Fortunately though there is an alternative and it’s in every version of the operating system (XP, Vista and Windows 7).  This is called “Safe Boot” and you can find it in the MSConfig panel.  To open this type msconfig into the Start Menu search box in Vista or Windows 7, or run msconfig from the run option in XP.

Under the Boot tab in the MSConfig window you’ll see the Safe Boot option as a tick box.  Turning this on will make Windows use the Safe Boot option every time thereafter.  When you want to stop using Safe Boot and return to starting Windows normally you’ll need to return to the MSConfig panel and untick this option.  There are also several other options here including Minimal Boot, which will take you into the full Safe Mode, but the standard option will normally be enough for most people.

The Safe Boot screen, as you can see here is a half-way house between the full Windows desktop and Safe Mode.  What you will find though is that most of your hardware drivers will be installed and working though your startup software will still be disabled.

So when might you want to use Safe Boot?  Occasionally you will encounter a problem in Windows that you will need to go into Safe Mode to repair.  As I mentioned earlier however Safe Mode won’t allow you to perform some Windows tasks, and this is where the Safe Boot mode is useful.  You may also suspect that your problems aren’t being caused by a hardware driver, but by software instead.  This diagnostic mode enables you to have a full Windows desktop where nothing loads at startup and where you can run and check programs individually to see what effect they are having on your system.

As I have already mentioned Safe Mode is extremely limiting, not just in the very low screen resolution that it gives you.  If you need to run full diagnostics on your copy of Windows, to see what’s going on under the hood, or if you need to test individual software packages in a safe environment where they will be able to run properly then Windows Safe Boot is the way to do it.

Remember though that you will need to turn off Safe Boot when you are done, or else Windows will start permanently in this mode.  I have found this to be a very useful diagnostic tool in Windows and it’s extremely underused because, frankly, many people simply do not know that it exists.  Hopefully you will find it useful too.

In Windows Vista and Windows 7 the new Resource Monitor is able to give you real-time information about just about everything going on inside your copy of Windows.  You can access it by typing the word resource into the Start Menu search box.

The Resource Monitor itself is split into different tabs and panels.  The tabs along the top will give you an Overview of your PC’s and Windows operations, but there are also tabs to give you detailed and in-depth information on your CPU, Memory, Disk and Network.

Each tab is split into collapsible panels that give you detailed information.  Where it comes in especially useful is in the following scenarios.

Scenario A – Your PC suddenly slows down at random moments and you can’t check why.  You have a look in the Task Manager but can’t see what it is that is chewing your processor cycles or memory.  Leaving the Resource Monitor open will give you much more detailed information than you will find the Task manager, including real-time graphs of exactly what’s going on.

Scenario B – Your network connection is slow and you don’t know why?  Using the Resource Manager you can see exactly what is using your network connection and how much bandwidth it’s using, not just overall, but split across your different connections and separating out Internet and local network traffic.

Overall I can’t recommend the Resource Monitor highly enough for helping diagnose and repair problems with slowdowns and bottlenecks on Windows PCs.  The Resource Monitor is very easy to use and understand and give you details of exactly what program or process is eating away at your valuable computer resources.

So how do you back up the drivers in your Windows installation and how can you use these?  In all versions of Windows the drivers are stored in the C:\Windows\System32 folder in the sub-folders Drivers, DriverStore and if your installation has one, DRVSTORE.  These folders contain all the hardware drivers for your operating system.  In the folder location, C represents the drive on which you have Windows installed, this may be a different letter on your system.

You can simply copy these folders out to seperate storage (DO NOT MOVE THEM) such as an external USB drive or Pen Drive.  When time comes to reinstall the drivers you can copy the folders back.

Now there are a couple of ways to reinstall the drivers.  The easiest way is to simply restart the PC when the driver folders have been copied back to see if Windows automatically detects drivers for uninstalled hardware.  This is possible, but won’t be the case for all your hardware.

To install drivers for the missing hardware you need to open the Device Manager.  You can do this by typing Device Manager into the search box in the Start Menu.  You will see all your uninstalled drivers highlighted with a small yellow warning triangle icon.  You need to Right-Click on each one and select Update Driver.  Because the correct drivers are already in the drivers folders on your computer, telling Windows to find the drivers automatically should always install the correct one.  You may however, in some cases, have to tell the Device Manager which folder to look for.  You can either point it directly to one of the two drivers folders, or just at the System32 folder; making sure you tick the box “include subfolders”.

There is an important caveat with this.  The drivers for 64 bit (x64) and 32 bit (x86) versions of Windows are usually different.  This means that if you copy x86 drivers into an x64 copy of Windows; or vice-versa, they will not install.  Windows will recognise them as being incorrect.  You cannot use this method therefore when migrating your system from the 32-bit version of Windows to the 64-bit version when, for example, adding more memory to your PC.

You CAN use this method to migrate drivers between Windows Vista and Windows 7 (and back again) as both operating system share the same driver model, but again not between x86 and x64 builds.  You CAN’T use this to migrate Windows XP drivers to Vista or Windows 7 however as Windows XP uses an older driver model and the hardware drivers for XP are not compatible with the newer versions of Windows.

If you have a laptop computer with a TPM chip then using BitLocker to encrypt the content of your hard disk is a very worthwhile activity, especially for work computers where you may be carrying sensitive personal data on staff or customers, or where any data you are carrying will be subject to local data protection regulations anyway.

Bitlocker is easy to use too, you just go into the BitLocker option in the Windows Control Panel, select your hard disk(s) you want to encrypt and, if your computer has  TPM chip, turn it on.  But what atre the problems and pitfalls of using BitLocker?

Bitlocker will work very effectively and silently in the background and you won’t even realise it’s there.  This can cause problems should something go wrong with Windows and you need to either restore it from a backup, or reinstall it completely.

When you encrypt your disk with BitLocker, Windows will prompt you to store a copy of your encryption key on a USB pen Drive.  There are good reasons for this and it’s wise to keep a copy of the encryption key on that Pen Drive and keep the drive itself somewhere safe but handy.  Obviously if you’re taking a laptop out and about you shouldn’t keep the Pen Drive with you at all times where it could be stolen with the laptop, this is almost as bad as having no encryption at all.

If you need to restore Windows from a backup image however Complete System Restore in Windows will ask you for a copy of the encryption key before it can work with your hard disk(s).  It will happily look on Pen Drives and find the appropriate keys.  Without these keys the restore process simply won’t work at all, neither will any the startup repair options in Windows 7.

When you come to reinstall Windows the problems will be worse.  Before you can do this it is extremely wise to completely decrypt your BitLocker-protected drives; a process that’s probably best left running over-night.  You can create yourself all types of security problems if you try to reinstall Windows 7 over a partition that’s already encrypted, or if you wipe the original partition and recreate it and have a second partition or disk for files.

A BitLocker encrypted disk is tied to the boot loader of a Windows installation, and it is this that it looks for to check it’s not been modified before the TPM chip releases the decryption key.  It would be too easy to reinstall Windows and then find you no longer have any access to your files and data because they’re encryped and not backed up in an unencrypted form somewhere safe.

Backups are essential when you are dealing with any form of file or disk encryption, even Windows EFS (Encrypted File System) which I personally hate as it strips useful metadata out of files when it compresses them for reasons that make no sense.  You should always make sure there is at least one fully unencrypted backup copy of your files stored in a secure location.

I would also recommended keeping a copy of your encryption key in a safe location, perhaps Microsoft’s SkyDrive service.  It wouldn’t even matter here if hackers gained access to your account and downloaded the keys, as without physical access to the computer they relate to, the keys are completely useless to them.

So while BitLocker is a fantastic idea and one that I use on my own laptop paired with a fingerprint scanner, you need to be very careful when putting it into implementation.

I’m singling Microsoft out in this article because the other major desktop operating systems don’t seem to suffer from this problem. Apple have a clear policy of only supporting older versions of OS X for so long and, because these (so far at least) haven’t been susceptible to malware in the way Windows has, there has been very little in the way of support that Apple has had to offer.

GNU/Linux, especially Ubuntu the most common name in Linux, changes so regularly that there’s no need to support older versions at all and indeed legacy support almost never happens. Each new version will run happily on the hardware of an older version so people are simply encouraged to upgrade for free.

So where does this leave Microsoft? This company has a bigger problem. Not only is it the market leader with millions more computers around the world running its operating systems, it also faces two other major problems. The first of these is big business, Microsoft’s largest customer group, who traditionally leave it at least a year or two after a new version of Windows is released to upgrade and many of whom are still using Windows XP today, despite Windows 7 having more than proven itself in terms of reliability, security and performance.

Businesses don’t like upgrading very often. They tend to approach these things in an “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” manner because they have all types of bespoke desktop software and intranet services that still require the devil’s browser, Internet Explorer 6 to work, and it’s expensive and time-consuming to bring these up to date. In short, they’d all rather not bother.

Microsoft introduced XP Mode, a fully licenced copy of XP running in a virtual machine for Windows 7, to address this problem but it doesn’t seem to have helped. Businesses just won’t shift in great-enough numbers.

Then we have the developing market for whom computers are an expensive luxury and where running Windows 7 is just something the old 386, 486 and Pentium computers they’re still using won’t run it, at least not well. Many of these people are stuck on XP both because of performance and price. These people simply can’t afford to upgrade despite Microsoft long ago having made available a special version of Windows just for them.

The official policy of Microsoft for product support is that…

Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream Support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended Support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer.

This puts Windows XP support ending on April 8th 2014, a massive 13 years after it first went on sale and Windows Vista on April 11th 2017. Many people argue this is simply far too long.

So why is it too long and what are the reasons for forcing people to upgrade sooner? Apple seem to have the right idea on cost. It’s just too expensive to maintain support for these older operating systems. Microsoft could too save money by cutting support for XP earlier and they’d have some increased revenue for those people who are forced to upgrade (business customers on their Software Assurance programme will have already paid for Windows 7 depsite not using it).

It would be better for the man on the street too, knowing that his operating system would be more secure because he simply wouldn’t be using XP… or would it?

The question remains that if Microsoft pulled all support for XP would people actually stop using it? There would certainly be a proportion of people who would upgrade but a great many more, for whom XP is also as comfortable as an old shoe, wouldn’t even necessarily know that support had ended and would carry on using it anyway.

This scenario could create a security nightmare for the world with not only these individuals having their PCs being targeted by virus and malware writers, but also with the huge potential for these machines to be hijacked by botnets to attack larger targets.

It could also be argued that Windows versions would be much cheaper, maybe even approaching OS X levels of pricing ($90 over three years), if many years of additional support staffing didn’t have to be factored into the overall cost.

We can’t say though that we, as a consequence of this being a possibility, all have a responsibility to continue to support XP. Education is needed here for consumers, direct intervention in the form of financial help is needed for the developing world and big business needs a firm kick up the backside. It was big business who forced an extension of the support life for XP after all, and these people have a lot to answer for.

So should Microsoft drop support for a product that’s older than four years in the way Apple do? The answer in my mind is a definitive yes, but with the pressures Microsoft are under we can probably still expect to see computers running Windows XP for many years to come.

This address does exist within Windows but it’s well hidden.  One time when you will see it though is when you install the operating system and with Windows 7 (and Vista) it is vitally important to make certain you choose the right one.

This wasn’t a problem even a few short years ago as computers only came with a single hard drive.  With the cost of hard drive storage still tumbling though and capacities increasing, it’s becoming more and more common to find two hard disks inside a new PC and even some high-end laptops.

These disks are labelled by Windows, Disc 0, Disc 1, Disc 2 and so on with Disc 0 (zero) being the critical one to the operating system.  This is the disc on which you really should install your copy of Windows.

There’s no hard and fast rule here that says you absolutely must install Windows on this drive, in fact it will boot merrily from any hard disk in your PC and from any partition on that drive.  Windows often places a 100Mb System partition at the beginning of Disk 0 though.  This hidden partition stores the boot information for your PC.  It’s completely separate from your Windows installation but absolutely critical.

The boot menu resides here, if you don’t have this partition you won’t be able to start your PC without detailed rebuilding of the boot system, if it’s even possible to do so as sometimes it’s not.  Either way the process is very technical and not for the faint of heart.

If you have this System partition on a separate physical hard disk to your copy of Windows you are doubling your chances that a hard disk failure will render your system unusable.  It might also be the case that you want to swap this disc out for a larger one, or remove it completely.  This can also render your copy of Windows unusable.

Hard disks, let’s not forget, are some of the very few remaining components in your PC to have mechanical moving parts (unless you’re lucky and rich enough to be able to afford a solid state disk).  The only other moving parts in your PC are fans if that’s any indication of how old the technology now is.  These moving parts can be placed under tremendous physical strain by heavy or prolonged use.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example here.  You have installed Windows 7 on Disc 1 in your computer.  This being the second physical hard disk inside the case.  Disc 0 will always carry the System boot partition so if either one of those hard disks fails you lose access to your copy of Windows.

If you instead install your copy of Windows on Disc 0 (zero) then the other disc can fail and you’ll not lose access to your copy of Windows.  Let’s not forget that on a dual hard disk system the disc that doesn’t contain a copy of Windows will commonly be used for file storage.

It’s an easy error to install Windows Vista or Windows 7 onto the wrong physical disc.  Perhaps the leads have been swapped onto the motherboard ports during maintenance or the build of the PC so that the disk on the top of the pile in the case, the one you’d assume was disc 0 now isn’t.  Alas the only way around the problem should issues occur with this is a complete reinstall, which can take many hours when you factor in all your software and settings changes.

So the next time you come to install a copy of Windows Vista or Windows 7, have a good look at the list of available disks and partitions, and make certain you choose Disc 0 for your installation.

I made the decision to install all updates, and new software to make the transition for the family member as easy as possible. Starting with Windows Updates, I ran into the problem that the Service Pack 2 installation would not complete.

The notebook was running an OEM copy of Vista, licensed to Toshiba. Research on the Internet revealed many users who had troubles installing Vista SP2 on OEM notebooks and desktop PCs.

The main suggestion in most of the “how to fix service pack 2 installation problems” guides, articles and forum posts was to run the System Update Readiness Tool for Vista.

This tool is being offered because an inconsistency was found in the Windows servicing store which may prevent the successful installation of future updates, service packs, and software. This tool checks your computer for such inconsistencies and tries to resolve issues if found. This update is provided to you and licensed under the Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 License Terms.

It seemed to fix the issue for many users, but not all. Fingers crossed, I downloaded the software from Microsoft Download and began the installation.

It took about 15 minutes for the tool to analyse the system, and install a single hotfix. I tried the installation of the Service Pack 2 via Windows Update again after that and lo and behold, it installed without errors this time.

This may help other users who are in a similar situation, even though I doubt it that this many Vista PCs are still running Service Pack 1 or no service pack at all.

Did you ever run into troubles installing a service pack in Windows? Let us know about it and how you fixed the issue.

The vulnerability afcects all versions of Windows including XP and Windows 7.   On Windows 7 the exploit can bypass the operating system’s security as it does not require administrative privileges to run.

In a statement Microsoft said…

Microsoft is investigating reports of limited, targeted attacks exploiting a vulnerability in Windows Shell, a component of Microsoft Windows. This advisory contains information about which versions of Windows are vulnerable as well as workarounds and mitigations for this issue.

The vulnerability exists because Windows incorrectly parses shortcuts in such a way that malicious code may be executed when the user clicks the displayed icon of a specially crafted shortcut. This vulnerability is most likely to be exploited through removable drives. For systems that have AutoPlay disabled, customers would need to manually browse to the root folder of the removable disk in order for the vulnerability to be exploited. For Windows 7 systems, AutoPlay functionality for removable disks is automatically disabled.

The exploit requires removable-media, such as a USB flash drive, and with auto-play enabled or with the user browsing manually to removable media. 

Affected Software

Windows XP Service Pack 3

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 with SP2 for Itanium-based Systems

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 1 and Windows Vista x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems and Windows Server 2008 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for x64-based Systems Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems and Windows Server 2008 for Itanium-based Systems Service Pack 2

Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems

Windows 7 for x64-based Systems

Windows Server 2008 R2 for x64-based Systems

Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium-based Systems

NeoWin have a video demonstrating the vulnerability which can be viewed here.

Lifehacker have an article up on their website detailing the process of switching from the default fonts used by most websites and the computer system to the Vista fonts. This is easier done than one would think. A user who wants to enable those fonts in the Firefox web browser needs to have a working installation of Microsoft PowerPoint 2007, Microsoft Office 2007 or the free Microsoft PowerPoint Viewer 2007. This ensures that the Vista fonts are installed on the computer system. Vista users do not need to perform this operation since their operating system ships with those fonts.

The next step involves switching to ClearType if the computer is connected to an LCD monitor. This can be done with a powertoy from Microsoft.

It is then time to configure Firefox to use the Vista fonts instead of the default fonts after installation of the fonts and enabling ClearType. This is done in the Tools > Options > Content menu. A click on the advanced button under Fonts & Colors will display the following configuration menu. Just switch to the same fonts and settings that are shown in the following image:

It is important to uncheck the checkbox at the bottom to prevent pages from selecting the fonts. The result can be a better readability and is something worth to try.

Taskbar Resize Tool is a small program for Windows Vista that can alter the heights of individual items in the Windows Vista taskbar. The software requires the installation of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (download) before the program can be executed. The software itself comes with a English and Chinese interface.

The software is portable and will display a slider after execution which can be used to change the height of the taskbar items.

A click on the Apply button will change the size of each item immediately. All settings will be reverted after a restart which is why the only option in the program interface is to add the application to system startup.

Of course I have to make mention to back up your data! You never know when something could happen to cause you to lose precious files.

So, without further adieu, let’s begin.

Fundamentals

Before we go into the how to on this it is best to discuss what dual booting is and how it is possible. I will mention that the most important issue with setting up a dual booting machine is that Windows MUST be installed first. Because the Windows boot manager is a very single-minded boot manager, it will not recognize any other operating system. To that end, the Linux bootloader must be used.

Now dual booting is exactly as you would expect: A single machine with multiple, working operating systems installed. Upon boot of the machine the Linux boot loader (typically Grub) allows you to select which operating system to boot. This set up is very nice for those wanting to make the transition to Linux or want to use Linux but have Windows to play games on.

Getting Vista Ready

Vista did some things right. One such thing is hard drive partitioning. With Vista you are able to resize a parition, on the fly, without damaging data. Microsoft hid this tool a bit, so you have to know where it is. To open up the Computer Management tool click on the start menu and then right click the Computer entry.

Click on the Manage entry from this new menu to open up the Computer Management tool.

Now it’s time to click on the Disk Management entry. Once you click on that you will see your machine’s hard drive in all its partition’d glory.

There are two parititions on this drive. The larger partition (141.61 GB) is the partition to resize. Right click on that parition to open up a new menu. From this new menu select the “Shrink” entry.

Partition managing menu

Once you select Shrink a new window will appear asking you how much to shrink the drive.

Shrink window

The amount of space to shrink will be the partition your Linux installation is on, so make sure you create enough space.

Once you click the Shrink button your machine will go to work resizing your partition. Once the partition has been resized there will be unallocated space on your drive.

In the image above I only resized the parition a small amount. You will need to create a much larger portion of unallocated space to install Linux.

Once the partition has been resized, it’s time to load Linux.

Installing Linux

Since there are numerous distributions I will only touch on the key aspects you need to watch for. Most likely you will be installing from a LiveCD so boot the LiveCD up. Once the LiveCD has finished booting click on the Install icon to begin the installation process. The first section you need to pay close attention to is the partitioning of the hard drive. What you need to do is make sure the installation uses the free space on the drive. You most likely will have to select the Manual partitioning, but don’t let that scare you. Once you select Manual you will have options to select. There should be the equivalent of using only the free space on your hard drive. Do NOT select anything remotely equivalent to Use Entire Disk. If you make this selection your Windows installation will be erased.

Once the installation partitions the drive it will install all the files it needs. Upon completion of the system installation it will be time to install the boot loader. Just accept the defaults because the Linux boot loader must be the first thing to load on the machine.

Once the boot loader is installed it’s time to reboot. You will notice when you boot (again the exact wording and look of this will depend upon the distribution chosen) there will be a few boot entries. The default entry will be the Linux operating system. If you do nothing within 10 seconds Linux will boot. You can use your arrow keys to select the Windows choice and hit enter to boot into Windows.

Final Thoughts

Congratulations, you now have a dual booting Vista/Ubuntu machine. It’s really that simple.  If you need to have a guided tour of a Linux installation, take a look at my Illustrated Guide to Installing Ubuntu.

The pre-beta release is distributed to a select group of testers who have to run a program that adds a few keys to their Registry which enables the download of Windows Vista service pack 2 on Windows Update.

The release which has the build number 6002.16489 has a size between 290.7 MB to 296.9 MB. It contains all released updates but no obvious changes or additional features according to Within Windows.

KB955430 is the hotfix that has to be installed after making the changes to the Windows Registry. After installing that hotfix the real Windows Vista Service Pack 2 download becomes visible in Windows Update.

It will probably be only a matter of time until the Registry changes leak on the Internet which would enable the Service Pack 2 downloads for anyone making the changes to their Registry.

Users who want to change the language of their Windows Vista operating system will soon realize that it is not as easy as they thought it would be. Especially Vista Home users are left standing in the rain because there is no official way of changing the language of the operating system.

The Windows Vista Multi-language User Interface Hacker (via Raymond)is a third party software that was specifically designed for the purpose of changing the language of a Windows Vista operating system. It works by downloading the program files, the selected MUI language pack and a lengthy conversion in the software application that can take between 5 and 60 minutes depending on the computer’s performance.

After that is is simply a matter of selecting the installed language in the program’s interface and restarting the computer.

Download links to all available language packs are provided in the software program so that the user can simply download it right away. Switching back to the original language is not a big problem either. It is simply a matter of downloading the right MUI and applying the same procedure to the file.

The Windows Vista Ultimate extras that have been released are Windows Dreamscene, a video background application, A Hold’Em Poker game, a puzzle game called Tinker that comes with an extra sound scheme, two additional sound schemes, various MUI language packs and the Bitlocker and EFS Enhancement tools.

And that’s it. The main focus seems to be on entertainment which is probably a sector that most Windows Vista Ultimate users do not care about. To be fair, Windows Vista Ultimate is the only edition of Windows Vista that provides all features of the operating system by combining Windows Vista Home Premium and Windows Vista Enterprise in one software package.

The reason for this post? Well Microsoft released new extras which have already been mentioned in the second paragraph: The Tinker game that includes the sound scheme and another Dreamscene package.

Users who bought Windows Vista Ultimate for the extras can rejoice and enjoy another background and some new sounds. How many will be happy with the new extras? Take an educated guess.

This is my personal list of things of what I’d like to see changed, fixed or included in Windows 7:

Performance:
The biggie… I’m popping this in because it wouldn’t be a real wish-list without it. Personally I find Vista to perform great, better then XP definitely on decent hardware, however I’d love to see Windows 7 just kick Mac OSX and Linux’s ass as far as performance goes.

This is the major topic under discussion in Steven Sinofsky’s Engineering Seven blog.

Faster Functional Desktop
Sure, I get a boot time pretty close to Microsoft’s benchmarks, however what they don’t mention is that even though the desktop is loaded, a lot of background processes are still going on in the background. It’s a good minute before I get a functional desktop after booting.

Windows Task Bar
I would love for Windows 7 to include some dramatic changes to the taskbar. I don’t mean visually or functionally but things like some new features for the Quick Launch bar, more options for creating menus and folders on the bar and things like that. Also why isn’t doesn’t the Quick Launch bar use the same theme as the taskbar? It looks ugly.

Bloody Annoying Deletion Bug
Sure you can use Unlocker but it would be really nice if Vista actually deleted what I wanted to delete! For me this is the single-most most frustratingly annoying thing in Vista.

Multiple Desktop Support
Everyone else has them, no third party app does it decently yet. It is time.

UI Consistency
Hopefully Windows 7 contain essentially the same Aero theme as Vista and the developers can work on fixing all the UI bugs and inconsistencies across the system. Check out Long Zheng’ Aero Taskforce for some examples.

Redesign ‘Personalise’
I have no idea what they where thinking when they changed all these options around but it’s really annoying trying to work out where is where and navigating between. Make it easier to change all appearance related settings from one place!

System Tray
Do something here, I’m not sure what. It seems especially buggy in Vista, icon menus freezing up and that kind of thing.

Improve Windows Search
Search is fantastic in Vista and I understand why it takes a few seconds to get results, however I really think for simply searching amongst start menu program icons it should be dramatically improved. When I’m searching for a file I can wait a few seconds, when I just want to launch ‘Word’ I’d like instant results as soon as I type ‘Wo…’

Also some more intuitive functions would be nice, similar to Launchy, learning from usage patterns and picking up on typos. I would also be more likely to use virtual folders more if performance was better.

Calculator functions from Start Menu
Why not? It seems pointless to open up the actual app when you could do it straight from the search box.

Multiple Monitors
It’d be great to have a taskbar which stretches across multiple monitors and options for wallpapers to do the same, or perhaps even choose two wallpapers for 2 monitors.

Annoying Notification Popups
Need I say more?

Explorer Doesn’t remember folder settings.

Networking and Sharing
This is a joke, the Network and Sharing center is way too many clicks away and sharing media between devices is incredibly convoluted and confusing.

You will also be aware that WinFS was removed from the feature list when the Longhorn project was reset.

The lack of real discussion and comment from Microsoft seems to have led to a great deal of speculation, rumour and myth concerning the WinFS file system which really has more in common with the “Microsoft should rewrite Windows” movement of thought than actual reality.

I know personally I had a lot of misconceptions about the whole thing, perhaps due to the fact I’m a non-programmer. What confused me the most was the while using Vista I came across a lot of functionality which seemingly resembled the WinFS I had heard so much about, yet I frequently heard the comments about Vista being pointless because it lacked the promised Longhorn features.

However Ed Bott’s article “Why Do You Want WinFS?” explained a lot and after checking it out and reading around I discovered a lot of interesting things. Apologies if this is old news to you, hopefully some of you will find this interesting:

WinFS was never going to replace NTFS:

WinFS was not a new file system designed to replace NTFS, it was a system designed to run on top of NTFS, which potentially provided the capability to be moved between OS’s:

“WinFS is based on SQL Server and its core feature is to provide a data relations mechanism. This means that your pictures are related to dates, events, and persons and so on. This allows you to perform a search such as "All pictures of Joe taken the last month". This query is not possible for a traditional file system such as NTFS, but will be a trivial part of WinFS. In reality, WinFS stores are simply SQL Server database files (.mdf files) with the FILESTREAM feature enabled. These files are stored in secured folder named "System Volume Information" placed into the volume root, in folders under the folder "WinFS" with names of GUIDs of these stores.”

WinFS was a drag on system performance and potentially had a bad programming model:

Boy, and you complained about Windows Vista. Imagine if Vista had included WinFS, Microsoft wouldn’t have had a chance against the forum haters. (Or, ironically, perhaps people may have actually accepted system performance slow down thinking it was worth it for this great new technology)

According to Dare Obasnjo; “The third thing I worry about is that the programming model will suck. An easy to use programming model often trumps almost any problem. Developers prefer building distributed applications using XML Web Services in .NET to the alternatives even though in some cases this choice leads to lower performance. The same developers would rather store information in the registry than come up with a robust alternative on their own because the programming model for the registry is fairly straightforward.”

Vista can do much of what WinFS was intended for:

From the WinFS development blog (2006: “The vision for a richer storage in Windows is very much alive.  With the new tools for searching and organizing information in Windows Vista, we are taking a good step towards that vision.”

Perhaps what is the most frustrating thing with WinFS is that Vista actually does include much of what WinFS was intended for but without the kind of disadvantages previously mentioned. It clearly doesn’t have WinFS, but most of what was relevant and useful for end users has been included. You’ll find much of those features present in the Windows Indexing and Search technologies.

The irony of this is that if consumers and developers have so far been so unwilling to utilise the current technologies of Vista than what does this say about their willingness to adopt something even more radical which would have been the result of WinFS?

As Paul Thurrott wrote some time ago about WinFS, “the big deal, of course, was desktop search, a capability that had always been part of the plan, but was being promoted because of the sudden rise in Internet-based searches.” This never changed through the Longhorn/Vista development and integrated searching is the single biggest improvement in Windows.

Other WinFS features included metadata sorting, filtering and indexing, virtual folders and shared data between applications. All these are essential aspects of WinFS and can be found in Vista. Here is one more detailed example of just how powerful some of the Vista search tools are. 

You can also take a look at Paul Thurrott’s Virtual Folders showcase here.

If I’m wrong about any of these statements, maybe even completely up the wrong tree then let me know!

I really can’t see Microsoft adding it into Windows itself, not even for Windows 7, so I’ll have to keep looking around for decent freeware alternatives.

The annoying thing is that as of yet, I haven’t really found any decent desktop managers which are simple, stable and perform well.

Today however, I found one which I really liked the look of on CodePlex.

Multiple Desktops for XP and Vista is a alpha quality desktop manager which you can try out here, but is pretty unusable right now. What I liked about it is the simplicity, ease-of-use and generally good design. Using the new Windows Vista live thumbnails it can give “give you a full screen preview of all of your desktops.”

At the moment however it’s slow and buggy, but I shall be keeping an eye on it for upcoming versions.

The full set of features includes:

• An infinite number of desktops only limited by the amount of memory in your computer
• A full screen desktop/window manager/switcher
• Live Vista thumbnails of all of your windows
• An alpha-blended indicator window to provide a visual indicator when you switch between desktops
• Hotkeys for up to 9 desktops using your numpad keys along with "send window to desktop" hotkeys
• A system tray icon to access a menu containing items for every desktop, no matter how many
• Multiple-monitor support
• Arrow key hotkeys
• One system tray icon per desktop (optional)
• Window-specific menus
• Sticky windows to exclude windows from the virtual desktop manager
• Per-desktop backgrounds
• XP support
• Thumbnail window tool
• Show all windows hotkey
• Show mini-preview at cursor hotkey
• Program rules for locking programs onto desktops
• Command line arguments for launching programs onto desktops, switching desktops, and showing the switcher

You can check it out here.

Whenever a application requests a connection to the Internet that is not in the list of applications that have already defined firewall rulesets Vista Firewall Control asks the user if he wants to allow or deny that connection.

That’s a known feature from many desktop firewalls. The options are to configure the application to disable or enable all connections or to allow only incoming or outgoing connections.

The list of applications that already have a ruleset can be displayed and edited or deleted if necessary. The free version of Vista Firewall Control does have several limitations and it would probably be better to download and install a third party Firewall like Comodo instead.

The guide includes tips like disabling unneeded startup items, disabling unwanted services, disabling visual effects or to adjust search settings. That’s a basic set of tasks that most experienced users do after installing an operating system. It also means that experienced users will probably not find anything new in the guide that they do not already know about.

The Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide is therefor clearly aimed at computer users who do not have that experience but want a faster Windows Vista operating system. It’s definitely a very nice read with good instructions to guide the users through the changes that they can make.

If you have the time head over to Microsoft and download the 1.1 Megabyte guide.

Seeing might actually be the biggest problem in proving the point. Microsoft is very tight lipped about the experiment itself and the preview page that was up until earlier today mentioned a ten minute demonstration from a sales person on a 2 Gigabyte Intel Core Duo 2.2 Ghz HP computer.

Now that the website is up and running users can view short clips, really short ones from normal people who participated in the experiment. The website holds little information but at least a user breakdown. About 84% of the users are Windows XP users, 22% Apple OS users, 14% use other Microsoft Windows operating systems and 1% Linux. It seems that some users are accustomed to more than one operating system.

Some videos show that one person is actually demonstrating features of the “Mojave” operating system to the users, for example photo stitching that takes pictures and creates a panorama out of those photos.

That’s probably a very good way of getting the “wow” effect from people first by showing them nice features on fast hardware and then again by telling them that they did see Vista and not a super duper new Microsoft operating system.

It does however fail to cover important aspects of Vista criticism like that it is running extremely slow on older hardware even if the computer was purchased with Windows Vista or incompatibilities that still exist.