Successful upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP

I bought a new Gateway PC with Windows Vista Home Premium Version last September. During this period, I have installed lots of software such as Adobe products, Visual Studio .NET 2005, SQL Server 2005, Office 2007, Google and yahoo products. When I ran the program on Windows Vista, the response time was so slow and made my PC down. I needed to use task manager to end the program. If it didn’t work, I needed to reboot my PC. Finally, I made a decision to downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP.

Before I did the downgrade, I found that Gateway didn’t give me all drivers inside the CD. I went to http://www.gateway.com/ and found it was not helpful. I called their technical support and that woman said,” If you want to do the downgrade, you will break your warranty. We don’t do it over the phone. ” I was not satisfied with her answer.

Heaven helps those who help themselves. I wanted to give it a try. After I installed Windows XP with SP2, Office 2007 and lots of software, I found that some drivers were missing. Finally I found ccleaner.com has the small program that can check my PC. It was really helpful because it checked how many drivers I needed in my PC and made me download.

After I downloaded them and installed them, I still found l needed one more audio driver. Without it, I couldn’t play MP3. Finally I found the driver, High Definition Audio, in realtek.com. After I installed it, I could play MP3.

Now when I launch so many programs on Windows XP machine ,the speed is really faster than Vista’s. I want to say: I successfully “upgrade” from Windows Vista to Windows XP.

The error of Web Application Stress Tool : MSVCP50.dll was not found

If you install Web Application Stress Tool on Windows Vista, you might have the following error.

The application has failed to start because MSVCP50.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem.

You need to download msvcp50.DLL and put it in c:\windows\system32 folder.

After that, just run setup.exe. It should work.

Microsoft provides an excellent website of virtual labs

We know that Microsoft has so many products. How can you get familiar with all of them very well unless you are a super man?

If your work can let you get familiar with all Microsoft products, your company must be very excellent. Per the job descriptions posted on Dice, CareerBuilder or Monster, you probably feel frustrated because some companies need more experienced candidates with different technical skills in different products. I think it is hard for them to find those people.

Everything starts from zero. If you don’t know one of Microsoft products now, you can just go to the following website.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/virtuallabs/default.aspx

You can register online, download the individual lab manual and make some practice. You will improve your skills gradually.

I like Google Reader

Everyone knows that blogs are very popular now. If you want to see your friends’ blogs, but these are in different websites, how can you access them easily? Do you want to open your browser and go to the individual website? It is not smart to do so.

Google Reader provides a good way for bloggers to read people’s blogs easily. You just login to www.google.com/reader using your username and password. You can add subscription by typing the URL of friend’s blog individually. Next time you can read them easily. I like Google Reader.

Google provides the excellent search function of free ebooks

If I find some IT books such as Visual Studio.NET 2008, C# 3.0, WPF, WCF, or SQL Server are excellent in Barnes and Nobles, do you think I will buy them soon? The answer is no.

I will go back to my apartment, open my notebook, go to Google main page and enter the name of the book title. I will see lots of websites provide free ebooks and I can download them easily. Why should I buy these expensive books? Google really provides the excellent search function of free ebooks.