Speaking at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, Corporate Vice President of Windows & Windows Live – Tami Reller announced the public beta. Microsoft revealed its plans for Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 last month at its annual Tech-Ed conference. Windows 7 SP1 will include the usual hotfix patches and new virtualization tools in SP1 will help Windows Server 2008 R2 users prepare for cloud computing. SP1 will include RemoteFX which provides rich 3-D graphical experience for remote users. The service pack also will include a series of incremental updates, previously released on Windows Update for both Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

RemoteFX is a new enhancement to RDP’s graphical remoting capabilities. The idea behind RemoteFX is to allow for a full remote experiences including multiple displays, Aero and multimedia streaming to all types of client devices including low cost thin clients. RemoteFX achieves this by using a technique known as host-based rendering. This technique allows for the final screen image to be rendered locally on the remote PC after being compressed and sent down to that remote host. The enhancements are expected to greatly improve video streaming across remote sessions which is currently one of the major drawbacks of virtualized computing.

In April this year a build of SP1 surfaced on the Internet. The build leaked to file sharing sites. SP1 is also rumored to include USB 3.0 support and enhanced Bluetooth/Wi-Fi stacks but Microsoft has not yet confirmed this.

Microsoft released a beta build of Windows 7 to testers earlier this month. Weighing in at 1.22GB the build was compiled on June 3 with the number 7601.16562.100603-1800. Microsoft released the public beta on its TechNet Evaluation Center page.

hosting transfer. A few minor hick ups along the way but after a couple hours of work we are back up with no problem and also running WordPress 2.9.1. I’d like to think Jason for assisting me on getting familiar with the Plesk Control Panel. Some of the added benefits are that each domain with this host gets its own control panel which we didn’t have with 1&1 and better support overall. Look forward to new updates about all things tech.

Ryan Price -

To Reproduce:

1. Run an elevated CMD prompt
2. Run CHKDSK <drive letter:> /r
3. With task manager open, you should see your memory quickly gobbled away in the chkdsk.exe process until it either stops at or around 90% or it maxes completely out and crashes the computer.

**Update**

I was told that this is by design in Windows 7 because the OS is capable and uses more memory. According to my source, because they intended to speed up chkdsk , they did so through using more memory. However, it could be a bug somewhere in OS or a driver bug but seeing as it happens across a wide range of setups, it doesn’t seem to be 3^rd party related. This is the information I have been told by my MS contact. I can also verify this issue goes all the way back to Build 7201.

 

Without further adieu, Exhibit A:

Recently this past year Seagate was one of the first companies to release a 1.5 TB drive. However, having this claim to fame doesn’t have much flack when you have an alarming number of the models failing. From personal experience, my dilemma started in January when for a birthday present i was surprised with a 1.5 TB drive to upgrade my 500GB drive (also a Seagate).

Less than a month in the drive began to make a clicking noise and locking up for 30 seconds or more. I promptly went to Seagate, got an RMA request and got a replacement drive. Everything seemed ok until April rolled around and my 1 TB Drive started exhibiting the exact same problem minus the clicking. Now familiar with the RMA process i returned the drive, this time to my surprise it was a “Certified Repaired” drive…(this is what i pay good money for..a failed drive that has been ‘fixed?!). The 1TB drive now has Windows 7 RTM on it and is running great to my surprise. One Week after getting this drive back, I’m back where i started, the 1.5TB drive with CC1H firmware (checking the Seagate site it claims its not affected..i beg to differ) This time transfer rates are on par with the speed of a 56k modem..

Needless to say i am ASHAMED of Seagate. A company that has had my heart and loyalty for over 10 years all thrown away with this deplorable excuse of a product. Frankly i am surprised there isn’t a class action law suit yet. Needless to say i am really pondering weather or not to send the 1.5 drive back..The money i have wasted on RMA-ing these drives could have bought me a Western Digital drive or a Samsung drive which i hear are doing quite well. To those of you considering buying Seagate drives in the near future, stay away from the 1TB and 1.5TB models…at least until they get them fixed.

Shameful Seagate, absolutely shameful..I’d be replacing each of these failing drives with the 7200.12’s or the ES2’s…yet you don’t. You have lost my business.
Update: User’s experiencing problems with this drive model as i have, please go here to take part in a Class Action Lawsuit against Seagate and their faulty 7200.11 drives. http://www.kbklawfirm.com/seagate/index.php

There are a number of sites however claiming that July 13th was the sign off date which was not necessarily true. Instead it was noted that it would be THIS month not a specific date. So as this has come to pass, another build: 7600.16385 has leaked out from a Chinese source.

Hopefully in the next few days we’ll know more but as of right now there is not a definitive RTM build that is gold.

Ryan: First off Cullen, its good to speak with you. If you don’t mind me asking? What exactly is the Copenhagen Project?

Cullen: Copenhagen is a User Experience concept that I designed. It is unique in the fact that it manages to bring together classic design, contemporary design, usability, and art.Copenhagen shatters the composite prototypical event patterns people have developed for their OS, Windows.It is a collision of months of research, high visibility, proper affordance, accurate conceptual models, visceral experience, behavioral experience, and reflective experience, all coming together to create an amazing user experience.

Ryan: What made you start this project in the first place?

Cullen: It started with me being board last summer while I was at camp. I just started sketching and eventually it evolved into me having fun and refining designs. I started informally and formally watching friends, family, and acquaintances using Windows and started quantifying their actions and designing around those. I then started making mock ups in Photoshop and around this time, I started developing a ton of theories of how people interact with with computers, etc

Ryan: What is this built off of?

Cullen: The concept is built off of flash at the moment, it was done in Two weeks. To be clear, I learned flash in 2 weeks for the original. This version that you see in the video has been in the works for about a month or two

Ryan: Going from Flash; What platform could you see using that would really allow this to come to life? WPF? .Net Framework maybe?

Cullen: I really think it could be built using Direct3D

Ryan: What Benefits and Functionality would Copenhagen have over say…Windows Vista’s or Windows 7’s interface?

Cullen:We can start by Find and Organize, or FnO. High Visibility makes it easier to fully afford FnO’s full Capabilities. It is built to conform to mental patterns and it is more elegant. There are NUMEROUS studies that support the claim "beautiful things are easier to use" — but you have to find the balance between visceral experience (beauty) and behavioral experience (usability). Its very customizable and the mental boundaries are limitless, you do not have a constricting taskbar holding you back.

You can basically group tasks how YOU like.

Ryan: What other features are in it?

Cullen: There is this concept i like to call Task Module. Where you see the icon appear on the desktop (in the video), you can click that once, and all your apps pop up, exactly how you left them. It could really benefit IT Departments by allowing them to deploy certain work scenarios. Another feature I like is the scrap box which is up at the top. The idea behind that is that you can select any bit of text or URL link and drag it there and it is saved. Allowing you to recall it later.

Ryan: Can we expect a working Prototype soon?

Cullen: Not anytime soon, Way beyond my skill set. Though, I really would love the opportunity to impact the billion Windows users, by trying to make my visions a reality, at Microsoft.

I want to thank Cullen for taking the time to sit down and give us a little more insight on what Copenhagen is all about and we hope to see his work manifested somehow later down the road hopefully in a future version of Windows. For those of you still wondering what Project Copenhagen is all about check out the video below.

Recently i wanted to try my luck again and stumbled upon a man who decided to become a one man wreaking crew. Daniel_K , managed to do what an entire crew at Creative couldn’t. Successfully tweak, fix and unlock the X-Fi Drivers so that they would work properly in Vista. After doing such a good service to his fellow die hard creative users, Creative went so far as to file a motion to sue them, the guy who basically saved your card and franchise from going belly up and you SUE him? I’d be offering the guy a metal of honor and a job to boot. Needless to say…I have since downloaded the SB X-Fi Prelude drivers that Daniel has released and have been running full speed 24-bit 192,000Hz in Vista SP1 AND Windows 7 7057…I have a new found love for my card now and do not have to worry that if i reboot weather or not it will snap,crackle, or pop. Thanks Daniel for all your hard work and being a die hard X-Fi user!

In the light of the recent news about the SKUs for Windows 7 which will consist of Starter, Home Premium, Professional,
and Ultimate. Microsoft has also decided to do away with the Ultimate Extras for Windows 7. Because the lack of notable
features that Ultimate Extras brought to Windows Vista and with the added criticism they made the right choice in my opinion. The features brought by the Ultimate Extras simply were not worth the added cost to Ultimate. Bit Locker type applications are out for XP and Vista so why exactly pay $400 for a ‘exclusive feature’ that is added when it should either be in the OS anyway or can be inferior to 3rd party applications. Honestly I think I got fed up with it when the only things that were being released were Sound Packs, Dream Scenes, and very boring games like Ticker. So why exactly would one even want to pay that kind of money for such poor add on’s?

So it begs to differ..what exactly is Windows 7 Ultimate going to offer? What will set it apart from the other two versions that merit its price tag? The whole point of Ultimate and Ultimate Extras were that you got additional ‘treats’ for having dished out more money for the exclusive version of the OS. I really think if they had looked out for the long term they probably wouldn’t have went with this solution. Nothing was wrong with the Home/Pro versions. It actually made it quite simple. I guess in some ways it could be a blessing but far more questions arise than answers.

Do you have a SATA disk drive in your computer, well guess what you can sweeze a little more performance out of it by enabling this tweak. This tweak speeds up the performance of your hard disk by enhancing write caching. However, if your computer is not connected to a battery backup and you loose power you have a increased risk for data loss or corruption. If you have a laptop your chances are data loss or corruption are dramatically less since your laptop battery will kick on if your power source is lost. So let’s get started:

1. Click on the Start Button and key in Device Manager and hit Enter.

2. Expand Disk Drives.

3. Right click on your hard drive and select Properties.

4. On the Policies tab, check Enable advanced performance.

Hit OK and close Device Manager. And Enjoy the added Performance

Aero tweak for Underpowered/Onboard Graphics:

This tip is pretty useful for notebook owners or anyone whose PC is packing graphics that are a little on the weak side. The Flip3D animation as we know can slow down weaker graphics cards if it has to flip a lot of windows, so this is a tweak that lets you set the number of windows that will be rendered in 3D at one time.

Click on the Start Button, type regedit in the Search bar, and press Enter.
Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM. Create a new DWORD and call it Max3DWindows.
Set the value of this to something between four and nine (“4” and “9”) depending on the performance of your card (a higher number requires more video card power). You should then feel free to experiment to find the best value for your computer. Restart your PC to finalize the change.

TCP Auto-Tuning:

To turn off the default RWIN auto tuning behavior, (in elevated command prompt) type:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

The default auto-tuning level is "normal", and the possible settings for the above command are:

disabled: uses a fixed value for the tcp receive window. Limits it to 64KB (limited at 65535).
higlyrestricted: allows the receive window to grow beyond its default value, very conservatively
restricted: somewhat restricted growth of the tcp receive window beyond its default value
normal: default value, allows the receive window to grow to accommodate most conditions
experimental: allows the receive window to grow to accommodate extreme scenarios (not recommended, it can degrade performance in common scenarios, only intended for research purposes. It enables RWIN values of over 16 MB)

Recommendation: normal  (unless you’re experiencing problems).

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts:

Keyboard shortcuts
Ctrl+Shift+Esc -> Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del -> Tasks Screen)
Ctrl+Shift+Enter -> Run an executable with elevated privileges
Windows logo key+1-0 -> Launch the shortcuts on the Quick Launch toolbar
Windows logo key+T -> Cycle through programs on the taskbar
Windows logo key+Tab -> Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Flip 3-D
Ctrl+Windows logo key+Tab -> Use the arrow keys to cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Flip 3-D
Windows logo key+Spacebar -> Bring all gadgets to the front and select Windows Sidebar
Windows logo key+G -> Cycle through Sidebar gadgets
Windows logo key+X -> Open Windows Mobility Center
Open a folder and press & release Alt -> Show Menu Bar (also works in Internet Explorer)

Enable DEP on Internet Explorer to protect against memory

Because browsers can host plug-in extensibility, security settings within the browser can make plug-ins fail. This is why in Internet Explorer 7 Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is off by default. Two of the most well-known and commonly used browser plug-ins, the Adobe Acrobat/Reader browser helper object and the Adobe Flash Player, now run when DEP is enabled. You can enable DEP by navigating to the following dialog and checking the highlighted option shown below (note, you must elevated to admin first, otherwise the option is grayed out).

Stay tuned guys as I bring you more of the best Windows Vista tips to help squeeze the most performance out of your PC.

Today Bill Laing started off day two of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Bill Laing was part of the team that worked on the Windows Server 2003 development as well as 2003 R2. He started off by stating that with Server 2003 , the server OS was released in 32bit and 64bit flavors. However with Server 2008 R2 it will be strictly supported on the 64bit platform and the Itanium. He also went into a little bit of detail of how the trends have helped shape the new landscape that has brought changes in Server 2008 and now R2. The increased adoption of Multi Core CPU’s , 64bit technology and a focus on power efficiency and virtualization.

A few other things Bill touched on were:

• Enable Data center automation
• Remote Management using Server Manager
• Active Directory Administrative center built on Powershell
• Refactored Server Core 2008 R2, to natively support Powershell
• Remote Server manager supported for Windows 7 and Server 2008
• Group Policy Enhancements
• Identical user experience from work or from internet
• Cost efficient support for Brach offices.

There was also a demonstration about the new role that is in Server 2008 R2 that includes Scanning into the Print Server role. This particular role would essentially allow a user to scan a document on a company scanning station and have it uploaded and displayed on a web portal or even in SharePoint services.

Improvements to the Branch Caching allows little to no bandwidth to be used if a document has been downloaded and cached it can be quickly accessed from other machines within the company without having to wait for the file or document to be downloaded again, a big plus for companies that do not have fast broadband connections.

Another big feature I see being used by corporations is the Direct Access function which allows seamless access to corporate resources regardless if you are within the domain or not. Securely being able to access important files will help many business users.

Data Security improvements have been stepped up through allowing Group Policy to manage bit locker encryption functions which will give IT admins better control over securing their data. Something that was not utilized in 2008.

This was not all that was talked about, there was also a demonstration about the improvements when coupled with SQL Server 2008, a demo load was run on 2 servers – 1 IBM server which housed 192 logical processes and half a terabyte (yes..half a terabyte ) of ram. Also another machine by HP that was run off of 256 Itanium cores to demonstrate the better use of multi core technology and scalability.

Brian Surace, a Senior Program Manager showed a brief demo of some of the improvements to Hyper V in Server 2008 R2. Better support for Linux is integrated now. And now generates a script so it can be integrated into large scale deployments through Powershell and Server Core.

Stay tuned for the 3rd and final day of coverage.