Tommy Nation

If you’re like me, living on the bleeding edge with Windows 7 RC, you might have noticed the watermark in the right-hand corner of your desktop. Such things annoy me a bit, so I went to work (Googled) how to remove it, and found a great solution.

To remove your watermark(s), download this nifty little watermark removal application, right-click the appropriate file for your system (32-bit or 64-bit) and run it as an administrator. Follow the on-screen instructions and you’re set!

This removes watermarks for all Windows versions and all languages by searching for some standard watermarking strings and modifying the user32.dll.mui file instead of replacing it with a pre-patched file like others do.

Ignore any weird question marks that might be displayed in the CMD window – it still works perfectly.

This is a watermark. Watermarks are baaad!

Microsoft attempts something different with their new marketing hype of the upcoming Office release 14, also known as Office 2010.

Launching www.office2010themovie.com, we’ re treated to some semi-witty movie trailer-esque videos. While showing us that Microsoft likes to be witty and creative with their marketing, they don’t really reveal much in detail about the new Office 2010 release (at the time of writing). So to make up for Microsoft’s shortcomings, I have included a video that shows some actual footage from the Office 2010  Technical Preview, courtesy of YouTube user lukychan.

You can actually sign up for the chance to try out the Office 2010 Technical Preview for yourself in July if you put yourself on Microsoft’s waitlist.

One important thing we do know is that it will be released in both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) versions. We also know that Microsoft is focusing on options for adapting the Office suite to suit the needs of different types of users. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in the final product.

Still, it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re still trying to recover from their dreadfully awkward Songsmith commercial. (Click “Read the rest…” below the Office 2010 videos following to see it. It’s not for the faint of heart, so consider yourself warned.)

Office 2010 The Movie Teaser Trailer:

Office 2010 Technical Preview:

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On my Media Center PC, after reinstalling some video codecs, my MKV* video files made Windows Explorer crash regularly when opening a folder with one of these files in it. To solve this problem, I had to disable automatic thumbnail generation in Vista or Windows 7. Disabling thumbnail preview in Windows Explorer can make Vista/Windows 7 perform notably faster in any case, as Explorer will no longer be generating thumbnails for every video and image file in every folder you open. This is especially useful when browsing back and forth between multiple folders. Follow these steps to disable the automatic thumbnail generation:

1. Press and hold the Windows key on your keyboard, then press E to open Windows Explorer (alternatively click Start > Accessories > Windows Explorer).
2. In the Windows Explorer window, click on the Organize button on the menu/shortcut bar.
3. In the pull down menu, click on Folder and Search Options.
4. The Folder Options dialog window will appear. Click on the View tab.
5. Under the Files and Folders tree heading, check (tick) the box next to Always show icons, never thumbnails option.
6. Click the OK button and you’re good to go!

* MKV is a common container format for video, audio and subtitles, often used to distribute standard and high definition video, audio and associated subtitles in one single file, with support for multiple audio and subtitle tracks, just like on a DVD.

By installing the Media Control Plugin for Vista Media Center by Damien Bain-Thouverez, you can finally play back video files with subtitles, especially files using the Matroska container format (MKV). Multiple subtitles support, multiple audio streams support, FFDShow settings tweaking, and much much more is enabled.

The plugin can even hook on to the remote control driver and enable access to customizeable special functions and shortcuts when using a Media Center compatible remote control. There’s even a newly added feature that enables Windows Live Messenger integration. I haven’t tested this one myself yet, though.

If this is just what you’ve been looking for, then head on over to the homepage and download it now! Be sure to read the requirements section carefully before you install it.

Thank you Damien for this great plugin! Please show your support by donating to him if you find it useful.

To be able to access administrative shares and shut it down remotely, I added another user to my media center computer (HTPC) matching my usual username and password. Upon next boot, I discovered that instead of being logged on automatically, I was now presented with a logon screen, where I had to choose between the default (passwordless) user and my newly created “remote control” account.

“There’s got to be a way to get the automatic logon back”, I thought. Of course there is! Following is the simple solution to configure automatic logon in Vista. (Please bare with me, and pretend that the Norwegian screenshots are in English for now.)

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Even if your Windows Vista user account is a member of the Administrators group, you are still asked to give applications permission to access your system in different ways. To enable the hidden Vista Administrator account, and become free of these hassles, just follow these directions:

1. In the search field of the Start menu, type “cmd” and right-click the cmd.exe suggestion that pops up in the results.
2. Select “Run as administrator”.
3. In the command prompt window, type (without the quotes) “net user administrator /active:yes”.
4. Log out of your Vista session, and – voilà – the administrator account is now selectable.

Even if you consider yourself an advanced Windows user, beware that activating the Administrator account makes your system more vulnerable when you are logged in as this user. It’s the same as being logged in as the root user in Linux, in that applications will now get access to your file system like in Windows XP.

When you have more than one computer in your local network, you may want to be able to access all your files on all your machines, whichever one you’re sitting at. Here’s how you can accomplish that in Windows:

To be able to access all files you will be using something called Administrative Shares. These are hidden shares of your local hard disks and optical drives. These shares are not like normal shared folders, in that they require administrative access to open.

An administrative share always has a dollar ($) sign directly behind it, and do not show up by default when you access a computer through Windows Explorer. To access the C:\ drive for instance, you would type this in the address bar of Windows Explorer: \\Computername\c$

This alone is not enough however, as you still need the administrative access rights. To get this, all you have to do is to create an account on each computer that has administrative rights, and the same username and password. To do this, open Control Panel and go to User Accounts and make the necessary account and/or password changes there.

Now, whenever you want access to your files on your other machines, just open Windows Explorer and type in \\Computername\c$ in the address bar – replacing the letter c with the drive letter of the hard disk you want to access.

There’s an additional administrative share that’s standard on all Windows computers, and this is the Windows folder. To access this share, type \\Computername\admin$. If Windows was installed on a different drive than the C:\ drive, it doesn’t matter when you use this share. Pretty useful when you want to view Windows log files on remote machines.

Windows Vista troubleshooting:
In Windows Vista you will get prompted to enter a username and password. Enter the username and password, and tick the box to remember the password if you don’t want to be bothered again. You may get problems here, being denied access even if you entered the correct username and password. Should this be the case, you should read my previous article on enabling admin shares in Vista.

A few months ago, Futuremark announced their next generation benchmarking tool 3DMark Vantage. Today it has finally arrived.

I like 3DMark because it gives good indicators on where you could improve your system if its not quite up to par, and because its easy to compare your system performance with the performance of other systems like it.

The tests are all new based on DirectX 10, and take physics more seriously than earlier incarnations – which means owners of an Ageia PhysX card could see a boost in their score. I don’t have one, and I doubt you do either, but I still managed to get a score of P5308, which I hope is good. There was only one similar system to mine, not enough to get a detailed report! Time will tell as more results tick in …

Head on over to the 3DMark Vantage website for more information about Futuremark 3DMark Vantage.

When getting into overclocking your rig – whether you just want more frames per second out of your old 6600 GT in Call of Duty 4, or to be able to brag about a score above 20k in 3DMark06 – you’ll need the right tools for the job.

Here’s an introduction to some of the most used overclocking and monitoring tools!

RivaTuner

Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista (incl. 64-bit)
This application lets you overclock your NVIDIA graphics card. It was originally just a registry tweaking application for NVIDIAs old Riva TNT graphics card, but has since evolved into a much more useful tool. The most common use of RivaTuner is to set higher clock speeds on the core, shaders and memory of your graphics card(s), as well as letting you control fan thresholds and other settings. The registry tweaking is still an option however, shall you feel tempted.

ATITool

Windows XP / 2003 / 2000 (incl. 64-bit)
You guessed it – ATITool was made to overclock your ATI graphics card. However, today this application also works with NVIDIA graphics cards. If you have problems with RivaTuner, try this little bugger instead.

Prime95

Windows (incl. Windows 3.1) | Linux | FreeBSD | OS/2
This number crunching application lets you push your CPU to its limit of stability. The latest version supports multi-core processors using multiple threads. Tip: If you want to test only your CPU for stability, choose the “Small TTFs” torture test, and select “Round off checking” under the “Advanced” menu. This test uses the least amount of system memory, reducing the likelihood of your RAM being the culprit in case of failure, (but it will still be a factor).

External link: Guide to using Prime95 effectively.

SpeedFan

Windows 9x / NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP (incl. 64-bit) / Vista (not listed on the homepage)
This handy tool lets you monitor temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, and can even monitor hard disks with S.M.A.R.T. enabled. As a bonus feature it can adjust the FSB speed on some motherboards, but primarily I use SpeedFan to monitor the temperatures and voltages when overclocking. Tip: Disable SpeedStep (Intel) or Cool’n'Quiet (AMD) features in the BIOS to get accurate readings after OC’ing.

Core Temp

Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista (incl. 64-bit)
A simple, yet useful utility that lets you monitor the temperatures of your processor cores. A nice feature of Core Temp is that all CPU core temperatures can be displayed in your system tray at all times.

CPU-Z

Windows
One of the most widely used tools for overclockers. CPU-Z gathers information about your CPU, motherboard and memory timings (including SPD values).

GPU-Z

Windows 2000 / XP / Vista (incl. 64-bit)
As the name suggests, this tool is much like CPU-Z, only for graphics cards. GPU-Z gives you detailed information about your accelerator card, from make and model to clock speed and driver version. If you click the “Sensors” tab, you can handily monitor the GPU and PCB temperatures, fan speed (in per cent and RPM), and current core and memory clock speeds.

The first Beta version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 has just been released publically.

Improvements include default mode interpreting web pages much more correctly according to W3C standards. A button to “Display as IE7″ is available for debugging.

The big news that MS is touting is something they call Webslices. Essentially Webslices are like RSS feeds – small subscription services, except they can go both ways – output and input. An example of output would be a weather service, while input could be a task manager.

A crash recovery feature is also in place, to recover crashed sessions.

Oh, and it passes the Acid 2 test with flying colors. The Acid 3 test however…

Click here to download the Internet Explorer 8 beta client
(only works on XP SP2, Vista and Server 2003).

PS! I don’t recommend you install this on your main system, as it is beta software and could be unstable.