AWS

Many expect Microsoft to become the next IBM, a huge, successful, and almost universally boring behemoth. This may still happen. But at least Microsoft is going kicking and screaming into this possible future. View the full article

Last week at PDC, as we were about to start talking to people about IE9, I saw the following notification from my Facebook account: From: Facebook [mailto:notification+mwm5axbx@facebookmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 10:05 AM Dina posted something on your Wall and wrote: "funny vid of u, you see it? http://www.facebook.com/l/ca339hTTP://www.N70.InFO/2d" To see your Wall or to write on Dina's Wall, follow the link below: Thanks, The Facebook Team The message was from someone I know pretty well, and I believed the message. The address itself (http://www.n70.info/2d) wasn’t that suspicious there are a lot of URL shortening services, and the .info domain has many legitimate sites on it. So I clicked the it: and thought – whew.

It's still a year away, but now that Google has shown off its plans for the Chrome OS, consumers--and other OS makers ike Apple and Microsoft--have a lot of thinking to do. Here's what Google is planning. View the full article

In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo and I discuss the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009, some Windows 7 OEM news, IE 9, Office 2010 public beta, Microsoft's open source code theft, and much more... View the full article

Microsoft this week unveiled a very early version of Internet Explorer 9 and major initiatives around performance, standards compliance, and hardware acceleration. View the full article

In part 2 of my look at the Office 2010 Beta, I examine some of the new user experiences that span the entire suite. View the full article

We’re just about a month after the Windows 7 launch, and wanted to show an early look at some of the work underway on Internet Explorer 9.

This week, Microsoft delivers the public beta version of the Office 2010 productivity suite. Find out what's coming in this eagerly-awaited release. View the full article

The All-Star Bloggers--Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Rafael Rivera, Tom Warren, and Long Zheng, as well as myself--are now up and running again, live blogging the Day Two PDC 2009 keynote address. Tune in! View the full article

Microsoft this week inched closer to a widespread public release of the Office 2010 Beta when it issued the release to MSDN and TechNet. View the full article

You could try using system restore to roll back to a few days before you got locked out. Maybe you just didn't go back far enough the first time you tried. If that fails then restore back to factory condition might be the only option.

The All-Star Bloggers--Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Rafael Rivera, Tom Warren, and Long Zheng, as well as myself--are now live blogging the Day One PDC 2009 keynote address. Tune in! View the full article

Download Seatools and after you burn the tools to disk you can boot from them and then format the whole drive. Then when you install you can create new partitions

I'm here in Los Angeles for the week to attend the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2009. In addition to daily live updates from the show, I'll be live blogging the keynote events on Tuesday and Wednesday with the All-Star Bloggers. See you at the show! View the full article

Laurence Gaffié, a security researcher, has discovered a weakness in Windows 7 and published all the relevant details on the full disclosure mailing list archives at Insecure.org. The bug has been recognised by Microsoft but its importance has been minimised by the software company. On his blog, Gaffié went as far as providing with a proof of concept which he used to remotely crash Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) on a local area network. Such an attack is also possible through any version of Internet Explorer even older ones (or broadcasting NetBIOS Name Server "trick") even if the system's firewall is activated. The vulnerability, which is found in the Server Message Block (SMB) file sharing protocol, could effectively be used to perform a denial of service (DOS) attack through an infinite loop. Full story: Microsoft Windows 7 Hit By Zero Day Vulnerability - Windows 7 Related Links Microsoft Reacts to Windows 7 0-Day DoS Vulnerability Microsoft working on a fix for a zero-day vulnerability in Windows 7 First Windows 7 zero day exploit is spotted Windows 7 , Server 2008R2 Remote Kernel Crash

In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo and I discuss Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Windows 7 on a netbook, Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Live and Bing updates, and more... View the full article

Microsoft has dramatically changed its OEM licensing in the past year, and it's not really possible for individuals to legally use this type of Windows 7 Setup disc. View the full article

Yes they can both be installed on the same box. As you go through the install process and run into problems post about them and we'll help you.

I spend a lot of time dealing with problems users encounter when using Internet Explorer. As a result, when I write about add-ons, I’m usually talking about misbehaving code that is wrecking the browser. However, it’s not all doom-and-gloom out there, and I’m delighted to share my favorite browser add-on with you. I first came across Ralph Hare’s work when perusing the IE add-on sample code at CodeProject. Ralph and I both liked mouse gestures and wished that Internet Explorer offered them. For those of you who have never used mouse gestures, basically, they allow you to trigger commands like back, forward, refresh, etc, without using the keyboard or clicking on toolbar buttons or menus. While not everyone wants to use mouse gestures, some of us find them incredibly compelling. This sweet spot makes gestures the sort of feature ripe for implementation as an add-on. Fortunately for all of us, Ralph is a great developer and he put together a fantastic gestures add-on for IE which has evolved and improved a lot over the last six years. I’ve installed his add-on on every computer I’ve used since discovering it, and I now find it annoying to use browsers that don’t support gestures. It’s an ironic turn of events for me, since I’ve been a keyboard snob for over a decade. :-) What makes this add-on so great? Respect for the User. The gestures add-on respects your existing browser settings, and does not attempt to change your default homepage, search provider, favorites, user-agent string, etc. There’s no junk (e.g. adware, unexpected toolbars, etc) bundled with it either. Stability. I’ve tried out a lot of different add-ons over the years, but almost always end up uninstalling each after a few days because they’re unstable and result in occasional or frequent browser crashes. In contrast, Ralph has delivered a rock-solid implementation of gestures the few bugs I’ve found have been fixed quickly and the updated versions are automatically offered using an automatic notification service. Best Practices. Ralph’s code is compiled following best-practices for secure and stable add-ons, including linking with the /NXCOMPAT and /DYNAMICBASE flags to opt-in to DEP/NX and ASLR memory protections. Performance. Many browser extensions are useful from time-to-time, but I’m not willing to suffer a performance penalty when not actively using an extension. For some types of extensions (menu extensions, toolbar buttons) this isn’t a problem, because the add-on code only loads when I actively use the add-on. However, an add-on like Mouse Gestures inherently needs to be available at all times, so high performance is an absolutely critical consideration. Ralph’s Browser Helper Object (BHO) is written in native C++, and designed and coded for speed. After installing, check out the Load Time column inside

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is the best game that will be released this year. It may be the single greatest video game in history. Find out why in my latest Xbox 360 review... View the full article

I recently purchased a Windows 7 Starter-based netbook and upgraded it with more RAM, an SD card, and Windows Anytime Upgrade. It's a simple upgrade and makes a big difference. View the full article

Shutoff all the services you don't need. Check task manager and see which services are using the most cpu power.

You'll need to buy at least 15 client access licenses or CALS.

Once again, Microsoft is pushing cost savings as a primary reason to upgrade to a new product, in this case Exchange Server 2010. View the full article

Bulletin Severity Rating:Important - This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Word file. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs view, change, or delete data or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights. View the full article