In order to properly get everyone up to speed, first I must take you back to 2003, back to when Microsoft was all about the “Longhorn Vision” and what it will mean for the end user.  Microsoft was promising everyone an amazing world where you would be able to accomplish almost anything with this amazing new operating system.  The demos were absolutely breathtaking, but unfortunately, most of these demos were nothing more than smoke and mirrors.  In reality, the physical code that was Longhorn, was an absolute train wreck.  The builds were horribly unstable, and it looked as if the vision would come crashing down like a house of cards, and in August of 2004 it did just that.  Microsoft set off to reset the codebase and restart Longhorn from scratch.  Normally this wouldn’t have been so bad, except they decided to remove many of the promised features, and 2 years later they delivered Vista, a half baked release and something that didn’t even come close to the original Longhorn that we all wanted to see.  Vista was plagued by driver issues, performance issues, and stability issues.  It got off to a very bad start with the press literally throwing it under the bus, and to this day the mere mention of Vista in a crowd makes people cringe.  Granted, a lot of the issues were fixed in SP1, but not enough to make people want to switch, many bugs that were reported during the beta still remain in Vista to this day.

With Windows 7, Microsoft realized it needed to change things radically.  Jim Allchin had retired from his post as chief of the platforms division, and Microsoft brought in Steven Sinofsky under the new title “Vice President of Windows and Windows Live.”  Steven has a reputation of driving releases that are on target, meet deadlines, and most importantly, deliver results.  Steven’s first order of business was to re-organize the whole Windows division in order to streamline the development process and ensure a quality product at any point in the build process.  He instituted a series of code quality checks, wherein NOTHING is allowed to check into winmain unless it meets a stringent quality standard for stability and function, something that really did not exist during Longhorn/Vista development.  The purpose of this is to ensure that almost any Windows 7 build plucked out of the winmain lab will be stable enough for regular usage.

The second part of the policy change, and the one that I might not fully agree with, is his disclosure policy.  During Longhorn/Vista development, Microsoft was extremely open about the process.  The public literally had an open window to look in on Longhorn development and see how things were going.  The problem with this though, is that the public also had a bird’s eye view of the failures, the feature cuts, and the pushing out of the half-baked Vista.  I do think that Steven went a little too far with his non-disclosure policy, but looking back I really can’t fault the man.  He managed to keep Windows 7 development under wraps long enough to genuinely surprise all of the PDC attendees that saw the first public demonstration.  The fact that we were seeing real working code, and not some director demo was also extremely satisfying.

And finally, the third part of the policy change, and this one is actually rather profound.  Steven wants Microsoft to promise, and then deliver exactly what they promised, and so far they appear to be doing just that.  And dare I say it, Windows 7 is MUCH closer to the original Longhorn vision than Vista ever was.  If you honestly think about it, Longhorn had many conceptual features that appear in current builds of Windows 7:

• New, Animated boot screen:  During the Longhorn project, there were concepts for a new, high resolution, animated boot screen.  This feature was later pulled from Vista, although it could be enabled (minus animation) with a boot loader hack.
• New Taskbar: During Longhorn development, there were many UI concepts going around for a new taskbar that would rethink the way the user deals with tasks and launches applications.  In Windows 7, the new taskbar (codenamed superbar) delivers on that goal.  It unifies the quick launch and running applications, gives nice visuals of open tasks, and generally streamlines the task management experience.  I think this is a huge step forward for Windows, and a much needed change after 14 years of little change in this department.
• Federated Search: In Longhorn, Microsoft wanted to implement WinFS for easy file searching and data management, but they also wanted to enable this functionality over the network.  In Windows 7 this will become a reality with the new federated search feature.  This new feature allows users to search over the network or on websites with little to no code changes on the server side.  Pretty cool if you ask me.
• Castle: In Longhorn, a new networking feature (called castle at the time) was being worked on that would easily allow people to network their home PC’s and share and stream information over the network.  In Windows 7 this feature is back in a functional form under the name “Homegroups”.  Homegroups allow a user to create a network of Windows 7 with extreme ease.  Gone are the days of pulling out your hair trying to create a networked environment of XP or Vista machines in your home.
• New Explorer Views:  In Longhorn there were many new explorer view ideas, and while not all of them appear in 7, one major one does.  The stacking view.  This view allows you to stack files by date, author, and many other filters.  This view especially shines with pictures.  Want to sort your pictures by month taken and have them stacked?  Easy.
• Device Stage: One of the concept features in Longhorn included a new way to visualize the connected devices on your PC.  Windows 7 really delivers here with the new device stage feature.  It allows for a much more visual experience specifically tailored to your device that allows you to see information and perform tasks all in one easy to use location.

Windows 7 comes with even more on top of all of that.  It comes with new additions to Aero, such as Aero peek, Aero Shake, Aero Snap just to name a few.  These features really make the experience of using Windows a whole lot better.  Aero snap is really useful when viewing multiple documents and you want a side by side view.  Aero Peek is great when you want to get a quick look at the desktop or a specific window without minimizing everything, and Aero shake is nice in touch based applications as a quick way to un-clutter the screen.

The bottom line is Microsoft really set out to change perceptions and fix the problems that plagued Vista.  And so far they are doing a very good job of that with Windows 7.  Current builds of Windows 7 are amazingly fast, driver support is better than Vista, even at this early beta stage, and the stability is absolutely unbelievable.  I have been using Windows 7 as my primary operating system for a while now and I have absolutely no intentions of going back to Vista.  Actually, you couldn’t even pay me to go back to Vista at this point.  In my view, Windows 7 will be the operating system that breathes new life into Microsoft, and revitalizes the Windows and PC community as a whole.  Apple, get ready to meet your match, you’re not going to be able to poke fun at this release, it’s probably going to trump Snow Leopard too.

Windows 7 is on a diet - Upon my initial boot, the first thing I noticed was that this build was only using about 30 processes, which is an improvement as 6801 has approximately 43 processes running without anything open or installed. This is definitely good news for those of you on older systems or netbooks.

Aero Peek - One of the goodies that was demoed at PDC yet was late to be uncovered in 6801 is Aero Peek. This nifty feature allows you to literally take a quick look at open windows by hovering over their taskbar preview. Then, other currently open windows will be temporarily “hidden”, and the window you have selected will be brought into view, as seen in Figure 01. You can also take a peek at the desktop by hovering over the button all the way to the right of the superbar. This feature comes naturally with the build, meaning that it doesn’t need any hacks in order to be accessed.

Figure 01 (click to enlarge)

GUI Changes  - This build is also filled with several minor UI changes. When hovering over a program in the superbar, the design is slightly different than what we saw in 6801. Along with that, there are also a few new icons. The Action Center (Solution Center in 6801) sports a new icon, along with Libraries, Windows Fax and Scan, and most of the Networking and Sharing center. Some of the new icons can be seen in Figures 2 and 3 below. Another GUI change is the Shut Down option in the start menu.

Figure 2 - (click to enlarge) Here are some of the new icons in 6956. From left to right: Libraries, Documents Library, Music Library, New Library (one that you create), Pictures Library, Video Library, Downloads Folder.

Figure 3 - New Action Center, Networking and Sound icons can be seen on the Superbar.

Windows Explorer Changes - Along with the general UI, Windows Explorer also has a few changes. There is now a new “Include in library” button, making life easier for everyone. When viewing a library, it also is more simplistic. There is no grey area anymore where the name of the library is.

Figure 4 - (click to enlarge) Easily integrate any folder that you encounter while browsing your files in a library; or add it in an all new library that you can create on the spot wherever you are in explorer.

Figure 5 - (click to enlarge) No grey in circled area.
Small Redefined - When you check the “Use small icons” box in the Taskbar Properties, it shrinks your taskbar down to an impractical size, making this more of a quirk than anything else in my opinion.

Figure 6 - (click to enlarge) No, your eyesight hasn’t been damaged or impacted in any way; its just the size of the icons.

New Windows Media Center Intro - When firing up Windows Media Center for the first time, you will now be greeted with a new “splash screen” which showcases the many features of Windows Media Center with a picture and a brief description. You can scroll from item to item using your mouse scrollwheel, keyboard, by clicking on each one (this brings the item next to it closer), or of course with your remote.

Figure 7 - (click to enlarge) First page. You can see both the “Internet TV” and “Television” options in the background. In the screenshot tour, we will go right and begin at “Television.

Figure 8 (click to enlarge)

Figure 9 (click to enlarge)

Figure 10 (click to enlarge)

Figure 11 (click to enlarge)

Figure 12 (click to enlarge)

Figure 13 - (click to enlarge) And… we’re back to Internet TV.
The Internet Games work! - If you’re an, ahem, diehard gamer, I’m sure you most likely missed Internet Backgammon, Internet Checkers, and Internet Spades which never survived to see the light of day in Vista. They have however made a comeback in Windows 7 Build 6801, but in that build they didn’t work. Now, they do work; if you can find more players. While I wasn’t patient enough to see what Internet Backgammon and Internet Spades looked like, I managed to get a peek at Internet Checkers, as seen in Figure 14.

Figure 14 - (click to enlarge) Internet Checkers with its fancy new look.

Now that we have covered most of the new stuff in Build 6956, lets move on to the guide.

Remove the Intrusive UAC Dialog Box - One of the first things that you may notice in this build is the return of the intrusive UAC Dialog Box; yeah, that’s right, the one that completely covers everything in a black blanket except for the UAC window. No need to panic however, as there is an easy fix to this. In this build, the level of protection that UAC provides is at default 1 level higher than that in 6801. So, in order to change this simply go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Action Center, and to the left where there are links, there should be one to adjust UAC settings. From there, simply turn it down a notch as seen in Figure 15.

Figure 15 - (click to enlarge) Using the slider bar, simply turn it down a notch and you can say goodbye to UAC being intrusive.

Removing the Recycle Bin from your desktop - In and prior to 6801, you could simply right-click on the Recycle Bin, click on “Remove from desktop” and voila, it’s gone. In 6956, it’s a little different. In order to remove the Recycle Bin from your desktop, right click the desktop, click on “Personalize”, and, to the left of the personalization window there should be links. From there, click on “Change Desktop Icons”. As you can see in Figure 16, the Recycle Bin is checked. Uncheck it, and click OK.

Figure 16

Major App Compat Layer Bug - In this build, the entire application compatibility subsystem is broken.  If you try to run anything in compatibility mode, it will crash instantly with various error codes depending on what compatibility mode you were trying.  Judging by other builds in the same range as this, I’m not sure this is a bug with the build itself, but rather a symptom of the EXTREMELY poor job the leakers did with the vhd imaging process.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it, a little review and a few simple tips.  I would seriously recommend anyone that wants to use Windows 7 as their main OS to stick with 6801 if you’re using x86, and if you’re using x64, give 6936 a shot.  I will be doing some write-ups for that build in greater detail over the next few days.

Looking back on the year 2007, when Windows Vista was released, we all can remember the harsh criticism that it faced. It was slow, buggy, a memory hog, incompatible, and “it wasn’t worth the upgrade as there wasn’t anything new from XP”, quoting many critics. Despite the fact that most of these problems have been rectified now in the post-SP1 era, no amount of marketing or proven facts can convince most people that Vista is any good. Vista’s reputation is badly bruised, and it will take a LOT to heal it. Microsoft needs a fresh start. An operating system under a new name with new features, improved speed/reliability, and most importantly an OS that has drivers ready for it upon launch.

I can say firsthand that Windows Vista was definitely not as bad as people said it was. It ran very smoothly even when I had a Pentium 4, and I never experienced any problems with it except for when I had incompatible drivers installed after an upgrade from XP. A fresh, clean install fixed that. With that said, Vista also has many flaws. The UI is very inconsistent, it lacks many of the features we expected with Longhorn, the Ultimate Extras are a joke, and UAC was pretty intrusive.

Now let me turn the spotlight to Windows 7 Build 6801. Like many, I got my hands on it as it spread all over the internet, and I must say that after a week of use, I’m very impressed with it. I did all of the things that I normally do with my PC, such as gaming, designing, coding, and browsing the internet, and at times I forgot that I was using a pre-beta build. When I installed Windows 7, all of the essential drivers were installed (all that was left out was my HP monitor). I didn’t have to go through the hassle of installing the networking driver and running Windows Update to get updates and drivers, so that saved me 10 minutes of my life.

Seeing that most Vista problems were caused by incompatible drivers, I think this feature will definitely help 7 maintain a good reputation. Once I started using Windows 7, I immediately started to love it. I have a C2Q Q6600 rig, 2GB of OCZ Platinum Rev. 2 RAM and a 9600GT on top of that, yet I STILL noticed a speed increase over Vista. I looked at the task manager and I saw that without anything else open, I only had 43 tasks running in the background.

I haven’t had 1 crash yet. I have encountered some minor bugs, such as choppy window animations on my nVidia card, but that’s about it. Something I also noticed that Microsoft got the memo on was the highly inconsistent UI. Just about every program had a different GUI. Now, they seem to have 2 major GUIs; the Windows Explorer GUI and the Ribbon GUI, which both seem to be taking over most of Microsoft’s applications.

Recently, Rafael managed to make a patch that unlocks the hidden goodies in 7. Among the goodies lies the Superbar, and that one feature really made me fall in love with Windows 7. Before all of you hardcore Mac and Linux fanboys go flaming Microsoft saying that this is a feature copied from other operating systems, let me just remind you that the superbar is basically quick launch, window grouping, and window previews all combined in one. The whole quick launch idea is something that Microsoft has had since the stone age, so its not like they’re copying anyone. Anyways, the superbar just made window management much better for me.

I normally have a lot of windows open at one time, so my taskbar would look like a pigsty. Now, I just pin all of the programs which I most often use on the superbar and it groups them all and makes it fast and easy for me to launch them. My point is that Aero Shake, Aero Peek, Jumplists, and Libraries among other things all bring us closer to the Longhorn vision. Touch also will introduce a whole new way of interacting with your PC.

I’m just blown away with the performance, reliability and features that I have seen in build 6801, and I eagerly await Windows 7 RTM. I can go on and on about how several things in 7 are improved, such as UAC and networking, but I’m sure you got my point. Microsoft is molding and developing Windows 7 to become a much improved version of Vista. Of course, they cannot market it as Vista SE, because Windows 7 is Microsoft’s fresh start.

Windows 7 should have a smooth RTM compared to Vista as it won’t face the same driver issues as Vista had, and it automatically retrieves and installs the essential drivers when installing the operating system. Another criticism that Vista has faced is on the lower-speced PC topic. While Vista indeed ran fine on my Pentium 4 (I must admit that XP did run faster), many other people say otherwise based on their experience. Based off of what we heard at PDC, Sinofsky mentioned that Windows 7 will make a push onto the new and emerging Netbook scene, which means that people who have netbooks or lower-speced machines might have better luck with 7 than they did with Vista.

With all of these aforementioned factors in mind, its very possible for 7 to massively heal Microsoft’s wounds that were left by Vista’s bad launch. From what I see, they seem to be able to make the launch date as they most likely won’t have to go through with what happened during the development of Vista. With Windows 7, Windows Live, and the introduction of Windows Azure, I think that Microsoft’s future looks very bright. Now if only they can improve IE8’s standards…

A new version of Rafael’s Blue Badge tool for Windows 7 has been released.  This new version brings many improvements as well as implementing a few rather interesting discoveries that were made.  The other night (I think it was Saturday), we started digging around in a build of Windows 7 that out of the box that had all of the features protected but was known to have working Aero Peek.  Conventional Blue Badge patching was not working to enable peek.  As a matter of fact, everything except peek was working.

This led us to do something that caused us to discover how it works internally.  We set our machine names and criteria to match the Microsoft criteria the build checks for and everything turned on, including Aero Peek.  After a little investigating, Rafael found code references to checks pointing to specific registry keys that when set to a certain value, will turn on the feature associated with said key.  So we dug up all the ID’s, compiled them together, set the proper attribute value, and voila, blue badge, the easy way.

So just to outline, here are the improvements in this revision of the Blue Badge tool:

• Completely Build Independent: Will work on any build of Windows 7 that contains protected features.  This version of the tool works perfectly on build 6801 as well as 6936.
• No Patching of System Files: This revision works its magic through the registry, no system files are altered in any way.
• Blue Badge on a Per-User Basis: since this tool applies the feature ID’s under HKCU, you can patch each account at your own discretion and compare.  So you can have users with all the features, and others without.
• Enables Aero Peek on 6801: After using this revision of the tool, users of build 6801 will be able to enjoy fully functioning aero peek on their machines.

That pretty much wraps it up, look below for download links for the tool as well as a link to Rafael’s post about the new tool (where he even includes a new flowchart).

Download: Revision 3 for x86 and x64

View: Rafael’s Post

Fortunately we can remove this link pretty easily.  It just involves a simple registry edit.  For the sake of easiness I will post the reg code below, all you have to do is copy/paste it into notepad and save it as feedback.reg.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop]
"FeedbackToolEnabled"=dword:00000000

 

Merge the registry file, say yes to any UAC prompts or otherwise, log out and back in and enjoy your clean window frames!

So last week, winfuture posted about Windows 7 build 6954 having a new boot screen. Ever since then, people have been wanting to see exactly what this new boot screen looks like. I can tell you it looks pretty nifty. It is basically 4 animating balls that come together and form a glowing windows flag, making for a pretty cool effect.
I recently had a chance to film this boot screen in action, so without further ado, watch the video of the new Windows 7 boot screen below. Excuse the iffy quality, had to do this with my digital camera.

So, looks like Microsoft removed it from soapbox, so now a youtube video is available below.  Thanks to whoever uploaded this for me, I tried last night but it wasn’t processing.

1. Navigate to %windir%\system32\drivers
2. rename blbdrive.sys to blbdriveold.sys or something similar
3. Go into the device manager and right click the unknown device and click “Update Driver”.
4. You want to find the driver on your own, so select the bottom option.
5. At the screen, select the option shown in the screenshot:
   
6. Next, click the have disk option, and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\blbdrive.inf_amd64_neutral_f7447a670ab06496 (for x64, x86 name should be similar).  Select the File as Volume driver and click next.
7. You will be presented with a prompt warning that the device may not be compatible.  Ignore the warning and click yes.
8. The device will install.  The system tray may report that installation failed, but that is not the case.  Reboot when asked and enjoy a clean device manager!

I have determined that this driver belongs to the component known as “File as Volume Driver”.  With a little coaxing I managed to get the component to install and I now have a clean device manager.  I will be posting a set of detailed instructions on how to get this to work tomorrow, so stay tuned!

View: Blue Badge Tool

PS: Tomorrow I will be posting a write-up about Windows Server 2008 R2 (which is built on the same Kernel as Win7) So stay tuned!

NOTE: Everything you need to know to make this work is in the following guide, if yours isn’t working, you did something wrong, so read it over again because you probably missed a step.

What you will need:

• Latest iTunes x64 release from apple.com
• Installed copy of iTunes on a Vista x64 system available to you
• Basic knowledge of installing drivers in Windows

Ok, so first off, you obviously need to install iTunes.  Install it as you normally would and let it do it’s thing.  Once you have done that, you will notice the following error if you try to start iTunes with your iPod Touch plugged in:

The reason this happens is because the iTunes installer does not install the Mobile Device Support component which is necessary for the iPod Touch to work correctly.  To remedy this issue do the following:

1. Copy the “Mobile Device Support” directory from your Vista system to the same location on your 7 system (Located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\).
2. Once you have done that, we need to merge the appropriate registry entries so the services actually work.  Merge THIS registry file and allow all UAC prompts.
3. Once that is done, now we need to move on to the hardest part of the whole process.  Installing the correct driver for the iPod Touch.  Windows 7 incorrectly sees the device as a digital camera, so we need to fix this manually.  To do this head into the device manager and select the iPod (see screenshots below).

   

   Once you have done that, right click and go to “Update Driver”.  You will now see this:

   

   Select “Browse my computer for driver software”.  Now you should see this:

   

   Click the button highlighted (hint: it’s the Let me pick… Button).

   When the prompt comes up, click have disk and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers\

   After doing that click OK and you should see this:

   

   Click Next and the driver will install.

   Finally, reboot your computer to allow the Mobile device service to start, and plug in your iPod Touch and fire up iTunes.  Your device should now work exactly as it should.  Enjoy!