Microsoft Support & Discussions

By Paul Thurrott The Gears of War series has been a mixed bag for me since the original, with epic, moving single player campaigns that rank among the best, most interactive video game experiences I’ve ever had and almost laughable, mind-numbingly bad multiplayer modes. Gears of War 3, the latest and hopefully final chapter in this series, delivers on both of these contradictions in spades. It’s beautiful, but monotonous. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott With Epic and Microsoft allegedly winding down the "Gears of War" series of video games with Gears of War 3 this holiday season, I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at the Gears coverage I’ve created over the past several years. Here are the reviews, previews, and screenshot galleries I created for the four--remember, there was a PC version too--Gears games since the first title was announced in 2005. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Microsoft this week described a major update to the storage infrastructure for its Hotmail web-based email service, in which it will be moving away from RAID and to a scheme called JBOD, or "just a bunch of disks." Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Amazon announced this week that users of its Kindle eBook platform can now borrow eBooks from over 11,000 libraries around the United States, erasing what was previously one of the few major advantages of the competing Barnes & Noble Nook platform. But as is usually the case with Amazon, the Kindle entry into libraries doesn’t just duplicate what the others are doing, but adds unique and useful new features as well. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo, Mary Jo and I discuss Windows 8 post-BUILD, some of the 300 new features in Windows Server 8, Google in the antitrust hot-seat, and the pending release of Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango". Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft has made available for download a first beta of its WebMatrix 2.0 tool bundle for Web developers. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott With developers now tearing up the Windows 8 developer preview and looking for hidden gems, we’re going to soon see an amazing number of utilities aimed at improving the Windows 8 experience and, in some cases, making it work more like its predecessors. While I can’t endorse or support that kind of thing, let alone recommend individual utilities quite yet, I figured it would be useful to collect what’s out there in a single location. Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft officials provided more information on plans for UEFI secure boot support in Windows 8 in response to fears by some users that they may be blocked from dual-booting Linux on Windows 8 machines. Source: All About Microsoft

Microsoft is adding video images to its Bing home page, but for now they’ll be viewable only by those with certain HTML5-enabled browsers, and in the U.S. only. Source: All About Microsoft

The list of high-level Microsoft execs leaving teams that are supporting the Microsoft cloud infrastructure continues to grow. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott An often irreverent look at some of this week’s other news, including Windows Phone 7.5’s vague arrival, Verizon’s CEO backs Windows Phone over BlackBerry, Google’s competitors chant "monopoly," HP jumps the shark again, Facebook announces something as the world yawns, Apple is supposedly holding an October 4 event for something, Samsung vows to get more aggressive against Apple, iPhone customers are lemmings, and Oracle still wants a big payday for Android infringement. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Microsoft evangelist Mike Ormond this week announced the availability of an intriguing new free eBook for developers interested in Windows Phone. Dubbed Building Windows Phone Apps: A Developer

By Paul Thurrott Microsoft announced Thursday that it won its civil case against the Rustock operators six months after it successfully took down the botnet. The software giant will now hand all of the evidence it gathered during this time to the FBI, which could pursue a possible criminal case. Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft’s new Dynamics CRM Online release, coming later this year, will integrate activity feeds that are similar to those pioneered by Facebook and Salesforce with Chatter. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Google chairman Eric Schmidt admitted to a US Senate antitrust panel yesterday that his company was a monopoly, even though he has publicly claimed otherwise. But he also defended Google’s business practices, and claimed that the online giant wasn’t another Microsoft. Source: Win Super Site

Severity Rating: Critical Revision Note: V1.1 (September 21, 2011): Corrected the Affected Software table to remove MS11-046 as a bulletin replaced by this update on all affected editions of Windows Server 2003. This is a detection change only. There were no changes to the security update files. Customers who have already successfully updated their systems do not need to take any action. Summary: This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Windows DNS server. The more severe of these vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker registers a domain, creates an NAPTR DNS resource record, and then sends a specially crafted NAP…

Microsoft will begin pushing the Windows Phone Mango operating system update to existing Windows Phone users in another week or two, officials said on September 21. Source: All About Microsoft

Some are concerned that Microsoft’s coming Windows 8 secure-boot technologies and policies could result in users being unable to dual-boot Linux alongside Windows 8. Microsoft officials aren’t commenting on whether the worries are unfounded or grounded. Source: All About Microsoft

Severity Rating: Critical Revision Note: V2.1 (September 21, 2011): Corrected the registry key verification entries in the Security Update Deployment section for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Summary: This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Windows. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent a specially crafted SMB response to a client-initiated SMB request. To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker must convince the user to initiate an SMB connection to a specially crafted SMB server. Read Bulletin

By Paul Thurrott As you might imagine, my inbox is overflowing with questions about Windows 8, thanks to Microsoft’s recent release of the first public Developer Preview. I don’t have all the answers, but here are some of the more representative questions I’ve received in the past 10 days. Source: Win Super Site