In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.

This article will show you when and for what to use Sun VirtualBox.

For these tests, I used a quite uncommon configuration: I ran a virtual Windows 7 on my native Windows 7. Most users probably won’t do this, but there is a reason why I chose this OS configuration: Sun VirtualBox allows you to use more CPU cores than you actually have.

The OS installation with Virtual Box is quite easy, just insert your install DVD into the real drive, create a new VM with the hardware configuration you like and tell VirtualBox which OS you’re planning to install. Then allocate your DVD to the VM and start the installation. Worked greatly with Linux, Windows XP and Windows 7 and VirtualBox automatically installed its tools to enable automatic mouse grabbing and this kind of stuff.

In contrast to Microsoft Virtual PC, VirtualBox comes with GPU acceleration, but only allows you to use up to 128MB of video memory. Moreover, the drivers are still beta, so the performance is not as good as you would like it to be.

Performance:

For this test, I didn’t choose settings that any serious user would try, but decided to test the option of using 8 cores.

Settings:

CPU count: 8

RAM: 2048MB

GPU acceleration: yes, 128MB video memory

I searched for a benchmarking program that can use any number of threads and found wPrime. Since it can be scaled to 4 or 8 cores, it was capable of running on both my real quad-core and on the virtual octo-core and still using all the cores.

The virtual octo-core was 0.303 seconds slower, which equals 1.9% performance loss. This is quite surprising when you consider that four of the cores are just simulated and the real OS and processor have to split up the work somehow. These results are even better than the ones I got from Microsoft Virtual PC where the performance loss was about 3.9%.

Hardware graphics acceleration should be there, but don’t expect too much. The drivers are still beta, the video memory is just 128MB and the graphics performance of VMs has never been close to the CPU performance. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the DirectX acceleration to work, neither on Windows 7 64-bit nor on Windows XP 32-bit. That’s a pity because the only VM supporting graphics acceleration is VMware Player then.

All in all, VirtualBox is a really nice tool due to its possiblities of configuration such as using 8 cores, its easy installation and the CPU performance. There is no such feature as direct integration into the host OS as with Virtual PC, but nobody would expect such a feature, and the graphics power isn’t that awesome either, but still better than other VMs supplying just a standard VGA adapter without hardware acceleration or DirectX support.

In this series, I’m going to focus on comparing different Virtual Machines running Windows and their performance regarding different tasks such as single-threaded CPU-only applications, multi-threaded programs or even games requiring hardware 3D acceleration.

This article will show you when and for what to use Microsoft Virtual PC and the XP mode that comes with Windows 7.

The first thing to mention is the fact that Virtual PC requires hardware-assisted virtualization which must be supported by both CPU and mainboard. Many older and mainstream mainboards do not include this function and thus render the user unable to use Virtual PC. Most other Virtual Machines can profit from virtualization, but do not require it.

A nice feature Virtual PC has is that it can be directly embedded into the host OS (Windows 7). Like in other VMs, you can launch XP Mode normally in its own window with its own desktop and stuff, but all the programs you installed in XP Mode will be directly available from the Windows 7 start menu. Just click the shortcut, wait a few seconds for the VM to boot, and you will see your application running in an Windows XP environment, but the window is on your normal Windows 7 desktop.

Performance:

Settings:

CPU count: 1 (not adjustable)

RAM: 512MB (not adjustable)

GPU acceleration: no

Basically, Virtual PC doesn’t leave you the option to change any settings for your Virtual Machine, but if you really want to do so, you can edit the configuration file manually. Just open it with notepad and change the settings: C:\Users\Lennart\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines\Windows XP Mode.vmc

Since there is just one CPU and no graphics acceleration, I decided to test the only thing I can, CPU performance. I ran SuperPI first on the VM and then on my native Windows 7 and here is what you get:

The virtual Windows XP took just 0,848 longer than the native Windows 7, meaning a performance loss of 3.9%. This are really good values that basically enable you to work with applications running in the virtual machine as if they were running natively and you shouldn’t feel any slowdown (except for multi-threaded work such as video encoding).

All in all, Microsoft Virtual PC enables you to run old programs that can’t run on Windows 7 for some reason without any major loss in performance. Since there is no GPU support, you can’t use it for gaming, not even some very old games I tried were running. But if you just want to work, XP Mode will be a  good choice.

If you forgot your your Windows account password, it got hacked or some virus changed it so you’re not able to access your computer any more, you can use the following tutorial to restore and reset the password. This method will also work for Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP and Windows Vista!

WARNING: Please do not use this method for illegal activity such as hacking passwords without the other user’s consent!

1. Your Windows passwords are stored in the Windows registry. In order to reset them, you need access to  this registry without running Windows. Luckily, there is a tool called “Offline NT Password & Registry Editor” which contains a small Linux kernel and drivers for your hard drives. Download the tool from this server or the official website.
2. Extract the RAR archive. Now you need to create a bootable device in order to run the tool:
   Using a CD: Just burn the ISO file to any empty CD and proceed.
   Using a USB memory stick:
   Format the memory stick in FAT32 format (rightclick it and choose “Format”) and enable “Quick Format”. WARNING: When formatting, all data in the memory stick will be lost!
   
   Open the ISO file with WinRAR (or any similar program) and extract all files onto the memory stick.
   Start the console (Press WINDOWS + R and type cmd, press ENTER), enter the drive letter of your memory stick (e.g. L: ), then enter “SYSLINUX.EXE -ma L:” (replace L: with your drive letter). This will set the boot record for your memory stick, enabling your computer to use it as boot device.
   
3. Now plug in the USB memory stick or insert the CD into the drive of the password-locked computer and switch it on.
4. When the BIOS image is showing up, make sure you enter the “Boot Menu”, usually by pressing F12.
   
5. A window should pop up asking you to choose the device to boot from. Select CD or USB HDD.
   
6. After a few seconds, this screen will show up. Just press enter to boot normally.
   
7. Now a lot of text will appear on your screen while the system is loading drivers for your hardware. Just wait until it comes to a stop and waits for your input. Now the tool is asking on which partition your Windows registry files are located. Usually, this would be  the first partition, but since there is a small (100MB) backup drive in Windows 7, you should take the next one, enter the number below and press enter.
   
8. Next, it asks for the path to your registry files on the drive. These are usually fine, just press enter to continue. When the files are located, you can choose what to do. Enter 1 and hit return for “Password reset”.
   
9. Then you have to select “Edit user data and passwords” by entering 1 again and pressing Enter
   
10. Enter your account name from the list and press Enter
    
11. On the next screen, enter 1 to “Clear (blank) user password”. You may also select 4 to “Unlock and enable user account” if you have entered the password too often and it is locked. If that’s all you wanted to do, enter ! and press return to quit.
    
12. Enter q again to leave the next menu and write the files by typing “y” in Step 4.
    
13. Now your password has been reset, just restart your computer normally and you should be able to log in to Windows again!

If there are any questions, please comment!

If your computer crashes or is somehow malfunctioning, a BIOS update may help. I tried to run Microsoft Virtual PC on my Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P mainboard with AMD Phenom II X4 955 processor, but it refused to start due to lack of Hardware Virtualization support although I enabled it in the BIOS setup. Updating my BIOS to the latest version with Q-Flash using an USB memory stick helped, so this tutorial will show you how to do it.

1. Get the latest drivers for your mainboard from www.gigabyte.com.tw
2. Extract the 7-zip archive to some folder, e.g. C:\bios_flash\
   
3. Plug in your USB memory stick and format it using the FAT32 file system (enable Quick Format).WARNING: When formatting, all data on the memory stick will be lost!
   
4. Go to the directory with the extracted BIOS update files and locate the actual BIOS data file, called something like M79XTUD4.F7, where the .F7 stands for version 7 and the stuff before for my mainboard model. Copy this file onto the freshly formatted memory stick
5. Restart your computer. When you see the BIOS image, press END to enter Q-Flash mode
   
6. A blue box will show up asking you what to do. First of all, backup your original BIOS to your USB thumbdrive. Select “Save BIOS to Drive”, then your USB memory stick and type in a name for your backup. Once you press enter, it will start backing up your data which may take up to 5 minues.
   
7. Once you are done backing up, return to the previous menu and select “Update BIOS from Drive” and locate the BIOS file you downloaded. Press enter to start flashing. WARNING: Do not switch off your computer while flashing your BIOS. This may permanently corrupt your mainboard!
8. When the flashing is finished, restart your computer, enter BIOS setup (press DEL when seeing the mainboard image) and “Load Optimized Defaults”.
   
9. After loading the default settings, “Save and Exit Setup”. Your computer should start normally with the latest BIOS  version, hopefully solving the problems you encountered before!
10. If you did any adjustments to the BIOS before (enabling Virtualization, memory  timings, CPU clock, etc.) you will have to set it again.

If you have problems following this guide, please comment! You can take good pictures of your computer screen using the Xshot! camera stabilizer!

When trying to play Medieval II: Total War multiplayer in LAN mode, you may encounter the problem that the players can’t see each other in the lobby and can’t find the hosted game despite of correct versions, network configuration and firewall settings.

There is a quite easy fix for this problem, just follow the steps below:

1. Browse to the directory containing Medieval II (e.g. C:\Program Files\Medieval II Total War)
2. Open medieval2.preference.cfg with notepad
3. Scroll down to the [network] section and edit the following line saying “use_ip = “. Put your LAN IP address after the equals sign and save the file
4. Restart the game, now everything should work nicely!

If there are any other issues, please comment and I will try to help!

The new version 4.0 of Google Chrome (currently Beta) enables the use of plugins and extensions in your browser. Extensions are a long requested feature for Chrome and one of the only reasons why many users still favored Firefox over Chrome.

In the Google Chrome Extension Directory you will find many interesting extension, but the one I waited for a long time is one that blocks annoying advertisements on websites. With AdThwart, there finally is such an extension and I will show how to use it. There was a trick to do block ads with earlier versions of Chrome, but using the official extensions is much more comfortable.

1. Make sure you have Chrome 4.0 or later. Click at the tool button (top right corner) and “About Google Chrome” to see your version. If it’s not 4.0 or later, download the Chrome Beta here.
2. Go to the AdThwart page and click “Install”
3. Once installed, you will see the options page. By default, the filters EasyList and Extra filters are enabled. You may choose another filter for your country.
   
4. Now most ads on websites should be gone.
   
5. If there are still some remaining, you can use the  Easy Filter function to block them as well. Click on the devil-button on the right side of your address bar and select “Easy create filter”. Then click on the element you want to block or hover over it and press CTRL + Shift + E. Return to the popup and confirm that you want to block that element.
   

If you for some reason don’t like AdThwart, there is another ad blocking extension called simply AdBlock. I didn’t try it, but looking at its rating of 4.5/5 stars, it seems to be quite good as well.

Currently, Google is testing a new search interface for their websearch somehow reminding of Bing. This new interface is supposed to make searching easier by putting all the useful filters and kinds of search in a bar on the left side while displaying the search results on the right side.

Although this interface hasn’t been released for the public yet, you can try it already by following these easy steps:

1. Open a new browser window or tab and go to this URL: http://www.google.com/ncr
   By using the “ncr” statement, you make sure that you’re not redirected to a local version of Google (e.g. .de, .cn, .co.uk, …)
2. Paste this script into the address bar replacing the URL:
   javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);
   This will set a cookie telling the search to use the new interface
3. Go back to google.com and start searching!

There is also a nice comment on the bottom of each page with customized search telling you that you’re awesome!

Have you heard about Google’s upcoming operating system ChromeOS and are willing to test it on your computer?  Then follow this guide to make it working! ChromeOS is intended to include only the Chrome browser and is only able to run web applications, thus targeting users who spend most of their time in the internet.

Test and use ChromeOS without installing it:

1. Download a compiled release of ChromeOS. This is the easiest way, you may of course compile it on your own, but that is not part of this tutorial. Use the torrent mirror for fastest downloads. Once it’s done, unpack the image file (ChromeOS-Cherry.img)
2. Connect a USB memory stick (at least 1GB) to your computer
3. Download and unpack Win32DiskImager and launch Win32DiskImager.exe. Click on the little folder symbol and select your image file unpacked in step 1. Select the proper drive letter of your USB memory stick in the Device section. Then click Write and confirm the window warning your about a potential physical corruption on your device.
   
4. Once it finished writing, unplug your USB device and plug it into the computer you want to test ChromeOS on. Make sure your computer is configured to boot from USB devices as first priority. If your computer is a netbook (e.g. Asus Eee PC), try the steps under Prepare the Asus Eee PC to boot from USB devices in my tutorial on Windows 7 on the Eee PC. Most other computers will have a similar BIOS configuration, though.
5. Boot from the USB device and wait a few seconds. ChromeOS shouldn’t take long to boot (around 5 seconds on my Eee PC 900).
6. Login using facepunch as both username and password.
7. There should be three symbols at the top right corner. The first is showing your battery status (in running ChromeOS on a laptop), the second your WiFi and Ethernet configuration and the third some menus. Click the second one and connect to your WiFi/Ethernet network. This is really necessary since all applications in ChromeOS are web-based!
8. Enjoy ChromeOS!

Troubleshooting:

• I am connected via WiFi/Ethernet but can’t open websites.
  This may be due to a misconfiguration in your network settings. Sadly, ChromeOS currently has no GUI to configure it, but you can try to do it with the terminal. Press CTRL + ALT + T to open terminal, and go on using Linux commands (e.g. ip addr to see your network configuration, ping to ping other network devices, sudo bash for root user, …)
• My screen resolution is not at its maximum.
  I had this problem a few times and there was no way of fixing it (xrandr in terminal didn’t work and told me that VGA1 was disconnected). Probably ChromeOS has some problems with the display drivers, but restarting the computer always helped.
• Flash/YouTube videos are lagging.
  This happens probably also due to bad/missing video drivers. I don’t think there is a solution for it except finding and installing fitting display drivers for your device and Linux on your own. Hopefully Google will fix this in the final release.

If there are any questions, please comment!

Have you got an iPod touch or iPhone and want to play cool games like FIFA10 or Assassin’s Creed, but don’t want to spend money on buying them? Then this tutorial will definitely help you.

Warning: Jailbreaking your iPod/iPhone will void your warranty. Downloading cracked applications is illegal and may have legal consequences. It is not my intention to motivate people to do illegal things, everything you do will be on your own risk!

Notice: This will only work with the latest generation of iPods/iPhones with Firmware 3.1.2 or higher! The blackra1n jailbreak will probably not work with the MC models (iPod  touch 3G with 8GB).

1. Jailbreak your iPod/iPhone

Before you will be able to install applications other than the ones from iTunes Store, you must jailbreak your iPod. Please consider the warning above before jailbreaking your iPod.

The easiest jailbreak for the 3.1.2 firmware is blackra1n. This tutorial will only focus on blackra1n.

Warning: blackra1n is a so-called “tethered jailbreak”, meaning that everytime you reboot your iPod (e.g. due to empty battery or after switching it completely off) you will have to run blackra1n again. Running blackra1n again won’t install or uninstall any applications but just enable the iPod to start again.

1. Download blackra1n either from the official website or from this server.
2. Make sure you have installed at least firmware version 3.1.2 in iTunes.
   
3. Close iTunes but keep the iPod connected to your computer via USB.
4. Open the downloaded blackra1n.exe file and click the “make it ra1n” button
   
5. Your iPod will go into recovery mode now and reboot. You should see this on your computer:
   
   
   And this image on your iPod:
   
6. Now wait for the iPod to reboot, shouldn’t take longer than a few seconds. Once done, launch the “blackra1n” application that appeared and install  Cydia and Rock.
   

2. Enable the installation of cracked application

1. Open Rock, the application you just installed with blackra1n.
2. Go to Manage -> Manage Sources -> Edit -> Add and enter http://cydia.hackulo.us to enable downloads from hackulo.us, then click Add Source
   
3. Go to Search, search for AppSync and install “AppSync for OS 3.1″
   
4. That’s it,  your iPod is now able to install cracked applications.
   For the case that cracked apps won’t work, try installing AppSync again with Cydia instead of Rock.

3. Download and install cracked applications

1. The biggest cracked application repository out there is Appulo.us, so you should try getting your desired application there first. The website is quite slow and sometimes offline, so be patient.
2. If Appulo.us doesn’t find the application you want or is offline, you may use downloadipa.info, apps.su or search torrents and rapidshare for “<app name> ipa” (ipa is the extension of cracked apps).
3. If the downloaded app came in a zip file (which is the case with most apps downloaded from Appulo.us), rename it to .ipa
4. Double-click your ipa files to add them to iTunes
5. Sync the iTunes applications with your iPod
6. Launch the application on your iPod!

I hope this tutorial was helpful. If you encounter any errors, please comment to tell me about it!

Risen is a single-player fantasy-themed action role-playing game released just a week ago. While the graphics is quite good in some parts (lighting, shadows, weather effects and environment), the developers didn’t manage to integrate Anti-Aliasing due to the HDR (High Dynamic Range) effects. Here is a way how you can enable Anti-Aliasing anyway, working only for nVidia graphics card though.

1. Download and install nHancer

nHancer is an Advanced Control Panel and Profile Editor for nVidia graphics cards, enabling you to optimize the display of games and customizing driver settings. This will allow you to force the nVidia driver to activate Anti-Aliasing, no matter what the game wants. Download and install the latest version of nHancer from the official website or from the local server.

2. Rename the Risen executable to Vanguard

Go to the binary folder of your Risen installation, probably C:\Program Files (x86)\Deep Silver\Risen\bin and rename Risen.exe to Vanguard.exe. This will force the nVidia driver to apply Anti-Aliasing settings usually applied for the game Vanguard which are also working for Risen.

3. Enable Anti-Aliasing settings with nHancer

Now launch nHancer and let it search for all profiles if this is the first time you start the application. Once the list in on the left side is populated, search for Vanguard and select the according profile. Once you selected it, tick “Anti-Aliasing” in the “Enhancements” tab on the right side and select the Anti-Aliasing mode you prefer. You will probably have to do some experimenting to find the right setting for your hardware, but I suggest to use “Multisampling” and then the 8x or 16x setting.

My GTX 260 can easily run Multisampling 8x and 16x without big performance losses, but using Supersampling or Combined 16x will kill the performance to around 2-3 FPS. Try various options for your graphics card and select the one which looks best without losing too many FPS.

Then make sure “Anti-Aliasing compability” is checked under the “Compability” tab and “Vanguard” is selected in the drop-down menu below.

4. Launch Risen and have fun with smoother edges and less aliasing

Now you can just launch Vanguard.exe (your Desktop shortcut may not be working any more) and enjoy the better graphics! I took some comparison screenshots for you to see which Anti-Aliasing setting has which effect and how big the performance losses are. Graphics settings:

Resolution: 1920×1080
Details: Everything “High”,  Depth of Field deactivated (looks ugly),
Config tweaks:  ViewRange set to 16000

1. Anti-Aliasing off, 55 FPS
   
2. Multisampling 8x, 35 FPS
   
3. Combined 16xS, 3 FPS
   

As you can see, there is not much difference in the image quality between Multisampling 8x and Combined 16xS, but the performance differences are huge. I recommend to use Multisampling and not Supersampling or Combined.