Wictor Wilen

When you have an SQL Server which has been installed on a different port than the standard 1433 you might have trouble connecting to it if you don’t specify the port in your connection string or connection settings. This is how the syntax is, which was new to me until today. The server name (or IP) is separated using a comma sign instead of the standard colon, which are standard in URL’s and others.

Robert Scoble is writing about that the analog TV will be turned off (Turn off analog TV? It’ll never happen) in two years and that he thinks this is not going to happen. This is exactly what’s happening in Sweden right now, by the next few months the last analog terrestrial broadcast is turned off. I think this is great except for that almost every TV has analog recievers and you therefore have to buy another box, with a new remote etc etc. Thank god I’m using a Media Center computer :-), anyone have any suggestions for a good HD Ready dual digital-TV tuner card compatible with Windows Vista?

 NVIDIA has released a new beta of the ForceWare Graphics Drivers Release 100 (100.64) for Windows Vista (32 bit and 64 bit), which is one step forward in their new official plans for a functional Windows Vista driver. According to the Release Notes there are still a lot of missing features, a lot of known issues and only a few small fixes, since the 97.46 WHQL driver. If you experience any kind of problems please go to the newly established Vista Quality Assurance program by NVIDIA and report any problems with the NVIDIA drivers. Please submit any kind of NVIDIA related problems you have on Windows Vista so we can get working drivers for Windows Vista.

Windows DreamScene is now available from Windows Update. It’s a technical preview of the Ultimate Extra application and at a first glance it looks nice. To enable the animated background Personalize your Desktop Background and in the Location drop-down choose Windows DreamScene Content or any other folder that contains your animated backgrounds, see image below. The Location drop-down even contains, by default, your Videos folders so you can test one of the Sample Videos provided with Windows Vista.

NVIDIA has been struggling with the drivers for Windows Vista and this has not gone unnoticable and they are even facing a possible class action. NVIDIA has now publicly released their plans for the ForceWare drivers for Vista. In short here is what we can expect: February - new WHQL certified drivers, probably not anything fancy or new about this one, big thing is that they will probably work fine March - new drivers with new features. TV output and HDTV support including overscan - finally!!! April - new drivers that targets DirectX 10 SLI support and support for H.264 decoding. May - new drivers again, what will be in them is not announced Let’s hope they can keep this time schedule - they are already late…

Windows Vista contains a performance booster functionality called ReadyBoost which really can improve the performance of your Windows Vista system. In fact, ReadyBoost, is one of the top five Windows Vista features according to Ed Bott. In short ReadyBoost caches programs on a flash drive to speed up your Vista, reports are that a program that previously started in 10 seconds will now start in 2-4 seconds. Almost all articles I have read on this subject says that you should use an USB-stick as your ReadyBoost flash drive, but it will work with any kind of flash drive, like an SD-card.

Microsoft Windows Vista contains new common dialogs, such as the Save As and Open dialogs, which have a new sidebar navigation to the left. The navigation can show the folder tree or your Favorite Links. Windows XP had a similar concept, but not as customizable as in Windows Vista. If you are like me and like to have your files organized and have easy access to them you can customize the Favorite Links really easy. All the links in the Favorite Links sidebar is plain old shortcuts (.lnk files) which are located in the Links folder of the Users directory, to be precise: %USERPROFILE%\Links\, for example c:\Users\wictor\Links\.

Virtual PC and Virtual Server uses Virtual Hard Disk which may be dynamically sized, that is they don’t occupy the whole size of the disk on the host system. But they may take up much more than the guest operating system reports. I will show you how to reduce the size of you dynamically expanding virtual disk, using the tools provided with Virtual PC 2007 beta 2 (it’s the same on VPC 2004).

NVIDIA has released ForceWare Release 100 as a beta for Windows Vista, mainly to support the 8800 graphics cards but it works with all the 6/7/8 series. The Release 100 contains an updated NVIDIA Control Panel which contains new functions for scaling the display so finally I can use 100% of my plasma screen. So far it has been working fine, except for when you once have made your settings do not enter the Control Panel again cause it will the revert to default or faulty settings!