Vista and Halo*FIXED*

[Ediseye]

i still don't recommend it.

...I've only been using Vista since it was still in beta over 2 years ago, lol.

Welcome to the club. I still even have the Vista RC1 ISO DVD right above my monitor. I tested Vista as soon as it came out as well.

And again, with a up-to-date operating system (AKA Vista SP1 or better because of the limited kernal that developers had before it) and a up-to-date antivirus program, users SHOULD be safe if they turned UAC off. UAC detects ALL of the things that you listed on the previous page, and asks you for permission to do so. It is unaware what is a virus or malware, and what is not. A antivirus program, such as NOD32 or even Kapersky (Or another highly recommended one) will automatically detect a system virus, even with UAC OFF, and will notify the user of any BAD changes; not ones that the user tells the computer to do or perform.

As I said, I'm not trying to go and tell everyone and their mother to turn off UAC. I'm just saying that if it is a annoyance, and the person using Vista is SOMEWHAT computer literate and has security protection such as a suite installed, everything should be peachy and fine.

[Glogg]

While i do agree with you that it's unaware of whats a virus or malware program, thats why it gives a pop-up so you can see whats being installed.
Also, not all virus  or malware programs detect it all .

I'll just copy and paste some more info for everyone to go ahead ans read. This article was written just this year to, in October i believe.

A FLAW has been discovered in Microsoft's flagship Windows Vista operating system, but the company has said it won't fix the glitch until its next, as-yet unannounced, service pack.

Discovered by Austrian researcher Thomas Unterleitner of the insecurity company Phion and announced last Friday, the buffer overflow flaw reportedly exists in Vista's networking I/O subsystem.

It can cause a blue screen of death system crash, allow denial of service attacks, or enable injection of rootkits or other malware such as viruses, trojans, bots or keyloggers.

Unterleitner told ZDnet UK that Phion had notified Microsoft of the vulnerability in October.

Phion successfully tested an exploit of the vulnerability against Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate and believes that other versions of Windows Vista are "very likely" also vulnerable. It says that both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the operating system contain the flawed code.

Unterleitner said administrator privileges are required to execute a program that calls the function containing the flaw, but that doesn't seem like much of a hurdle, since Vista trains its users to click on "OK" to all sorts of security warnings.

He also said it appeared possible, though not yet confirmed, that an attacker might craft a malformed DHCP packet to "take advantage of the exploit without administrative rights."

"We have worked together with Microsoft Security Response Center in Redmond since October 2008 to locate, classify and fix this bug," Unterleitner reportedly said in an email. "Microsoft will ship a fix for this exploit with the next Vista service pack."

However, Microsoft said that it had investigated but was "currently unaware of any attacks trying to use the vulnerability or of customer impact." Nor could it confirm that a fix will be included in the next Vista service pack or project when it might get around to releasing that.

Notice how it says "administrator privileges are required to execute a program that calls the function containing the flaw". Hence why i recomment leaving UAC on.

But i believe there is enough reason to leave it on. Ultimately its up to the user to make there choice.

Opps, i think we have strayed way off topic, lol. I'm done now.
Sorry for the offtopic.

[Ediseye]

Good read there BringIt. Not about to lie, I was actually unaware of that issue in Vista.

But yes, we have gone quite off topic here. And you are right, it's up to the user if they want to use UAC or not in the long run.

[Tåndêm]

Couple things

1) Regarding the original post, next time you're asked to run DxDiag, all you have to do is (in Vista) type "dxdiag" in the Start Menu's search box and hit <ENTER>.
2) Vista doesn't have blue screens of death. They're black now. :-P

[Glogg]

Hmmm i hope that was a joke, lol. Cause i caused myself a Blue screen just yesterday by shutting something off that wasn't suppose to be shut off, lol.

[xsix]

Ok, new problem, I can't see any text in halo, not even the stuff I type! Like in the text box, what i type doesn't show up 

[MrMxyzptlk]

Ok, new problem, I can't see any text in halo, not even the stuff I type! Like in the text box, what i type doesn't show up 

Halo requires the MS XML 4.0 support be installed for text to work.

Follow the steps from the related section of this MS article:

1. Press and hold down the SHIFT key while you insert Halo PC disk 1.
2. On a Windows Vista-based computer, click Start, and then click Computer.

On a Windows XP-based computer, click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Open.

On a Windows 98-based computer or on a Windows Millennium Edition (Me)-based computer, right-click My Computer, and then click Open.
3. Right-click the CD-ROM drive, and then click Explore.
4. In the root folder of the CD-ROM, double-click the Redist folder, and then double-click the Msxmlenu.msi file.
5. To complete the installation process, follow the instructions that appear on the screen.