When I start up Windows Vista every loads ok including antivirus program, but the red indicating is on or flickering for a good 2 mins sometimes then everything stabilises. What does it do behind the scenes? With win98 and xp one had more control.

Don't turn it off? Seriously it seems to run and run and run without trouble so probably best to just leave on for most people (until updates require a restart). Believe the update service pack coming soon (in bata now) will greatly speed up the housekeeping so probably best to just live with it for another month or two.

When I start up Windows Vista every loads ok including antivirus program, but the red indicating is on or flickering for a good 2 mins sometimes then everything stabilises. What does it do behind the scenes? With win98 and xp one had more control.

Try running SysInternal's "Process Explorer" at startup - you can then see what's happening.

Get it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb896653.aspx

I guess you mean the notification icon that complains about antivirus not being up to date ?

This is just a service that runs and checks for things like anti virus, autoupdates and firewall, sometimes this service is started before your anti virus program, hence it thinks that AV is not up to date. Depending on your antivirus program, you can actually make the security centre service depended on your anti virus service, then your AV will be started before security centre and you won't see the warning anymore. Of course this only works when your AV actually runs as a service.

Sorry to highjack the thread but this is about Vista.

I just got a Vista and am having a big problem finding a free codec that would allow me to play videos

in AVI or mpeg. All the help I can get is much needed - Thanks

Try VLC-player.

Sorry to highjack the thread but this is about Vista.

I just got a Vista and am having a big problem finding a free codec that would allow me to play videos

in AVI or mpeg. All the help I can get is much needed - Thanks

K-Lite codec pack, 'nuff said.

Vista Codec Package from http://shark007.testbox.dk/ works great for me. Plays absolutely everything.

What does it do behind the scenes?

This is what it does up to the login prompt (and partly after). A lot of the processes that run are down to what you want to run, there are not many things that you can't turn off / control. Suggest you google some of these terms and run a process viewer at startup.

Starup sequence vista:

Bios

Master Boot Record

Boot Sector

Windows Boot Manager

Read from BCD

Search/read hibernation file

Start winload.exe

Start ntoskrnl.exe

Start smss.exe

Start winlogon.exe

start services and login interface

The rest is up to your configuration (so is some of the above)

Note the above is for a boot, there is also a winresume process that gets you back from "hybernation". I agree with LOP3 its a lot better just to leave Vista running.

Edited February 10, 200818 yr by dsys

Hi.

Having Vista since it's launch and shutting it down every evening without any problems, i can say that most of the "HDD activity" is from loading program bits - Vista is "kind of usable" from the moment the desktop appears, but still takes a while longer to be "fully booted", and certain programs can extend this time period by quite a lot - see my boss' computer, he's got Norton 360 on there AND PGP - the combination of those two has the computer take close to 10 minutes for the HDD activity to stop and the icons of those two to appear on the task bar! On his (Windows XP) laptop it is worse - takes just as long to completely boot (same two programs on it) but there he can't do ANYTHING with the machine before those two icons show up indicating it's done booting.

On my own machine, from pressing the power button to being able to use the machine takes some 50 seconds, but for the HDD activity to die down it's more like 3 minutes. Oh, and if you do NOT have "indexing" disabled, your HDD activity may never stop - when i got Vista first this was irritating me (and sure can't be good for the HDD itself!) that it just kept on rummaging around on the disk, never stopping. I disabled "indexing" and quiet it was

Best regards.....

Thanh

Thanh and dsys are both correct. But at this stage I would wait until SP1 is released on the 18th, as Lopburi suggested. Or if you can't wait that long, Reimar has posted the RTM version of SP1 in the download forum.

Vista Codec Package from http://shark007.testbox.dk/ works great for me. Plays absolutely everything.

Thanks, I am FAR from claiming to know anything about computers. Im lucky I can get Email.

But, The above site gave me a choice of Majorgeeks.com , betanews or Softpedia. I tried the first one and all im looking for is a download button. Can't find it.

I tried K-lite before and nothing. Only Windows media works. (as it had from purchase date)

The VCl player, I belive that was the first one I tried and Nothing.

I just want to click on a vid and it works, without having to go to computer school.

It worked that way, when I downloaded a codec pckg. for my( now fried ) XP.

What am I missing ( besides the obvious ) .

Please reply in baby talk.

Thanks again.

Hi

Messing with Codecs under Vista is a royal pain in the ass. I tried the K-Lite pack and it thoroughly screwed up, there's a reason why they have a separate "VIsta Codec Pack". But even THAT doesn't do what K-Lite does under XP.

For a very simple solution (i.e. point-and-click) i recommend two players:

VLC - http://www.videolan.org/

GOM Player - http://www.gomlab.com/eng/GMP_download.html

VLC plays pretty much everything and has lots of nifty features that are still easy to use and understand. And the few odd files that even VLC struggles with run in GOM - i find the GOM Player even nicer than VLC.

Now Vista is intelligent enough NOT to associate files with these players by itself, YOU must do that. After you installed the player, right-click any of your video files and select "open with". Go searching for your player (if it's not on the list you must use "chose program" and find it), then check the box "always use this program to open files of that type" and the next time you just double click your video file and it will open with that player all by itself.

Best regards.......

Thanh

Edited February 11, 200818 yr by Thanh-BKK

Thanks, I am FAR from claiming to know anything about computers. Im lucky I can get Email.

But, The above site gave me a choice of Majorgeeks.com , betanews or Softpedia. I tried the first one and all im looking for is a download button. Can't find it.

I tried K-lite before and nothing. Only Windows media works. (as it had from purchase date)

The VCl player, I belive that was the first one I tried and Nothing.

I just want to click on a vid and it works, without having to go to computer school.

It worked that way, when I downloaded a codec pckg. for my( now fried ) XP.

What am I missing ( besides the obvious ) .

Please reply in baby talk.

Thanks again.

Here is the direct link to the Codec Pack (http://download1us.softpedia.com/dl/1f6ae5...Codecs_v458.exe), download, install (use default options) and enjoy.

Hi

Messing with Codecs under Vista is a royal pain in the ass. I tried the K-Lite pack and it thoroughly screwed up, there's a reason why they have a separate "VIsta Codec Pack". But even THAT doesn't do what K-Lite does under XP.

For a very simple solution (i.e. point-and-click) i recommend two players:

VLC - http://www.videolan.org/

GOM Player - http://www.gomlab.com/eng/GMP_download.html

VLC plays pretty much everything and has lots of nifty features that are still easy to use and understand. And the few odd files that even VLC struggles with run in GOM - i find the GOM Player even nicer than VLC.

Now Vista is intelligent enough NOT to associate files with these players by itself, YOU must do that. After you installed the player, right-click any of your video files and select "open with". Go searching for your player (if it's not on the list you must use "chose program" and find it), then check the box "always use this program to open files of that type" and the next time you just double click your video file and it will open with that player all by itself.

Best regards.......

Thanh

Thanks Thanh,

Im not sure what I did but I downloaded the GOM codec pkg. and it works ! Sort of. I now have to "save" file in GOM in Docts. and play it from there. Then I have to delete it when im finished. Now, I also have to do this with Windows media. Where I used to be able to just click on Windows Media and it played. A small price, I guess when I can now open AVI files. Now to try the Mpeg. If you don't hear back from me, that means I just blew up my new PC.

Jeff

Ok, Mpeg works too ! Now im happy.

Norrad, I did try the "Softpedia" one and nothing happened....for me. Now, It might have wanted to open the same way but with the XP, when I clicked "save" , I was directed to a "help" site and nothing ever happened. So I was always a little scared of the save button. This last time I had to try it. Just to see what happens next. Strangly, it worked ! The PC gods were smiling down on me today.

Thanks guys for all of your help. In another year or so, I might have this thing working as well as my old XP!

Oh, I forgot to ask, How do you turn this thing off?