especially for its price of $799)‚Ķ Intel Processor A110(800MHz), 7″ WSVGA screen, 1GB DDR2 400 RAM, 60GB 4200rpm hard drive, Intel GMA950 graphics card, and Windows Vista Home Premium (which I would replace with Windows XP Tablet Edition). Full specs are located after the jump.

In the end I opted not to purchase one, mainly because between my laptop and my iPhone I already have enough gadgets to cover my computing needs. Though I might reconsider getting a UMPC if the HTC Shift drops in price drastically.

Read more…

Windows XP Won’t Recognize CD Drive

Recently someone approached me with a question about their CD drive, basically Windows XP wasn’t recognizing it, it would only show up in the device manager with the following error message…

The device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device (Code 31).

Uninstalling and reinstalling the drive yields the same result. I finally managed to track it down to a leftover registry value from when they’d removed some disc burning software.

You might give the following steps a try if you’re having similar difficulties.

Step 1:
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

Step 2:
In the Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Expand SYSTEM, then expand CurrentControlSet.
Expand Control, then expand Class.
Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
In the right hand pane, select UpperFilters.
With the UpperFilters entry selected, press the delete button on your keyboard
It will ask you “Are you sure you want to delete this value?”, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the registry entry.

Step 3:
In the right hand pane, select LowerFilters.
With the LowerFilters entry selected, press the delete button on your keyboard
It will ask you “Are you sure you want to delete this value?”, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the registry entry.

Exit the Registry Editor and reboot.

Following these steps may result in your current burning software no longer working, to fix this just reinstall it. If you use the built in Windows burning utility, just uninstall and reinstall the CD drive from the device manager.

Read more…

Spybot Pwns Your Windows Firewall

Yes, I did just use the word “pwns” in the title of my post… blame it on the fact I’m typing this on my iPhone since Apple has my computer for the next week.

So apparently Spybot has a nasty habit of taking away your ability to disable your Windows Firewall, go figure, so now when you go to disable it, the disable option is grayed out and cannot be selected.

Here’s how to disable it manually:

Click Start

Hit Run

Type services.msc

Once it opens, find the entry marked “Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing [ICS]” and right-click on it and hit Stop.

Now right-click on it again, and select Properties.

On the General tab change the Startup Type to Disabled. Click Ok.

And there you have it, no more Windows Firewall. Of course I would recommend installing another firewall solution after disabling the Windows Firewall, but that’s your call.

iTunes Error -9808

A friend of mine suddenly couldn’t access the iTunes Store after upgrading to the latest version, every time he tried to purchase something he kept getting the following error:

“We could not complete your iTunes store request,an unknown error occurred (-9808)”

I couldn’t find anything online about it, so here’s how we fixed it under Windows XP. Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Advanced Tab, make sure that both the SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0 options are checked. Then under Security make sure that the “Check for server certificate revocation (requires restart)” is unchecked. Then click ok, restart and fire up iTunes.