Chris123NT's Blog

As many of you know, I published an article a few years back telling everyone how to make WMP x64 the default in Windows Vista x64.  I had hoped at that time that Microsoft would have the sense to make the x64 player the default one in Windows 7.

Well not only did they fail to see why the 64 bit player should be the default, they also locked the user’s ability to switch the default player.  They locked the registry keys that the old Vista command altered.  Their excuse for this is that it “adds security” so that malicious code cannot modify the WMP play/enqueue commands.  Fine, I can buy that, but then alter the tool so that it can change those keys.  Well apparently this wasn’t on the timetable, and I decided to find a way around this, because after all, who wants to have to install TWO sets of codecs to watch stuff in Media Player (x86 player used by default) and also watch stuff in Media Center (which is x64).

So for those of you who recognize that the 64 bit media player SHOULD be the default in Windows 7, I have made a script with the help of Kristan Kenney that automates the entire process for you.  It unlocks the necessary registry keys, and then uses the old vista command to make the switch.  We have also included a script that allows you to switch back to the 32 bit player if you choose to do so.

So Microsoft, specifically the WMP team, you guys didn’t want to fix it, so we did it for you.  Now users can have some consistency in their 64 bit user experience.

NOTE: After changing the default Media Player to x64, remove the media player shortcut from the taskbar, start media player via the start menu and then re-pin it.  If you don’t do this you will see 2 WMP icons on your taskbar.

If anyone has any other questions or comments, either post in the comments section or contact me privately and I will answer them.

Download: Windows Media Player x64 Switch Script

So as we all know, Microsoft announced the pricing details for Windows 7 yesterday, and some people are already waving the Snow Leopard 29.99 upgrade price around.

ZDNet Blogger Ed Bott had taken the time to read the fine print on the Apple upgrade offer and has come to an interesting conclusion.  Windows 7 is CHEAPER than Snow Leopard for the majority of the market.

You see, you can only actually get Snow Leopard for that 29.99 price if you’ve bought an Intel based Mac AFTER October 2007.  Anything before that will cost you $169 and anything before 2006, well you’re SOL, no upgrade for you.  Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it?  At the end of the day the Microsoft offer is actually pretty darn good, at least it’s cheaper than Vista right?

Here’s a chart Ed made that breaks things down nicely:

Full Story: Ed Bott’s ZDNet Blog

So as we have all seen, the Windows 7 retail packaging is nice and simple, and easy to open.  What we haven’t see is the retail packaging for Anytime Upgrades if people choose to move up to a higher SKU of Windows 7.  Bryant over at AeroXP has posted some pictures of the packaging.

From AeroXP:

Just about everyone has seen the shots of the new Windows 7 retail packaging, but pictures of the new Anytime Upgrade packaging are much harder to come by. Nearly impossible to find are any current examples of the packaging besides press shots and renders, so having said that, here are a few good hands-on shots I managed to take.

(There’s nothing relevant inside the boxes themselves; just a fake key and a CD of Visio inside the retail box of which I was also taking some pictures.)

Have at it:

Source: AeroXperience

So today Brandon Leblanc over at the Windows Team Blog has officially revealed the packaging for Windows 7.  It looks exactly like the images that have been floating around for a while now, but the post also outlines how this new design is sleeker, lighter and easier to open.

From the Windows Team Blog:

Simple, Clean and Easy To Open…

We approached the packaging for Windows 7 the same way we approached the product – by listening to what our customers told us they wanted: make it a simple clean design, easy to open, and reduce waste.

Simple Design

Customers told us they liked the big bold Windows logo and how it clearly communicates that it’s Windows 7. They like larger typefaces to make it easy to read and they like background colors for each edition to make it easier to differentiate between Windows 7 Home Premium all the way to Windows 7 Ultimate. In their own words, the “clean” design gives off a “fresh” feel.

Make It Easy To Open

We’ve reduced the number of elements in the package down to three: the plastic case, the paper sleeve, and a simple Getting Started Guide. The plastic case opens easily like a standard DVD case and it will have a single easy-to-remove seal at the top – And that’s it!

Reduce Waste

The plastic case protecting the Windows 7 disk is lighter and is recyclable. The packaging itself has a 37% weight reduction and a 50% improvement on it’s econometrics score over the predecessor.

Essentially, this packaging is what customers told us they were most interested in picking up to learn more about Windows 7. We hope you do the same.

Look for the new Windows 7 packaging to hit this fall!

View: Original Post @ Windows Team Blog

So a reader e-mailed me a link to this new blog that has springed up.  It has a very interesting name.  The author calls it “Windows 7 Nightmares”.  The point he is trying to drive with this blog is how and why the Windows 7 Beta has been mis-managed and goes into some detail about how Microsoft is managing things currently.  Anyway I suggest you all read it if you want to know what’s going on.

As for who the author is, I have no Idea, but whoever it is, they definitely know what they’re talking about because their information is accurate.

Read: Windows 7 Nightmares

So with the recent leaks of various Windows 7 builds leaking in VHD form, I thought it would be a good time to dust off my guide writing skills and do one to inform everyone just how easy it is to make an install DVD out of your freshly downloaded VHD of Windows 7.

So firstly I should answer the million dollar question that some of you may have.  What is a VHD?  Well to put it simply, a VHD is the image file format used by Microsoft VirtualPC and Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technologies.  Some of these builds leak in these forms because internally Microsoft does a lot of their staging/testing in Hyper-V environments.  One cool thing to note, is that these images are already staged, so all we have to do is capture the contents to a WIM file.

What you will need to follow this guide:

• Windows 7 Ultimate (we’re using the built in VHD mount utility)
• Windows 7 AIK RC
• UltraISO (Or another Utility to edit ISO Files)
• Windows 7 ISO (Any build 7100 or newer will work)

So, the first thing you need to do is obviously make sure you have your VHD downloaded to the desired location. Once you have done that, do the following:

1. Go to start and type compmgmt.msc and press enter.
2. Click on “Disk Management”
3. Go to the Action Menu and click “Attach VHD”
4. Browse to the location of your VHD, select it and click OK.
5. It will install a drive to your system, take note of the drive letter, you will need this later.
6. Install the Windows AIK and take note of the installation path.
7. Now start an instance of command prompt as administrator.
8. Navigate to X:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86 or X:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64 depending on your architecture. (X being the drive you installed the AIK to)
9. now type imagex.exe /compress maximum /flags “Ultimate” /capture L: D:\install.wim “Windows 7 Ultimate”
10. Let that process run (should take a few minutes) and you will have your WIM.

Now we need to put this shiny new WIM into an ISO.  For this do the following:

1. Open your ISO in UltraISO (make sure your ISO is the same architecture as what you downloaded)
2. navigate to the sources folder and delete install.wim
3. Drag your new install.wim into the sources folder.
4. Save the ISO with a new name.
5. Burn the ISO and install.

And that’s it, using the above method you can quickly convert a VHD into a WIM and insert it into an ISO and install it like any normal build of Windows.  The above can be accomplished in under 10 minutes, so it’s a pretty quick process as well.

You may recall a couple of months ago I made a post outlining the fact that Internet Explorer 8 is a removable component in Windows 7.  What I didn’t mention though, is that there are many other components that can be removed by the user.  Microsoft listened to user feedback, and the users made it clear that they wanted more control over the in box applications.  They wanted to be able to remove and add things at will, as needed.  Users can add/remove the following components:

•   Windows Media Player
•   Windows Media Center
•   Windows DVD Maker
•   Internet Explorer 8
•   Windows Search
•   Handwriting Recognition
•   Windows Gadget Platform
•   Fax and Scan
•   XPS Viewer and Services

To turn features on or off you go to the Control Panel, open the Programs and Features applet, and select the link ‘Turn Windows features on or off’.  Here you will see all of the features you have control over.

One other thing I want to post for your viewing pleasure, is a guide by Infoworld blogger J. Peter Bruzzese.  You may also remember him as the author of the book “Tricks of the Microsoft Windows Vista Masters”.  He has prepared this free ClipStart guide to quickly outline some of the new things in Windows 7 that you may or may not already be aware of.

View: Windows 7 ClipStart Guide

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.