Reading through my RSS feeds today, I stumbled upon an interesting post over at Neowin entitled “Vista’s Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit” which reports on a new technique that can “bypass all memory protection safeguards that Microsoft built into Windows Vista.”

Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. have discovered a technique that can be used to bypass all memory protection schemes that have been built into Windows Vista by Microsoft.  These new methods are basically used to get around Vista’s Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections by loading malicious content through a web browser.

In a nutshell, this hack is something that many of us weren’t expecting.

While this may seem like any standard security hole, other researchers say that the work is a major breakthrough and there is very little that Microsoft can do to fix the problems. These attacks work differently than other security exploits, as they aren’t based on any new Windows vulnerabilities, but instead take advantage of the way Microsoft chose to guard Vista’s fundamental architecture. According to Dino Dai Zovi, a popular security researcher told, "the genius of this is that it’s completely reusable. They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That’s completely game over."

Microsoft has yet to post a statement officially, but they are apparently aware of the security issue and are waiting for the exploit to be made public. We can only wait and watch as to what comes up now…

If successful this could be a mess as good as the DNS exploit in the wild these days. This can potentially change the whole view of how the industry thinks about hacks in my opinion. Microsoft will have a quite a lot of work on hands in the coming days, I’m sure. We’ll know more about this in the near future and there even lies possibility of being faced with the prospect of your "secure" server being stripped completely naked of all its protection.

You think its game over for the already struggling Vista?

photo credit: jpctalbot

I’m not a Windows Vista fan, but even then everyone at my home uses Windows Vista, while I dual boot with OSX on my Hackintosh.. I’ve used XP before and for some reason I always felt that Internet speeds on Vista were comparably slower than on OSX, and more so even Windows XP.

Considering it was quite slower than what I used to get on XP, I realized that Vista was doing something extra that made my internet connection slow down. After a bit of investigation and a bit of googling I found the solution.

Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail… It all comes down to Vista’s “Auto Tuning” feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.

Anyways here’s what you need to do turn off the Auto Tuning feature on Vista..

At the Start menu type command, but don’t launch the command prompt immediately. Instead, right-click it and choose Run As Administrator. Once the prompt is open enter the following command.

netsh interface tcp show global

If the line Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level does not say “disabled,” enter this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=restricted

If this doesn’t help, substitute this command and see if it works

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

At this moment, you should notice considerable improvements in your browsing speeds, or rather you should be cruising now. If it works, you should notice the difference in browsing speeds immediately. If it doesn’t work for you, and you feel the need to put things back the way they were, you can type this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal

Here are screenshots showing the whole process, incase you feel the need for it..

Good luck, hope this works for you.. Please let us know if this worked for you or not..

The Mojave Experiment has been the center of the latest round of controversy surrounding Microsoft and its flagship operating system Windows Vista. Initially I thought Mojave was a brilliant marketing ploy and it would work wonders to clear the bad air on Windows Vista..

Well it is not really the best marketing ploy ever! If I were to choose my words, I’d call it the lamest marketing exercise of the year. The Mojave Experiment means Microsoft has stooped to an all time low, trying to do every single thing it can to clear the air about Vista. But trust me Microsoft its not as easy creating a beautiful new OS codenamed Mojave only to reveal that its nothing but Windows Vista.

Here’s how Microsoft describes the Mojave Experiment :

What do people think of Windows Vista® when they don’t know it’s Windows Vista? We disguised Windows Vista as codename "Mojave," the "next Microsoft OS," so regular people who’ve never used Windows Vista could see what it can do – and decide for themselves. Now decide for yourself.

Oh well, here are my top 5 reasons why the Mojave Experiment is Epic fail…

• Microsoft treats its customers as though they are stupid

  One of the chief reasons, why many people dislike Windows, is plainly because of the number of steps it takes to do a simple thing. Microsoft makes sure that the user has to go through an endless sequence of steps to get a simple job done. It’s always click, click, click, click, click, click, click, where one or two clicks should suffice.

  Microsoft treats its customers as though they are kids. They feel that the user should be shown around the system, and be told what’s right and what’s not.. These way of holding users hands just like a parent holding a child’s hands is not the way Microsoft should be working.

  It should instead focus on giving the power back to the user, in his own hands. Let him do as he pleases, after all its his PC. What MS feels is that by giving the power in users hands, it is going to make Windows more vulnerable. But in real life that isn’t the case, take for example Linux where the user is supreme and the number of attacks just pale in comparison to those on Windows.

  Come on Microsoft its high time you gave your users some respect, and treated them as smart humans!

• Microsoft tries to seduce its customers

  Microsoft’s initial campaign on Vista, was all about the new interface and the WOW! features. Somehow the we never heard people saying Wow while looking at Vista. Now Microsoft was downright frustrated and it wanted those Wow’s somehow, and that’s why Mojave began in first place.

  Here’s what MS told the participants of the Mojave experiment, “Hey! Listen, I’m going to show you a peek into the latest operating system from Microsoft. You’re really lucky and special, and I hope you like it”.

  Now when a tester hears that he’s all excited, and when he sees the demo later only to find that it was Vista he’s embarrassed. Of course he’s going to like it!There’s no one way he’s going to tell he didn’t like Mojave or Vista or whatever its called.

  Now this is something that’s human nature. When we are shown something that’s top secret we’re almost always going to like it, and that’s what Microsoft’s been targeting. I believe they have a good psychologist on the Mojave team.

• Microsoft completely controls the test environment

  The chief complaint of millions of users when Vista came out was it didn’t work well with their existing hardware. It ran terribly slow and many of there hardware didn’t work properly.

  Now with Mojave, Microsoft set up the hardware. Microsoft brought the accessories. Microsoft picked the software. Microsoft sat people down with Vista experts driving the mouse, and walked people through Vista.

  In such an environment, people liked Vista. What Microsoft fails to understand is that these guys want to be able to run Vista smoothly on their computers back home, and not have to run to the nearest computer store to buy a computer that can run Vista smoothly even though their existing computer is less than a year old.

  Windows users have always wanted to set up their own hardware, and they would expect Vista to work properly with the hardware they have, and not use the hardware that Vista is comfortable with.

• Mojave Experiment blames the customers for all the problems, rather than Vista

  What do you think is the problem? Why is it that thousands of people are downgrading from Vista to XP? Why is that many OEM manufacturers are still selling PC’s with both XP and Vista?

  What Microsoft feels is that all the negative perception behind Vista are because of the bloggers, forum posters, reviewers and hell even the Apple’s marketing campaign. Microsoft’s attitude has been more like, we’ve solved many problems with SP1, and we’ll solve many more with SP2. Until then just hang on tight alright!

  The first step in fixing a problem is admitting that you have one and this is something which Microsoft fails to do. The only way I read this experiment is that Microsoft considers Vista’s failure to be due to customer ignorance rather than failings of the product itself.

  Way to go Microsoft!!

• Mojave is Microsoft’s Arrogance at its best

  Microsoft’s attitude with Mojave is something on these lines, “We’re smart. You’re stupid”. Microsoft’s methods of choosing testers, specifically on the basis that they had strong negative attitudes about Vista isn’t right.

  What Microsoft feels is that by tricking people and making them feel that Vista is way better than they thought its just another way to reinforce its new corporate mantra “Customers are Stupid!”

  The problems that Vista has become famous for are not the kinds of problems you encounter in a few minutes of playing with it in a controlled environment that Microsoft setup with Mojave.

If Mojave is what Microsoft spends $300 Million to promote Vista, then am afraid that the bad is only going to get worser. What are your thoughts on the Mojave Experiment?

Atleast for me Mojave is Epic Fail!

Windows Vista came bundled with one of the most irritating security features to date that is the UAC. There are many apps that I use that require to be run in elevated mode everytime I run them.

I’ve already told you guys how to disable UAC for specific apps permanently but that hack requires a bit of work, instead using a free software called Elevate Me you can take the pain out of running apps that require elevated mode.

Just install the software, and you should find an option the right click context menu to run a software or a program in elevated mode. Really easy isn’t it? Installation is a breeze, but the irony is that the installation needs to be run in the elevated mode. Nevertheless here is how you can install Elevate Me.

• Download and extract the archive to a suitable location.
• Run the install.cmd, when UAC prompts for elevation allow it.
• Once that is done, you should see the elevate me option in the context menu.

I hope that Microsoft comes up with an exclusion list for UAC, which would make disabling UAC for specific apps as easy drag and drop. Right clicking to avoid the annoyance of the UAC just doesn’t cut it.

Download Elevate Me

I keep trying variety of registry tricks everyday, and install and uninstall numerous applications that demand a restart whenever I install them. To get away with boring restart process I normally kill Explorer.exe from the task manager and wait for it to restart automagically. But the problem is that the Task Manager method is like forcibly killing the process instead of terminating it cleanly.

Luckily there is a hidden option in both Windows XP and Windows Vista Start Menu that will allow you to terminate and restart Explorer.exe cleanly. As you can see in the screenshot above there’s a hidden option in the start menu to cleanly terminate Explorer.exe. Follow these steps to get that option visible and cleanly terminated Explorer.exe.

Click the Start button. Press and hold the CTRL and SHIFT keys, and right-click on an empty area in the Start menu. You’ll see a Popup menu containing the two options namely Exit Explorer and Properties. Alternatively you could get the above Popup menu by holding the CTRL and SHIFT keys and then right-clicking on the Start menu power button itself.

After selecting the Exit Explorer command, the shell (Start menu, Taskbar and the Desktop) will exit and the other applications will continue to run normally. You need to manually start a new Explorer.exe process by launching Task Manager. Use the CTRL+SHIFT+ESC key sequence to launch Task Manager. From the File menu of Task Manager, choose New Task (Run…), type Explorer.exe and press ENTER.

And you should now be looking at a clean shiny new Explorer process running at full speed. This way of restarting Explorer is a much safer process and has been recommended by Microsoft itself. Please let us know how this works for you in the comments.

If you are a Windows XP user there is a similar hack described by Microsoft employee Jeff. Have a look at that as well.

Credit : Aaron Margosis

Windows Vista’s UAC can be overly frustrating at times. There are times when a program needs to be launched with administrator privileges from the start menu, and right clicking and clicking on “Run as Administrator” just doesn’t cut it when you are in a hurry and need to get something to be done in a hurry.

For example, to open Command Prompt as administrator, click Start, type cmd in the Search box and press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER. You should see the User Account Control window popping up for task elevation confirmation. Press ALT+C to continue. By using the keyboard shortcuts life certainly becomes a lot more easier doesn’t it?

The CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER shortcut is extremely useful for Keyboard junkies like me. It should be noted that this shortcut works only on the Start menu and nowhere else.

Windows Vista has been a lovely companion for me, but the UAC frustrates me all the time. With these keyboard shortcuts I’m actually trying to figure out if I’m using  CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER more than CTRL+ALT+DEL on my PC!

Did this shortcut make life easier for you?

Windows Vista SP1 has been out in the wild for some time now. Though SP1 has brought about a lot of improvements in Windows Vista, there still remain a few problems that need to be ironed out. When I first installed SP1 even though it said it installed correctly, I kept having random crashes from time to time. I reinstalled it and everything is running fine now.

While I was randomly searching around the net, I found that Microsoft is officially providing Free Support to all Windows Vista SP1 users. Microsoft Support provides you with email, chat, or telephone support where you can talk to a Microsoft Support Agent to assist in troubleshooting your installation issue.

If you are looking for some Official Microsoft Support follow the link below :

https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?prid=11274

I have personally not tried the service, but its nice to see Microsoft owning upto its mistakes in the past, and supporting the customers through out.

What do you think about the service? Did you try it?

Imagine how nice it would be if you could launch your favorite application by just clicking the middle mouse button. Well today am going to show you a simple hack that allows you to launch your favorite application at the click of a button.

Before you begin, download and install WinFlog eXtreme on your Windows Vista PC. Once you are done with the installation, have a look around at the app, I’m sure you will find some interesting tweaks. But that is not what we are looking for at the moment, so read on to find out how you can launch your favorite app by just clicking the middle mouse button.

Follow the steps below to launch your favorite app at the click of a button.

• Open WinFlog eXtreme and click the first option (Turn ON Flip3d after the Middle Mouse button / Scroll wheel is Clicked)
• Press Windows Key+R to open the Run Dialog box.
• Press “regedit” in the dialog box and press enter.
• Browse the path below:

  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\UnlockForUs\WinFlog

• You will notice the DWORD value: “Mode” is set to 0
• Double click and change it to 2
• Right-Click any blank space > NEW > String Value >> Enter “Mode2App”
• Double click >> Enter the application path:

  Example: C:\Program Files\Winamp\winamp.exe

• To tune the sensitivity (default=300), Change the value of “TrInterval”. It is measured in milliseconds.

Well that is it. Now whenever you click the Middle Mouse Button, Winamp launches for you. How Sweet! Couldn’t be easier than this right?

Via Unlock For Us

You surely must have heard about the imminent arrival of Windows Vista SP1. Looks like at the grand party of the release of SP1, it is going to disappoint some apps. Yes you heard that right, SP1 will break support for some apps, just like Vista did on a larger scale when it first came out.

The biggest problem that Vista had when it first came out was the large amount of software incompatibilities. Most people held back from upgrading to Vista fearing that their favorite software or app wouldn’t work on Microsoft’s flagship OS. Things aren’t looking any brighter at the moment with an official Knowledgebase article stating the apps that would break with Windows Vista SP1.

The official list is rather short in my opinion, and I have a feeling that even more apps will break when SP1 comes out. Microsoft doesn’t seem to understand the situation here. If apps continue to break like this with every other release of a service pack, enterprise users are surely going to be in for a big disappointment.

The first service pack is expected to revive Vista, since it received a rather lukewarm response so far. Many business users have been waiting for SP1, hoping that Vista would be more stable. But at the moment, the business users need to hang on.

And about us home users, its even more difficult. What if your favorite app breaks with the arrival of SP1, and you happen to be a tech noob and you can’t figure out what went wrong after upgrading to SP1. Surely we don’t want all this mess, do we? Come on Microsoft, you guys can do better than this!

From my side, all I can say is Best of Luck Microsoft!

Further Reading : Knowledgebase Article | News.com

Cairo has been in stealth development for quite sometime now, and it has gone much beyond a Windows taskbar replacement. But it’s since evolved into a complete replacement for the Windows shell, with a custom file explorer, favorites manager, and live file previews and more…

The totally revamped Shell aims at providing the best user experience and takes a completely different look at how you access your data. An Alpha release is a few weeks away, and I’m hoping that I get to play with it. Well here a few mockups, for you to feast your eyes upon..

Cairo is currently being developed with Windows Vista in mind, but the developer says that a Windows XP version may also be in the offing.

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