Microsoft Support & Discussions

Our friends over at the FutureFed blog reported that Windows 7 the has passed the Common Criteria (CC) certification process and achieved Evaluation Assurance Level 4 with augmentation (EAL4+). Common Criteria certification is an international standard recognized by 26 member nations including the United States and is a procurement requirement for U.S. Defense and national security customers. With this certification, we are excited that our federal customers as well as foreign governments can feel secure in deploying Windows 7, having successfully passed the rigorous security testing protocols set forth by the National Information Assurance Partnership. Several g…

You may have seen articles recently that highlight a social engineering technique called

On this blog, we&rsquove discussed the ways that scammers can attack your PC, through malicious software, rogue security alerts, phishing attacks and more. But the bad guys have now devised a new vector: the phone. I first learned about this when I heard my parents had received a call that they had been identified as having rogue software on their PC. The caller, who said he was from Microsoft, needed to remote access their PC to resolve the issue. Turns out scammers like these were simply taking the time to prey on potential victims by calling them and masquerading as a representative from a trusted institution to trick them into giving up valuable and personal infor…

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows In part 2 of my transcript of Steven Sinofsky's D9 appearance earlier this month, I focus on the Windows 8 demonstration featuring Julie Larson-Green. Suffice to say there was plenty more info provided by both Larson-Green and Sinofsky that never escaped past the D9 censors. Until now. ... Source: Win Super Site

Join us this September 13-16 in Anaheim, California for Microsoft

Any site can offer Tracking Protection Lists (TPLs) to help consumers protect their privacy. This post shows you how to make a TPL available from your site. For example, clicking here in IE9 will add the list from the EasyPrivacy. A word about Tracking Protection Lists Tracking Protection Lists are similar in concept to the lists behind the AdBlockPlus add-in for Firefox. The main differences are that TPLs are built in to IE, the W3C is working through the standardization process of their format, and adding a TPL in IE sends the DNT header (link). Technically, TPLs are just text files that can be hosted on any Web se…

Internet Explorer now gives you more control over the data that Web sites store on your computer. This includes Flash Player&rsquos Local Shared Objects (LSOs). We&rsquove worked closely with Adobe to integrate Flash LSO deletion directly into Internet Explorer, making it easier for you to manage your online privacy with the latest version of Adobe Flash and IE9 (as well as IE8): IE will delete your Flash Cookies as well as your Web cookies If you want to try this out, please visit our Test Drive Web site where you can create a Flash Cookie and then delete it. If you want to manage all the Flash settings, visit the online settings application on Adobe&a…

The June 2011 Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer is now available via Windows Update. This security update resolves seven vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that were disclosed in coordination with Microsoft. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user visits a malicious, specially crafted Web page using IE. Users who run without administrative rights are more secure in general and should be less impacted than other users you can read more about this security principle (link) in many places (link). This security update is rated Critical for IE6, 7, 8, and 9 on Windows clients for more information about the ratings and the vulnerabil…

Adobe Flash Player 10.3 delivers super-fast graphics by plugging into the Internet Explorer 9 hardware-accelerated rendering pipeline using IE9

Microsoft plans to tweak its Windows Azure pricing, come July 1, to make the platform more attractive to users who want to migrate lots of data to the cloud. Source: All About Microsoft

Reports began surfacing about a new Microsoft cloud outage on June 22 — less than a week before the company is slated to turn on its Office 365 hosted service platform. Source: All About Microsoft

Microsoft’s President of Server and Tools, Satya Nadella, is beginning to speak publicly again, after taking on his new job in February 2011. And in one of his first pronouncements, he’s declared that the industry is moving toward “the post-virtualization era.” Source: All About Microsoft

Windows IT Pro The nation's largest wireless carrier has finally revealed a change that many believed was inevitable: It will switch from its unlimited data plan for smart phones and other mobile devices to a tiered set of data plans similar to that offered by its biggest rival, AT&T Wireless. ... Source: Win Super Site

Windows IT Pro Microsoft and other high tech companies are asking the US government for a year-long tax repatriation holiday that would allow them to transfer billions of dollars of cash from international banks into the US at a much lower than usual tax rate. And this temporary holiday wouldn't just benefit the companies in question: By moving that much cash back into the US, they could inject trillions of dollars, collectively, into the ailing US economy. ... Source: Win Super Site

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows When Microsoft corporate vice president Steven Sinofsky appeared at the D9 conference to unveil the Windows 8 Start screen earlier this month, I was transfixed. But the live blog from the event was lacking, and now that D9 has finally released the unedited video of the interview, we can find out what Mr. Sinofsky really said. Shocker: You only know the half of it. ... Source: Win Super Site

What do you get when you cross natural-user-interface technologies, like Kinect’s voice-control, with ads? Microsoft is calling them NuAds and is pitching them to advertisers as of this week. Source: All About Microsoft

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows Remember Mozilla

Windows IT Pro When Microsoft announced its intention in March to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion, I questioned the rationale behind the deal. ... Source: Win Super Site

Windows IT Pro Scotland Yard announced Tuesday morning that it had arrested a 19-year-old man in Wickford, Essex who is suspected of being the mastermind of a hacker group called LulzSec that electronically attacked Sony, the US Senate and CIA, the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and many other organizations, law enforcement agencies, corporations, and governmental bodies. The teen is being questioned in London while computer forensic specialists examine his PCs and servers. ... Source: Win Super Site

Windows IT Pro Beleaguered smart phone giant Nokia on Tuesday announced the release of a major new smart phone, the Nokia N9, which combines elegant hardware design with innovative new software features. While the N9 in many ways represents Nokia's first viable iPhone competitor, it's also something of a lame duck: It runs the Meego OS, which the company is dropping in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone. ... Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft is ready to release a beta of its Windows Phone “Mango” operating system update to testers, possibly as soon as this week. Source: All About Microsoft

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows You may be wondering, on a point-by-point basis, what's changed between the first version of Windows Phone and Mango. And this document can help, presented in raw notes form, pretty much as I originally composed it. ... Source: Win Super Site

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows I've been using Windows Phone "Mango" for the past week or so and think I finally have a handle on what it is that Microsoft will accomplish over this platform's second year. And it's mostly (very) good news: Mango improves the Windows Phone platform in useful ways. ... Source: Win Super Site

As officials have been hinting in recent weeks, Microsoft has relaunched and updated its Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage service. Source: All About Microsoft

Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows With the new version of Windows Live SkyDrive now available, here's a screenshot gallery of the new user experience. ... Source: Win Super Site