Ashampoo WinOptimizer is an easy-to-use suite of tools for maintaining and optimizing your Microsoft Windows?® computer. It keeps your Windows?® installation free of unnecessary garbage and running smoothly while other computers just get slower and slower.

K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs, DirectShow filters and tools. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user-friendly solution for playing all your movie files. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even some rare formats. The K-Lite Codec Pack always very up-to-date with the newest (and/or best) versions of the components. The installation is fully customizable, meaning that you are able install exactly those components that you really want. Uninstallation removes all files and registry entries created by the pack. It is extremely easy to make a fully customized unattended installation. It tries to avoid potential problems with existing codecs and even fixes some problems. The pack is able to detect broken codecs and filters on your system, and remove them for you. It is a very complete package, containing everything you need to play your movies. Suitable for both novice and expert users. The K-Lite Codec Pack works on Windows 2000/XP/2003/XP64/Vista.

Now is the time and the time is now: let??™s talk about Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Much has been made of what will or will not be included in SP1 and when it will be released (some accurate, some otherwise). I??™m here to set the story straight: we??™re in the process of developing and deploying a Beta version of SP1. This post will describe for you what to expect from that effort and how you can be involved in the process.

First, a note on service packs. As you are aware, service packs are part of our traditional software lifecycle; they??™re something we do for most major products as a commitment to continuous improvement. But, the servicing situation has changed with the advent of Windows Vista, as we no longer rely solely on service packs as the main vehicle used to deploy system fixes and improvements. Continue reading ?»

Windows Vista???out of memory??? errors are intimately connected with the way the operating system manages virtual address space. On Microsoft??™s latest operating system, applications have their very own private virtual address space. You must understand that there is no correlation between the virtual address space available to a certain program and the total volume of physical memory installed on the computer. On 32-bit platforms, applications are generally limited under a 2 GB boundary as the maximum size of the virtual address space. In this context, the ???out of memory??? errors in Windows Vista are generated by applications that have eaten up all the virtual address space allocated to them.

???Every memory allocation, file mapping, or library that is loaded by an application consumes space in this virtual address space. When the application consumes all its virtual address space, any additional such operations fail. Although all applications should be coded to handle memory allocation failures, many applications do not recover correctly from such failures. Therefore, the programs may become unstable or stop responding after they recover from such failures???, Microsoft informed. Continue reading ?»