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Foreword

This guide has been written with Ubuntu Gutsy(7.10) in mind, but should work for any other OS as well.

Intro

I’ve read several complaints stating that Ubuntu Gutsy’s partitioner was unbearably slow when resizing a Windows Vista NTFS partition. There were also some people asking why it wasn’t slow with Windows XP’s partition. The reason Gutsy isn’t slow when resizing the XP partition is because Windows XP and Windows vista have different versions of the NTFS file system. So basically, something in the code is written wrong, which makes the resizing of a Vista partition painfully slow. But there is another way of doing this without taking a 5 hour coffee break to install Gutsy. You can partition your drives right inside Vista itself. Using this process, I was able to partition, install, and tweak Gutsy in under an hour. Here’s the process I used to partition my hard drive:

Steps

Click Start
Go To Computer and Right-Click
Select Manage

Select Disk Management under Storage in the left hand hierarchy.

Right Click (C:)
Select Shrink Volume

Choose how much you want to partition off, and go.

That was easy wasn’t it? It’s also a heck of a lot quicker than waiting for Gutsy to do it.

Here’s my partition table after partitioning:

NOTE: Having certain features, such as thumbnails, enabled in Vista only allows you to partition a certain amount off your drive, so beware.

Windows has always had a “Recent Items” list.  So this Vista feature is nothing new, and many people have always thought of it as a security risk.  Some people work on materials they don’t want other people seeing.  Especially those dad’s at home who don’t want their kids screwing up important documents for work.  For whatever reason, people have always been after how to clear this list.  Here is the Vista version of it:

1. Click the Start button and type gpedit.msc in the Search field. Press Enter.
2. Navigate to the following container: User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Start Menu and Taskbar.
3. Right click the Clear history of recently opened document on exit and click Properties.
4. Click Enabled and click OK.

After about 5 minutes of using Vista, I, along with countless others, realized that Window’s new security feature was really really annoying.  Even though I was logged in as the admin, I would keep having to click “yes” and “ok” to run things as the admin.  Talk about annoying.

Here is a simple four step solution to this very irritating problem:

1. Launch Control Panel
2. Type “UAC” in the search box at the upper-right hand corner of the window
3. The option to disable UAC is the first search result.
4. Log off and back in.

Now, you shouldn’t be getting all those pop-up message asking you to run as adimn.  If this didn’t work, you might have to restart.

First off, some of you may be asking “What is this IRC that you speak of?” Well, IRC, or Internet Relay Chatroom, a way of communicating in real time with people from all over the world. It is made up of different networks of servers, which allow people to connectto discuss just about anything by joining channels. Channels are basically chatrooms with a specific topic. The channel names either begin with a # or an &. Each person on IRC is known by their “Nick” or nickname which is essentially a screen name this name is the name that appears as the person talks. Channels are presided over by operators, which are more commonly known as “ops”. Ops essentially moderate the channel and enforce its rules. There are a large set of commands that IRC allows you to use, but I will not discuss them here because the list is too extensive. Plus, I don’t even know all of them. If you would like to learn more about IRC you should visit the IRChelp website.

In order to join an IRC server and a channel and talk on them, you will need an IRC client. One of the most popular ones for Windows is mIRC, but it is pretty old school looking, and it costs $20 to register after the 30 day trial period. It also reminds me of Windows 98 to be honest. My favorite IRC client is IceChat. It is more modern looking and is very easy to use. For Linux, I like X-Chat, which also has a windows version. And on Macs, I love using Colloquy, which has a couple of great looking skins and integrates with the Mac OS X look and feel very well.

I frequent the #rmxp channel on the irc.slacked.org server. For you other IRC users, what channels do you frequently visit?

For a while now, I have been searching for a good program that is native to Vista and mounts CD images , which I use to back up all the games and programs that I buy, so I never “lose” the CD. The program is called Virtual Clone Drive, and it lets you mount .ISO, .CCD, .DVD, .IMG, .UDF and .BIN files. After installation, you will have to restart, but then you will be able to mount CD Images on a virtual drive on your computer with just a right click on the image you want to mount. I’ve already used the utility three times in just the couple days that I’ve had it. It is simple to use and very lightweight.