Proof by anecdote, I know, but I've never had any issues cleaning out C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download. Now, C:\Windows\Installer on the other hand... Just leave that one alone. Compress it if you want, but don't delete that stuff, or you will majorly screw up subsequent installations/uninstallations.

Yes, cleaning out C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download is perfectly safe but usually unnecessary.

Updates are downloaded into that folder and then installed. If the installation of an update is successful, the installer is deleted from the SoftwareDistribution\Download folder. If it is unsuccessful the installer remains in the folder and the installation will be attempted again the next time Windows Update is run.

I have seen systems with a lot of installers in the SoftwareDistribution\Download folder for updates that were installed successfully. Further investigation revealed that the antivirus client on the machine was keeping a file handle to the installer open after the update was installed. As a result, when Windows failed to delete the installer because the antivirus client never closed it's handle to the file.

The way to fix this problem was to reboot the PC (to make sure there are no more open handles) and manually delete the contents of the SoftwareDistribution\Download folder. I usually follow this up by removing the installed antivirus client and installing a more well-behaved one such as Microsoft Security Essentials.

While many cameras default to using protocols like MTP or UMS, every camera I have seen over the past several years has had an option in their settings menus to enable USB Mass Storage mode. Turning that option on makes the camera act like any other USB storage device and allows pictures to be copied easily. Although honestly if the camera supports MTP I always use that instead since it is safer and is fully supported on Windows XP and later and on Mac OS X. Either way the camera manufacturer's software is not required.

"Support" for Microsoft products currently comprises making tedious searches in their "knowledge" base and reading their circular answers to questions only peripherally related to the problem you're actually having.

Really? I have also found the knowledge base to contain quite a bit of good information once you learn how things are organized. (I agree that the organization is not very intuitive at first but there is more information there than a casual search may reveal at first.)

I have also contacted Microsoft Support at least 3 times in the past year and I have always found them to be very knowledgeable and quite helpful.

Yes, there is a fee required to contact support but they almost always refund the fee if the problem was not caused by user error and they will continue working with you on the problem until you agree that it has been resolved.

I had one particularly puzzling problem that turned out to be a bug in IIS. The support ticket ended up being escalated to someone on the IIS development team and they built a custom hotfix to fix the issue. The problem was resolved within 2 days and they refunded the support fee automatically.

Then of course as you pointed out there is the weird window tearing thing going on, which for some reason will happen even on a top-of-the-line Windows machine with no software running except the one explorer.exe window you're moving around.

The window tearing that you are describing was fixed by the hardware accelerated window manager that was introduced in Windows Vista.

If you are experiencing window tearing on a modern Windows machine, either your graphics card or drivers does not support the features required for hardware composting or you have disabled Aero. (Disabling Aero forces a fallback to a software desktop compositor similar to the one used in Windows XP and Server 2003.)

Please note that you can disable the transparent glass effects while still taking advantage of the new window manager by switching the theme from Aero Glass to Aero Basic.

He is probably referring to the fact the Dreamcast could be connected directly to a VGA monitor instead of a TV. When a VGA monitor is connected, many Dreamcast games would display at either 800x600 or 1024x768 (depending on the game.)

While this is not quite HD, 1024x768 is fairly close to 720p (1280x720).

Actually many Wii games do switch to a 16:9 aspect ratio if you have the Wii set to EDTV (480p) mode instead of SDTV (480i) mode.

Of course this requires connecting the Wii using a component video cable instead of the included composite cable but the results look quite good if your TV has a reasonably good scaler and doesn't try to do something stupid like deinterlace the already progressive signal coming from the Wii.

The only downside is having to switch your TV to 4:3 mode for those few games that do not support 16:9 (Like Kororinpa). Fortunately the vast majority of Wii games do support 16:9 mode.

If only... it would be easier to track down information when needed if Apple did have some kind of basic numbering. Or even somewhat non-intuitive number like NVidia, but at least something to point at and say "it's laptop version such-and-such" rather than trying to remember exactly what year it was purchased.

Actually Apple does give each hardware refresh a version number. In OS X you can see the version numbering by going to About This Mac and clicking on the More Info... button. Select the Hardware option on the left side and you should see a Model Identifier that says something like "MacBookPro5,1" The 5,1 part represents the hardware version/generation.

Just a thought, as long as this is using DirectShow or the modern equivalent, doesn't this open up the web browser to any and all flaws in said stack? Are Microsoft or the rest of you really that open to rely on the multi-media stack for security tightness? I'll stay afraid and yet wish everyone else luck

If the web browser runs in Low-Rights/Reduced Privileged Mode then any flaws in Media Foundation or DirectShow are not likely to lead to an exploitable attack vector. (Reduced Privileged mode causes a process to run with a permission level below that of a regular user and allows very little access to the file system or registry.)

Unfortunately Firefox refuses to support Reduced Privileged Mode on Vista and Windows 7. Internet Explorer and Chrome do, however.

I seem to remember that some displays have a DVI-I socket (both analog and digital), and if they can't sync to a DVI-D signal, they'll fall back to the DVI-A pins.

Indeed, most of the descent LCD panels that I have worked with have had DVI-I ports and will accept a VGA signal sent through a DVI-I cable just fine.

In fact, many NEC monitors come with a VGA->DVI-I cable in the box (along with a DVI-D->DVI-I cable and sometimes a DVI-D->DVI-D cable).

I have seen some LCD panels equipped with 2 DVI ports, one DVI-I and one DVI-D. In those cases, the DVI-I port can accept an analog VGA signal or a digital DVI signal and the DVI-D port can only accept a digital DVI signal, so if you have a monitor like that make sure you use the correct port.

When are they going to switch to a different filesystem? The fat32 4GB file size limitations makes HD video a pain to deal with as well. Currently canon cameras stop recording when the file size reaches the maximum and the user has to see the recording light stop, and hit record again. A better interum solution would be to fill the 4GB file size, increment the filename by one, and keep going. I don't understand why they don't do that... it would be a simple firmware fix.

Most decent video cameras do split their files into 2GB chunks and then automatically join them when they are transferred to a PC.

I believe this behavior is required for all cameras that support the AVCHD/H.264 standard and most of the cameras that I have used that youse MPEG2 compression do this as well.

Most still cameras with a video recording feature do not split their files on purpose. The resulting time limits prevent them from being classified as a video camera which means the manufacturers don't have to pay the tariffs that some countries impose on video cameras.

That particular puzzle was originally created for online players working together, hence the weird 15 minute wait. That way there was enough leeway for online players to coordinate to solve the puzzle. When the plug was pulled on Uru Online, Cyan had to re-adapt the expansion for single player.

Why they didn't rework this particular puzzle remains a mystery, but I'm sure budgeting had much to do with it.

I suspect the reason that particular puzzle was not changed was because time travel plays a very important role in that part of the overall story.

If you pay attention to some of the clues in the area you will notice that you are actually traveling 15 minutes backwards in time. Hence the need to wait approximately 15 minutes before you see the pellet you dropped earlier.

This particular puzzle (and limited time travel) plays a larger part in the overall story which becomes even more clear in Myst V.

AFAIK they are packaged with every major linux distro out there, and I can't but presume that Windows ships with microcode patches as well.

Microcode updates for Windows machines are distributed through Microsoft Update and are downloaded and installed automatically if automatic updates is enabled (and it is enabled by default). No BIOS update required.

An example of such an update can be found by looking at Microsoft KB936357

which is why you just use Junction points to other disks.

Sorry i've been doing this on desktops since NT5 Beta..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point [wikipedia.org]

sure it takes a little work - and you can't do it right at install - but it isn't that much work, and you have the added benefit that you don't have to care if devs are stupid and hard code paths in their software.

Actually you can instruct the installers for Vista and Windows 7 to put the Users folder which holds all of the user profiles on any drive you choose. It may work on Server 2008 and 2008 R2 as well but I have only used it on Vista and Windows 7.

The easiest way to do this is to use the Windows Automated Installation Kit to set the path and then copy the resulting XML file to a flash drive. The installer will automatically read the XML file and create the Users folder on the appropriate drive.

This method ensures that all of the permissions are properly set for the user profiles and eliminates the need to manually create a junction for the user profiles.

I'd like to see MS work on virtualization on the app level. This way, a Web browser (or more specifically a Web browser instance) has its own instance of everything in the OS.

That is exactly what Internet Explorer's Protected Mode does when running on either Vista or Windows 7 with UAC enabled. When Internet Explorer is running in Protected Mode it can only access a small handful of directories and certain registry locations even if the user running it is an administrator.

Microsoft calls applications that use this feature Low Integrity processes. For more information look here and here.

In Vista and Windows 7 only a small part of the graphics driver resides in Ring 0. Most of the graphics driver runs as unprivileged code so the potential for a kernel mode (privileged) exploit in a graphics driver is fairly small.