Moving and resizing Partitions in vista

Although vista has a cool partition management tool inbuilt, you cannot perform powerful operations like increase your primary boot partition space by bringing in free space from the end or another drive etc.

Gparted allows you to do that flawlessly. Here's a good howto on that:

http://www.hackszine.com/blog/archive/2007/04/move_partitions_around_on_vist.html

I'm plannin to use it myself and see how it goes...

Other unrecommended but possible alternatives include:

• www.partition-tool.com/resource/resize-vista-partition.htm
• http://www.vistarewired.com/2007/04/07/how-to-work-with-partitions-in-windows-vista-xp-when-disk-management-doesnt-work
• www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/

Vista Troubles and Office woes...

If there is anything I hate about technology, its institutionalization.
Think about it.

Everything we do with our Personal Computers, mobile phones, internet connections, and a bunch of other software has made us institutionalized.

Institutionalized in many senses of the word... We have become institutionalized to the user interface, the taskbar, the start menu, the OK / Cancel buttons whenever a dialogue box pops up, and many many things. In the absense of any of these, we feel left in the dark, insecure, and unsure.

Recently I got institutionalized to Windows Vista, and had to shift over from my earlier OS: fedora 9, for two reasons. Firstly, one of my courses this semester, creative multimedia, relies on Adobe Creative Suite 3, which runs only on Windows. Secondly, I had a lot of trouble getting the campus Wi-fi to work in fedora. But this institutionalization has its own demerits. I faced two problems (and when I googled, I found I wasnt alone).

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Sonic Solutions DLA

On every Machine reboot, I would get a warning message saying:

this driver is blocked due to compatibility issues
sonic solutions
dlapublisher: sonic solutions

It turns out, this is due to the roxio drag and drop feature, which came bundled with the OS. The solution:

Open Up 'My Computer' and delete these files and folders if they exist.

C:\Program Files\Roxio\Drag-to-disc\

C:\Windows\DLA.EXE'

C:\Windows\System32\DLA\C:\Windows\System32\DLAAPI_W.DLL

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\DLACDBHM.SYS

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\DLARTL_M.SYS

Now, reboot. The problem should vanish.

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Microsoft Office Word, Crashes on exit

This happened overnight. I didnt install anything new, no new drivers, no new softwares, no uninstalls, but yet one fine day My Word crashes whenever I close it. Heres what it says: "Microsoft Office Word has stopped working". Additional information:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: WINWORD.EXE
Application Version: 12.0.4518.1014
Application Timestamp: 45428028
Fault Module Name: mso.dll
Fault Module Version: 12.0.4518.1014
Fault Module Timestamp: 4542867b
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0003977b
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.2
Locale ID: 1033

Additional information about the problem:
LCID: 1033
Brand: Office12Crash
skulcid: 1033

Solution:

If you want to work on Word, goto command prompt, and start winword.exe with the /a switch. It will work, but without addons. Its a relief, coz I can finally get my work done without bothering to search for the Office installation DVD, repairing office or uninstalling and reinstalling it...

Goto start, type cmd and press enter.

Navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12

Type in "winword.exe /a" without the quotes and press enter. And now, it works!

And while ur at it, goto the office menu (top left), word options, add-ins and disable the culprit after you've identified it (no choice but to try all of them out one by one, unless you're sure).

Note that this solution works only if the fault module (in the crash message) is "mso.dll". In other common cases, the fault module starts with "hp... .dll". In such cases, your HP printer driver is causing problems and you need to uninstall it to get word to work.

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The Hibernate Option in Windows Vista is Gone!

This happened to me when I tried to clean up my C drive (system drive).

Right clicking the drive > Properties > disk cleanup

Here, I chose to remove everything I could, to make some space. And accidentally also removed the Hibernation file from the list (which was consuming > 4 GB of space at the time).

So now I find that the hibernate option has gone missing. I cant even enable it. It isnt there in the power options, neither is it there anywhere else. I was forced to make-do with the sleep option. But the solution i quite simple:

Get into the command prompt, open it in administrative mode (by right clicking the icon in the start menu and selecting run as administrator), and type in:

powercfg /hibernate on

Reboot. And voila, hibernate is back in the "Microsoft Power Options" and the shutdown menu.

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I know institutionalization is bad, but in some cases its just about optimization. In the enterprise, professionals would rather continue with the inefficiencies of a system they know how to use, than invest time (and money) in learning a new and better systems (including open source counterparts) with hopes of improved performance.

The day when Open Source software institutionalizes the users as much, or more, than Microsoft has; will be the day when we will get to see true competition at its best...

Till then, its make-do time...

The Holy Crusade: Its Google vs Microsoft again!

OK this is the latest that has hit the wires:

Microsoft Changing Vista Desktop Search

Microsoft's compromise with the U.S. Justice Department, detailed in a report released late Tuesday, allows Windows Vista users to set a non-Microsoft program as the default search engine on hard drives. Microsoft will also add a link to that alternate program in the Windows Start menu, but will not change the way Vista "Instant Search" technology works.

Recent concessions by Microsoft are part of a broader battle between the two companies. While Windows continues to dominate the desktop operating system market, Google's ability to make money from search advertising has left Microsoft scrambling to catch up. Google has also stepped into traditional Microsoft territory in the past year with a set of free, Web-based programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

Tuesday's regularly scheduled status report came after Google filed a 49-page document with the Justice Department in April, claiming that Vista's desktop search tool slowed competing programs, including Google's own free offering. Google also said it's too difficult for users to figure out how to turn off the Microsoft program.

It is interesting to see how millions of us are closely following the so called 'crusade' between Microsoft and Google. In the not so forlorn past we can trace a similar analogy that prevailed between Apple and Microsoft.

Its easy to see that every attempt of Microsoft to provide default Ms tools to its users has created a hunch for many other software providers. consider these for eg:

Computer security software companies testing early versions of Vista last year also believed that the operating system might interfere with users' ability to chose products other than Microsoft's.

Also last year, Google told the Justice Department it was concerned that Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft's latest Web browser, made it harder for PC users to install toolbars of competing search engines. Regulators declined to intervene, but Microsoft still changed the way Explorer worked. And at the request of antitrust authorities in Korea and Europe, Microsoft released versions of Vista without the Windows Media Player.

The instant search technology so ambitiously flouted in the new vista release has been said to have existed in the Mac since prehistoric times (A very huge fan following would resist any of your attempts to prove otherwise). However, software developers have a different take to it:

Microsoft is enmeshed in a similar battle with the European Union, which has levied more than a billion dollars in fines against the software maker for depriving competitors of technical information, and charging too much for some licenses.

In response to claims that Vista's "Instant Search" slows other products, Microsoft agreed to give competitors technical information to help optimize performance.

Google had initially raised concerns about desktop search in December. The April complaint that drew public attention to the skirmish was filed just days after Microsoft called for antitrust regulators to scrutinize the search company's planned $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad service DoubleClick Inc. (That was a big story in itself).

More of an interesting read here.
Here is the Antitrust case filings (for those of you too interested!).

As I said it will be interesting to see how the two companies continue their skirmish. As users, of course, Its a pleasant ride all the way to the end. The more the competition, the more the options we have and the better it is. All we can do is spectate, comment, participate and enjoy the ride!