Windows
New Version of Church Song and Video Projection Software Released
A new version of the church song and video projection software SundayWorship has been released.
This release adds two major features to SundayWorship.
- Support for running Microsoft PowerPoint presentations from SundayWorship
- The ability to import songs from EasiSlides.
You can download the latest version from here.
First it was the “Blue Screen of Death” Now it’s the “Black Screen”
Users of the Windows operating systems have been facing a rather strange problem over the last few days. The problem which was named the “Black screen of Death” left users with a totally black screen once they logged into their accounts. In a statement made by software firm Prevx, according to them, the black screen of death was possibly caused by a faulty security update in November. However, officials at Microsoft have said that the problem was not as a result of any faulty security update and it could be a malware.
In a blog post made by Microsoft, a malware like Daonol could be the root cause for problem like this and not the KB976098 and the KB915597 updates as claimed by Prevx. All known versions of Windows, including windows 7, Vista, XP and Windows 2000 were known to be affected by this malware and Prevx said they had come up with a fix for this.
Fast and Affordable Windows 7 Touch Screen PC from MSI; Introducing the Wind Top AE2220
MSI has announced the U.S. availability of the Wind Top AE2220 all-in-one desktop PC. What’s cool about this touch screen PC is that like a flat screen TV, this PC can be mounted on a wall.
Its touch screen capabilities feature MSI’s exclusive graphic interface plus the new Windows 7 native multi-touch support to provide a cool touch-screen experience for browsing the Web, editing photos, creating documents, or just about anything else, without using a mouse. But if you insist on using a mouse, it does comes with one anyway!
Featuring a 21.5-inch screen with 16:9 widescreen display, full HD (1080p) resolution and high-fidelity 5.1-channel SRS Premium Sound, the Wind Top AE2220 is designed to provide home users with theatre-like multimedia entertainment.
It is powered by the NVIDIA ION graphics platform and the latest Intel Core 2 Duo/Pentium Dual Core processors which means it can handle HD movies and 3D games. It also has 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive would should be plenty for even advanced users.
Wind Top AE2220 Specifications:
- CPU — Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 (2.2GHz) / Pentium dual-core T4300 (2.1GHz)
- LCD Panel — 21.5” (54.61cm ) 16:9, 1920 x 1080, Full-HD Multi-Touch Screen
- Graphics — NVIDIA GeForce 9300 Integrated Graphics with 256MB VRAM
- Memory — 4GB DDR2 800MHz
- Wireless LAN — 802.11 b/g/n WiFi
- Hard Disk Drive — 500GB SATA2
- Optical Drive — Blu-Ray/Double-layer DVD Super Multi
- Speakers — Two 5W 5.1-channel surround speakers with SRS Premium Sound
- Video Input — 1.3-megapixel webcam and microphone
The Wind Top AE2220 all-in-one PC is available in a variety of configurations, and is priced starting at $749.99.
Microsoft Revamps MSN
Microsoft’s internet portal, MSN has got a new look almost after a decade. A number of new features have been added in the revamped site that is to be rolled out in 2010. Currently, only a few people in the US have been granted to access the revamped version of MSN. A large Bing search engine box along with columns to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and a number of categories like sports, money, entertainment and lifestyle along with localized information are some of the new features of the webpage.
Microsoft has made this comprehensive revamp mainly to promote its search engine Bing, that was launched as a competitor to the search engine giant Google. The MSN logo has also been redesigned to look similar to the Bing logo. Also, MSN has decided to relaunch its MSN music service in the UK which has a library of over one million tracks.
Windows 7′s User Account Control Doesn’t Help Against Viruses
Sophos has revealed that Windows 7 with its User Account Control (UAC) in the default configuration and no anti-virus software installed is vulnerable to 7 out of 10 sample viruses.
Although Microsoft strongly recommend the use of anti-virus software, this experiment proves that the improved User Account Control (UAC) features built into Windows 7 are not enough.
UAC stopped only one example (from ten malware samples that arrived in Sophos’s labs on 22 October) that would otherwise have infected the PC. It was a strain of autorun malware (called Autorun-ATK by Sophos).
Thankfully there are a number of free-of-charge anti-virus packages from the likes of AVG, Comodo, Avast and Avira, along with Microsoft’s home-grown Microsoft Security Essentials freeware anti-malware scanner.
UAC debuted in Windows Vista as a technology designed to prompt users for permission before allowing applications to run. Widely criticised as annoying, Microsoft released a less intrusive version of the software with Windows 7.
Related links:
Microsoft’s New Solution for Security Issues
Microsoft has released its new security software and this software is available for free download in the Microsoft’s Security Essentials website. This software can be used as a basic protection against viruses, Trojans, root kits, and spyware. This is the second attempt by Microsoft in providing anti-virus software with the first one being the beta version of the Microsoft’s Security Essentials (MSE) software which has been codenamed as “Morro” and has been made available to the people from specific countries such as US, China, Brazil, and Israel. When Cliff Evans, head of the Microsoft Security and privacy in UK spoke, he said that this software will come as independent software and this won’t be covered by the Windows automatic updates or included in the operating system.
Evans added that most of the systems in UK are still not protected against malware and the launch is targeted to reduce this number and also he assured that this will turn out to be a success. The only restriction with this software is that, it can be used only with the genuine copy of Windows registered with Microsoft. This can be used with Windows XP, Vista and also can be used with the oncoming Windows7. The updates will be given to the users automatically from Microsoft regularly.
Windows 7 Install: ‘Cannot boot from CD – Code 5′ Problem and Solution
Having just got hold of my copy of Windows 7, I decided to install it on my rather long-in-the-tooth PC. It is a 2.5Ghz P4 with only 1.75GB of memory and a 40GB hard drive… OK stop laughing there at the back… But it works for me as I am mainly an Apple Mac user…
Anyway… I stuck the Windows 7 DVD in the drive and booted and I got this strange error: “Cannot boot from CD – Code 5″
This is quite odd as other DVDs boot fine on this machine including Windows Vista. After a bit of research I discovered that something changed in the boot loader for Windows 7. This error is mainly seen on computers with older motherboards from companies like “AsRock” or “MSI”.
Solution
There are several different solution posted on the Internet including amazing ways to burning a new version of the Windows 7 DVD with the boot loader from a Windows Vista DVD… But I wanted a quick and easy solution and here it is.
In a nutshell what you need to do is boot from a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD and use Smart BootManager to boot the Windows 7 DVD.
Step by step
- Download the Ultimate Boot CD.
- Burn it to a CD (see the tutorials if don’t know how to do this).
- Insert the Ultimate Boot CD in your DVD drive and boot the PC. Of course you need to make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the DVD and not the hard drive.
- In the Ultimate Boot CD, go to Filesystem Tools->Boot Managers->Smart BootManager
- Once the Smart BootManager is loaded, take out the Ultimate Boot CD and put in your Windows 7 DVD.
- Now scroll down to CD0 and hit ENTER.
You PC should now boot from the Windows 7 DVD without any problems.
64 Bit Windows 7 System Requirements
There are two variations of all the different Windows 7 versions available, a 32 bit version and a 64 bit version. If you want to try the 64 bit version you will need a 64 bit processor from either Intel or AMD and you need to make sure that your PC meets the minimun requirements.
The published minimum system requirements for Windows 7 64 bit are:
- 1 gigahertz (GHz) 64-bit (x86) processor
- 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 20 GB available hard disk space
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
By using 64 bits you open up a whole new world of possibilities, specifically in the realm of lots of system memory. With 32-bit Windows 7, you’re stuck at 4GB of RAM and probably due to some boring technical stuff about memory mapping, only about 3.3GB is available. With 64-bit, 4GB is just the start. You can run loads of applications simultaneously without the system slowing down for swapping. Windows 7 runs nicely in 4GB of RAM and 8GB (and more) becomes a reality (although you need to check how much your motherboard supports).
So what processor do I need to run Windows 7 64 bits?
Intel
In a nutshell you need an Intel Core 2 Duo, an Intel Core i7 or and Intel Core i5 processor.
There are some other Intel processors which supported 64 bits before the Intel Core 2 Duo including:
- Some Xeon models
- Pentium D
- Pentium Extreme Edition
- Pentium Dual Core (E2140, E2160, E2180, E2200, E2220, E5200, E5300,
- E5400, E6300, E6500, T2310, T2330, T2370, T2390, and T3200)
- Celeron (Celeron 4×0; Celeron M 5xx)
AMD
If you have an AMD processor it is normally a bit easier to tell if it supprts 64 bits as it will have the number 64 in the processor title. So all Athlon 64, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX processors support 64 bits (clever huh?). But also the following AMD processors are 64 bit compatible:
- Athlon II
- Opteron
- Phenom
- Phenom II
For more information you might like the following pages in Wikipedia: x86-64 and 64-bit.
Will My PC Run Windows 7?
The question is can your PC run Windows 7? If you are considering upgrading Windows on your current PC, then there are two ways to check if your PC will work with Windows 7. The first is the manual way, read the system requirements and compare them to your PC, the other is the automatic way, run the Microsoft Windows 7 upgrade advisor.
The published minimum system requirements for Windows 7 are:
- 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x86) processor
- 1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
- 16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
A “DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver” means you need a graphics card which has drivers for Vista, in in practice this means an nVidia GeForce 6 series or better graphics card, or an ATI Radeon 9500 or better.
The recommended way to check for Windows 7 compatibility is to run the Windows 7 upgrade advisor. The upgrade advisor scans your hardware, devices, and installed programs for known compatibility issues, gives you guidance on how to resolve potential issues found, and recommends what to do before you upgrade.
Related links:
Will My PC Run Windows 7? New Upgrade Advisor Available
Microsoft Releases BIG Security Update
With a number of security threat loose on the internet, OS developer Microsoft has develop a comprehensive update file that will help users tackle about 34 security vulnerabilities. The security update will include a number of critical updates and will be biggest security update released by Microsoft so far. Microsoft noted that there were a number of loopholes in Internet explorer and Microsoft Office which made computers vulnerable to potential attacks.
Loopholes in the File Transfer Protocol(FTP) of Windows was the most exploited ne by cyber criminals and in a recent survey, it was found out that computers running Windows were the hottest things in cyber fraud and a number of Trojans and viruses have been aimed at the operating system. Security fixes are released every month since 2003 and the second biggest update prior to the one released on the 13th of October was in June 2009 when 31 vulnerabilities were addressed.
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