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Windows 7 Battery issue – it ain’t the message, it’s the medium

I figured this was a non-event. Shows you what I know.

By now, no doubt, you’ve heard about the Windows 7 warning message “Consider replacing your battery. There is a problem with your battery, so your computer might shut down suddenly.” It’s a new message that didn’t exist in Vista, one that’s causing many people much angst. If you have a laptop running WinXP or Vista, and your battery’s been behaving properly, then you install Win7, and you suddenly get battery warning messages, you’re bound to think that Win7 has gone a bit bonkers.

I first saw the report on Ars Technica, which said that Microsoft was looking into the problem. I haven’t heard much about it – none of you have written to be about it – and figured it was another tempest in a teapot.

Kinda boring, actually.

Suddenly it isn’t boring any more. Why? Because Steve Sinofsky – the head Windows guy – posted a response to the allegations on the Windows 7 Engineering blog. That’s interesting.

This is very interesting: it’s the first post on the Win7 Engineering blog since August 10 – six months ago, long before Windows 7 shipped.

Is it possible that MS is going to use the E7 blog to keep up an ongoing dialog with its customer base?

If so, this is a great, new way to interact with us, keep us advised on the happenings inside the Windows team, in an official, reliable way. The E7 blog helped many of us understand the inner workings of Win7 during the development cycle. Maybe it’ll help while Win7’s out in the real world, too.

I hope it’s just the first post of many.

MS-DEFCON 2: Don’t patch and hold onto your hat

With 13 security bulletins and 26 separately-identified security holes, it’s going to be a wild month. Make sure you have Automatic Updates turned off. Let’s see what happens.

Hotmail “Reply” does not include the text of the incoming message

A friend of mine just wrote with an interesting problem:

I use Hotmail. Up until a week ago, when I forward, or reply, the original text in the incoming email shows up in the new email I’m about to write. Suddenly, last week, the text area on any email I wish to reply to, or forward, is blank! Any attachments are there, but no covering text.

Ends up that Roger hit a bug in Firefox 3.6. There’s a discussion about it on the Firefox support forum. Looks like you have three options: go back to version 3.5.7; use IE for your Hotmail; or wait for Mozilla to fix the bug.

13 Security Bulletins coming

Hooooooo-boy….

Microsoft just announced that it has 13 – count ‘em, a baker’s dozen – 13 Security Bulletins coming up on Tuesday.

They affect both Windows and Office.

Get yourself patched up right now, folks. Then make sure Automatic Updates is turned off, please. The PC you save may be your own…

Another Internet Explorer 0day

Microsoft has released Security Advisory 980088, which describes in sketchy terms another 0day vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

if a user is using a version of Internet Explorer that is not running in Protected Mode an attacker may be able to access files with an already known filename and location. These versions include .. Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8 on supported editions of Windows XP … Protected Mode prevents exploitation of this vulnerability and is running by default for versions of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008.

The vulnerability exists due to content being forced to render incorrectly from local files in such a way that information can be exposed to malicious websites.

Microsoft is playing it close to the chest (as it should). No known attacks as yet. Makes me wonder how Microsoft found out about it.

Microsoft’s workaround? Basically, disable ActiveX. Of course, you’re using a browser that doesn’t work with ActiveX, right? Such as Firefox or Chrome. Gad. There I go with that broken record again…

Office 2010 Release Candidate out

If you’re one of the select few in Microsoft’s TAP (”Technology Adoption Program”) you may have been offered a chance to run Office 2010 RC 1.

Ars Technica has the scoop:

“Microsoft made a release candidate available to members in the Technology Adoption Program (TAP),” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed with Ars. “This is one of Microsoft’s planned milestones in the engineering process; however they do not have plans to make this new code set available broadly.”

… The Office 2010 beta that Microsoft gave out to the public three months ago was build 14.0.4536.1000 and has already been downloaded over 2 million times. Since then, and even before then, there have been many leaks of other builds; the latest one we’ve seen is build 14.0.4734.1000, which leaked out only last week

UPDATE: Neowin reports that the RC version (Build 4734.1000) is now available to all Technical Beta participants. No, if I was in the beta, I couldn’t tell you. But Neowin can.

MS-DEFCON 4: Get patched

Microsoft had two Security Bulletins in MarchJanuary, with a plethora of patches.

MS10-011 / KB 972270 is relatively innocuous – a real yawner if you’re using anything other than Windows 2000 SP 4.

MS10-002 / KB 978207, on the other hand, consists of a massive rollup of Internet Explorer patches. As you may recall, it was issued “out of band,” after the usual Black Tuesday patch day. The patch got released early because of highly targeted “spearphishing” attacks, many of which targeted Chinese dissidents. I didn’t get too excited about it because normal people like you and me weren’t getting clobbered by the original spearphishing expedition – and I haven’t heard of any attempts at a mass attack based on the vulnerability.

As with any massive IE rollup, there’s a big potential for problems. Although the Knowledge Base article is up to version 4.0 (which means MS has had to modify it significantly on many occasions over the past couple of weeks), it now appears to be stable. So I’m ready to give the “all clear” to install it.

Of course, you’re using Firefox or Chrome or anything other than IE, right? Remember the mantra: keep Internet Explorer updated and patched (you should be on version 7.0 or 8.0), just because holes in IE can be exploited even if you don’t use IE; and use anything but IE.

I’m taking us down to MS-DEFCON 4: There are isolated problems with current patches, but they are well-known and documented here. Check this site to see if you’re affected and if things look OK, go ahead and patch.

Problems with using some new hard drives as boot disks for XP

This one’s a bit obscure, but if you’re installing XP on a system with a new, large hard drive from Western Digital, there’s a little problem you should know about.

AnandTech has a good overview.

Thanks to LK for the heads-up. He says:

Check the model number of any Western Digital hard drive you may be considering. If it ends in EARS eg. WD10EAR, WD15EARS then you have the new format. No problem if you are using Linux, OSX, Vista or Win7. If using WinXP, and this hard drive will be the boot disk, then you need to apply the WD Align program (read the AnandTech article).