Ask DACS
March 2013

Moderated and reported by Bill Saturno

Ask DACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at our monthly General Meeting. At this month’s Ask DACS, we reviewed questions posted at the Ask DACS forum at DACS.org as well as solicited live questions from the floor of the meeting. An open discussion continued pursuing answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problems presented. The answers below include both the summary of discussion that took place at the general meeting as well as some (pre and post meeting) research.

Q: If I were to get a Windows 7 64-bit upgrade, would it be able to upgrade from the 32-bit Windows 7 installation into a 64 bit?

Differences between the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions of Windows allow for the computer to handle memory accessibility, memory management, and enhanced security features. Depending on your computer’s hardware configuration, you may or may not have an option to install a 64 bit Operating System. Confirming the advice given on the Ask DACS forum, there is no official migration path from 32 bit to 64 bit Windows 7. William R. Stanek of Microsoft’s Technet magazine confirms this upgrade hurdle, and he strongly suggests moving directly to a 64 bit edition when installing Windows 7.

Follow Up: Is there a way to make the 32-bit version see more than 4 GB of RAM? I know Linux includes PAE in their kernel which allows seeing more than 4 GB of RAM with 32-bit versions.

One of the greatest advantages with a 64 bit Operating System architecture is the ability to handle increased memory. Unfortunately unlike Linux, there are no common solutions or memory management tricks on accessing additional memory outside the OS’s allotted range. Ken Blake, a ten year veteran with the Microsoft Desktop Experience on the Microsoft Community forums,  also confirms there are no existing “workarounds”. After exploring this answer, the first live question was asked by a member in the general audience:

Q: Where do I find which version of Windows 7 I am running on my own computer?

Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties. In the lower half of the dialog box which appears, the information on your specific Windows system will be listed, including if it is a 32 or 64 bit installation. In most instances, your desktop and higher end laptops will be running 64 bit version of Windows 7, while your more economy based machines and light end netbooks will have a 32 bit version installed. All installation options of Windows 7 are available in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Additional recommendations from the community included a utility called Belarc Advisor. BelArc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, including Microsoft Windows version information, and software serial numbers. Advisor then shows the results in your Web browser. BelArc Advisor is available online at a variety of sites. As always, download only programs you are familiar with from the online sources you trust. (In this case, our suggestion was to utilize download.com operated by CNET.)

Q: It seems that VMWare viewer is the common application to get thin clients connected to the virtual desktops. My question is; does an operating system still need to reside on the thin client as a bare essential? Also, if an operating system does need to reside on the thin client and you are running a 64bit VMware environment, would it be ideal to have like windows 7, 64-bit or some 64bit OS on the thin client for optimal speed? I get the desktop is virtualized, I don't understand how the thin client is setup to connect to the virtual desktops.   

A thin client can be a simple piece of computer hardware (or a computer program) that relies on some other computer (usually a server) to fulfill its traditional computational roles. The purpose of using a thin client is multifold, as it can create cost savings within an organization as well as help keep program version standards equal across the entire organizational platform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client

VMware is available in a plethora of configurations. The VMware Compatibility Guide online shows that the VMWare viewer is available for dozens of thin client hardware platforms and Operating Systems. To best answer the question, Yes, You may certainly run VMware on a Full Powered PC locally, but there is no real advantage (unless you need the additional computer power to perform higher computational functions or tasks locally at your workstation)

Q: My 4 year old XP laptop is experiencing longer boot times. What suggestions can you recommend?

A plethora of ideas were suggested by the community. The first suggestion was to run the Windows Defragmentation Utility. This built in program accesses the computer hard drive and organizes the data into a more efficient arrangement to increase data read and write times.

To further explore what may slow down the laptop’s start up time, one suggestion was to use a program called Soluto. Soluto is a PC utility that does a variety of functions including examining which Apps are running on your machine, and assessing which apps maybe crashing or hogging the microprocessor. Soluto also will make suggestions on what apps could be turned off (or postponed) at startup to allow you to speed up boot-up time of your machine. By being a community based utility, soluto can inform you of crowd sourced suggestions of what adjustments you may be able to make for most effective speed solutions.  

Other suggestions followed: Space on the Hard Drive may become a factor in an older machine that starts slowing down its performance.  Look at your drive’s free space; Compress some files or remove some unneeded data if your drive is almost at capacity. Other recommendations included entering your computer hardware bios and see if there are some unneeded items in the computer boot sequence. Another suggestion was to check your MS Config startup list for the same house cleaning technique.

Sometimes the slowdown in speed is not internal. A recommendation was made to inspect what programs (on startup) are pinging out on boot and are “calling  home” to check in for updates.  Many times these “calling home” procedures are defaulted to be executed at startup. Instead, try turning off or delaying these procedures until a more appropriate time. (Be aware that if you turn off any auto updating, you should manually check for software updates on a regular basis to make sure you are running the current, safest version.)

Last but not least, double check for Spyware or Malware!  In all the above suggestions, the assumption was made that the slow startup is on a virus free machine. Check to make sure your machine is clean of viruses. Suggestions on tools to do this (that operate beyond the scope of your normal anti-virus) include “SuperAntiSpyware.com” and “Spybot: Search and Destroy”.

Continuing on the subject of vulnerabilities, the last question was asked about the security risks in using Java.

Q: There have been some recent concerns about vulnerabilities in Java. Recommendations?

Java is a popular technology that powers many utilities, games, and business applications on a variety of computer systems. Recently, The U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned that Java poses risks for computer users. Using Java can create various vulnerabilities that allow others from the outside to remotely access and exploit your computer. The safest answer to the Java concern is simply to turn off Java manually. Although the safest and easiest method, this is not feasible to implement because users many times will need to use Java in their everyday work or computer use. There are settings you can set inside the browser program to require a stop and obtain user permission request every time certain scripts are initiated. This allows for a “stop and warn first” style usage while browsing the web. To help automate this process for a better online experience, there are third party programs available to run in your browser that allow for granularity control in Java use on a case to case basis. Using “NoScript” (in Firefox) or “NotScript” (in Chrome) allows the user to create a permissions whitelist of individual sites that the user trusts to be allowed to have access running Java.

If you have a question you would like discussed, feel free to ask it at our next monthly General Meeting on April 2nd. In addition, feel free to post your question to the DACS community in the Ask DACS online forum at DACS.org.

Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warranty as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!

 


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