Chris123NT's Blog

So yeah, I’ve moved this site to a new server.  More precisely, MY OWN server.  I have done this to better control reliability and uptime, and no longer have to worry about outside factors causing unnecessary downtime of this site.

So If you can see this, welcome!

If you see any issues, please do not hesitate to contact me, and I will get them fixed.  New server so there might be a few little hiccups here and there.

So I’ve actually been meaning to write this for a while because it’s been annoying the hell out of me.  I have seen people saying that 7105 and 7106 of Windows 7 are RC builds and the RC will be > 7100.  Well all I can say to those people is that you’re wrong, you fail, and you need to learn how the development process works inside Redmond before you go spouting about a build being an RC ESCROW or now.

There’s also the other camp that seems to think that Microsoft is strictly working on RC and have not let winmain continue building towards RTM.  Again, learn how the process works before you talk.

Ok so now I will attempt to explain all of this so you guys can walk away from reading this post knowing how it works in Sinofsky’s lair.

Basically, after build 7076 the tree was split.  7077 was compiled as an RC ESCROW build (winmain_win7rc) and the winmain lab bumped its build number up to 7105.  7077 and on are code frozen, meaning no feature changes will occur in that branch (the RC branch.  This allows them to work out the bugs to deliver a high quality RC release.

Any code changes internally are checked into winmain (7105 and higher at this point).  So from that standpoint you could say that codewise future 71xx.winmain builds are newer than the RC will be as those builds are still receiving new check-ins from the various fbl labs.

So for those who are wondering I will answer the question.  7105 or higher are NOT RC builds, but rather winmain builds pushing towards RTM.  7077, 7078, 7079, 7080 etc… are all RC ESCROW builds.  When the RC has passed testing, they will compile the final RC build as 7100.

Hope this clears up some of the confusion.  As usual if you have any questions feel free to ask!

UPDATE: The current situation has been clarified a bit to me. (Thanks to Tom W for this).  Build 7106, which leaked the other day in chinese, is in fact 7076 with a revved up build number.  So currently 7077 is the newest from a code perspective as 7106 does not contain the new visual style elements (updated taskbar buttons etc…) that are in 7077.  So for all of you who have 7077, stick with it and don’t bother with 7106, it’s not worth the hassle of attempting to translate it.  I really only did it myself to see if it was even possible.  7077 is re-installing on my laptop as I write this.

Well folks, here we are again, another leak of Windows 7.  This time we have build 7057.winmain.090305-2000.  This build is a mere 6 days old as of this writing and brings forth a few changes since build 7048.  I will outline these changes here as well as over a few other things.

UAC Issue

As you all know, previous builds of Windows 7 allowed you to change the level of UAC without ever receiving a prompt from the system.  This could potentially allow a piece of malware to turn off UAC on your system and open it up to a much more lethal attack.  This issue was not fixed in 7048 which surprised me, but it IS fixed in 7057.  Hooray!

New Logon Screen

Upon first boot of this build you will notice the most obvious change over 7048.  The logon screen is new.  At first when I saw the screenshot I didn’t think I liked it, but after seeing it running it is pretty nice, although it might be a little too bright in some areas.  See the screenshot below to have a look at the logon screen:

New Wallpapers

This build contains some new wallpapers over 7048.  They seem to be centered around the “Characters” theme which is clearly geared towards little kids.  Can’t say I’ll be using these but I’m sure they will make the 4 year old from the Windows Live commercials very happy.  See screenshot below to see new wallpapers:

New User Pictures

This build features all new user pictures to be used for your account on the system.  Some of these are quite nice and there are more than double the number that were present in Vista and previous builds of Windows 7.  See the screenshot below:

Expiration Date Change

This build, in preparation for the RC, has an expiration date which is set to March 1, 2010.  I have already seen people reading into this WAY too much stating that this must mean Microsoft won’t release Windows 7 until early 2010.  I can assure you all that this expiration date is merely there to give people ample time to get retail bits before their RC  build expires.

Startup Bug, Desktop.ini Opens in Notepad on Every Boot – FIX

This is an odd bug, mostly due to the fact that some instances of desktop.ini are visible and not set to system and hidden.  Fortunately the fix for this is quite easy:

1. Navigate to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
2. Delete desktop.ini
3. Navigate to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
4. Delete desktop.ini if present.

That pretty much covers it, a small overview of the changes in 7057.  Any questions or comments feel free to ask or discuss it in the comments.

So I came across THIS article today that pretty much states that Opera’s CEO is not happy with Microsoft making Internet Explorer 8 a removable component in Windows 7.  So that got me to thinking, what exactly DOES this guy want?  And then it hit me.  He wants to see Microsoft integrate his browser, and possibly others into Windows.

I can say right now that the above would NEVER happen.  Microsoft would rather withdraw from the EU market then include competitor’s products in Windows.  And there are many valid reasons for this, a couple of which I will outline below:

Support Issues

This is perhaps the single biggest issue.  The fact is, Microsoft has a responsibility to support everything that they include in box with Windows.  If Microsoft were to box Opera or any other browser with Windows, and said browser causes crashes or other unforseen issues, users will hold MICROSOFT responsible because it “came with Windows, so it must be Microsoft’s fault”.  The only way around this would be to sub out the support to the browser developers, but that is complex and puts an unfair burden on Microsoft because they will still have to field calls from users who don’t know any better.

Confusion

This point could be argued but I believe that if the OS were to come pre-boxed with multiple web browsers, users would become confused.  In my experiences in the field most users access the internet with “the blue e”.  No, I’m not making that up, people actually have said that to me.  If there are more choices one of two things could happen.  Either people will continue to use IE, or some may become confused and ask why there is more than one Internet on their computer (yes they will probably ask it like that too).

The bottom line though, is that the reasons for not integrating competing browsers into Internet explorer are plentiful and range the whole spectrum, from technical issues right down to legality and support issues.  I would recommend that competing browser companies bide their time and accept that IE is removable as a good thing.  Most users will switch away from IE once they see how bad IE8 is and just how badly it breaks the web.  This will be a good thing for people like Mozilla, Google, and hey, maybe some people will use Opera too.

Anyway just wanted to write a little blurb about this.  Feel free to comment with your opinions and/or questions.

I couldn’t believe this when I saw it, but it’s true.  Internet Explorer 8 is fully removable in Windows 7 build 7048.  I believe this fully squashes the case that the EU has against Microsoft?

As you can see in the above screenshot there is a new entry for Internet Explorer 8, if you uncheck it, IE8 will be removed from the operating system.  Want proof?  Try it for yourself:

Here are some instructions courtesy of Bryant

1. Enter the Control Panel and look at “All Control Panel Options”
2. Click “Programs and Features”
3. In the left sidebar, click “Turn Windows Features On or Off” (you will be thrown a UAC prompt if you elevated UAC)
4. Wait for the list to load.
5. Look for Internet Explorer 8 in the list and uncheck it.
6. Click OK. You will see a prompt notifying you of a reboot.
7. The machine will reboot once, configure things, and reboot again.

As you can see above, currently it just deletes iexplore.exe, which I hope will be revised in future builds, but all references to IE are removed from the OS (see second shot), so my bet is that deleting these files would not harm anything, but then again I could be wrong.

So there you have it, step in the right direction for Microsoft?  And a quick solution to the EU’s argument against them?  Time will tell.

News has come down the grapevine that Microsoft have already branched off winmain and started compiling RC1 branch builds, no doubt preparing for the public release of Windows 7 RC.  This tells me that Microsoft is far ahead of schedule with Windows 7 development and are going full speed ahead to get this release polished up and done.

This news has come to us in the form of a build tag which sports the typical naming scheme for milestone branch builds.  7048.winmain_win7rc1.090211-1625 is the tag.  As you can see, this build was compiled on February 11th 2009 at 4:25 PM.  On one hand it is good to see Microsoft moving this quickly with the development of Windows 7, but on the other it is a little concerning.  Microsoft have only officially released one build (7000) which went to beta testers and the public alike.  One build is not enough to gather enough feedback to move ahead this quickly IMO.  Windows is a far more complex piece of software than Office and I hope Mr. Sinofsky can learn that before this beta cycle is over.

Beta testers (and the public) will likely see RC1 within the next month or two and then likely will not see anything until Microsoft declare Windows 7 to be RTM, thus making the technical beta utterly USELESS.  I am a part of the Windows 7 beta and I am not pleased with what I am seeing.  There is no incentive to testing anymore, anything we get the public gets, so can someone remind me why I’m on the techbeta?  We have gotten no new builds, our feedback is not being taken seriously, etc…  Granted they have the public testing and they are getting BOATLOADS of SQM data, but that simply isn’t enough.  That won’t fix rogue usability issues, or odd app incompatibility issues, or driver issues etc…  So if anyone from the beta team reads this, please rethink your strategy and think about releasing some more builds for testing.  It can’t hurt, it can only help the end product.

So anyway, I know I drifted off into a bit of a rant but I feel the above needed to be said, and hopefully this feedback is taken seriously by the Windows team (hey there’s a chance, it’s not like we’re dealing with the Windows Live team, those people don’t know the meaning of the word feedback).

Source: Geeksmack

Discuss: Geeksmack Forums

So as you all know by now, Windows 7 build 7022 has made it’s way onto the internet yesterday.  Unfortunately this build only leaked in the 32 bit flavor but it still gives us some insight into the direction that Windows 7 is going.  The next official build from Microsoft will likely be RC1, so thankfully we have these “unofficial” builds to show us the progress in between.  I have to say I am impressed with what I see in 7022.  The changes may be small, but I think they are little details that just make the overall experience a whole lot better.

The first thing you will notice about 7022 is the speed of the install process.  The build installed about 5 minutes faster than 7000 did (15 minutes on 7022, 20 on 7000).  Upon first boot you will also notice that Windows does not ask you to create a Homegroup.  This is because it actually creates one for you, and you can go in and tweak the settings on your own later.

Read the full overview after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Well it looks like the screams over the past week or so have finally been heard, and more importantly, LISTENED TO.  Steven Sinofsky has made a post on the E7 blog outlining that they plan to address the concerns with 7’s UAC and make changes to make the system much more secure.  Changing the UAC level will now prompt you no matter what level you have UAC on.

I definitely applaud the Windows 7 team for finally listening, although I have a funny feeling the driving force behind this change was Steven himself along with the backlash that John received when he posted this morning that they weren’t going to change the system.

Here is the whole post from the E7 blog quoted for your reading pleasure:

When we started the “E7” blog we were both excited and also a bit uneasy. The excitement is obvious. The unease is because at some point we knew we would mess up. We weren’t sure if we would mess up because we were blogging about a poorly designed feature or mess up because we were blogging poorly about a well-designed feature. To some it appears as though with the topic of UAC we’ve managed to do both. Our dialog is at that point where many do not feel listened to and also many feel various viewpoints are not well-informed. That’s not the dialog we set out to have and we’re going to do our best to improve.

This post is an attempt to get both the blog right and the feature right. We don’t like where we are in terms of how folks are feeling and we don’t feel good – Windows 7 is too much fun and folks are having too much fun for us to be having the dialog we’re having. We hope this post allows us to get back to having fun!

To start we’ll just show representative comments from the spectrum of feedback. We’ll then talk about the changes we’re making and also make sure we’re all on the same page regarding how we move forward. In terms of comments we’ve heard the following:

@sroussey says:

You have 95% of the people out there think you got it wrong, even if they are the ones that got it wrong. The problem is that they are the one’s that buy and recommend your product. So do you give them a false sense of increased security by implementing the change (not unlike security by obscurity) and making them happy, or do you just fortify the real security boundaries?

And @Thack says:

Jon,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.  I understand your points.

Now, I want add my voice to the call for one very simple change:

Treat the UAC prompting level as a special case, such that ANY change to it, whether from the user or a program, generates a UAC prompt, regardless of the type of account the user has, and regardless of the current prompting level.

That is all we are asking.  No other changes.  Leave the default level as it is, and keep UAC as it is.  We’re just talking about the very specific case of CHANGES to the UAC prompting level.

It will NOT be a big nuisance – most people only ever change the UAC level once (if at all).

Despite your assurances, I REALLY WANT TO KNOW if anything tries to alter the UAC prompting level.

The fact that nobody has yet demonstrated how the putative malware can get into your machine is NO argument.  Somebody WILL get past those other boundaries eventually.

Even if you aren’t convinced by my argument, then the PR argument must be a no-brainer for Microsoft.

PLEASE, Jon, it’s just a small change that will gain a LOT of user confidence and a LOT of good PR.

Thack

With this feedback and a lot more we are going to deliver two changes to the Release Candidate that we’ll all see. First, the UAC control panel will run in a high integrityprocess, which requires elevation. That was already in the works before this discussion and doing this prevents all the mechanics around SendKeys and the like from working. Second, changing the level of the UAC will also prompt for confirmation.

@mdaria510 says:

Sometimes, inconsistency with your own ideals is a good thing. Make an exception, if only to put people’s fears to rest.

That sums up where we are heading. The first change was a bug fix and we actually have a couple of others similar to that—this is a beta still, even if many of us are running it full time. The second change is due directly to the feedback we’re seeing. This “inconsistency” in the model is exactly the path we’re taking. The way we‘re going to think about this that the UAC setting is something like a password, and to change your password you need to enter your old password.

The feedback is that UAC is special, because it can be used to disable silently future warnings if that change is not elevated and so to change the UAC setting an elevation will be required.  To the points in the comments, we also don’t want to create a sense or expectation of security that is not there—you should still not download code and run it unless you trust the source. HTML, EXE, VBS, BAT, CMD and more are all code and all have the potential to alter the environment (user settings, user files) running as a standard user or an administrator. We’re focused on helping people make sure that code doesn’t get on the machine without consent and many third party tools can help more as well. We want people to be comfortable with the new UAC control and the new default setting, so we’ll make the changes outlined above as the feedback has been clear.

While we’re discussing this we want to make sure we’re all on the same page going forward in terms of how we will evaluate the security of Windows 7. Aside from the UAC setting, the discussion of the vulnerability aspects of the Windows 7 Beta  have each started with getting code on the machine, which the mechanisms of Windows have prevented in the cases shown. We have also heard of security concerns that involve multiple steps to demonstrate a potential exploit. It is important to look at the first step—if the first step is “first get code running on the machine” then nothing after that is material, whether it is changing settings or anything else.  We will treat very seriously the ability to get code on a machine and run without consent. As Jon’s post highlighted briefly, the work in Windows 7 is about the increased protections in place to secure your PC from acquiring and running code without your consent, and of course we continue to make sure Windows code is secure from both tampering or circumventing the protections in the system.

We want to reiterate the security of the system overall. Windows 7 is SD3+C and is designed to be more secure that Vista—that’s our priority. None of us want to have Windows 7 be perceived as being less secure than Vista in any way, because our design point is to make sure it is more secure that Windows Vista, by default.

We said we thought we were bound to make a mistake in the process of designing and blogging about Windows 7. We want to continue the dialog and hopefully everyone recognizes that engineering, perhaps especially engineering Windows 7, is sometimes going to be a lively discussion with a broad spectrum of viewpoints expressed. We don’t want the discussion to stop being so lively or the viewpoints to stop being expressed, but we do want the chance to learn and to be honest about what we learned and hope for the same in return. This blog has almost been like building an extra product for us, and we’re having a fantastic experience. Let’s all get back to work and to the dialog about Engineering Windows 7. And of course most importantly, we will continue to hear all points of view and share our point of view and work together to deliver a Windows 7 product that we can all feel good about.

–Jon and Steven

 

Source: E7 Blog

Here is a little clearer description of the Windows 7 SKU’s for those who didn’t quite understand what was posted yesterday. Now, there is only 3 “mainstream” editions of Windows 7; Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, and Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise. Below is a description of each edition, quoting Ed Bott from ZDNet:

Windows 7 Home Premium – This is the successor to Windows Vista Home Premium, and Microsoft expects it to be the most common edition sold, the standard for virtually all consumer PCs. It includes the Aero interface with its Windows 7 enhancements, plus Windows Media Center, DVD playback support, and multi-touch and handwriting features. I’m also told (but can’t yet confirm) that image-based backup is included in this edition for the first time.

Windows 7 Professional – This edition drops the Business label used in Windows Vista and goes back to the old XP-era name, presumably to give XP users more comfort in their upgrade decision. Unlike Vista Business, this edition contains all features in the Home Premium edition, including Media Center. For the extra cost, you get more traditional business features like the ability to join a Windows domain, group policy based management tools, Remote Desktop host capabilities, network-based backup features, and support for the Encrypting file system.

Windows 7 Ultimate/Enterprise – In the retail channel, this edition will be called Ultimate; for corporate customers with a Select license agreement, it will be called Enterprise. In either case, the feature set includes everything in Professional edition plus support for BitLocker whole-drive encryption (and the new BitLocker To Go feature, which adds high-grade encryption to removable media). This edition also includes all supported language packs (those cost extra for other editions) and the capability to boot from a VHD.

Source: ZDNet

So today information has emerged about the final skus for Windows 7.  One thing I find particularly surprising is that all of the SKU’s Home Premium and higher come with Media Center in box.  I think this is a great move on Microsoft’s part and simplifies the SKU feature set.  Customers can now buy Pro and get most of the features.  You will only need Ultimate if you have a need for the bitlocker related features or the VHD mounting feature.

The SKU’s are as follows according to Neowin:

Windows 7 Starter
Market: Emerging markets, with new PCs only
Key features: Enhanced taskbar, Jump Lists, Windows Media Player, Backup and Restore, Action Center, Device Stage, Play To, Fax and Scan, basic games
What’s missing: Aero Glass, many Aero desktop enhancements, Windows Touch, Media Center, Live thumbnail previews, Home Group creation

Windows 7 Home Premium
Market: Mainstream retail market
Key features: Aero Glass, Aero Background, Windows Touch, Home Group creation, Media Center, DVD playback and authoring, premium games
What’s missing: Domain join, Remote Desktop host, advanced backup, EFS, Mobility Center, Offline Folders

Windows 7 Professional (superset of Home)
Market: Mainstream retail market
Key features: Domain join, Remote Desktop host, location aware printing, EFS, Mobility Center, Presentation Mode, Offline Folders, Media Center
What’s missing: BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, Direct Access, Branche Cache, MUI language packs, boot from VHD

Windows 7 Enterprise
Market: Volume-license business customers only
Key features: BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, Direct Access, Branche Cache, MUI language packs, boot from VHD
What’s missing: Retail licensing

Windows 7 Ultimate
Market: Retail market, limited availability
Key features: BitLocker, BitLocker To Go, AppLocker, Direct Access, Branche Cache, MUI language packs, boot from VHD
What’s missing: Volume licensing

There will be a Home Basic edition, but it will only be released to emerging markets. "We know emerging markets have unique needs and we will offer Windows 7 Home Basic, only in emerging markets, for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC", said Windows General Manager Mike Ybarra. Paul Thurrot is reporting that Home Basic will lack "Aero Glass, Live Thumbnail Previews, Internet Connection Sharing, and a few other goodies."

I am glad that Home basic will be restricted to emerging markets.  There was just too much confusion with Vista having 2 home editions and some will argue that Home Basic is not really Vista (which I happen to agree with).  Now there will be two mainstream versions avalable.  Home and Pro, and if users choose they will be able to get Ultimate if they have a need for the higher feature set.

What are your thoughts on this new SKU set?  Do you think it will simplify things for the consumer and the OEM PC buyer?  Post your thoughts, I’m curious to see what people think of this.