Be careful with your KMS key! (more…)

Consider the following scenario. You attach an external monitor to a Windows Vista-based portable computer. The lid of the computer is open. You play a DVD in Microsoft Windows Media Player 11. You close the lid of the computer while the DVD is playing. In this scenario, you receive an error message that resembles the following:

Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copyright protection between your DVD drive, decoder and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card.

When you resize the Windows Media Center window in Windows Vista, video playback may stop.

When you try to use Windows Photo Gallery or Windows Explorer on a Windows Vista-based computer to add metadata to a Canon RAW file that has a .tif file name extension, the file is corrupted.

When the GUID of a network adapter changes on a client computer that is running Windows Vista, the computer registers an old IP address that was associated with the old GUID.

The client computer also registers new IP addresses that are associated with the new GUID. However, because the client computer registers old IP addresses, another client computer may try to use the old IP address. If the old address is not valid, a connection failure may occur.

You may experience either of the following problems when you use an IEEE 1394 device on a Windows Vista-based computer:

• After you wake the computer from sleep, the IEEE 1394 device disappears or is no longer available.
• After you repeatedly disconnect and reconnect the IEEE 1394 device, the device disappears or is no longer available.

The IEEE 1394 device may be an external hard disk or an external optical drive.

After a Windows Vista-based computer has been running for a long time, the desktop screen may stop updating correctly. For example, you may experience any of the following symptoms:

• Parts of the screen may go black.
• Parts of the screen may become transparent.
• The toolbar may disappear.
• The toolbar may appear at the top of the screen instead of at the bottom of the screen.

A nice list of free software available for Vista from Microsoft and others. (more…)

Describes how WSUS 2 has Vista going in a loop if you try to get updates from Microsoft Update, but version 3 fixes that. (more…)

When you try to repair or recover Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium by using Windows Complete PC Backup and Restore, you may receive an error message that resembles the following:

You do not have a valid backup image to restore from.

Additionally, you are asked to provide the location of a valid backup image.