Winnipeg Experts

First of all there is a new virus out that disables the ability to open the registry.

Go into the Local Computer Policy-User Configuration - System - Prevent access to the registry editing tools. Change this item to “Disable”. If you enable it it actually stops you from running the registry editor.

Once you get that done. Open start menu - Type “regedit”. HKey_Local_User - Control Pannel - International - sTimeFormat. Remove “Virus Alert!”.

if you search the registry for “Virus alert” one more time you will find the product info to be changed as well.

Hope this helps.

Ok. I’ve been dicked aroun by EA so many times I figured I’d help all those people with the same issue I was having. This works in Windows XP, Vista 32 & Vista 64.

I’ve got a Samsung SyncMaster 226BW Widescreen monitor. I wanted to play BF2 and BF2142 with wide screen custom settings. The highest non custom resolution you can get in game is in the 1290×960. To get both the 1680×1050 resolution and Widescreen setting you must follow these steps. I assume you’ve already installed the game and have the latest patch installed. These step work in both BF2 and BF2142.

• Create a Shortcut on say your desktop to your BF2.
• Edit the shortcut to look similar to this:
• “C:\games\Battlefield 2\BF2.exe” +menu 1 +widescreen 1 +szx 1680 +szy 1050
• *note* You only want to add the “+menu 1… ” part to the end of the shortcut.
• Go to your profile settings. It is in your:
• C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles (For Vista)
• C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\Battlefield 2\Profiles (XP)
• Edit Video.conf files with notepad in each profile. Each profile will look like 001,002 etc. You also want to edit the Default Video.con profile.
• Find the line in : “VideoSettings.setResolution 800×600@60Hz” or something similar in EACH the Video.con file I just mentioned. Put a “rem ” without quotes at the begining of the line. This removes the command from the config file.
• Go in the game. Do NOT…. Change the resolution in the game. You can however change setting like Terrain Detail = High etc if you need to.
• Download and install widescreenfixer from here:
• Once installed select Bf2 from within widescreenfixer
• Run game. Once you’ve loaded up a level in the game hit the “;” key to make the screen True widescreen. You can see the difference this program makes here near the bottom of the page:
• To verify that the game is runing in the right resolution download & install fraps.
• Run FRAPS program and run game. Hit F10 in the game to take a screen shot to the default FRAPS folder. Verify the picture is the propper resolution.

Got a USB stick that Windows Vista doesn’t want to use for memory? Read how to use it anyway.

Sooner or later, everyone’s computer tends to slow down. Call it old age or simply doing too much, but even the most cutting edge PC’s seem to lag after a year or so of use.

For those who aren’t keen on opening up their PC to put in more memory, Windows Vista has a handy little feature called ReadyBoost that can use USB sticks for additional memory. Unfortunately, Windows Vista doesn’t take kindly to the slower sticks on the market and refuses to use them. Proving once again that we control the computer and not the other way around, here’s four simple steps to get around this limitation and use any USB stick you have to increase your computers memory.

1. Setup

First things first. Plug the device in. Ignore AutoPlay if you have the enabled, and go to Computer in the start menu. When it pops up, right-click the USB stick and select properties.

2. Disable the stick

Click on the Readyboost tab on the properties menu and check Do not restest this device. Click okay and unplug the stick from your computer.

3. Edit the registry!

Woah! Don’t panic, it’s not as frightening as it sounds. Firstly, you need to open regedit, by opening the start menu and typing regedit, then enter. The registry window should load up.

Using the left-hand pane, work your way through the following folders: HKLM (Local Machine) -> SOFTWARE -> Microsoft -> Windows NT -> CurrentVersion -> EMDgmt. You’ll have a list of USB devices the computer has encountered, one of which should be your USB stick. Click on it.

Here there’s a few details you need to edit. Double click on Device Status and change the value to 2, then ok. Do the same for ReadSpeedKBs and WriteSpeedKBs, changing their values to both 1000. Exit the regedit and breathe a sigh of relief.

4. And back in again

Now all that’s left to do is put the stick back in and once again go to the device properties (Computer > Right-click on drive). If you look under the Readyboost Tab, you’ll be able to now select Use this device. Success! Now enjoy your faster PC.

With Windows Vista you can now flip through several windows very quickly and know exactly what is open at any given moment. You can access the 3D flip by holding down the Windows Key + hitting tab. Each time you hit tab while holding down the Windows key will show you each of your windows on the screne similar to this:

There is a new feature that is part of Vista Ultimate called “DreamScene” You have to use Windows update to download it through the “ultimate Extras”. There is the Dream Scene and the Dream Scene pack. The DreamScene pack comes with 4 moving desktops. Really they are just mpeg or WMA files. In fact you can use any MPEG or WMA file and right click it. You will be given the option of using it as a DreamScene. It works great with motion clips without sound. If the clip has sound you will prob get pretty annoyed with the same looping sound. Once you have a DreamScene dekstop you will wonder how you’d ever go back to a plain old static desktop. To select a DreamScene desktop you can right click your desktop and hit personalize. Click on Desktop background. From the drop down menu select DreamScene content. If you have downloaded all the DreamScene content already you will see something like this:

Well I haven’t had a lot of time since I’ve been very busy with both of my jobs. I did manage to get some personal things done on my home computer. I am now running Vista as my primary OS with XP as the second OS.

One thing that I love about Windows Vista is that the OS is able to under stand what games I have on my computer. It is not only is able to show the icon but it also is able to dynamically download the picture of the game’s box. Since I mostly rip all my games into ISO’s and then run them with Daemon tool I really appreciate being able to see game’s box art. I went as far as just copying a game to my main partition and then ran the executable. The Games section automatically understood that the program I was running was a game and it propperly added the Box art. In the comming weeks I will be going over some of the really cool features of Vista. Stay tuned for next time when I will be going over Vista Ultimate’s “DreamScene”.

Mrx reported this ”This is the newest Activation+WGA crack, you can download all updates for now from Windows Update.”

This is better than Timestop because you can download the updates which are only available for activated windows Vista Installations, and if you have Timestop, you don’t have an Activated Vista. and it is released today!

How does it work?

Microsoft allows large hardware manufacturers (e.g. ASUS, HP, Dell) to ship their products containing a Windows Vista installation that does NOT require any kind of product activation as this might be considered an unnecessary inconvenience for the end-user.

Instead these so-called ‘Royalty OEMs’ are granted the right to embed certain license information into their hardware products, which can be validated by Windows Vista to make obtaining further activation information (online or by phone) obsolete.

This mechanism is commonly referred to as ‘SLP 2.0′ (’system-locked pre-installation 2.0′) and consists of the following three key elements:

1. The OEM’s hardware-embedded BIOS ACPI_SLIC information signed by Microsoft.

2. A certificate issued by Microsoft that corresponds to the specific ACPI_SLIC information.

The certificate is an XML file found on the OEM’s installation/recovery media, ususally called something like ‘oemname.xrm-ms’.

3. A special type of product key that corresponds to the installed edition of Windows Vista.

This key can usually be obtained from some installation script found on the OEM’s installation/recovery media or directly from a pre-installed OEM system.

If all three elements match Windows Vista’s licensing mechansim considers the given installation a valid system-locked pre-activated copy (that does not require any additional product activation procedures).

So the basic concept of the tool at hand is to present any given BIOS ACPI_SLIC information to Windows Vista’s licensing mechanism by means of a device driver. In combination with a matching product key and OEM certificate this allows for rendering any system practically indistinguishable from a legit pre-activated system shipped by the respective OEM.

What are all those files for?

DIFXAPI.DLL - a runtime dll for Microsoft’s DIFx API used by oemtool.exe

OEMTOOL.EXE - an application for installing/uninstalling the emulation driver and dumping BIOS ACPI_SLIC information from any SLP 2.0-enabled Windows Vista OEM system

PKEYS.TXT - contains a list of validated OEM product keys

README.TXT - this file

ROYAL.INF - driver .INF file, can be (ab)used to install the emulation driver in case oemtool.exe fails to perform this task

ROYAL.SYS - the emulation device driver

CERTS\ACER.XRM-MS - the certificate that corresponds to the ACPI_SLIC information emulated by the driver when ‘Acer’ has been selected during driver installation

CERTS\ASUS.XRM-MS - the certificate that corresponds to the ACPI_SLIC information emulated by the driver when ‘ASUS’ has been selected during driver installation

CERTS\HEWLETT-PACKARD.XRM-MS - the certificate that corresponds to the ACPI_SLIC information emulated by the driver when ‘Hewlett-Packard’ has been selected during driver installation

CERTS\LENOVO.XRM-MS - the certificate that corresponds to the ACPI_SLIC information emulated by the driver when ‘Lenovo’ has been selected during driver installation

 Here are the files needed.