Newsletter Archives

• Microsoft swipes open source code

  Posted on November 8, 2009 at 03:13 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  It seems that somebody inside Microsoft stole and re-used open source programming code for the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool – the program available when you buy Windows 7 via the Microsoft Store that allows you to put the Win7 installer on a USB drive.

  Rafael Rivera discovered the apparent plagiarism while picking through the program. He blogs:

  A simple search of some method names and properties, gleaned from Reflector’s output, revealed the source code was obviously lifted from the CodePlex-hosted (yikes) GPLv2-licensed ImageMaster project. (The author of the code was not contacted by Microsoft.)

  I see two problems here. (I’m not a FSF [Free Software Foundation] professional, so there may be more.)

  First, Microsoft did not offer or provide source code for their modifications to ImageMaster nor their tool….
  

  Second, Microsoft glued in some of their own licensing terms, further restricting your rights to the software.

  Man, that burns me up.

  Windows News Microsoft open source, Microsoft steals program code

• The history of the Win7 Home Screen

  Posted on November 7, 2009 at 07:10 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Ever wonder how MS came up with that, uh, quirky home screen for Windows 7? Very cool interview and analysis from Gizmodo.

  The two pieces took about four months, start to finish. Chuck started with a pencil and paper, and moved on to Photoshop for the Windows 7 sheen, but the two pieces retain that sketchy feel—in fact, all the individual threads on the login screen were hand-drawn with a Wacom tablet.

  Windows News Windows 7 home screen

• Windows 7 upgrade is an upgrade, but…

  Posted on November 2, 2009 at 19:26 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  ‘Softie Eric Ligman posted a provocative piece on the MSDN blogs entitled “Regardless of what any hack says, a Windows 7 Upgrade is an Upgrade. What you need to know.”

  While I readily admit to being a hack, in the original, pejorative sense of the term, Eric seems to be taking to task those folks who published the well-known trick that allows you to install a “full” version of Windows 7 from the “upgrade” DVD. With one small twist, the newly published tricks greatly resemble the old Vista bypass Brian Livingston wrote about in 2007.

  Yes, you read that correctly. The same workaround that allows you to install a “full” version of Windows Vista from the upgrade CD also works with the Windows 7 DVDs.

  He hit a nerve. Paul Thurrott posted a riposte.

  There’s a lot of confusion about the upgrade paths available to Windows owners, whether they’re officially endorsed or merely allowed by using hooks that Microsoft has supported for years. We can only hope that some enlightenment will be forthcoming. I, for one, won’t hold my breath.

  Watch my Windows Secrets column later this week for a coupla observations.

  Windows News Win7 full install from upgrade DVD, Windows 7 upgrade

• Known problems installing/upgrading to Win7

  Posted on October 24, 2009 at 19:00 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  As expected, there’s a bunch of problems with Windows 7 upgrades and clean installs. I’m going to try to keep track of the most common ones in this posting.

  If you’re trying an in-place upgrade (as opposed to a “custom install” which is better known as a “clean install”) from Vista to Windows 7, the upgrade process may freeze at 62%. If that happens to you, be of good cheer: it’s a known problem with a relatively simple solution.

  If you’re trying an in-place upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, the upgrade may fail with the message “This version of Windows could not be installed, Your previous version of Windows has been restored, and you can continue to use it.” Then every time you re-boot the machine, the same thing happens. Fortunately, this, too, is a well-known problem and the solution isn’t too difficult.

  If you’re having trouble getting rid of Raxco PerfectDisk 9, and the Win7 refuses to run because of it, see KB 976552.

  If you’re trying to download Windows 7 from Digital River (“one of the most trusted names in E-commerce and Web-based technology”) and getting an error message that you’ve tried to download Win7 too many times, well, you aren’t alone. See the Microsoft Answers thread on the topic. UPDATE: there are more problems with the Digital River download, and more problems particularly with corrupt installation files, but they seem to be getting better.

  Can’t find your games? Steve Winograd has the answer.

  Looking for an HP DeskJet 4280 driver? So is most of the world. A lame excuse of an answer is here.

  Did you perform an in-place upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, and now the front panel icons on your HP Multi-function printer don’t work? Or are you running 64-bit Windows 7 and the HP Solution Center says “Device not found”? KB 976309 has a solution.

  If your in-place upgrade failed with a message saying the installer failed to complete, then you get a rollback, and the installer automatically jumps in and tries to install again – ad nauseum – there’s a tricky workaround.

  Are you trying an in-place upgrade and the installer tells you that you need to get rid of Avira – but you’ve already gotten rid of Avira? Easy solution: download the latest version of Avira, install it, then uninstall it.

  Reader HFP writes: Windows 7 Home premium 32 bit upgrade installed on Dell Dimension 9200 PC 2 1/2 year old with Sigma Tel High Def Audio CODEC Sound card therein. Sound now kaput. Enquires on Box indicates that Sigma Tel Inc taken over last year and no further support given nor it seems is there a driver for W7 to update Card. Seems a number of others have experienced the same problem.

  More to come.

  Windows News Digital River too many download attempts, HP DeskJet 4280 Win7 driver, KB 976309, Windows 7 games missing, Windows 7 HP multi-function printer problems, Windows 7 HP Solution Center Device not found, Windows 7 installation problem, Windows 7 Sigma Tel High Def Audio, Windows 7 upgrade Avira problems, Windows 7 upgrade problem, Windows 7 upgrade rollback

• Install Windows 7 from a USB drive

  Posted on October 24, 2009 at 17:20 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Brandon LeBlanc on the Windows Team Blog says that a new tool, called WUDT, will take a Windows 7 ISO file and turn it into a bootable DVD or create a bootable USB drive with all the files. WUDT runs on Windows XP, Vista, or Win7.

  No mention of whether WUDT will work with “Upgrade” versions of Win7, or if you must purchase a “full install” version of Win7. Ah well. Yet another detail still unanswered.

  If you want to put Win7 on your netbook, and you can’t get a bootable DVD drive attached to the netbook very easily, it’s a good approach. Nothing magical about installing from USB: Steve Sinofsky said months ago that he had installed Win7 on his netbook using a USB drive, and there are instructions for doing it all over the Web. But this is the first time that I know about where MS has specifically come up with a USB option.

  There are several problems with the approach. For starters, at this point, you can only buy the ISO version of Windows 7 through Microsoft’s own store. There’s a good analysis of the downsides on Geek.com.

  Windows News Windows 7 USB install

• Using Windows 7 Upgrade DVD to perform a clean install

  Posted on October 24, 2009 at 07:18 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  One of the big unanswered questions about Windows 7 is currently ricocheting around the Web: can you install Windows 7 on a clean hard drive using the upgrade DVD? A related question: can you install Windows 7 Upgrade on a PC that is running a, uh, less-than-genuine copy of Windows XP or Vista?

  I don’t have a “real” Windows 7 Upgrade DVD in my hands, so I can’t confirm anything that I’ve been reading.

  Paul Thurrott says you can do it, but the method he gives is horribly convoluted. (It isn’t clear to me why a slmgr -rearm command would open up anything that can’t be done in a much more convenient way.)

  If any of you have the upgrade DVD in hand, could you try a few experiments for me?

  – Try to boot from the upgrade DVD.

  – If that works, try installing the upgrade on a PC that only contains a completely clean hard drive: Nothing on the hard drive, no other hard drives in the computer.

  – Try installing the upgrade on a PC that’s running a pirate copy of XP or Vista. (Or, failing that, a copy of XP or Vista that hasn’t been activated.)

  Let me know what you find, and I’ll gladly credit you in my next Windows Secrets Newsletter Top Story.

  UPDATE: Ed Bott has some definitive answers. You can bet that they’re quite accurate. Paul Thurrott has published a rather bizarre workaround, and confirmation that the Family Pack upgrade DVD is identical to a “regular” upgrade DVD – the only difference is the type of key.

   

  Windows News Win7 Upgrade media, Windows 7 Clean Upgrade, Windows 7 upgrade

• Gorgeous new Windows 7 themes available

  Posted on October 22, 2009 at 15:21 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Microsoft has just posted a bunch of truly remarkable themes for Windows 7.

  Some are crassly commercial. (Coke or Pepsi, anybody?) But many are just plain gorgeous. I can’t wait to see the Thailand theme.

  Windows News Windows 7 theme

• Windows 7 rolls out all over the world

  Posted on October 22, 2009 at 07:20 CDT by woody • Comment in the Forums

  As I write this it’s 7:00 in the morning, October 22. Phuket’s a little bit ahead of most of you.

  Windows 7 is officially out, and I for one am thrilled. Not because of the marketing hype. But because the general public now has access to this piece of software I’ve been writing about – and marveling over – since early this year.

  Windows 7 is phenomenal. I’ll go into much more detail in my Windows Secrets Newsletter articles, but the bottom line couldn’t be more clear. Unless you’re running a laptop that’s more than three or four years old, or a desktop that’s more than five or six years old, or you’re stuck with an older piece of hardware or software that won’t work with Vista or Win7, you owe it to yourself to check out Windows 7.

  UPDATE: TechRadar quotes the Amazon UK Managing Director as saying, “The launch of Windows 7 has superseded everyone’s expectations, storming ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as the biggest grossing pre-order product of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, and demand is still going strong”.

  Windows News Windows 7 release
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