While NVIDIA nearly got sued over their lack of Vista-ready drivers for their G80, ATI isn't exactly innocent. The Inquirer did a quick experiment to see if it was possible to configure a Vista workstation with an ATI FireGL graphics card. To their surprise, it wasn't. This is because ATI does not have any FireGL drivers compatible with Windows Vista. And unlike NVIDIA, they do not even have beta drivers out. While most of the gaming community is more likely to use an NVIDIA G80 than an ATI FireGL, this is still a major problem for anyone relying on a FireGL based workstation.

The other day, techPowerUp! reported on a keygen for Windows Vista which supposedly allowed users to (illegally) generate activation codes for use with Vista which could fool the activation. However, the creator of this brute force keygen, known simply as "Computer User" on the KezNews forums, is himself admitting that the keygen was a joke and he's never gotten it to work, saying "everyone who said they got a key a probably lying or mistaken!" There have been some reports of success, and although there is a slight chance the keygen could work, the chances of actually generating a working code are slim - it would probably take days if you got one at all. So it looks like he's either worried about action from Microsoft and pretending it doesn't work, or it genuinely is a fake.Via: Slashdot

Microsoft has yet another problem on it's hands regarding Windows Vista. Windows Vista, despite all the effort Microsoft put into securing it with various forms of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software, now has key generators (keygens) that can give a pirate a valid key. This is in no way perfect, and is quite time consuming. It simply makes a random string of 25 characters, which the pirate would then subject to Windows activation. If this were to ever catch on as a major fad among pirates, serious problems would arise. The most serious problem to Microsoft would not be the unpaid copy of Windows. Instead, it would be the possibility of a key matching a legal key that hasn't been bought yet.

Just four days ago, we reported that Microsoft had updated Windows XP's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software. Unfortunately, Windows Vista's version of WGA is very similar to the flawed Windows XP version. And so, Windows Vista may prompt users to activate Windows Vista when they do simple things not requiring activation, such as swap out a small piece of hardware (such as a DVD burner or a gigabyte of RAM). Thankfully, Windows Vista doesn't seem to report a genuine copy of Windows Vista as pirated, like the flawed version of XP WGA did.

Many users have bought Windows XP based notebooks during the Christmas season and have applied for the Windows Vista upgrade. While the retail version has now been available for almost a month, those who took advantage of the upgrade offer will have to sit tight some more. Most upgrades should be shipped out in March. While some orders have been shipped already, most will receive the new Windows OS in that month. I for one do not mind sitting tight for a few more weeks.

'Ultimate', 'sexy' and 'love' are the describing words that Jason Chen from Gizmodo used in his news article. This Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 he is talking about really must have something.You want to see more of this piece of technology made by Microsoft? Then look at the gallery he created with lots and lots of pictures.

Microsoft's very own antivirus software, Windows Live OneCare, was recently found to be failing Vista users, and now the same has been discovered for its free anti-spyware application. In tests carried out by Australian company Enex Testlab, Windows Defender struggled to detect just half of the malware which it was tested with, with the quick scan finding missing most of the malware and the full scan finding only 53.3%. It would be best to note that the test was financed by competing company PC Tools, which claims the test was unbiased, although the winning software (detecting 88.7% of malware) was PC Tools' very own Spyware Doctor. Windows Defender was released as a final version in October 2006, so it is relatively new and of course (being free) costs less than Spyware Doctor.

Apple has joined this list of companies that have popular tech not ready for Windows Vista. Earlier this week, they announced that iTunes was not ready for Windows Vista. Apparently, all of Apple's software cannot be run on Windows Vista. This is quite a setback, considering how many Quicktime files there are on the internet, and how many people who own iPods.

Creative has responded to the Inquirer reguarding their article on Creatives Lack of vista support. Story can be seen here. The creative PR responded "We have been working on the Vista project for quite some time, having released beta drivers late last year for the beta community and endeavored to keep our customers up to date regularly via our Vista update site and forum feedback."

For those who wish to have a timeline for the release of more polished creative drivers here are a few dates to look for. March 5th, and March 8th. On March 5th Creative targets delivery of the Audigy series drivers, this is suprising to many seeing that the X-Fi series is newer than the Audigy Series and is being released at a later date.

As is well known, many OEM companies, such as Dell and HP have guarenteed customers who purchased a computer after a certain(in most cases after October 26, 2006) an upgrade version of Vista. Intrestingly two weeks and some odd days later few customers have actually recieved versions of express Vista upgrade. Dell Claims server issues were a primary cause for delay. Dell also stated that upgrade edition of Vista won't ship before the end of this month, and further stated shipping could take 6-8 weeks. HP is not doing much better in regards to the Express Vista promise, customers entitled to this upgrade were notified by an e-mail from hp saying they can expect to recieve their Express Vista upgrade sometime in April.

Although Vista is still a new OS, many users are complaining about the driver support, with one of the biggest complaints being NVIDIA's GeForce drivers - or lack of them. NVIDIA's Vice President of Software Engineering, Dwight Diercks, has been justifying the problems in an interview with Real World Benchmarks. To see the whole interview I suggest you visit the source, but the major contributing factor for the delay is that the company needs to write six new drivers - one for each of DirectX 9, DirectX 9 SLI, DirectX 10, DirectX 10 SLI, OpenGL and OpenGL SLI. One of NVIDIA's drivers for Vista has over 20 million lines of code, which is similar to all of Windows NT. He goes onto comment that the certified 8800 series driver should be released by the end of the month, and the SLI driver for the 7x00 series should be available in March, as well as support for Blu-ray and HD DVD.

Although most games work ok with DirectX 10, which comes built into Windows Vista, some games such as Medieval 2: Total War and Company of Heroes may not work correctly and you're likely to see errors about missing DLLs. If you have these problems (and even if you don't you should still consider it) you should install DirectX 9 on Vista by downloading it from here. This seems to be a problem with the backwards compatibility in DirectX 10 but installing DirectX 9 should solve any problems without causing any new conflicts.

When Microsoft shipped Windows Vista, they bragged about how secure it was, showing off the User Access Control (UAC) feature. UAC is something that asks a user if they really want it to run a program before simply running it (previous versions of Windows would simply run the program). "Hackette" Joanna Rutkowska found a disturbing loophole through UAC. Apparently, UAC works by running everything as an administrator, and simply asking for confirmation before executing a program. So if something like a game installer triggered off UAC, and a user hit "allow", the program could theoretically be allowed to run a bunch of other things that would individually require administrator privileges. When dealing with things like simple registry changes this is no problem, but when malware is piggybacking in an installer....this effectively ushers in the next generation of Trojan horse viruses. Microsoft does not consider this a serious threat, and thinks of it more like a minor weakness, which is the result of a "design choice".

Throughout the beta testing of Vista creative has had well beta drivers. For some they work fine, but for others they cause large issues. The problem with Vista we are now begining to see is not actually Vista, but we see the problems with key drivers that are essential to the use and functionality of a machine. This also leaves us to question Vista itself, Why are so many companies slow to produce Vista drivers? Back to Creative, Creative still lacks a non-beta Vista driver, while this dosen't leave anyone in the dark it does leave them with handicapped functionality.

One of the main reasons to buy Vista is support for the next version of the Direct3D API, DirectX10. It was apparent from the moment that the first public betas of Vista were released that games were going to be challenging. While Chris Donahue, manager of Microsoft's Games for Windows group, assured us that Microsoft tested thousands of games for Windows Vista, apparently there were a few that failed the tests (he did not comment as to which games those were). Classic first-person shooters, such as Half Life 2 and Doom 3, are having serious issues when being played in Windows Vista. Some games will not run at all, while others will crawl along at a seriously decreased framerate. The main causes of this are a lack of good (or for some video cards, WHQL certified) hardware drivers, the complexity of Windows Vista, and a lack of entry-level/midrange cards that can really handle DirectX10.

Windows Vista was officially released to the public on 30th January this year, and the "wow" effect seems to be working so far. During its first week, Vista contributed to a 73% jump in US PC sales compared to the previous week, and sales were up 67% compared to the same time last year. Home Premium accounted for 59% of desktop sales and 76% of notebook sales, whilst home basic made up 33% and 16% respectively, suggesting users prefer the more expensive version. The figures were collected from five of the major retailers, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Staples and Radio Shack.

NVIDIA, in response to recent demanding for driver support for Windows Vista, has launched a new web page dedicated to this issue. The site also features a link for all Windows Vista users to report bugs and issues.

Over the coming weeks NVIDIA and our partners, along with the industry, will continue to update Windows Vista drivers to ensure maximum performance on 3D applications and add feature support.

NVIDIA has released its chipset drivers for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Vista. The drivers are for all nForce 4, 5 and 6 based motherboards, with WHQL certification. There aren't any chipset drivers for nForce 1, 2 or 3 boards, and with only alpha versions of the audio and networking driver for the nForce 3 it seems unlikely that NVIDIA will be releasing any Vista drivers for these chipsets.

You can download the drivers here.

It seems that the recent trouble with NVIDIA's G80 driver is taking it's toll on more than just gamers. Dell was one of the first PC makers to promote the complete move to Windows Vista. However, it seems that all the PC's they sell with a G80 onboard, such as the XPS 7x0 series, still ship with Windows XP. This is a smart move on Dell's part, because they realize that their customers are not going to be happy with a beta driver running their brand new and expensive machine. This indicates one of two very bad things about NVIDIA's relationship with Dell. The first is that NVIDIA doesn't keep Dell "in the loop" about it's happenings, and will give Dell a G80 Vista driver when they make it. The second (and much worse) possibility is that NVIDIA keeps Dell "in the loop", and they themselves do not know when they will have a G80 driver for Windows Vista.

The picture below is Dell's high-end PC offerings, pay close attention to the operating system included.

In a recent test carried out by Virus Bulletin, Microsoft's own antivirus software, Live OneCare, was one of four packages which failed. The test involved 15 antivirus packages designed for businesses using Windows Vista, all of which were released about two months ago. To pass the test, each package had to detect a set of viruses that are known to be circulating without giving any false positives. However, Live OneCare 1.5, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.1i, G DATA AntiVirusKit 2007 and Norman VirusControl 5.90 all failed. Other software, including that from Computer Associates, Fortinet, F-Secure, Kaspersky, Sophus and Symantec, passed without problems. McAfee claims that the test did not use its latest update, whilst Microsoft has pledged to improve its software.

Although Microsoft isn't too keen to mention this, a well documented "Easter-Egg" for Vista is that you can actually extend the activation grace period up to three times. If you buy a one copy of Windows, when you go to install it you have the option not to enter an activation code and try out another version to see what it's like. By default, this will only last for 30 days without needing a code. However, DailyTech is reporting a supposedly legal Vista command that you can use to reset this 30 day countdown timer and get more use out of your install. All you have to do is simply launch a command prompt with administrator rights, type in slmgr -rearm and then you will be back up to 30 days. This won't give you unlimited time however - you can only do it three times at the most, so that's 120 days maximum. To test how long you have left, simply type slmgr -dli in a command prompt.

All the effort Microsoft has put into making sure this Windows would be the most secure ever appears to be somewhat in vain. Iranian hackers, operating through a legitimate software firm, have gotten past all of Microsoft's "anti-copying tricks". These hackers claim they will sell these illegitimate copies of Windows Vista through the firm they work for at approximately $8 USD a copy. What's really interesting, though, is how they managed to give each pirated copy of Vista its own serial number, so that they can register it through Microsoft as a legal copy of Windows Vista.

For those who don't know, S3 Graphics is a company which develops the Chrome series of graphics chips - although S3 was more successful before the 3D era, it is a company that still shows some potential and manufactures reasonable quality graphics chips. For anyone that uses a graphics card based on one of the Chrome S20 series you can now download Vista drivers (including those for the S25 and S27) which have been fully certified by Microsoft.

You can get hold of the drivers here.

Three days after being released, the first major flaw has been published for Windows Vista. For anyone with speech recognition enabled, malicious websites or audio files could potentially give commands to hijack the PC and tell it to delete files. It works by playing commands such as shutdown, copy or delete through the speakers which could then be picked up by the microphone, causing the computer to carry out certain tasks. Microsoft admits that the exploit is "technically possible" but doesn't see it as a major problem. This flaw is more down to new features than problems with the coding of Vista, and it shouldn't be a problem for most people.

You may remember this news story on techPowerUp! a couple of days ago relating to the lack of clean installs when using the Upgrade Editions of Vista, which required an old OS to be installed. However, Paul Thurrott has managed to find a workaround for this issue, which ironically lets users do a clean install Vista without any previous version of Windows, albeit a little tedious. Here are the steps:

• Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD as normal
• When prompted for a product code, leave this blank
• Select the version of Vista you have purchased and let Vista install
• When you boot to your desktop for the first time, run the Vista setup from Windows
• This time enter your product key
• When asked whether you want to do an Upgrade of Custom install, select custom and choose a clean install
• Windows will now install for a second time and you should be able to activate it

Remember, these steps are only advised for use in order to achieve a clean install of Vista, it is only legal to use the upgrade editions if you have previously purchased the appropriate version of Windows.