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Windows 7, Vista and XP - David Overton's Blog
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  • Did you know that you can get all the security releases each month on a downloadable ISO?

    I didn't, but a quick search on http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=security%20iso&DisplayLang=en shows that since January you can download each months security patches as an ISO, carry it around with you and patch to your hearts content. ttfn David

  • Vista could create 50,000 jobs in Europe

    Recently there has been discussion about Vista in Europe around security - some to-ing and fro-ing around if there will be a requirement to ship a version without security features. While all this stuff has been going on, there has also been some discussion around the impact of Vista on the European economy. Vista could create 50,000 jobs in Europe | Tech News on ZDNet European Launch of Windows Vista is on Track ttfn David

  • How Microsoft UK deployed Windows Vista and Office 2007

    Partner TV has been busy recently, with this discussion about Microsoft UK's own deployment of Vista and Office 2007 . An except from the site says: James Senior talks to Asif Jinnah, the Senior IT manager for Microsoft UK, about the internal deployment of Vista and Office 2007. Asif also talks about best practices using Microsoft tools and services to help with deploying images (for example Windows Deployment Services Windows Desktop Search and System Management Server [SMS]). Asif was previously part of the team responsible for launching the “Microsoft Deployment Centre of Excellence” (CoE) in the UK to educate partners and customers on how best to deploy operating systems. To learn more, click the link above - the video is only 11 minutes long. ttfn David

  • See what Vista can do in a short minute or spend longer looking at features

    Ok, so Vista is a HUGE thing to start to learn about, but where do you start. Well, to see the product I would start with http://microsoft.mrmpslc.com/WindowsVistaPartner/Secure/vistafeatures_demo.html . It has a great quick vista demo. If you want to see more of the product, go have a look at http://www.seewindowsvista.com/ where you can quite literally see the product in action along with a number of videos and scenarios. ttfn David

  • Finding device drivers for Windows systems

    Every so often someone asks me how to get device "xxx" working. Obviously the 1st stage to this is to finding the right device driver. Sometimes this can be hard to track down - one thing to look for is the hardare ID from device manager. The ID is made up of the bus type, vendor, major and minor ids. You can do a search for the vendor ID on the internet and once you have that, try their site for a device driver. This is sometimes a long winded process, but normally yields results. One alternative that I spotted today to this was the Microsoft Technet site for drivers . This site has both Microsoft controlled and non-affiliated sites that can help with the device driver searching. When Vista comes along, searching for device drivers will be an even bigger goal of the Update function that ships in the box. ttfn David

  • Small Business Security Guidance (Windows Clients and Peer to Peer networks)

    These documents are slightly old, as in published in late July 2006, but very much worth a read and a potentially useful as a checklist for those customers without servers in their environment. Protecting Client Computers from Network Attacks.doc Securing Remote Clients and Portable Computers.doc Securing Windows XP Professional in a Peer-to-Peer Networking Environment.doc Link to Download details: Small Business Security Guidance ttfn David

  • Windows Live Messenger (was MSN Messenger) is now released, final and ready

    Do you IM people? Do you want to share files with them, have voice and video conversations, even call from your PC to a real phone at the end? Then Windows Live Messenger is for you. Get it at http://messenger.live.com . From the website: Call their phones. Call their PCs. Call your friends' mobile or landline phones. It's great value within the UK or internationally. And calling someone's PC is always free. See them on the screen Show and tell: get a webcam and start a video conversation within minutes. Share stuff Set up a Sharing Folder with a friend. Drop in photos and other stuff, as much as your computer can handle. See it even when one of you is offline. A network of millions Tap into the world's largest IM network, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Soon: talk to your Yahoo! friends, too Soon you'll be able to use Windows Live Messenger to talk to your friends who use Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. The world's largest IM network is getting even bigger. ttfn David

  • Is your Hardware ready for Vista yet - or "David's unofficial hardware guide"

    I saw Susanne's post on Vista ready hardware over at http://www.uksmbgirl.co.uk/blog/archives/106 and decided it was worth chipping in a few thoughts of my own. Many PCs will run Vista and while this has been discussed until people were blue in the face, much mis-information has also been published about it, so I thought I would give you the "David's unofficial guide to Hardware" To start with Microsoft has published both minimums and recommended minimums for hardware, with the later being a 1GHz or above machine with 1GB of memory. As has always been the case, power users may well require more. I am writing this on a 2GHz laptop with 1GB of memory and I consider myself a power user (my index engine reports 91,941 documents indexed - so I consider myself a power user :-) ) Does my laptop sometimes run slow - yes, but it is due to that PowerUser status and not enough RAM. My XP machine was a 3GHz Centrino with 2GB of RAM and I will upgrade the RAM on this at some time. One other way I speed the machine up - turn...

  • TechNet Security Postings for June

    New security features in Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2) http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4979991 Learn about the new security features in the browser's latest version that help better protect your PC and personal information Microsoft Threat Analysis and Modelling Tool, Version 2.0, RC1 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5049706 The free Microsoft Threat Analysis and Modelling tool allows nonsecurity subject matter experts to enter already-known information, including business requirements and application architecture, to produce a feature-rich threat model. Along with automatically identifying threats, the tool can produce valuable security artefacts such as data control, component access control, and subject-object matrices as well as data flows and focused reports. Reduce Your Risk: 10 Security Rules to Live By http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5049703 When you manage security you must strive to reduce unacceptable risk while keeping the impact on workflow of the organization and total cost of ownership of the infrastructure...

  • Is Vista just a new and improved whitener ala soap powders, or have things really changed?

    I obviously work closely with small business partners and a thread at the SBSBPI.co.uk website got me thinking. The question that was asked is why is Windows XP, which has always been a great product, suddenly a "bad" product, so much so that people need to buy a new operating system, Windows Vista . To answer this, lets look at a few things - is Windows XP bad - nope, it is an excellent operating system, but it has a design that was delivered 5 years ago, with a major security overhaul with XP SP2. SP2 was a good security fix, but it still left the onus on the user to understand the risks they were taking. From a user interface point of view, people have got used the XP interface - well, except for you die hard folks who only use the classic interface, get with the program - use a mouse and the non-classic control panel - you know you can do it!! Windows XP is then supplemented by Defender, 3rd party anti-virus products, anti-spam, filters, toolbars, search and other powertoys to lift it to a "desirable"...

  • top sixteen lies of a ceo

    I was reading Guy Kawasakiblog entry on the top lies of CEOs and I realised how many of them applied to those "high flying" small business owner managers in a scaled down way, What I partcularly liked what the "what we wished they actually said" section: “I don’t know.” “Thank you.” “Do what’s right.” “It’s my fault.” How many times would a small business specialists life been saved if this was what they actually said to us instead of (perhaps the 17th lie) "I did nothing to it, it just started going wrong... I was not even here when it happened." And of course, that is probably what was said when this all started! ttfn David

  • Did you know that your small business customers want Windows Vista

    I know this has been discussed before and while I am on Paternity I am not authoring much in the way of content (not enough time), so simply adding things I am finding elsewhere, but this little gem was interesting. A recent web survey that I think, but am not 100% sure about, was NOT commissioned by Microsoft found the following: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=11414 Small shops (with fewer than 100 employees) who identified themselves as aggressive when it comes to platform upgrades were among the most avid projected Vista adopters, with 76 percent saying they would roll out within the first year of Vista release. Of respondents who said they plan on delaying a Vista rollout, 69 percent said they would rely on their PC refresh cycle to drive the transition . Overall, 46 percent of respondents said that new security features would be a factor in causing them to undertake a Vista rollout; the next most popular response was end of support for legacy Windows systems, at 28 percent. Only three survey respondents...

  • Windows XP SP1 support is ending in October

    Support Ends for Windows XP Service Pack 1 http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5159878 Effective October 10, 2006, support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1) will end. After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support or security updates. To enhance the security of your computer and to continue receiving updates, we recommend upgrading to Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). To learn more about this upgrade and the free technical support provided to download and install the service pack, visit the Web site http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=5159908 . You know the answer, if your customers are not on XP SP2, time to move them up. ttfn David

  • Windows Vista build 5728 - post RC1 build - get it now

    This page includes information to help you download a special test build of Windows Vista. This build (5728) has a number of improvements and updates from RC1, but has not been put through the same internal testing process as RC1 and therefore may be unstable in certain installations. We are making this release available for a limited time only (and only by download) in order to get broad distribution and testing in a variety of PC configurations. Please note: This build may not have the same level of support or servicing via Windows Update, and you may not be able to upgrade to the final version of Windows Vista . To continue, please use the links below to start the download. Otherwise, please click here to access the download for Windows Vista RC1 (build 5600) . Link to Windows Vista build 5728 ttfn David

  • Off topic- another feature played with in Vista

    Hello again everyone, I have been playing with a new feature in Vista . It is the the ability to dictate directly into the operating system or application, so for example this blog was dictated using a the headset and Windows Vista speech recognition of my UK accent. While it can be frustrating while windows lands my voice one benefit at least is that I no longer have to spell check what type type is this is automatically performed by the voice recognition technology. It can even be set to use my local language so words which would normally be spelt in the American way such as a magazine are now starting the English way. While this technology is not knew I had spent many hours in the past training this sort of behaviour into applications before where is now it is taken over a short amount of time to get it right. The process of correcting its mistakes is also very nice as is the way in which you can now move around other applications including Internet explorer by showing that numbers for all of the places where...

  • Two Windows Vista events next week in London and Reading

    11 September 2006, London: Windows Vista System Integrity Technologies Windows Vista will ship with several new system integrity technologies, including code integrity, secure start-up, service hardening, mandatory integrity control and Internet Explorer protected mode. In this session, Steve Lamb explores how these technologies work to thwart malware's attempts to take over your computer. 14 September 2006, Reading: What's New in Administering Vista? In this session, we will examine Group Policy functionality improvements that have been made with Windows Vista. We will describe the new and updated features and how these help to alleviate the problems that were present with previous versions of Windows. ttfn David

  • The key to Vista's success is a great product and some amazing ISV applications

    I have been having a chat with Vlad ( http://www.vladville.com/2006/06/vista-advertising-machine-starts-its-engine.html ) and he has made a really good point that Vista looks good, that it is beta, so should not be deployed in a live environment and that he needs some compelling apps. I happen to agree with him - it is beta, and therefore more sluggish and buggy than a final product, but on the apps front, there is soooo much to come. The view of public apps can be seen on http://www.seewindowsvista.com , but Mary Jane Foley has raised the question in http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1972444,00.asp and also points out that a different bread of ISV is coming to town and they are bringing Vista only or enabled apps that will help. Obviously the Vista benefits for Security, reliablility, ease of use and user safety will all be a major factor for many customers. I can't wait for the information on ISVs to continue to materialize over the coming weeks. ttfn David

  • Security and some Myths debunked

    I used to spend my time dealing with security at a military scale for computer systems. I was not guarding anything in terms of weapons etc, just following process for protecting documents I was managing. If there was one thing that irked me was when people thought they were safe, but then did stupid things to completely undermine the security. For example, going in through the main enterence involved stringent security checks, but going through the side enterance the only check was on your car speed. My data was far less protected once physical security was compromised! Bring this into the world of computers and my role now, many people do things to enable them to feel safe - load A/V software, run multiple malware detectors, check the patch level on their firewalls, even if they are hardware filewalls, keep their systems patched, ensure the clients and servers are locked down with their own firewalls configured and managed by policy. I could go on, and of course you all do these things already, right? It was...

  • Vista Webcasts for July

    Using Built-in diagnostics in Windows Vista Monday, July 17, 2006 9:30AM - 10:30AM Pacific Time https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032301591&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US Windows Vista Deployment Overview (Level 200) Monday, July 17, 2006 1:00PM - 2:00PM Pacific Time https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032301597&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US Moving to 64-bit Computing with Windows Vista (Level 200) Tuesday, July 18, 2006 11:30AM - 12:30AM Pacific Time https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032299835&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US Security Features in Windows Vista (Level 200) Wednesday, July 19, 2006 11:00AM - 12:00PM Pacific Time https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032301585&EventCategory=4&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US Reliability Enhancements in Windows Vista (Level 200) Friday July 21, 2006...

  • Find out just how much Malware Microsoft has seen and removed using our tools

    Malware and the like are nasty horrid beasties. You probably see the malware remover tools come down each month as part of your security updates, but never think about what it is actually doing? Well, some scary information is provided at http://virtualteched.com/archive/2006/06/12/74.aspx from Tech-Ed. What is quite frightening is the number of PCs infected, the number of rootkits and the fact that most still get there with the users consent. ttfn David

  • Is Windows still relevant? - Perspectives - CNET News.com

    CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says recent upset over Vista should put a rest to that lingering question . By Charles Cooper In the increasingly Google-YouTube-Web 2.0 age we inhabit, it's become fashionable to dismiss Windows as a relic. I always love these sorts or articles - before I even opened it up I knew what the answer was "no way is Windows Vista irrelevant". It is obvious to me. Sooo many partners, customers, ISVs all have their businesses wrapped up in Windows, even those who are opposing some of the changes. If Windows were not here, how would all those tools vendors sell their products for clients, if the clients were just web terms. How would people work on the move when disconnected (or in the UK - on a train)? So, of course Vista is relevant - people may have views as to how it applies to them, but that is true of anything. What is true is that it offers a great set of features that enhances both business and personal users. Of course, if you have a view, feel free to comment on the blog. ttfn...

  • Running SQL Server on Microsoft Windows Server Longhorn or Microsoft Windows Vista

    Most people do not run SQL on their Windows client PCs, with the exception of MSDE. Windows Vista will not support MSDE (aka SQL 2000), so applications dependant on SQL will need to be moved to SQL Express, which in simple terms is SQL 2005 MSDE on steroids. I have checked and Microsoft will be releasing updates to it's packages that are supported on Vista to move them to SQL Express. Obviously, if you are looking at Vista, check with other 3rd parties to ensure they are doing the same. More details can be found at Running SQL Server on "Microsoft Windows Server Longhorn" or Microsoft Windows Vista . ttfn David

  • One word for Vista

    This is a really simple exercise - If you have used Vista, please summarise it in one word. The word from me is "inspiring"

  • Fixes and Updates for Vista and Longhorn Beta 2 - Symantec Antivirus, IPSec / firewall race condition leading to memory corruption and activation problem

    Update for Windows Vista Beta 2 and Windows Codename Longhorn Server Beta 2 Install this update to fix application compatibility issues with Symantec Antivirus version 10.0.1.622 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0ce37fb9-b654-45e7-b006-e1728fe076ca&DisplayLang=en Update for Windows Vista Beta 2 and Windows Codename Longhorn Server Beta 2 Install this update to fix an issue where in the presence of Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) or Windows Firewall, a race condition can be hot on multi-processor (or hyper-threaded) systems causing memory corruption, leading to a system crash http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8cf0c2ec-6a31-46a6-8238-dff1b2eb2025&DisplayLang=en Update for Windows Vista Beta 2 and Windows Codename Longhorn Server Beta 2 Install this update to address an issue where you may be unable to activate the product and become blocked from logging in http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5d21d780-a0e6-42e5-b905-d3a6e702ac56&DisplayLang...

  • How to install Vista inside a Virtual PC

    One of my partners was having problems installing vista inside a Virtual PC and I remembered the problem with Virtual PC not liking DVDs or ISOs > 2 odd GB, so my answer was to use Virtual Server. Having said all that, there is very good documentation at The Elder Geek on the process - http://www.theeldergeekvista.com/vista_00028.htm . I would add a couple of things – install using Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 beta – you will get a much better experience – and this is freely available too. Enjoy testing Vista and remember to let us know what you like / don’t like. Ttfn David P.S. for all vista downloads etc have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista
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(c)David Overton 2006-23