Mr. Fixit's PC Upgrade and Repair
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Windows Vista All support ends April 2017
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As of April 2017, all support for Windows Vista has ended. You will need to upgrade to Windows
7, 8.1 or 10. No further support is offered for Windows Vista.
Windows Vista introduced many new features. To name a few, Microsoft improved the startup code by
allowing Vista to bring up the desktop first while running other startup tasks in the background. Sleep
Mode is a combination of both Standby and Hibernation modes. It shuts down everything except critical
components (Standby) and saves all of your work to the Hard Drive (Hibernation). If there is a power
failure, the computer can still restart from the hibernation part of the Sleep mode. SuperFetch in an
improved version of Windows XP's Prefetch. It creates a profile of your programs and data you use over
time and uses this data to predict which programs/data you are most likely to use and preload them into
memory at startup. ReadyBoost was introduced that uses a USB Flash drive to store Prefetch and
SuperFetch data to free up System Memory. Transactional NTFS (TxF) is a lot like System Restore
except instead of having to restore the entire System, you can restore a single file, a folder, or volume.
more cleaner and aesthetic view. Windows Defender was introduced as an anti-spyware program that worked along side Windows Firewall.
Windows Update became part of Control panel and no longer required the web applications. Problem Reports and Solutions allowed users to
report problems and check for solutions. User Account Control was updated to only display the popup when a change to the system is about to
occur and now appears in a secure desktop mode to help stop malware/viruses misleading the user by interfering with the authorization window.
In 2007, Vista's release did not receive a warm welcome with the public. In fact, it was severely criticized. The biggest problem being Hardware
compatibility. Microsoft claimed Vista would operate on nearly every PC but, consumers soon discovered that to be false and it led to a Class
Action law suit against the software giant. Two consumers sued Microsoft when it was discovered that PCs with Windows XP, were upgraded to
Windows Vista, the system would only operate in Vista Basic and, in some cases, run Vista Basic at user-accepted speed. Even Dell pointed out
flaws in the new Operating System, how Microsoft inflated Vista's capabilities. There were even problems with the licensing of Windows Vista.
People who reinstall Windows on a regular basis ran into problems when they try to re-install the Vista upgrade. It was later discovered that the
Vista Upgrade would actually install on a "clean" PC after the first attempt failed. Operating System Upgrades cost less than the OEM version and
were meant to be installed on a PC that has a previous version of Windows installed. OEM versions were intended for PC manufactures and
private PC builders to install an OS on a PC that doesn't have a previous version of Windows installed.
Service Pack 1 was released in 2008 to add support for new technology and improve Vista's performance but soon discovered any PC that
installed the update was rendered useless because Vista would start, crash, and restart in a continuous cycle. It was so bad, Apple even mocked
Windows by comparing it to their Mac, in a TV Ad called "Get a Mac" that aired from 2006 to 2009. Manufactures like Dell, Lenovo, HP were
pre-installing Windows Vista and started including Windows XP CDs to keep their sales from falling. Many businesses skipped upgrading to Vista
to avoid the fallout