Weekly Wrap-Up: July 18-24, 2010

Follow along as I briefly discuss important news in the Microsoft world in this Weekly Wrap-Up for the week of July 18-24, 2010.

A Look at Microsoft Security Essentials vNext Beta and the Changes That Accompany It

For those who know me, and probably for those who don’t, know I’m a big fan of Microsoft Security Essentials. I’ve highly recommended it to friends and family due to that MSE seems to be the simplest and most efficient Anti-Virus software around.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Beta Screenshots

Over the past week I’ve been installing the Windows 7 SP1 Beta on several of my PCs. I finally was able to grab some screenshots a couple days ago and thought I would share them. So far, my testing has included several different Windows 7 PCs, with one Windows Server 2008 R2 machine.

Activating Windows 7 If You Didn’t Provide a Product Key During Install

Windows 7 gives users the option of not providing a product key during the installation (similar to Windows Vista). They can easily skip the screen that asks for the product key and continue.

Adios Windows 2000 and XP (SP2), It Was Fun While It Lasted

Today marks the end of support for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and Windows 2000 (all versions), which means if you’re running one of these editions of Windows, be sure to update to a later version.

Weekly Wrap-Up #5 (July 4-10, 2010)

I was away this week so I wasn’t able to update the blog over the past week. As I’m now back to my normal schedule, I should be updating it more regularly. In any event, enjoy this weeks Weekly Wrap-Up. (P.S. Devs may be getting WP7 devices next week!)

How to Change the Default Startup Location for Windows Explorer in Windows 7

One of the new changes to Windows 7 was the addition of Libraries. As such, Microsoft has hopes that users will start to use these more and more often to “link” common files and folders from several locations on their current hard drive and on external/network drives.

New Version of Microsoft Security Essentials Now Available

You may have woken up this morning to find that your current version of Microsoft Security Essentials was updated, or at least requires an update update. If so, don’t be alarmed.

Microsoft Security Essentials Up-Close

Microsoft Security Essentials is Microsoft’s free alternative to Norton Utilities, or McAfee anti-virus. Along with that, it serves as true competition for other competing free AV programs already available,

Yet another Bing’s Best Theme for Windows 7

Not sure exactly when this was released, but the next Bing’s Best theme, not unwittingly called Bing’s Best 3, is now available from the Microsoft Personalization Gallery. I wrote about the Bing’s Best 2 a while back when Microsoft announced that, plus there’s also, obviously, Best of Bing 1.

Download Windows 7 Documentation (i.e. Manual) from Microsoft

Some of you may already know this, but for those who don’t, you can download the Windows 7 Documentation via Microsoft’s Download Center. The documentation spans 140 pages and is available either as a PDF or XPS document format.

My Top 10 Reasons why Microsoft is now doing a great job (Not that they weren’t before)

Yesterday, Ed Bott posted a great article over at ZDNet (It’s official: Microsoft is out of the Vista doghouse) about how Microsoft has lately been reclaiming its customer satisfaction that it may have lost from Vista.

Windows Live Update requires shutting down 25 programs?

Really? I went to update my Windows Live Essentials Suite and as is usual it required me to close down IE8 and Outlook. Okay, no problem, but wait, that wasn’t it. For some bizarre reason it required me to close down 22 other programs before the install could continue.

End of Support for Windows 2000, XP SP2, and Vista RTM

Microsoft is ending support for some of its operating systems this year. Microsoft already ended support for Vista RTM on April 13, 2010. For those still using Windows Vista without SP1 or later will not be able to get further updates on their computer. To continue getting updates via Windows Update, users should simply download Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.

Community Technology Preview release of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone‏

Somehow I missed this. An E-mail I received from Microsoft last week regarding the refresh of the Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone (CTP):

Windows Home Server “Vail” Beta Now Available from Microsoft

If you’re interested in trying out the next version of Microsoft Windows Home Server (Codenamed “Vail”) you can hop on over to the Microsoft Connect web site to sign up to test it. Here’s more from the official Windows Blog:

Windows 7 Home Premium Uses Only 6.40GB

As I’m currently tinkering with the service pack 1 pre-beta for Windows 7, I installed Windows 7 Home Premium into a Virtual Machine. After installing it, I looked at the size that Windows 7 actually took up, interestingly Windows 7 Home Premium only uses 6.40GB of hard drive space to install. Amazing? Sort of. This just goes to show that Windows 7 is truly the big improvement that we’ve all come to realize over time. So, without further ado, here’s a screenshot as proof:

 

 

I’ve noticed this before, but wanted to document this to everyone to show how efficient Windows 7 really is. How much space does Windows XP take up? Well, it depends. The RTM for Windows XP, which shipped in 2001, was about 1.5GB. Given the biggest hard drives back then were around 80 GB. Doing the match, Windows XP took up around 1.875% of the biggest hard drives in 2001. Step forward nine years and you find that Windows 7, after doing the math, only takes up 0.625%. Not too shabby for nine years of time.

 

A couple notes here, the 6.40 GB size does not include SP1 pre-beta, it’s just the RTM of Windows 7 Home Premium. Also, I installed 32-bit Windows 7, as I’m still certain that VMWare does not support 64-bit Operating Systems. If I’m mistaken on that one, you can let me know…

 

To make a short story even shorter, it’s just great that Windows 7 takes up so little hard drive space, I think. This gives users the ability to, of course, install more “stuff” onto their computer. Doesn’t Windows 7 just make everyone’s life easier? :)

 

del.icio.us Tags: Windows 7 Home Premium,Windows 7,Microsoft,Tinkering With Windows,Windows,Service Pack,Small,Tech,Blog

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 – A Little Info

It’s here, it’s now…well, sort of. The official news is that Windows 7 SP1 has leaked and is now available through the nets…it’s build 6.1.7601.16537. It’s an alpha release, so obviously this is not something you want to be installing on a work/production machine. However, in order to further review this update I’m installing it as we speak in a Virtual Machine, I’ll also install it on one of my test PCs. I’ll let you know what I find, if anything, later today or tomorrow.

 

Also of note is although this release doesn’t offer too many significant changes for Windows 7, it will offer some significant (sort of) changes for Windows Server 2008 R2…Which I’ll be looking into as soon as I put the two together (i.e. WS 2008 R2 + SP1). I’ll let you know what I find.

I’m currently also reading the documentation for this release (there’s actually quite a bit) and will hopefully get a little more information from there. Interesting stuff so far.

 

If I’m correct in remembering this, Service Pack 1 should be released about one year after Windows 7’s official release. That is, around October 22, 2010. Unlike some service packs in the past (Windows XP SP2 anyone?) this release won’t necessarily add new “features,” instead, it will fix any problems and include old security updates for Windows 7. In essence, it will be what a service pack is supposed to be.

 

del.icio.us Tags: windows 7,microsoft,service pack,windows 7 service pack 1,beta,downloads,tinkering with windows

Microsoft Security Updates: April 2010

Every month I’d like to publish a post in which describes the security bulletins, to some degree, that Microsoft has released for that specific month. It’s funny, though, that this month, the first month I start, Microsoft issues several security bulletins…11 to be exact. If you want to read more about them, feel free to check out the official site for the security bulletins. Click on the Executive Summary to see a brief overview of each bulletin.

 

 

First, you may notice that if you’re using Windows 7 as your operating system, only 2 out of the 11 security bulletins are actually critical while one other is considered to be moderate. This just shows that keeping an up-to-date system, you should be able to avoid certain security vulnerabilities, in this case eight vulnerabilities. (By the way, if you’re still on ole trusty XP, you’ll have to deal with 10 out of 11 updates, in which four are critical, three are important and one is moderate.)

 

Here’s a quick overview of the exploits:

 

Bulletin	Title	Severity Rating
MS10-019	Vulnerabilities in Windows Could Allow Remote Code Execution (98210)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-020	Vulnerabilities in SMB Client Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980232)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-025	Vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Media Services Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980858)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-026	Vulnerability in Microsoft MPEG Layer-3 Codecs Could Allow Remote Code Execution (977816)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-027	Vulnerability in Windows Media Player Could Allow Remote Code Execution (979402)	Critical Remote Code Execution
MS10-021	Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (979683)	Important Elevation of Privilege
MS10-022	Vulnerability in VBScript Could Allow Remote Code Execution (981169)	Important Remote Code Execution
MS10-023	Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Publisher Could Allow Remote Code Execution (981160)	Important Remote Code Execution
MS10-024	Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange and Windows SMTP Service Could Allow Denial of Service (981832)	Important Denial of Service
MS10-028	Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Visio Could Allow Remote Code Execution (980094)	Important Remote Code Execution
MS10-029	Vulnerabilities in Windows ISATAP Component Could Allow Spoofing (978338)	Moderate Spoofing

 

As always, you should make sure to have automatic updates enabled for Windows. Once again, I’d like to point out that although this month looks bad, if you have a recent version of Windows, such as Windows 7, you will not be as affected as an older version, such as Windows XP. Hence, one of the reasons to upgrade to Windows 7.

 

If anyone has any comments or suggestions feel free to send them to me at tinkeringwithwindows at live dot com.

 

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft Windows,Windows 7,Windows XP,Windows Update,Security Bulletins,Security,Office,Maintenance,Update

Don’t Forget: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Also Launches Today

With all the hoopla going around about Microsoft KIN, it seems many people forgot about another product being released today: Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. If you are an MSDN subscriber, feel free to take advantage of downloading it for free. Plus, if you’re a student, you can also obtain Visual Studio 2010 via DreamSpark (for free!), thanks goes out to Paul Thurrott on this one (and Davor P. who tipped him off to it.)

 

I’ve been using Visual Studio 2010 since the initial public beta and have been very impressed with it. Programming just seems so much easier and more fluid with 2010. However, if you remember the good ole days of GWBASIC, then you may not be so happy about an easier programming interface … although I think most of us will enjoy the nice update. I may or may not place some type of review of Visual Studio 2010 on this site. It really depends upon my time schedule and whether I think it’s truly that important to review. After-all, it is just a developer program, right? :)

 

I’m currently downloading it from DreamSpark, as I’m one of those college students. If you don’t have MSDN or don’t qualify for DreamSpark (not sure if MSDNAA has it yet or not, but they should soon, I’ll check later on that), you can always download Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition. (Also, thanks goes to Paul Thurrott and David S. on this one as well.)

 

del.icio.us Tags: Microsoft,Visual Studio 2010,Free,DreamSpark,Paul Thurrott,WinSuperSite,MSDN,MSDNAA,Tinkering with Windows