file operation n start menu

File operations

In Windows Vista, when moving or copying files, Windows Explorer displays the full source and destination path, size and number of items and the transfer speed in megabytes per second (MB/s). If a conflict or error is encountered, it does not terminate the copy or move operation. Rather, the file is skipped and the rest of the files processed. At the end of the operation, the errors are presented to the user with resolution options (if available). If two files have the same name, an option is available to rename the file; in previous versions of Windows, the only options were to either replace the destination file or cancel the process. The user can also choose to apply the same action to the further conflicts, if any.

When renaming a file (when extensions are being displayed), Explorer only highlights the filename without selecting the extension.

In case a file is in use or "locked" by another application, Windows Explorer informs users to close the application and retry the file operation. Also, a new interface IFileIsInUse is introduced into the API which developers can use to let other applications switch to the main window of the application that has the file open or simply close the file from the "File In Use" dialog. If the running application exposes these operations by means of the IFileIsInUse interface, Windows Explorer, upon encountering a locked file, allows the user to close the file or switch to the application from the dialog box itself.

Start menu

In Windows Vista, the Start Menu has undergone some significant changes. One of the chief additions is a Search box, where users may begin typing immediately. The contents of the Start menu itself are indexed and searchable, besides the global search index. If indexing is turned on, the search box returns results on-the-fly as users type into it. This allows the Start menu to act as a fast and powerful application launcher. The Start menu search also doubles as the Run command from previous versions of Windows; simply typing any command will execute it. The Run command can also be added separately to the right column in the Start menu.

Another major change to the Start menu in Windows Vista is that it no longer presents the All programs menu as a horizontally expanding cascading list which utilizes the entire screen space, but instead as a nested folder view with a fixed size. The list of submenus and single items appears over the left column contents with a Back button below it. Subfolders expand and collapse vertically within the list when single-clicked, in a tree-like fashion similar to Windows Explorer. Single items appear at the top and folders appear at the bottom. Hovering the mouse over a folder does not open it, the folder needs to be clicked. A limitation of the new Start menu is that subfolders inside the All Programs menu cannot be opened simply by searching or double clicking. Also, as more programs are installed, a vertical scroll bar appears between the two columns. A dynamically changing icon showing the user's display picture by default is present at the top of the right column. It changes as users hover over any other item to reflect that item's icon. The Power button's action is configurable through Power options in the Control Panel. Users can quickly lock their user account by pressing the LockLock button is clicked. button. Additional power and account related actions are listed in a sub-menu which appears when the small arrow next to the

Like Windows XP, Windows Vista allows users to switch back to the pre-Windows XP style "Classic" Start menu, however, the Search box is not present on the Classic Start menu.

power management in vista

Power management

In Windows Vista, a Sleep power state replaces Standby mode and is active by default. When chosen, this new "Sleep" mode saves information from the computer's memory to the hibernation file on disk, but instead of turning off the computer, it simultaneously enters Standby mode. After the specified amount of time, it shuts down (hibernates). If power is lost during Standby mode, the system resumes from the existing hibernate image on disk. Sleep mode, thus, offers the benefits of fast suspend and resume when in Standby mode and relatively faster resuming and reliability when resuming from hibernation instead of a complete reboot, in case of power loss.

Also, in earlier Windows versions, drivers sometimes prevented Windows from entering or reliably resuming from a power-saving state. This problem has been solved in Windows Vista. Applications can disable sleep idle timers when needed such as when burning discs or recording media. Away mode, which is not a power plan by itself but a feature, automatically turns off displays, video rendering and sound but keeps the computer working when the user is away from the computer. Optionally, it can also switch to sleep mode. Advanced power settings can be configured using the Control Panel. Power settings are also configurable through Group Policy.

The battery icon in the notification area has been improved to let the user more easily select a "Power plan". "Presentation Settings", through the Transient Multimon Manager (TMM), allow saving of display preferences when an external display such as a projector or external monitor is connected. The setting can be restored when the same device is re-connected later. Presentation settings are available only on mobile computers.

graphics

Graphics

Desktop Window Manager

The Desktop Window Manager is the new windowing system which handles the drawing of all content to the screen. Instead of windows drawing directly to the video card's memory buffers, contents are instead rendered to back-buffers (technically Direct3D surfaces), which are then arranged in the appropriate Z-order, then displayed to the user. This drawing method uses significantly more video memory than the traditional window-drawing method used in previous versions of Windows, which only required enough memory to contain the composite of all currently visible windows at any given time. With the entire contents of windows being stored in video memory, a user can move windows around the screen smoothly, without having "tearing" artifacts be visible while the operating system asks applications to redraw the newly visible parts of their windows. Other features new to Windows Vista such as live thumbnail window previews and Flip 3D are implemented through the DWM.

Users need to have a DirectX 9 capable video card to be able to use the Desktop Window Manager. Machines that can't use the DWM fall back to a "Basic" theme, and use screen drawing methods similar to Windows XP.

The Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is included in all editions of Windows Vista except the Starter edition.

DirectX

Windows Vista includes a new version of Direct3D, called Direct3D 10. It adds scheduling and memory virtualization capabilities to the graphics subsystem and foregoes the current DirectX practice of using "capability bits" to indicate which features are active on the current hardware. Instead, Direct3D 10 defines a minimum standard of hardware capabilities which must be supported for a display system to be "Direct3D 10 compatible". Microsoft's goal is to create an environment for developers and designers where they can be assured that the input they provide will be rendered in exactly the same fashion on all supported graphics cards. This has been a recurring problem with the DirectX 9 model, where different video cards have produced different results, thus requiring fixes keyed to specific cards to be produced by developers.

According to Microsoft, Direct3D 10 will be able to display some graphics up to 8 times faster than DirectX 9.0c because of the new improved Windows Display Driver Model. In addition, Direct3D 10 incorporates Microsoft's High Level Shader Language 4.0. However, Direct3D 10 is not backward compatible like prior versions of DirectX. The same game will not be compatible with both Direct3D 10 and Direct3D 9 or below. Games would need to be developed for both APIs, one version for Direct3D 9 and below if targeting Windows versions prior to Windows Vista and another version using Direct3D 10 if targeting only Windows Vista. Windows Vista does, however, contain a backward compatible Direct3D 9 implementation.

The Direct3D 10 API introduces unified vertex and pixel shaders. In addition, it also supports Geometry Shaders, which operate on entire geometric primitives (points, lines, and triangles), and can allow calculations based on adjacent primitives as well. The output of the geometry shader can be passed directly onwards to the rasterizer for interpolation and pixel shading, or written to a vertex buffer (known as 'stream out') to be fed back into the beginning of the pipeline.

D3D10 functionality requires WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) and new graphics hardware. The graphics hardware will be pre-emptively multithreaded, to allow multiple threads to use the GPU in turns. It will also provide paging of the graphics memory.

The version of Direct3D 9 available in Windows Vista is called Direct3D 9Ex. This modified API also uses the WDDM and allows Direct3D 9 applications to access some of the features available in Windows Vista such as cross-process shared surfaces, managed graphics memory, prioritization of resources, text anti-aliasing, advanced gamma functions, and device removal management.

securityu n safety

Security and safety

Beginning in early 2002 with Microsoft's announcement of their Trustworthy Computing initiative, a great deal of work has gone into making Windows Vista a more secure operating system than its predecessors. Internally, Microsoft adopted a "Secure Development Lifecycle"^[17] with the underlying ethos of, "Secure by design, secure by default, secure in deployment". New code for Windows Vista was developed with the SDL methodology, and all existing code was reviewed and refactored to improve security.

Some of the most significant and most discussed security features included with Windows Vista include User Account Control, Kernel Patch Protection, BitLocker Drive Encryption, Mandatory Integrity Control, Digital Rights Management, TCP/IP stack security improvements, Address Space Layout Randomization and the EFS and cryptography improvements. Additionally, Windows Vista includes a range of parental controls, which give owners of a computer a set of tools to limit what other accounts on a computer can do, and an improved Windows Firewall which supports both inbound and outbound packet filtering, IPv6 connection filtering and more detailed configurable rules and policies.

Management and administration

Windows Vista contains a range of new technologies and features that are intended to help network administrators and power users better manage their systems. Notable changes include a complete replacement of the "Windows Setup" process based on Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE), completely rewritten image-based deployment mechanisms, a significantly improved Task Scheduler, a revamped eventing infrastructure, GUI recovery tools, support for per-application Remote Desktop sessions, new diagnostic, health monitoring and system administration tools, and a range of new Group Policy settings covering many of the new features.