Windows News: The Living, Loving, Upgrading Edition

Love XP? Your Vote Counts!

Neowin.net reports that Microsoft is now logging calls from users requesting a life extension for Windows XP. If you want to see Windows XP live on, US users should call (866)234-6020 (see the article for more numbers). Remember, your call must concern extending the life of Windows XP. If you also have a different problem, call back later.

More "Live" to Love

The Microsoft TechNet Sysinternals website, home of some of the best Windows utilities in the world, now offers those utilities in an instant-on, ready-to-use format.

As ZDNet's Ed Bott reports, the new Sysinternals Live page lists all of the Sysinternals tools and enables you to run them from the command prompt using Universal Naming Convention (UNC) syntax. For example, to run BGInfo (which displays system configuration information on the Windows desktop), open a command prompt window and enter the command \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\bginfo.exe.

If you don't want to click Agree to agree to the license terms for the utility, add /accepteula to the command and it runs immediately:

If you prefer, you can also enter the command into a Windows Explorer address box:

To learn more about a specific Sysinternals utility, visit the Sysinternals website.

Catalyst 8.5 Gives ATI a Big Boost of HDTV Support, Performance, and Reliability

The Catalyst 8.5 driver set for ATI GPUs adds:

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  • Lots of new features for HDTV support
  • Support for Windows XP SP3
  • An improved uninstaller
  • Significant performance improvements for a number of DirectX 10 and DirectX 9-based games
  • Many bug fixes for both Windows XP and Vista users.

Download it here.