Windows 7 Gets Dose of High Octane...Wallpapers

Thanks, but that didn't help. It turns out WinXP had the SSD set as a dynamic disc instead of a simple. I had to open the command prompt, select the SSD and convert if from dynamic to simple. I found the answer on Microsoft's technet site. Anyway, it has allowed me to write to the disk, thankfully.
 
Microsoft Confirms Windows 7 Holiday Release

Up until today, Microsoft’s always said that Windows 7 would be a 2010 product. Of course, those who have been testing the beta and now the release candidate have long felt that the operating system is closer to prime time than Microsoft was letting on.

Today at Tech•Ed North America 2009, Microsoft announced that the company is anticipating that Windows 7 will be available to customers in time for the holiday shopping season.

“With early RC testing and extensive partner feedback we’ve received, Windows 7 is tracking well for holiday availability,†said Bill Veghte, senior vice president of the Windows Business Unit at Microsoft.

Microsoft also revealed that Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate (RC) is available today with the final product releasing to market in the same timeframe as Windows 7.

This confirmation from Microsoft finally puts to rest the constant rumblings that Windows 7 is ahead of schedule. OEMs will also be pleased that the shiny new Windows will be out in time for holiday season, giving shoppers an extra reason to purchase a new PC.

Of course, now the Windows 7 release speculation will move to nailing down a specific release date. Earlier this month we heard from two different Acer executives who gave a confident date of October 23 for Windows 7 – which would be just in time to catch all the holiday sales
 
Could This Be Windows 7 Retail Packaging?

With Microsoft only having confirmed that Windows 7 will be shipping in time for this holiday season, it’s hard to accept that its marketing department has already finalized the box art for its retail copies of the new OS. But it’s still fun to look at. Pictures come courtesy of CentrumXP.pl.

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Windows 7 RC Update to Shoot Blanks Soon

Starting May 12, Microsoft will begin testing the automatic update functionality of Windows 7 by rolling out ‘sterile’ updates that will do nothing to alter the operating system.

“We need to verify the update infrastructure to ensure that when we need to release real updates, the process will run smoothly. There will be at most 10 updates, and as before, they will not deliver any new features or fixes,†read an update on TechNet.

Most of the updates will be automatic, but some will require specific user action to install.

“One of the updates will test a new update notification feature that provides detailed information about available updates that need to be installed manually. Windows 7 RC users will be prompted to install this update and provided more information about this feature –it will not install automatically,†the post continued.

So for those of you now running Windows 7 RC, has it been a smooth experience?
 
Torrented Windows 7 RC Builds Botnet

Researchers at security firm Damballa said that an infected, torrented version of Windows 7 Release Candidate created a botnet spanning around 27,000 controlled bots. The firm said that the hidden Trojan infected thousands of users when the software first began to circulate BitTorrent sites on April 24, spreading at a rate of "several hundred" new bots per hour, maxing out (so far) with as many as 552 users per hour. However, Damballa managed to knock out the devious botnet's command and control server on May 10.

According to the firm, the clever little Trojan performed its magic immediately after users downloaded the Windows 7 RC. Once situated on the hard drive, it locally installed a bundle of malware. The Trojan was virtually immune to anti-virus tools because many solutions still do not support the new operating system, thus leaving end users wide open for infection. With that said, the computer was infected before the consumer could locate and install compatible tools. Unfortunately, the problem hasn't been solved on a permanent basis.

“We continue to see new installs happening at a rate of about 1,600 per day with broad geographic distribution,†said Tripp Cox, Damballa's vice president of engineering, in a statement. “Since our takedown, any new installs of this pirated distribution of Windows 7 RC are inaccessible by the botmaster. The old installs are accessible. The countries with the largest percentage of installs are the U.S. (10%), Netherlands (7%), and Italy (7%).â€ÂÂ

The firm didn't specify as to what the botmaster plans to do with the current network, if anything at all. However, botnets are typically used to distribute spam email, phishing schemes, retrieve personal information via spyware, or carry out denial-of-service attacks. Conficker is probably one of the more popular botnet names as of late, with an estimated 10 million bots currently in its network, and a spam capacity of 10 billion per day. Another botnet attempted to build a kingdom earlier this year through pirated versions of Adobe Photoshop CS4 (Mac version) and iWork '09, although that attempt was eventually thwarted as well.

Ultimately, users interested in obtaining the Windows 7 Release Candidate need to steer clear of BitTorrent websites or other P2P distribution applications. Instead, consumers can obtain the OS safely by heading to Microsoft's website. The RC is free to download, and will stay active until early next year.
 
Windows 7 Optimized for HyperThreading

HyperThreading was cool. It was an innovative way to process threads concurrently without actually having two physical CPU cores. Of course, then we got two (or more) physical cores with the Core 2 processor, and so went away HyperThreading. But now HyperThreading is back with Intel’s Nehalem and even Atom processors supporting the technology, and Microsoft’s optimizing Windows 7 for it.

Bill Veghte, senior vice president for Windows business, spoke last week at the Tech•Ed event and touched upon many upcoming Windows technologies. As expected, Microsoft works closely with partners such as Intel to ensure that software takes advantage of the hardware.

Veghte explained that Microsoft and Intel worked closely together on many angles. “One is around power management, power management in what they do across their cores and across their chipsets, and what we do in the OS. And the work that we've done across Windows 7 and Nehalem, the Nehalem lineup, I think you'll be very, very, very excited about,†he said.

With Nehalem’s arrival, Intel’s HyperThreading technology is back. Veghte explains that Windows 7 contains optimizations to take advantage of HyperThreading (and we’ll assume that will also apply to any system with multiple cores).

“The second thing that we're excited to announce in terms of the cooperation and the work that's been done is around hyper-threading. And obviously the work that Intel has done around hyper-threading across a multi-core system is absolutely critical for you,†said Veghte. “And so the work that we've done in Windows 7 in the scheduler ad in the core of the system to take full advantage of those capabilities, ultimately we think together we can deliver a great and better experience for you.â€ÂÂ
 
Windows 7 to Turn Your Wi-Fi Card Into Two

One of the things that we love most about Windows 7 right now is the much-improved taskbar. But as much as we love it, it’s not allowing us to do anything radically different than from before. Much of what we’ve reported about Windows 7 centers around small tweaks and changes that make us enjoy our computing experience more, but now we’ve learned about something that could change the way that we use our portable computers.

According to istartedsomething.com, Microsoft has been researching since 2002, a technology that would allow a wireless adaptor to appear as more than just the single piece of hardware that it is.

Windows 7 will allow through clever virtualization software a single Wi-Fi card to appear as two. For the way that most of us use Wi-Fi today, this doesn’t sound like a big deal – but with two ‘virtual’ adapters, now we can connect to two hotspots at once.

The revolutionary part comes in when you want to use one virtual Wi-Fi adapter to connect to a hotspot and the other one to share the connection with other laptops. This could be useful for paid connections at public places such as hotels. Only one paid-internet pass would be needed, which can then be shared through the second virtualized adapter. You could even take it a step further by using the second adapter as a repeater.

The feature is already integrated into Windows 7, but the reason why we’re not all running virtualized adapters now is because there needs to be specific drivers written to take advantage of the feature.

Microsoft’s documentation reads:

“On Windows 7 and later, the operating system installs a virtual device if a Hosted Network capable wireless adapter is present on the machine. This virtual device normally shows up in the “Network Connections Folder†as ‘Wireless Network Connection 2’ with a Device Name of ‘Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport adapter’ if the computer has a single wireless network adapter. This virtual device is used exclusively for performing software access point (SoftAP) connections [...]. The lifetime of this virtual device is tied to the physical wireless adapter. If te physical wireless adapter is disabled, this virtual device will be removed as well.â€ÂÂ

Support for virtual wireless adapters is supposed to be part of the Windows 7 driver certification program, so hopefully we’ll be rocking dual Wi-Fi soon.
 
Windows 7 to go RTM by Late July

Now that the retail date for Windows 7 is officially set for October 22, Microsoft is going to be slowly planning out all the things that have to happen between now and then.

The retail boxed copy of Windows 7 only represents a small portion of the new OS’ rollout for Microsoft. It’s the licenses sold with new PCs that makes Windows the top selling product for the company.

With October 22 being the launch date, OEMs will have to have their systems configured, tested and fully prepared – which requires greater lead time than just packaging a disc. For this reason, the really big date for Windows 7 is when hits RTM, released to manufacturing in its final state for OEMs to build systems around.

Microsoft doesn’t have an RTM date to share yet, but Brandon Leblanc, Windows Communications Manager, wrote in a blog, “Obviously, Release To Manufacturing (RTM) is an important milestone on the path to GA. We anticipate that we’ll be able to make the RTM code for Windows 7 available to our partners sometime in the 2nd half of July. We also expect to be able to make RTM code for Windows Server 2008 R2 available to our partners in this time frame as well.â€ÂÂ

While Windows 7 will be ready for the holiday shoppers, students getting new machines for back-to-school will still be faced with Windows Vista. The remedy that, Microsoft will offer an upgrade program for those who purchase new PCs with Vista to move to Windows 7. LeBlanc said that details regarding the upgrade option program will soon be revealed.
 
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