How To Install Windows XP on a Windows Vista Machine (Part 4)
Step 4: Editing the Boot Configuration Database (BCDEdit)
These are the final few steps that you will need to perform in order to allow you to boot from both Windows XP and Windows Vista on the same machine, without having to switch back and fourth between drives in the BIOS. Hopefully, you still have your Computer Management screen up and an Administrative Command Prompt. If not, just refer back to STEP 3 to open those again, if you don't recall how it is done.
In the administrative console (command prompt), unless you had to open it again, type c: or whatever the drive letter is that corresponds to your Windows Vista installation. You will probably be in c:\Windows\System32 so we will want to change the directory to the root of the drive. To do this, simply type 'cd c:\', replacing c with your drive lettter for Windows Vista, and removing the quotes, then hit enter. Now we will need to edit the boot.ini file which we copied to your Vista drive. Type 'notepad.exe boot.ini'.
Here is where things get a little bit confusing. We need to tell boot.ini on which drive Windows Vista lives, even though we use this file to boot Windows XP. This is because the bootloader is located on the Windows Vista drive and is not accessed from the Windows XP drive. You will have to look at the partition table again on the management console. You now need to find the Drive number that Windows Vista is installed on. In our example this drive was drive 1 and Windows XP was on drive 0. Because the bootloader is on the Windows Vista drive, we need to tell boot.ini to find the loader on the first partition of the same drive that Vista is on. If your Windows Vista installation is on drive 0 then you shouldn't have to make changes, but if it is on a different drive number then we will need to change the value of rdisk in the boot.ini file. In our example, the Vista installation is on drive 1 so we will have to change the boot.ini values of the rdisk to 1 in both the default and operating system sections. If you don't change both values, then you will get a second bootloader option for Windows XP, one working and one not, so make sure to change both rdisk values if you have to. As I mentioned, though, if your Vista is located on disk 0 then you will not have to make these changes. You should end up with a boot.ini file that looks like the following. Make sure you save your changes, if you had to make any, and exit notepad.
As you can see in the image above, we have changed the value of rdisk from 0 to 1.
Now we come to the final steps of the installation. Here you have to perform a series of commands in an administrative console which will install Windows XP into the Boot Configuration Database. BCDEdit is a handy little tool which will allow you to enter the values needed to create a multiboot environment. You can use this command to install a Linux boot partition or any other boot partition, however that is beyond the scope of this article, so we will stick with Windows XP.
Back at the Administrative Console, and at the root of your Windows Vista hard drive (c:\ presumably), we need to know two things. What would you like the bootloader to display as the operating systems name? and What hard drive letter does Windows XP reside on? The following commands (duplicated in the image to the left) need to be issued in order to install the OS into the BCD.
bcdedit /create {ntldr} /d "Windows XP"
This command installs only the name of the operating system that you wish to add to the BCD. You can replace Windows XP for whatever it is you want the OS to show up as in the bootloader. Make sure to note that you need braces around ntloader and you need quotes around the OS description. Next command.
bcdedit /set {ntldr} device partition=g:
This command tells the booloader where to find Windows XP. You will have to replace g: with the hard drive letter corresponding to the hard drive that holds your Windows XP installation. Don't forget to add the colon after the drive letter, and do note the space between device and partition. Next and final commands.
bcdedit /set {ntldr} path \ntldr
bcdedit /displayorder {ntldr} /addlast
The first command tells the Windows Vista bootloader where to find the ntldr file. The second command tells the Windows Vista bootloader to list Windows XP as an entry and to place the Windows XP entry at the end of the available operating systems list at boot time - this step is not optional, Windows XP will not show up in the list if you do not issue this command.
You can now close all of your windows, and reboot your machine. You should be greeted with a menu that lets you choose your operating system and will be able to boot into either Windows Vista or Windows XP. Enjoy!
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How To Install Windows XP on a Windows Vista Machine (Part 3)
Step 3: Transferring System Files
You should now be able to boot into Windows XP and work in that, but you don't have any access to Windows Vista, save maybe being able to see the hard drive in Windows XP. Now we have to undo all of the stuff we did in the BIOS which will allow you to be able to boot back into Windows Vista, however, you won't be able to boot into Windows XP yet. Refer back to Part 2 to refresh you memory about the changes we made in BIOS. Basically, the most important change we have to make, is in the Hard Disk Drive area on the Boot tab. You will need to reorder you hard drives so that the Vista boot drive is again at the top. Check your device boot priority and make sure either the CD/DVD drive or the Vista drive is in the top of the boot order. (Note: It is handy to leave the CD/DVD drive at the top and the Windows Vista drive second in case you want to boot from a bootable CD such as a Live Linux distribution, Norton Ghost, or an OS Installation CD). Verify you have your boot information correct and then save and exit from the BIOS setup. You should now test to see that you will boot into Windows Vista. If you don't boot to Vista, double check your settings and try again.
Now that we are back in Windows Vista, you will need to open up your management console and take a look at where everything is located in respect to how Windows sees it. To do this simply click start then right click on Computer in the right pane of the start menu and click Manage. Because this can affect system wide settings, you will need to confirm the action to UAC by clicking Continue.
You should now have a window on your screen that is similar to the image on the left. Here you need to remember a few things. First you need to remember the drive letter that Windows XP is installed on. If you didn't label the drive specifically, the Windows Vista drive should be the one that says Boot beside the healthy status. It may say a few other things, such as page file, etc, as well, but boot should be in there somewhere. Now you should have the letter of the Windows XP hard drive, in the example here, this will be 'G:'. You will also want to note which physical identifier the hard drive has. Below the list of drives you will see the partition bars labeled Disk 0, Disk 1 and so on, for all of your physical drives. Our Windows XP installation resides on Disk 0, so we will also want to remember that. Yours may be on Disk 1 or another drive, so just make sure you know which number corresponds to your installation.
Minimize the Management console and open up an Administrative Command Prompt. To do this, click Start, All Programs, Accessories and right click on Command Prompt then click Run As Administrator. Again, you will need to authorize the action via Continue on UAC. This will open up a black command prompt window like the one pictured on the left.
Now that we have an administrative command console open we will have to execute a number of commands to grant us access and change the visibility of some files we will need on the Windows XP hard drive. First off, to make sure you are on the right drive, type the letter of the drive which holds Windows XP then a colon and hit enter. So for our example this would be: 'G:' (without the quotes). Now we have to set some attributes of the needed system files on the Windows XP hard drive. We need access to three specific files; ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini. There are few system files on that hard drive at the moment so we can just globally modify the files. In the Command prompt type 'attrib -s -h *.*' and then hit enter. Now, should you do a 'dir' you will be able to see these files. We now need to copy those three files over to the hard drive that holds Windows Vista, this should be c:, but sometimes it can be different, although highly unlikely. So, we now have to copy those three files. Type the following commands, replacing <drive> with the corresponding drive letter for your Windows Vista installation, don't forget the colons after the drive letter.
'copy ntldr <drive>:'
'copy ntdetect.com <drive>:'
'copy boot.ini <drive>:'
We have now made copies of the files we will need in Windows Vista in order to make the Windows XP installation bootable, although we are not wuite done yet. Before we continue, let's change the attributes of those files back to hidden system files. This time we type 'attrib +s +h *.*' to reset the system and hidden attributes. We are now done this part of the process, only one more step remains.
How To Install Windows XP on a Windows Vista Machine (Part 2)
Step 2: Changing your BIOS
This step is rather quirky, as we can't give you exact information on what to do here due to the number of different BIOS and motherboard manufactures. We can, however, show you what we did on our test rig which has an AMI Bios. This is definitely one of the more widely used BIOSes, and almost any machine in the modern world should have options to allow you to do the same thing. This does not, however, guarantee it will be in your particular bios. If you find that you can not set the exact hard drive you wish to boot from in your BIOS, then you will be forced to open up the case and disconnect your Vista hard drive, and make the secondary hard drive bootable. We won't be discussing how to do that here, however, as I mentioned before, almost all modern BIOS have a means to choose which hard drive should be considered the primary drive, so you should be OK. Remember the changes you make to your BIOS as you will have to reverse these settings later on! If you have to write the changes down to remember, do so!
To get into your BIOS you will generally have to hit either Delete, F2 or F12. If none of these work for you, you will have to check with your motherboard manufacture, or pay attention to what the power on screen tells you. It will generally say something like "Hit (key) to enter Setup" or "Hit (key) to enter BIOS Setup", replacing (key) with the key you need to strike to get into the setup screen. On our test rig, the key to hit at power on is the Delete key. When you've entered into the BIOS you should have a screen that looks similar to the image on the left. This should tell you what hard drives you have installed, what CD/DVD devices, floppies, etc. If you have a RAID device, a series of several hard drives that are utilized as a single device, they may not show up here and you may have to configure your RAID device BIOS instead. For example, our test rig has two RAID devices, each made up of two physical hard drives, set up, one SATA and one PATA, however we have to go into the Fastrak BIOS to configure those. Those four hard drives do not show up in this BIOS, only the solo Western Digital shows up here. You will see your RAID devices listed later on, though, usually named something like TX Array 1 or some such.
Now that you are in your BIOS, you should be able to access a boot tab, or similar area, in your BIOS. On our rig, the boot tab has all of the options which we will have to change in order to make the computer think that the solo Western Digital drive is the primary hard drive, rather than the RAID array we normally boot off of. Essentially what we will be doing here is changing how your computer sees your hard drives, and which one should be considered the hard drive that we want activated as the bootable hard drive. This will not affect your ability to boot into Windows Vista, or, at least, not permanently. We need to do this step in order to make sure that the Vista bootloader and Master Boot Record (MBR) are not affected.
For us, using the BIOS we have on our test rig, we need to go to Hard Disk Drives and hit enter. We are presented with our current hard drive order; that is, the order that the computer sees these devices. At the moment, the computer sees our first RAID Array (the SATA RAID) as the primary boot device and the Western Digital solo drive as the secondary drive. Our PATA RAID doesn't even show up on this screen as we never need to utilize it as a boot device, so we removed it from this screen altogether. What we need to do is basically tell the computer we want to see the Western Digital hard drive first, and any other drive or RAID device second, third, etc.
To do this, you simply have to hit enter on the First Disk drives name. Select the drive you wish the system to see as ordered as your first hard drive available on the system and then hit enter. This drive should be the drive you want to install Windows XP on, not the hard drive you currently have Windows Vista installed on. As a precautionary measure, we have also set the second drive to disabled, which basically means at boot time, the computer will not even recognize this hard drive as a bootable hard drive. The operating system will still have access to the hard drive, and it will still be available, however, you will not be able to write an MBR on any of the devices not shown on this screen. This is a good thing to implement, as you don't want to accidentally write to your Vista MBR.
Next we need to select our boot device priority. If we try to boot off of the hard drive we are going to install Windows XP on, chances are our system will not boot, as we are assuming you are using a blank hard drive. We now need to tell the BIOS that we don't want to boot from that hard drive, but from the CD/DVD drive. Hit ESC to go back to the Boot Tab from the Hard Disk Drive section of our BIOS and then go to Boot Device Priority and hit enter. Here you may see that your blank hard drive is the first in the priority. You must change this to boot from the CD/DVD drive instead. To do this, hit Enter on the device beside 1st Boot Device and then use the arrow keys to select the CD/DVD drive you want to boot from, hitting enter to make that selection. As we can see below, the hard drive automatically goes down the list to becoming the second in queue to be booted, and the CD/DVD drive becomes the first to boot. If a bootable record isn't found on the CD/DVD media in the drive, or if no media is present, the computer will automatically boot the hard drive next.
The final step we have to do in our BIOS is to save the configuaration and exit. Most BIOS use the F10 key to savem, but not all of them, so you might have to go to a Save and Exit Tab or hit the appropriate key. Make sure you save your changes, as we don't want to be able to boot to Windows Vista. Test this theory by leaving your CD/DVD drive empty and try to boot from the blank hard drive. You should not be able to boot, since the hard drive is empty. If this is the case, all is well and good.
Now that you have tested your configuration, put your Windows XP (this works for 2003 and Media Center as well) media in the CD/DVD drive and boot from the disc, install Windows XP, boot into it, get your service packs, drivers, etc all sorted out then meet me back here for part 3 when you are finished.
How To Install Windows XP on a Windows Vista Machine (Dual Boot)
This is one of the questions I have been most asked recently: How can I install Windows XP on a computer that has Windows Vista installed, while keeping my Vista installation. While this isn't necessarily a simple fix, it is something that is easily achieved with a bit of ingenuity and know how. This first tutorial will help those that have access to more than one physical hard drive. We will put together something later on that will help those with a single hard drive. What you will need for this tutorial is a basic knowledge of your BIOS and how to get into the BIOS at boot time on your computer. You will also need to know how to set certain parameters in your BIOS. If you are unfamiliar with any of this, we recommend that you visit your motherboard manufacture and get a soft manual or pull out your motherboard manual to refer to while working with this tutorial. As there is a vast variety of BIOS and motherboard manufactures, we can not offer you any help in this area. Additionally, you will need to know how to set up Windows XP on your own.
Backup System and the obligatory Disclaimer
Before we continue, you are going to want to make absolutely sure your software is completely backed up. You don't want to accidentally overwrite your valuable data or operating system. Make sure you have completed a full backup using Windows Vista's backup tool, or one of your other favorite tools. We take no responsibility for what you do to you computer. If you choose to continue reading this article and follow the steps we will guide you through, that is your business, but we can not be held liable for anything you do to your system that renders it unbootable or for any loss of data that you may incur while performing these steps. We try to keep things as simple and accurate as possible, however, I will repeat, we can not be held responsible for damage to your system should you follow this tutorial.
Step 1: Verifying Your System
You have now completed your backup and are ready to get that system up and running with a dual boot operating system. Windows Vista introduces a new bootloader which is not compatible with older Windows operating systems. The new method of booting offers a nice security layer to your system, however, it also is a bit harder to work with than the older bootloader. If you install an old version of Windows over top of Windows Vista, you will find that you are no longer able to boot Windows Vista, as you cannot boot Windows Vista from the boot.ini file or by using ntloader. This makes running a dual boot system a bit more difficult. There are third party loaders which will facilitate this, but why pay for something you can do on your own?
In this step, you should verify that you actually do have more than one physical hard drive available. In these days of terabyte hard drives, you may find that you only have one physical hard drive split into two partitions. To verify this you can either go into your systems BIOS and check for the existence of two physical hard drives. Alternately you could crack the case open and visually confirm that you have two hard drives. Once you have determined that you have two hard drives you should download all of the drivers that you will need in order to install Windows XP on your system. Some of the newer motherboards are not natively supported in Windows XP, of special concern are SATA and SATA II controllers and RAID devices. If you boot the Windows XP installion CD/DVD, and do not see any hard drives listed, you will need to get these drivers and inject them into the operating system before you can install Windows XP. Generally this is a trivial matter and you can put the drivers on a flash drive or on a floppy (GADS! What's a floppy?!?!).
Alright. You have verified that you have two hard drives, have the drivers you need unzipped, in hand and ready to go and you know how to get into your system BIOS; time to get the show on the road!
Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics (Atari)
Dungeons & Dragons: Tactics
Genre: Turn-based RPG/Tactical Simulation
Publisher: Atari Interactive, Inc.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Multiplayer: Yes (4 Player)
Extra Features: Tutorial, In Game Music Player, Art Gallery
Game Overview
Set in a fantasy world with 3 different maps, 7 races and 13 classes to choose from; this turn based RPG is a wonderful adaptation of the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset. The storyline is rich and lush, and features a multitude of adventures that you must take your companions on. I was impressed with the way things were set up, right from the start. Being a fan of Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2, also adaptations of the famous Wizards of the Coast D&D rulesets, I was hoping that Atari would not disappoint me with the way the game handled and played. From the moment I turned it on, to the moment I finished the game, I was wholly impressed.If you are not familiar with the D&D rulesets, you may find this game intimidating at first, however, you do have the option of allowing the game to chose your statistics and abilities for your, so if you are not at all familiar with D&D or character creation in an RPG, you may want to play using this feature the first time through.
Gameplay
Gameplay is well thought out and planned. Unlike some tactics games where you only play the main character, D&D:Tactics allows you to play all of the characters on the quest. Not only that, but if you are a die hard RPG fan, you will be able to create every character in your party of six. When it comes to turn handling, an intelligently laid out menu appears in the center of the screen, allowing you to chose from a number of actions and abilities unique to your class. Simply pick your action from the list and move your cursor to where you want to walk, what you want the action to affect, what you want to attack, and so on. Movement around the world maps is equally as efficient, and you can journey to and from places you have discovered freely.
Graphics
The graphics in this game are both smoothly rendered and lush with detail. The visuals are wonderful and you can tell from the moment you start the game that the artists were not going to allow this game to be released with a lack of attention to detail. From the vertex textures to the artwork of the characters themselves, this game shines without sacrificing any quality or performance. Detail is the main thing that I enjoyed about this game, especially in the visuals. From slight rises in the terrain to skulls littered about the environment to symbols on cavern walls, this game features some superb graphical work.
Music
The first thing you will hear when you turn this game on, is a lush and brilliant soundtrack that never gets old. The game even features a musical selection player which will allow you to enjoy the in game music without having to play. The soundtrack seems to have been designed along the same lines as that of Morrowind. Lyrical and expressive, yet not forced. While it does repeat, as did Morrowind, the way it repeats, and the way the music was composed, more as a subtle overtone, rather than something that grates on you; you will find that it adds a wonderful atmosphere to the game.
Sound Effects
Again, the developers were going for realism and detail. The sound in this game is top notch, and it is not a composition of low quality samples, but of high fidelity samples that compliment the games fluidity. Unlike many games I have played that had me running to the options screen to turn off the effects altogether within the first few hours, the developers wanted to keep you switched on. As such, the game sounds are short, quick and reflect exactly what you would expect them to reflect; for example Spell A has sound effect A and Spell B has sound effect B so you have an audible cue as to what is going on. Nicely designed sound effects are not always a given, but the developers here hit the nail on the head.
Replayability
If you are a fan of D&D or even of RPGs in general, you will probably find yourself playing this game over and over with different sets of characters. The range in which you can equip your characters or utilize different characters in different scenarios is endless. I have played the game to completion more than a few times, and every time I played the experience was different.
Wrapup
With the compelling, deep storyline, the fantastic graphics and soundtrack and the ease of handling this game, I would recommend this one to anyone who is a long time fan of RPG games in any form factor. For the D&D nuts out there, this is a perfect opportunity to take your experience with you on the road. This game is one of those which should be included in anyone's RPG arsenal, and I am sure you will find this game to be one that you will not want to put down until you have finished it at least once, and will return to it after playing something more mediocre prior to finding another game to occupy your time. It isn't an easy game, but it sure is a fantastic one. Atari and the collective developers created a brilliant combination when applying the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset to a portable system. Fantastic job gals and guys!
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Why is UAC Important to Vista Security? (Part 2)
UAC and You
Now that we more or less know what UAC is, a means of controlling the actions of the end user; what, exactly, are the ramifications on the end user. First, and probably most notably, is the fact that the user has to click a button which allows for the function to access a higher privilege. Secondarily, the screen fades out to half bright when the pop up window is asking for the permission. Third, it provides a way of keeping the Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer, safe by making sure it is running in a sandbox, in IE terms, this is Protected Mode.
The first and most obvious thing that users see is the authorization box. This is essentially saying, as we have previously discussed, something wants to do something that may cause a problem on your system. That something can be anything from viewing your system logs, to installing a program to changing your Windows Experience Index. This is a great idea to keep running as you are being warned that system wide changes are being made. It is not something that will affect your own user experience, but that of anyone who uses the system.
The second most obvious thing that the user sees is the darkening of the screen. What is happening here is that all user processes are temporarily suspended and the system is put into a mode where only the basic System functions can operate. The screen darkens for a reason, and this is so that the control is hard to spoof. It makes the authentication window sit out like a sore thumb, and forces the user to make a positive decision one way or the other. No activity from scripts running in the background can manipulate the mouse or keyboard; only the user can intervene.
Finally, IE's Protected Mode allows the browser to run in a low privilege environment. This helps eliminate the possibility of drive-by installs and other nastiness that can happen within the browser to affect your system stability.
Why You Never Want to Disable UAC
While there are some glaringly obvious answers to this question, such as the ability to install a virus without the permission prompts to be shown, other, much less obvious, answers swim below the surface. If you disable UAC you are also disabling some of the features that Microsoft worked to put in place to make third party software compatible without them having to rewrite the OS. Remember how I mentioned remapping before? Well, some of the things in Vista actually are remapped, but to a much lesser degree than would be needed to eliminate the need for UAC. A lot of programs will install in the wrong folder and will not function properly is UAC is turned back on.
More importantly, should you turn off UAC, then you will also turn off your IE browsers Protected Mode. This leaves you wide open to script hacks and drive by installers which can, and most likely will, infest you with all sorts of nastiness that you are much better living without.
UAC is not an alternative to firewall software or hardware nor is it a replacement for anti-virus and anti-spyware software, but it is a very effective layer to help the end user deal with the electronic demons that plague our society at this point in time. If it were up to me, I would have UAC as a mandatory, not switchable function that was in place at all times - heck, throw it in the kernel so it absolutely can not be turned off. A good case in point is when trusted providers go bad. Remember the Sony Rootkit fiasco? If you popped in your music CD and UAC popped up and said: "Hey! This Audio CD wants to install something!", do you think that would have helped reduce the impact?
UAC vs. MacOS
Finally, I would like to address the Apple advertisements that are currently all the rage among Apple users. While I am a big fan of the Apple MacOS X, their advertising is extremely unfair. As MacOS has a small user base, when they decided to do an entire OS rewrite, it didn't impact the computing world as hard as if Microsoft should choose to do so. This is no fault of Microsoft engineers, they simply produce an OS which is more widely accepted than MacOS, mainly because it isn't locked into proprietary hardware contracts, a la the Sony Betamax video cassettes of yester-year. When Apple took to redesigning their OS, they included a mode which would allow non-forward compatible software to run. Were Microsoft to have done that, most people would never leave the emulation layer!
MacOS is written in such a way to allow the end user to have a great deal of control over the personal accounts, without necessarily having to have changes made system wide. They rewrote the OS smart, and efficient, however, there are still times when one must enter in credentials or click a button to allow system wide functions. It simply isn't as obvious or as often as in Windows. Windows 7 will probably help reduce the number of clicks the end user will have to hit; with software vendors getting on board with the logic of Microsoft, and the ability to use User folders vs. System folders in Vista, the market will be more prepared for a new kind of Windows. Windows Vista UAC is more or less a bridge for third party developers to start learning how to migrate to the new Windows logic, and it is possibly the most innovative and important feature to have come out of Microsoft for many years.
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Why is UAC important to Vista Security?
This is Part 1 of the article.
There is a long standing debate on the Internet as to how and why UAC should or should not be turned on by default. Before we go into too much depth as to its importance, lets first define exactly what UAC is.
What Is UAC?
UAC is an acronym for User Account Control. UAC was first implemented in Windows Vista as a method of security which allows a normally unprivileged user to access functionality of a privileged user. In layman's terms; it is a means to allow you to run programs and access functions that could be potentially dangerous to your system. Thus far, UAC has met with both extravagant praise and exaggerate criticism. In this article, I hope to explain why UAC is an important part of your security, and how a simple single click keeps your system safe.
Understanding User Access Control
UAC fundamentally changes the way Microsoft looks at an operating system (OS). It used to be that anyone and anything could be done to your system without giving it a second thought. If we go back to the DOS based days of Windows (3.1 and earlier, Windows 95, Windows 98 and 98SE and Windows ME), there was almost no security whatsoever. As a result, users of those OSes were riddled with problems; bugs, holes, back doors - all of which were extremely easy for someone with a malicious intent to exploit. When NT came along it was a bit better, even including NT3.5, however, because it was not the standard base being used in a corporate setting, it still had to be tailored to the third party software providers. When DOS based Windows was officially nixed as a supported Operating System, this all changed.
As DOS (Disk Operating System) offered no means of true security, Microsoft started shifting it's attention to it's New Technology (NT - no, NT does not stand for Network Technology or Networked Technology). NT included a secure file system, and security enhancements that made it more difficult for adverse things to happen in the OS. This did, however, tend to create a bit of a problem with Software developers, as they had to get used to not being able to have full control over the system.
Windows NT5 (Windows 2000) was largely accepted by corporate users. It was more robust, more secure and allowed a corporation to take control of what their employees specifically could and could not do. NT5 was not accepted as much on the home front, thus some developers catered to the DOS based counterparts, namely 98, 98SE and ME, and stuck with the old school logic. On October 15, 2002, hot on the heals of it's new OS, Windows XP, Microsoft announced a new support life-cycle policy, which obliterated official support for Windows ME and prior, and forced developers to take note and make appropriate changes.
While NT5.2 (Windows XP/Windows Server 2003/Windows Media Center) become more stable and reliable than any other Windows OS to that date, it still lacked key security features that competing OS layers offered, such as Linux and Unix. There were still some holes that could be manipulated and caused reliability issues, and it directly stemmed to a two key things. Some were from third party drivers and applications that were allowed to be utilized in kernel mode and, most users ran unchecked in and Administrative account.
While the first element is beyond the scope of this article, the second issue is exactly what we are presenting here. A means to limit the user without limiting productivity or by using Group Policy governed by a controlling server. How do we achieve this function?
Fundamentally, there are three ways of doing this:
- Redesign the entire OS from the ground up with setting more conducive to a Unix or Unix-like environment. (Relates to item 2 but more akin to MacOS X)
- Force the user to run in a limited capacity and make changes only by issuing those commands as an administrative user, requiring the input of separate credentials. (Relates to item 1 and 2)
- Allow the user to run at an administrative capacity, but require the user to acknowledge system-wide changes without the need of entering separate credentials. (Relates to item 1, item 2 and UAC)
Item 1 could not conceivably be an option. This would require the rewrite of literally hundreds of thousands of applications. It would force a near zero backward compatibility index and would cost third party developers an untold amount of both frustration and capital to achieve, since Windows is, without question, the primary OS choice in the world. We will discuss MacOS in a latter part of this article, but do understand; Item 1 would have ostracized tens of thousands of third party developers. They would have to redesign all of their software to accommodate Microsoft. Alternatively, were Microsoft to provide solutions within it's OS, it would have cost the end user a great deal of overhead and performance loss, as all backward compatibility apps would have to be forwardly mapped. By this I mean, for example; If Microsoft would have placed the Font folder in a user folder, versus in a system folder, all software that called the system folder for a font would have to be mapped to the new user folder. This requires valuable CPU time. That is a small and overly simple example. If everything in Windows that had previously been placed to a system folder had to be remapped and redirected to a different location, and a per user location at that, it would cause your OS to respond as if you were trying to use Windows XP on a machine designed for pre-Windows DOS. This option is, simply, not feasible at all.
Item 2 speaks for itself. While Unix and Linux users are used to typing SU to get things done, and mostly understanding the concepts of running at an unprivileged level; Microsoft users would have been adamant. Seriously, look at how much complaint has come from having to click a single button - could you imagine what would have happened if every Windows user had to type in different credentials every time? No. Not feasible at all. Too intrusive and time intensive for a breed that is used to point and click to get results.
Item 3, UAC, was, and is, the best approach Microsoft could have taken. It forces the user to click an authorization box, but does not requires the input of a secondary set of credentials. It should be noted that many distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu, adopted this practice. This procedure allows the user to access functions outside of the "user" scope, and enter the "administrative" scope. It causes no conflict to third party development; it causes no ramifications to the end user experience saving one more click; it provides a very effective way of keeping the system secure and reliable.
NAXPServer Realmlist Switcher
This little app will automatically change your World of Warcraft realmlist.wtf from the official Blizzard servers to the private ones provided at NAXPServer.com and back to the originals provided from Blizzard. Cheap, generic and works!
Version 1.1.0.0 - Now supports both US and European Blizzard servers.
If you wish to support this program, consider donating at http://NAXPServer.com instead, it was written for them, after all.
Cheers!
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