ATI video card + Vista Media Center = some hacks needed

If you have an ATI video card and a Vista Media Center PC, you will notice some degraded quality mostly in standard definition video. There are about 100 threads on www.thegreenbutton.com and www.avsforum.com about this, and it gets real confusing, real fast.

I know this stuff and I was confused until I found this one which is a quick and dirty list of what all you need to do.

nvidia raidtool installation for nvidia chipsets

I have had a heck of a time with Nvidia chipsets not installing their RAID tool automatically or with the chipset install for some reason. Ran across a thread tonight that had instructions.

1. Download and install the chipset driver from the nvidia website.
2. Extract the files (install 7zip then right click on the chipset drivers, extract to folder.
3. Go into the folder and into the “raidtool” directory. Right click on raidtool.cab, choose 7zip, then “unzip to folder”.
4. Copy that folder to c:program files.
5. run RegRaidSedona.Bat.
6. enjoy the ability to manage your raid sets in windows now.

changing the default escape in the hyper-v console

(I am putting this here mainly so I can find it again.)

In order to change the default escape key combination in the hyper-v console, instructions are here.

Basically: “You can change the release key combination (CTRL + ALT + LEFT ARROW) by going to the Hyper-V Manager and selecting Hyper-V Server Settings… and then Release Key and selecting one of the options from the drop down (I usually change my release key combination to be CTRL + ALT + SHIFT as I find it easier to type).”

w7 plus the touch mouse pad

I use Dell laptops and always disable the touchpad because it doesn’t do anything but get in the way and sent my pointer 2 paragraphs up without my knowledge or consent. There is no built in way to do this, so I had to use the Synaptec drivers for vista to load the utility so I could disable it. (Yes, the vista versions load just fine.)

windows 7 UI annoyance.. fixed

I have been using this bit of a hack to get Vista to show me the right folder view by default in explorer.

This one didn’t work with Windows 7, and the default “library” view was driving me nuts. Today I ran across this one for W7 that works well and “fixes” (masks) the problem for me.