Will Windows 7 get a cool new user-interface in terms of graphical overhaul?

Nope. Microsoft did officially state they won’t be changing the UI a lot (like they did when moving from Windows XP to Windows Vista) as, although very cool, most people get scared when seeing a new UI. The average user or users with less computer experience had some trouble adapting to the (rather minor, in my opinion) changes Windows Vista brought. So be prepared to be let down when it comes to the graphical appearance of the system itself if you were expected something better / newer / nicer. They are however putting some effort into making the experience more uniform across the system.

[http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1223485042.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

I hate User Account Control (UAC) in Vista! Are they going to change that at all?

Nope. UAC as designed is a basic security and permissions/access design that should be implemented in every modern day operating system. Linux and Mac OS X have had this design for ages now, separating users from admins and raising privileges on the spot when needed. In some of the latest leaked screenshots, it showed Microsoft is however working on refining the user experience when using User Account Control. It showed a configuration panel allowing the user to set when and how the user should be notified of UAC notifications. Also note that Microsoft is very much paying attention to the general public on this issue. Based upon user input when Vista launched, Microsoft refined UAC in the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 release.

Will Windows 7 have a completely new and rewritten kernel powering the OS giving us more power?

Nope. Microsoft stated on their official Windows 7 blog they won’t be bringing a brand new kernel to the system as it’s simply not needed. The current NT kernel is just fine and, although people like to think otherwise, is fairly fast. They (Microsoft) did say they are brining improvements to the kernel as always. One should also consider the compatibility issues created when changing some as fundamental as the Windows kernel itself.
[http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/05/27/communicating-windows-7.aspx]

(Story continues after the break! Please read on for more information)

So when is this secret OS coming out?

No one really knows of course but lately there have been some rumors on the interwebs that Windows 7 would be landing just before the summer of 2009. Personally I think a Q4 CY2009 (November enterprise/business launch, January 2010 consumer launch) is more realistic. Then again they should really try to get this to the OEMs before the holiday seasons as missing that launch window with Windows Vista did in fact hurt sales.

This doesn’t seem to be a big thing.. Windows Vista R2?

Well yes and no. A lot of people I talk to say Windows 7 is going to be a slight update and call it Windows Vista R2 (after the naming convention of Windows Server updates) and state Windows 7 won’t bring drastic new features to the table. Microsoft disagrees and call Windows 7 “a major release” in the Windows product line deserving a X. release rather than a .X release. Yes it’s true Windows 7 won’t change that much compared to its older brother Windows Vista. The change in name is more of a marketing stunt to get rid of the bad name the press has given Windows Vista (more on that in the closing statement). It’s a good move made by Microsoft and it also comes in line with the yet-to-release Windows Mobile 7. It sets a new image and a clear image for the freshly (on some people opinion: slightly) updated Windows.

I know a feature officially announced, ha! Multi-Touch input!

And you are right! Windows 7 is bringing multi-touch input in a consumer based operating system  to the masses. At All Things Digital this year, Microsoft chairmen and CEO Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer gave a small demo showing the typical multi-touch features found on other devices (Apple iPhone, modern laptop touchpads) such as pinching and navigating a maps using multiple fingers. How Microsoft will implement the new style of input is still anyone’s guess. If I’m correct (and I’m not an Apple developer what so ever), Apple uses a gesture recognition system that takes away the complexity of handling multiple events. Of course this won’t always work in a operating system environment where developers need to use more options than just gestures. Again .. I’m not sure on how Apple is doing it, but anything multi-touch is really hard. Almost every input system relies on the input cursor being at one spot at the screen with a X and Y coordinate. Multi-touch changes all that as there will be multiple points of contacts. Then again Microsoft had a pretty cool training ground: Microsoft Surface.

[http://d6.allthingsd.com/20080527/gates_ballmer/, credit: ATD]

It is however important that Microsoft brings rich new APIs to the system allowing developers to easily make use of the new hardware features. For small time developers or system architects who want to get going quickly without messing about with input methods, Microsoft should provide a gesture-based interface with a set range of gesture commands to be inputted put into the apps. For more advanced developers such as game creators, Microsoft should allow direct access to the input itself allowing developers create amazing stuff and not being limited by the built-in gesture recognition system.

Dell has a tablet PC that already allows multi-touch input in older operating systems on the market today. Microsoft better provide a interface that all manufacturers and developers can use or the technology will be forgotten. A good example is the implementation of tilt and orientation sensors in the current Windows Mobile devices. Microsoft provides no API what so ever to support these types of sensors right now resulting in closed APIs being written (quite poorly) by the manufacturers themselves. They are brining those APIs to Windows Mobile 7 and even to Windows 7 itself but they better life up to the high expectations else adoption will be slow or fragmentation in the market will occur.

What are HomeGroups?

The first time I heard about HomeGroups (or Longhorn Castles) was early this year from blogger Long Zheng. He wrote the following on his blog: “If HomeGroup is indeed Castle byte for byte, then what it is basically is the equivalent of an enterprise-grade Active Directory roaming-profile network setup simplified into a wizard dialog with a password field and checkboxes”. In short .. Roaming Profiles for the masses without the need of a separate domain controller on your network. I’m very curious on how such a feature would work or be implemented, however the end result would be great. No more synchronizing data between PCs and manually setting up new boxes at home. We’ve had this technology in the professional  workspace for over 15 years now. With the whole synchronization hype going one, this would raise the bar even higher.

[http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080215/windows-7-homegroup-rebirth-longhorn-castle/, credit: Long Zheng]

This feature is my personal favorite and I really hope they can make it work. As Zheng said, the feature was originally made for Windows Longhorn and ultimately Windows Vista however, probably due to quality concerns, they have cut the feature as no one has seen the living daylight of this type of functionality in Windows Vista. One little shed of hope: A screenshot leaked not too long ago, clearly showed the feature’s configuration page.

[http://screenshots.WinFuture.de/1222250455.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

The biggest problem to be solved is of course the storage of the Windows profile and how different computers use different settings. I wouldn’t want my workstation having the power settings of my media center or even my notebook for that matter. Keeping profiles in sync is another issue to consider when implementing this features. I expect the HomeGroups feature to be present but slimmed down. Don’t expect Windows profile syncing anytime soon and I’m guessing they are going to use Windows Live SkyDrive or Windows Live Mesh for storage for data such as documents or pictures. Co-blogger Raymond Comvalius also suggested Microsoft once talked about (roaming) profile syncing using USB storage devices, however I have yet to see such a feature being implemented or suggested. It’s a shame but understandable as it’s no easy feat keeping profiles in sync whilst keeping machine-specific settings intact using consumer friendly tools and configuration settings. Most people get confused when it comes to synchronization.

What is context-aware computing (sensors)?

Again going by what screenshots can tell you, and some information found on the official Windows 7 blog, Windows 7 will bring, what I at least call, context-aware computing. The operating system can use external third partner sensors to provide information about where the user is user the PC and how he is using it. Is he on move, sitting down, resting the computer on his lap? Is he in a secure location such as at home or on a business site?

[http://screenshots.WinFuture.de/1222250470.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

What are accelerators for Windows?

Look at the Internet Explorer 8 beta Accelerators and integrate that into Windows itself. Nothing too fancy but I’m betting the EU will like this features as users can easily choose a different datasource or search provider.

Is Microsoft making Windows 7 x64 only?

Nothing is really known whether Microsoft will make Windows 7 64-bit only however it’s really hard to believe Microsoft will make it 64bit-exclusive as not every CPU in the market can run 64 bit software. Older models and models specific for certain applications such as netbooks or embedded systems, do not have the needed x86-64 instruction set. Of course, just like Windows Vista, Windows 7 will have a 64-bit version. It’s very likely that the Windows 7 Server edition will be x64 only as the server teams stated again and again that Windows Server 2008 will be the last server-oriented operating system to have both a x86 and a x64 version. (Wikipedia tends to think differently and credits my personal weblog for saying both Windows 7 and Windows 7 Server will be x64-exclusive, which I never said. The article is now updated.) [http://www.martijnbrant.net/2008/08/microsoft-nl-confirms-windows-server-2008-r2-is-in-fact-windows-7/]

Vista has too many SKUs (different versions of Vista), are they fixing that?

Vista has many SKUs.. yes. Too many? Possibly however you should consider that most users won’t need the Enterprise or Starter version. The Home Basic version isn’t that good so I never advice it to anyone. That leaves only 3 real choices over the 2 XP SKUs: Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. I always advise consumers to go for HP, business users with Business and people who want it all (or know that you get like 50 copies when attending any Microsoft conference) with Ultimate. So it’s really not that many however it would be nice if they could drop the Home Basic one as it is useless to me. It’s barely cheaper compared to the more feature-rich Home Premium (difference in price is mostly in the DVD codec being provided yes or no). Consumers should have to choose between Home, Business and Ultimate. Enterprise and Starter will still have their place but consumers don’t need to see it. Of course it’s up to the gentlemen in Redmond.

Windows XP isn’t dead yet! How come? What will change with 7?

Yes it’s true that since XP was born in 2001, it’s still very much alive in the marketplace. No I’m not referring to the (relatively) small group of people (consumers!) being bitter about Windows Vista and wanting to downgrade to XP. I’m talking about the spicy new hardware phenomena called Netbooks. Netbooks are small light weight devices with small screens, a power-minded CPU and low on RAM. These machines are focused on low-budget consumers, developing nations and people wanting a small and portable extra system. The problem with netbooks is they lack the power to run the high-demanding operating system we use today. When Windows Vista was being designed, Microsoft stated modern computers that the average consumer would buy would be fast enough to run the new and high-demand system. And they were right. However just after Windows Vista launched, the new craze had hit the market. Windows Vista was deliberately designed as a heavy OS with a strong (and fat) foundation to run on. Windows 7 is now building on this foundation and it’s going to pay off just fine with “normal” computer. The problem is of course, the average netbook isn’t powerful enough to run Windows Vista with all its glory. Some OEMs (like HP and Gigabyte) have launched netbook product running Windows Vista yet most consumers opt not to have all the new features Vista brings and choose to run an older operating system which demands less of the system: Windows XP. Microsoft being able to provide a adequate solution in time (such as a Windows Vista Light Edition), they decided to cut Windows XP off for the normal market and only give away Windows XP Home Edition licenses for select products in the market. Only netbooks with less than 2Ghz cpu, 1.5GB of RAM and screen smaller than 11”, is allowed to run the age-old Windows XP Home license. Microsoft has said to make Windows 7 more componentized and more modular than its predecessors allowing them to design a system for more different types of scenarios. Whether Microsoft is brining a Windows 7 Netbook edition, is yet to be seen. There are currently 10” tablet netbooks on market with touch screen capabilities for around 500 dollars. Wouldn’t it be cool to run Windows 7 on a  10” netbook with multi-touch for less than 600$? On a small side-note: My AsusTek EEE PC 1000H with a 1.6ghz Atom CPU and 1GB of RAM runs Windows Vista Ultimate just fine.

Native VHD support

The new buzzword the last couple of years: Virtualization. And rightfully so. The new technology from not only Microsoft, allows users to run virtual copies of systems on their own PC. Unfortunately there still isn’t a uniform standard for storing these virtual copies. Microsoft current virtualization products (VPC 2007, Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V server) use their own storage format called VHD. The tech is quite similar to other virtualization products such as VMWare Workstation and most product allow for importing the different types of harddisk images. Long Zheng, again, found the following on the PDC agenda after it was published: “Virtual hard disk (VHD) is becoming a de facto standard image format for virtual machine operating system images. This session discusses native support of VHD in Windows Server 2008 R2.” (Quick note: 2008 R2 = 7).

[http://www.istartedsomething.com/20081013/winhec-2008-agenda-confirms-native-vhd-suppor/, credit: Long Zheng]

Will Windows 7 bring new deployment options?

No probably not and why would it? Microsoft overhauled their deployment technologies when they made Vista. Using Windows Deployment Services is easier than ever to deploy images over your corporate or system builder network. The new .WIM imaging standard can store the operating system in a file-based image. The HAL-less architecture allows for hardware-independent deployment of images making supporting and deploying these types of image really easy. So really there is no need to update the current deployment technique.

However a good feature would be a Mac OS X / Windows 98 like installer. Being able to choose which components are installed and which aren’t is a much missed feature in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. A power-user who knows what he’s doing (or thinks he know what he’s doing, trust me, those two aren’t the same) should be able to perform a custom installation without resorting to extra tools or config files. Yes the new unattended.xml allows for more customization, however it shouldn’t be needed. It should be an option on the Windows DVD.

Then again Microsoft probably won’t implement this feature as it makes supporting system less-easier (not harder, just not as easy). They made choice of now allowing for customizations during default installation to ensure every Windows XP and Windows Vista would have the same features. Look at it from a technical support standpoint: Nearly every Windows Vista PC is feature-wise exactly the same. They all have the Snipping tool, Paint and Wordpad available from the start making support just a little bit easier.

Desktop and taskbar integration

A term used a couple of times when I hear certain IT pros and other Windows related professionals connected close to Microsoft, is that the desktop and taskbar will integrate.    It’s even in the PDC 2008 Promo song “4 Softies and a Pizza Guy - P-D-C 2008”. Line 3 of Verse 2A is “The desktop and taskbar will integrate”. Of course this could simply be nothing. However no one has yet explained the small little blue square the bottom of every screenshot leaked so far! Mysterious? Yes!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv2M4aIMc-8, credit: Microsoft promo]

[http://screenshots.WinFuture.de/1222273806.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Hyper-V integration?

Will Windows 7 bring virtualization as a part of the operating system in the form of a stand-alone version of Hyper-V? I know a lot of IT pros and Microsoft Certified Trainers have been (ab)using Windows Server 2008 as a workstation running Hyper-V virtualization. It is a really good product. Currently the only Microsoft-made virtualization for the consumer-based Windows is Virtual PC 2007 which, although fair enough performance, lacks in the feature department to be honest.

Changes to the sidebar?

As seen on the integration screenshot, the sidebar Widg.. oh I mean Gadgets are no longer tied to the side of the desktop. They can now roam free. Also there no longer is a shadow on the side of your desktop (which I, personally, always found rather depressing to be honest. Silly me).

[http://screenshots.WinFuture.de/1222273806.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Windows Media Center

Microsoft did some tweaking to the Windows Vista version of Windows Media Center with the TV pack update released (or not) this summer. It’s known that Fiji (as its codename was) doesn’t bring a lot of new features to the consumer. It mostly a format update.

Leaked screenshots show a slightly tweaked main UI with larger text sizes and different placement of the different menus.

[http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1222250345.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Windows Media Player

WMP, my personal weapon of choice when it comes to media, will get a fresh coat of paint. It now features more Windows Live Wave 3-like colors with its trendy whites and blues. The player is also getting a new mini-mode.

[http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1222250363.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

How about that browser?

Don’t believe everything the blogging sphere is telling you. Internet Explorer is still very much alive and still is the most used web browser since the mid-90’s. Sure it’s more of a tough market these days with products like Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari on the rise, but Internet Explorer still is being actively developed by Microsoft. Windows 7 will feature Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and will be exactly the same as the Internet Explorer 8 currently in development by the IE team. You can pick up the IE8 Beta 2 for some time now. Expect the final version later this year.

Vista had some issues running on certain types of hardware (i.e. I tried to run it on my old slow pc and it didn’t work, surprise surprise). Will Windows 7 have these issues?

First off .. Vista’s hardware problems weren’t all that bad when compared to the release of Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The media has blown this way out of proportion.

Will Windows 7 perform great out of the box? No one can say for sure but every new product has it’s issues. However Microsoft did note on its Windows 7 blog that the fundamentals of Windows 7 will be nearly identical to those of Windows Vista. The system requirements will be nearly identical. Personally I’ve always said that any pc that runs Vista just fine, Windows 7 will run great on.

[http://blogs.msdn.com/e7]

Less bundled apps?

It has been said Windows 7 will feature less bundled apps from the start and will rely on users using either their own software, or Microsoft Office or Windows Live applications. Personally I hope this isn’t true and hope the Windows 7 operating system doesn’t lack basic functions such as reading email, handling contacts or scanning photos. These are all features that would appeal the average consumer and it would be a letdown you’re brand spanking new computer doesn’t how to handle media or information properly. I’m not saying Windows Vista’s Windows Mail program is perfect but I know enough people who use it (and have used Outlook Express for years, *shivers down spine*). Taking away functionality will not only make the system less valuable, it will also allow more OEMs to install yet more crap-ware on the preinstalled systems.

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10048142-56.html, credit: Ina Fried, CNet]

Paint?

Paint! Microsoft is, in years and years time now, finally giving Paint a graphical overhaul is desperately needs. Most of us (ab)use Paint as a quick and dirty editing and screenshotting program. However Paint can actually do a whole lot more yet it’s features and tools are hard to use.

The latest screenshots showed a surprise that shocked everyone. Paint has got the Office 2007-style Ribbon! Could we possibly ask for more from a basic built-in editing program?

[http://screenshots.WinFuture.de/1221989444.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Ok .. how about Wordpad?

Like we say in the Netherlands: You ask, we serve! Wordpad also got the Ribbon interface. Hopefully it will also get some Microsoft Office import functionality to quickly touch up or print out a Word document without the new for Word or Word Viewer to be installed.

[http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1221989443.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Ok .. long shot .. Calc?

Yup.. Even Calculator is getting an overhaul and getting some pretty sweet new features such as easier to read numbers when not using the Base-10 system (like Hex or Bin), history, Mileage calculator, Mortgage estimation and time calculation. Pretty sweet for a built-in calculator most people won’t look any further beyond calculating the square root of 32. (Stop launching calc.exe when reading this).

[http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1222250167.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Powershell 2

More and more reports are saying PowerShell 2 will be natively supported in Windows 7 and will ship out of the box. This of course simplifies administrating systems from a command line. An extra GUI (demo’d at last TechEd for IT Pro in Florida this year) is also being shipped with the operating system.

[http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1221989650.jpg, credit: WinFuture.de]

Anymore stuff we should expect in Windows 7 then?

Sure .. loads of stuff actually. You’re getting a XPS viewer out of the box, more Windows Aero customization options, Direct3D 11, Private Broadcaster Architecture support, WDDM 1.1 subsystem, a slightly tweaked Windows Explorer (more fresher look, nothing drastic such as a tabbed Explorer), >64 logical processor support (finally!) and many more little tweaks here and there.

Will it finally remember my folder preferences and not choose the best layout for my folders in the Windows Explorer?

I really don’t know and people should really stop bugging me about this. Read this: http://www.tweakguides.com/VA_4.html. That’s including you, Chewbacca!

So as you can see, Windows 7 has a lot to bring to the table. Is it a ground-shaking release which will stir up a lot of trouble like some analysts in the media said Windows Vista did during its launch? No it probably won’t as Windows 7 build on the new foundation laid down by Windows Vista. Does this make Windows Vista any less of an operating system then it is right now? No of course not. People seem to forget that it’s normal to see a Windows release every 3 years like we saw with Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP.  What happened during the development of Windows Vista (or Longhorn) was a mistake. Period. According to the mainstream press they didn’t fix that mistake and Windows Vista is flawed from the start. Sure it has been a bit of a bumpy ride the last 7 years but I wouldn’t call Windows Vista flawed. I regularly work with System Builders and OEM partner to get a grip on what the average consumer thinks of Windows Vista. More and more people, and this is also clearly visible on the public internet, come to realize the press is not being totally unbiased when writing about Windows Vista and the motto “sex sells” clearly comes to mind. In the entire year of 2007, the most popular thing to do in the mainstream IT press was to jam that pitchfork a bit harder in Windows Vista. Unfortunately Windows Vista will go down in the books as flawed (slightly fixed by SP1) and Windows 7 will be the savior of the day. This hardly true but looking at current trends, it’s quite possible.

You shouldn’t see Windows 7 as a patchjob to fix the flaws made in Windows Vista, but rather the implementation of new ideas build on the new foundation built by Windows Vista 3 years earlier. By not drastically changing the system requirements and core of the OS, most (if not nearly all) systems that run Windows Vista today, should run Windows 7 just fine. This is important as Windows Vista did raise the bar rather high. Raising it higher could upset a lot of consumers and IT pros alike.

Should you wait for buying that new laptop until Windows 7 hits the shelves? No .. you shouldn’t postpone such a purchase based upon the release of new software. Sure if the operating system is coming out next month, it worth it to wait a little while. But other than that, I don’t see Windows 7 shipping before Q4 CY2009 so waiting another 13 to 14 months would be absurd.

How much of this article is actually based on true facts, remains to be seen. Be sure to tune into the live webcast (will be posted on the Microsoft-oriented weblog www.bink.nu when available) and check out the all-star live blogging team reporting the action live:

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/10/22/all-star-bloggers-group-liveblogging-at-pdc-2008

Best of luck go out to Ed Bott, Kip Kniskern, Long Zheng, Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrott, Rafael Rivera and Tom Warren. I would like to thank IT pro, trainer and writer Raymond Comvalius (check out his new Windows Vista book!), Technology guru Hugo Leijtens and of course the owner of Bink.nu itself: Steven Bink.

Microsoft PDC 2008 begins October 26 and ends October 30. The main keynote is the 27th at 8:30AM. Don’t miss it or the live coverage!

About Martijn Brant

Martijn Brant is a Microsoft Certified IT Pro and Technology Specialist specialized in Windows Vista and user experiences. He has over 5 years of experience working with consumer minded deployments and optimization of user experiences. For years he has helped Microsoft improve their products and regularly writes as an analyst on the Microsoft oriented website Bink.nu. His personal website is http://www.martijnbrant.net/.

I had logged into my Vista Ultimate machine remotely over the local network. When I walked over to the machine itself, it showed this weird inverted login screen.

A touch of the mouse, fixed it. Two more on my Flickr account.

So last week I was going over some security principles and decided that file-based encryption wasn’t enough for my mobile system. I decided to look at drive encryption and for my scenario I had 2 very good and supported choices:

·         Windows Vista Bitlocker
I run Windows Vista Ultimate x64 so using Bitlocker would be a viable option for me

·         HP Protecttools Drive Encryption
The official business-level encryption solution provided by the OEM, HP, itself.

At first I wanted to use Bitlocker and I used the Bitlocker preparation Vista Ultimate Extra to prepare my harddrive for Bitlocker usage. The tool however refused to use my harddrive as it didn’t understood some of the partitions located on the drive (yes, even I have a dualboot to Linux, don’t like it tough) and it refused my harddrive.

Too bad and I decided to use the OEM-supported solution HP ProtectTools Drive Encryption. I figured as HP is a large and  good company (who has always given me great tech support here in the Netherlands), there would be no recovery issues in the event something should go horribly wrong.

And boy did things go wrong…

Earlier this month I turned on Drive Encryption in the software (which is buggy, doesn’t autolaunch the admin tool as Administrator in Windows Vista with UAC turned on, crap HP software). It took about 2 hours to encrypt my drive and it installed a little on-the-fly decryption app in the bootloader. All was working great and performance was still very good. I backed up a recovery key to 2 different USB sticks (just in case). It also asked me whether I wanted to use the online recovery service. As the service does nothing but store your decryption key for a ridiculous amount of money / year, I declined and used the USB-only solution.

Exactly one week ago, Thursday afternoon, I was prepping a demo I was going to give the following day @ 9AM. At around 15:00, I was done with my notebook and switched it to standby. Sometime later I had to change some boot arguments of the Windows Vista bootloader and used a few applications to reflect the changes needed (who I’m guessing rewrote the Vista bootloader, nothing fancy). All was good and I rebooted to test my changes and I noticed it didn’t load the HP decryption software (usually asking me for my password) and it just gave me a flashing cursor.

I rebooted again .. same. I booted a recovery dvd with a few partition manager applications on it. Double checked whether Vista partition was the active one. It of course was. I booted the Vista DVD and try to use auto fix. It couldn’t find my Windows drive (which is explainable as it is encrypted).

The HP system relies on the bootloader software to be present in order to decrypt the harddrive. Messing with the bootloader (which a normal OS installation next to you current OS would also do), seems to wipe away the HP software. Ok great.. now I have a locked drive.

Next up .. recovery.. I had my decryption key but no means to use it as the recovery option was a part of the bootloader decryption software. I quickly visited the HP.com support site in search of a recovery solution for the encrypted harddrive. No luck. Googled on the product name and found nothing usefull.

I quickly rang up HP Netherlands as it was about a hour before lines closing. Quickly got a pro (no level-1/level-2 filtering here, GREAT!) and explained the situation. However unfortunately due to some issues with the phone systems when using T-Mobile as a provider, I got disconnected. This happened a number of times and I quickly switched to landlines (after being on hold and being disconnected 3x). Ultimately had an employee working with me on how to resolve the issue. No luck. I explained my level of expertise on Windows Vista and systems overall and we both gave great ideas on how to possibly resolve the issue (recover the drive or reinstall the bootloader software). He looked in the central database and had no luck. It was over closing time and they had to cut the call short (which I understand). I asked them whether HP USA could help me further as they are 24/7. The Dutch support line said no as they use the same internal support KB.

I was getting late and quickly went to the shops to grab some food before they all closed. Some cooking later, I was looking at the software being used by HP for the encryption. HP ProtectTools uses a branded version of Safeboot (www.safeboot.com, now owned by McAfee). I again searched the internet but didn’t find a lot of useful stuff. One forum post noted the name (which I can’t say according to HP) of a recovery solution used by enterprises.

Via sources (I’m not allowed to say which ones according to HP) I got my hands on the decryption DVD. Great! Quickly inserted the disc and booted the system yet again. “Please enter daily 4 digit code”. Oh .. euh. 1234 .. nope. Tried some other numbers and couldn’t guess the number. I opted to cancel and the recovery app locked down. It had one other option “Activation via HP backup”. Hey! I have that. Inserted my USB stick and selected the file. “Valid”. Awesome! .. “Now please enter 4 digit daily code”. Arghh.

Looked up the support number for the Safeboot tool. The Dutch number was disconnected as McAfee had bought them. When trying the US number, I got connected to McAfee Enterprise support. I opted for Safeboot support. 1 minute waiting later, I had a tech person on the line. I explained my situation and stated I had the software. Just needed the key. The kind sir explained nicely to me they couldn’t give me the key without the proper SLAs. I understood however still lame the only thing holding me is a 4 digit code which the guy had displayed on his screen but couldn’t give me. I tried asking real real nice. Nope .. no go. He advised me to ring up HP USA.

So I did. Got disconnected 3 times whilst waiting (and having to pass the horrible voice-activated menu’s, what’s wrong with keyinput?) and had to wait another 15 minutes. Ultimately I got my tech person on the phone. Took about half an hour to explain the situation. Of course the ma’am couldn’t find anything in the KB either. I also explained my situation was urgent and I had to have the drive back before 9AM next morning. She would “look into it and do some research” while I would wait on hold (with the WORST waiting music EVER). I waited for up a to an hour. She was no help and couldn’t find anything. It took her over 90 minutes to realize with the Dutch guy did in 15 minutes. Ultimately she rang McAfee USA again and we had a little conference call (after I waited another 30 minutes whilst she was explaining the situation to McAfee). Ultimately I had the McAfee tech guy on the phone but again just like before, they couldn’t do anything for me.

I thanked them both and hang up (as waiting any longer or making a escalation ticket would be pointless and take way too long).  Nearly 5 hours of calling, waiting and being disconnected, I was no further in my quest to unlock my harddrive.

Another desperate 15 minutes of Googling and ringing up 4 IT Pro’s out of their beds, I gave up. I decided the best thing to do, was to wipe the harddrive and install a clean image. As I was using special software for the demo the following day, I couldn’t just use a backup. I had to reinstall from scratch. Of course all my documents and vital information was backed up to external hdd, LAN share and trusty Sharepoint sites so that wasn’t a too big a problem. However I did took me another couple of hours to setup the demo software again from scratch. By the time I got in bed, it was nearly 4AM.

The following day I got up at 7AM and give my demo at 9AM using my cleanly installed software (which went great dispite the 3 hours of sleep). Stayed on location till 6PM. After that I went to a friends house for dinner. Fixed his internet and had a good time. By the time I was back in my bed, it was 3AM/4AM.

So basically HP is providing a encryption solution they cannot support or recover for you in case something should go wrong. There are no external decryption tools provided. If you are using HP ProtectTools Drive Encryption right now, I really suggest turning it off and migrating away from the solution. At the very least, find some way to backup your bootloader containing the decryption software.

As for the recovery service which SafeBoot is providing for HP.. It’s a yearly fee to store your (kinda useless) recovery key online and a support service (allowing you to ring the 2 McAfee persons I talked to earlier directly). I asked McAfee whether that would have saved me in my situation had I taken up the subscription. The short answer: No. They only provide you your key and provide support for resetting the password remotely. They don’t provide support when your bootloader committed suicide.

I’m never ever using full drive encryption software by HP again! Perhaps HP could have given me a better solution had I waited a couple of days so they could escalate the problem to other departments and McAfee. I didn’t have the luxury of time, and you might not too when things go wrong. Stay away from HP Drive Encryption solutions (or anything Safeboot related).

One small note: I heard that Safeboot supported the HP software directly via their own helpdesk line thus unloading complex support calls to the HP helpdesk. However McAfee bought Safeboot in 2007. The HP agreement still stands but support is limited to enterprise SLA holders only.

Microsoft has been quick to act on informing IT pros and the general public on the security issue in nearly every NT-based Windows version out in the wild however more details are still lacking.

The bug concerns the Server service found in all NT-based Windows OS responsible for communication between computers in a Windows based Network allowing for remote execution of code.

Bink first reported the issue along with a link to the rather small KB article. Since then Microsoft updated the article (several times?) to provide more information to the public. Questions are raised after seeing this additional information.

Why are Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 rated “Critical” and why are Vista and 2008 rated “Important”?

Why is there information available on what could happen on Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 systems but not on what could happen to Vista and 2008 systems?

Why are Windows Server 2008 Core installations effected?

Who found this critical flaw? (Internal or external reporting)

How come Windows 7 is effected? (This also confirms the bug is in the deep roots of the NT Server service and no major overhaul is taking place in concerning these types of services in Windows 7, not that a overhaul was expected.)

The updated are available to all users via Windows Update right now. All systems using the default autoupdate settings should get the patch tonight. For enterprise deployment, please refer to the deployment guide.

Hopefully when the systems are patched, we could get a glimpse on how this bug works and how it could be there has been a flaw in a modern and secure system for over 8 years now. More information will be posted as it comes available.

However … this month I noticed something different and consulted co-writer Raymond Comvalius. What was written surprised us both. Tony wrote in his letter “Zo hebben Daniël en ik net een uitgebreide training achter de rug over de mogelijkheden van Windows 7 (Windows Server 2008 R2) en alles over het Software+Services concept”. (Translation: Daniël and I just completed an extended training on the features of Windows 7 (Windows Server 2008 R2) and on everything related to the Software+Services concept).

The most remarkable bit being of course the notation of Windows Server 2008 R2 right after Windows 7 thus meaning Windows Server 2008 R2 will be based on Windows 7? One can only speculate at this point as Microsoft won’t talk on Windows 7 openly just yet.

Little is known on Windows Server 2008 R2. In May 2008 first details started to show: http://bink.nu/news/windows-server-2008-r2-planned-for-2009.aspx. A little fact that we do know is that Windows Server 2008 R2 will be x64-only as Windows Server 2008 is confirmed to be the last server edition of Windows to support x86.

Naming the new  version (of Windows Server) Windows Server 2008 R2 is a good move in my mind as  it won’t scare people away from Windows Server 2008, waiting for the new version (for instance Windows Server 2009). Making it sound like it’s not a huge upgrade, will make sure the adoption of Windows Server 2008 stays on track.

As if the summer heat wasn’t bad enough in my home office (26C with AC, 32C+ without), it now officially killed one of my HDDs.

About 3 months ago I bought three new 750GB Samsung F1 disks and had put them all in RAID. All was sailing smooth and the speeds were amazing. However this last Wednesday I was working with multiple virtual PC’s whilst downloading and extracting large files in the background.

Whilst extracting, WinRAR threw an CRC errors. This can happen and luckily this can be fixed using some freeware utilities. I had set QuickPAR to fix the issues .. it crashed after a few minutes. Hmm strange…

Shortly after that explorer crashed and burned. I quickly saved all the data and rebooted the workstation. The Intel RAID manager (ICH9) threw an error: “Problem occured in disk 2″. Oh dear.

Surprisingly Vista booted through it but it was quite unstable. Excel would crash every 5 minutes. I stopped the computer again and took out the HDDs. They felt as if they were on fire (which is strange as they have active cooling on them and the aircon in the room was turned on). I’d let them cool down a bit, lay them beside the casing and targeted some extra casefans on them.

Booted through again .. again the RAID warning. Windows booted and looked stable enough. Using the Intel Storage Manager app I resetted the HDD back to normal state and all was fine. Some heavy I/O later on, thing became unstable again. Double checked the Intel app again: Disk 3 error.

Nice :\ … so HDD3 is officially dying. I got all the data on external backups so that was a problem. I killed the RAID, took the disk out and recreated the RAID with just 2 disks. Fast enough for me I guess. Sending the dying one to Samsung once it’s gone through the KillDisk hell.

As some of you may know, I picked up a Geforce 8800GT and I loved it. I, however, didn’t like the cooler that much. A singleslot cooler with a very loud fan on it. It was fair enough when idle. However put some load on it and it sounds like it would take off and take the PC with it. Two weeks later I ordered a new cooler and have waited for it to be shipped. After being in backorder for nearly 2 months, I canceled it.

This week I picked up the Zalman VF-1000. Installation was a charme (for me at least) but ended up fighting the tightness in my Antec P180 in order to install the fan header. After 10 minutes of trying to hook the damn thing up, I gave up and got myself a molex-3pinfan converter from the old cabinet. Hooked it up, worked perfectly.

As for the VF1000 performance, haven’t done real temperature measurements yet, but I’m not too fond of it to be honest. The low noise setting makes a rumble noise (like a seeking HDD) and the high-speed setting is only slightly more silent over the stock fan. But the overall exhaust heat is less so that helps.

I guess we’ve come to a point that hardware is so overpowered, silence is becoming a luxury most people won’t be able to afford. That’s what we get for pushing it

Thijs van Gils is a creative designer of multiple disciplines. He often creates diverse pieces of design. I don’t always get them as I tend to think in straight lines.. but then again it’s nice we’re not all alike because then the world would be very boring. Big thanks again to you Thijs. Included below is a little teaser of some of his work..

Vine Hallway from Thijs van Gils

Raindrops Intro from Thijs van Gils

You can reach Thijs on info at thijsvangils.nl

Why? you might ask.. Well .. just a little while ago I wrote about Sherweb eating my email and how it kinda pissed me off. One example was my hotel reservation I made about a month ago. Didn’t recieve the email at all. Even if I forwarded it myself using Windows Live Mail…

As DNS is updating (after correcting some server-side errors for the MX records) most of my email is coming in at the new server. Quickly I tested the (for me now famous “hoteltest”) spam filter on the new server by forwarding the email again to my mailbox.

A blank email with the url “http://www.choicehotels.com” went straight for the Junk Mail folder. However the forward of the orginal message went great and it landed securely in my inbox (or Postvak IN)!

Meaningless to you, allot to me

Try it! Comment on this post!

Let me explain.. I set up my account (…@martijnbrant.net) and made sure the DNS settings for my domain were properly set. They were and in no time the account was up and running using Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Windows Mobile 6.0 (Push email). All was great and all my email was being delivered to my inbox.

Half a day later .. I got a (what the server thought to be) spam message and I didn’t recieve it. At the end of the day, the server had send me a anti-spam reporting showing I had one message waiting for me at the webinterface for anti-spam. Turns out .. Sherweb was using a product called Barracuda Spam Firewall. It sat between my email and my inbox.. filtering emails and quarantining them in the webinterface. I found this annoying and I quickly turned it off (making it tag spam instead..).

All was fine again .. untill I was planning my trip to Florida. I had the hotel I was going to be staying in (which was great, Choicehotels are awesome value) on the phone and manager who booked my stay said he sended the confirmation of my hotel reservation to my mb.net email account. One hour later, I still hadn’t recieved it. I rang them up and had them send it to my Hotmail Windows Live Mail account. Sure .. 2 secs later I had recieved the email. “That’s strange huh?”

I dismissed the problem and went on my trip to Florida. After I got back .. I was curious as to how this could have happened. I tried to forward the stored email from my WLM account to my Sherweb account. Never recieved it. Surprised by this, I rang Sherweb. After going trough the usual Level-1-support stuff, I got through to Level 2. The guy was friendly enough and tracked down the email. “Ah I see .. blocked”. Ok sure, I replied .. why is it blocked and why can’t I see that?

“Well sir the Barracuda filtering system uses 3rd party blacklists in order to tag spam. Messages containing keywords from that list will be deleted”. Wait what? You deleted my email?!?! “Yes sir, for your protection”. Erhmm Ok .. On what word was it blocked? “Lemme just see here … ah .. choicehotels.com sir”. Wait what? As for as I understand it, Choicehotels is a pretty large organisation with 1000s of hotels all over the USA. “Yeah the word is blocked sir”.

It turned out I couldn’t see what emails were being blocked or for what reason. I had no idea on how much emails (read: business) I had lost over this. I asked Sherweb “What should I do with my important email? Just use my Windows Live Mail for all the important bits?”. He replied “Err yeah you could do that…”. “- Why am I paying you then?” … “Well sir, you could still use your Sherweb account for all personal stuff”. What?!?! Sure buddy .. I’ll just use my 100$ email account for personal stuff… I have WLM for that..

So .. as of today I’m migrating over to http://www.exchangemailhosting.com. I rang them up and told them/asked them about my Sherweb problems and if they had similar systems. They chuckled and replied “No sir, we believe in NOT trowing email away”. Hehe.

I hope exchangemailhosting.com will be better. We’ll see. Just about done with the DNS. Wait a couple of more days and then cancel my Sherweb service. They told me they’ll refund my pre-paid 3 month period. So have to hand it to them .. that’s great. Overall Sherweb is great if it wasn’t for their email-eating practice.