Microsoft cuts Ultimate licenses for volume buyers

Microsoft cuts Ultimate licenses for volume buyers

By Scott Dunn During most of 2007, buyers of Microsoft’s volume-licensing bundle were allowed to run one copy of Vista Ultimate on each machine covered by the arrangement. Microsoft quietly changed this policy, however, and now allows businesses to get only one Vista Ultimate product key for every 100 copies of Vista Enterprise they purchase.

Software Assurance users hit limits on Ultimate

The change in policy affects businesses that license Microsoft software in bulk through the Redmond company’s Software Assurance (SA) program.

Among other things, SA allows customers to get multiple copies of Microsoft products at a steep discount. In addition, some products — such as Vista Enterprise, the edition of Vista that’s aimed at large corporations with complex IT needs — are available only through Software Assurance.

Here’s what changed:

• Formerly 1-to-1 coverage. According to the Vista Ultimate FAQ on the Microsoft Volume Licensing site, “For each Windows license covered under Software Assurance, you are eligible to run Windows Vista Ultimate on a desktop covered under Software Assurance during the term of your Software Assurance coverage.” This policy ended on Dec. 1, 2007. (Note: The FAQ refers to a deadline of Nov. 1, 2006, but this was extended to Nov. 30, 2007, for companies that wanted licenses for Ultimate, according to page 62 of the February 2008 Microsoft Product List, a 127-page .doc file.)

• Down to 1 per 100. Under the new policy, most buyers of Software Assurance can get only 1 Vista Ultimate product key for every 100 copies of Vista Enterprise they’ve purchased.

• Only 5 copies below 600 seats. SA buyers who have fewer than 600 licenses for Vista Enterprise can get no more than 5 product keys for Vista Ultimate.

The Software Assurance Benefits page on the Microsoft Partner Program site now says, “Windows Vista Ultimate is ideal for consumer scenarios,” not for large companies.

One of the main benefits of Vista Ultimate over Vista Enterprise is that Ultimate contains Media Center Edition, Microsoft’s multimedia playback environment.

The SA benefits page suggests that Microsoft is hearing from some unhappy buyers. “In response to Windows Vista Enterprise customer requests,” the page says, “in February 2008 we are introducing a DVD Playback Pack that enables playback of DVD, MPEG-2, and 5.1-channel Dolby Digital files.” This pack is priced at U.S. $4.32 per playback device, according to Microsoft.

Not every affected customer is taking the change lightly. “Software Assurance is effectively just an upgrade program,” writes Bill Forney, a software architect who blogs at Windows Live Spaces. “They can put more stuff into it all day long, but none of my small to medium-sized business customers are interested in anything but the software itself, and I’m sure they’re going to be hopping mad when they find out that some marketing or legal dufus has decided that they should take this away in hopes of increasing their bottom line in Ultimate upgrade sales.”

Why treat Ultimate as a lesser Vista version?

Microsoft’s new licensing scheme means that any organization that was planning on standardizing on Vista Ultimate — or even just installing Ultimate on 10 out of every 100 workstations — will now have to pay full price for nearly all of the individual copies of Ultimate they want to deploy.

According to a Microsoft spokesman, the policy switch was announced to customers on Nov. 13, 2006, “and to partners and industry analysts before it was announced to customers, to ensure that these advisors would be able to address any customer questions.” That gave customers 18 days notice that Vista Ultimate would no longer be provided to every end user covered by Software Assurance. (Microsoft policy does not permit the media to identify public relations spokespersons by name.)

Why the change? It’s now clear that the Ultimate edition is not a superset of every other version of Windows Vista. The Windows Vista Ultimate page of the Microsoft Volume Licensing site articulates three things the Enterprise edition has that Ultimate does not:

• Deployment and activation. Vista Ultimate lacks Enterprise’s ability to activate multiple computers at the same time. Instead, Ultimate uses consumer activation technology, which means each copy must be activated individually.

According to the Microsoft spokesman, Ultimate’s lack of support for volume licensing (VL) exists for both technical and policy reasons: “As Windows Vista Ultimate contains consumer features such as Media Center, Movie Maker, and DVD Maker, we did not anticipate that enterprise customers would want to deploy Windows Vista Ultimate broadly throughout the enterprise, and therefore, chose not to add support for VL.”

• Manageability. Microsoft states that “Some of the consumer features in Windows Vista Ultimate, such as Windows Media Center, cannot be managed by using Group Policy.”

The Group Policy editor can, in fact, enable and disable Media Center, as is documented in a posting on MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network).

But, as the Microsoft representative points out, “you cannot configure settings, such as pre-populating the correct cable provider for the Electronic Programming Guide. Other features in Windows Vista Ultimate that are not supported by Group Policy include DVD Maker and Movie Maker. Internet Explorer, by comparison, provides hundreds of different policies for IT to control.”

Microsoft’s spokesman explains the missing Group Policy controls as a matter of scheduling, saying, “We simply did not have enough time to add those features.”

• Support. Because it is classified as a “consumer” product, support for Vista Ultimate is limited to a maximum of 5 years after first release, compared with 10 years of support for Vista Business and Vista Enterprise.

Forney, for one, finds the lack of manageability and support to be poor justification for withholding Ultimate from Software Assurance buyers.

“If that’s true, who controls that?” he writes in his blog. “Microsoft does. Who’s a bunch of lazy <insert expletive here>s for not making it manageable in the first place? Again, Microsoft are. So in the end, that argument has no merit at all.”

Forney continues, “The whole idea of Ultimate is to be the edition that includes everything and not just some of the pieces of the other editions. That is how it was marketed anyway. If it isn’t that, then change the name to Media Center Edition and stop talking about it like it is that.”

Microsoft’s mixed message on Vista Ultimate

Microsoft has promoted various messages about Vista Ultimate. The 316-page Vista Product Guide states that Vista Ultimate is for consumers and small businesses, as well as for the “dual user” who “wants to have a single PC for both work and personal activities including digital entertainment” (page 8).

The company also promoted the idea that Vista Ultimate is the version of Windows that has everything. The Vista Product Guide refers to Ultimate as “the flagship edition of Windows Vista,” boasting that it has “the advanced infrastructure of a business-focused operating system. … For users who want their PC to be great for working at home, on the go, and at the office, Windows Vista Ultimate is the no-compromise operating system that provides it all” (page 10).

The comparison table on pages 17 to 21 of the product guide shows Ultimate having every feature that’s present in any edition of Vista. The only disadvantage the guide mentions is that Ultimate only qualifies for 5 years of support, as opposed to 10 years for Business and Enterprise.

Promotions such as Microsoft’s “Choose an Edition” page still extol Vista Ultimate. “Easily shift between the worlds of productivity and play with the most complete edition of Windows Vista,” the page says. “Ultimate provides the power, security, and mobility features needed for work, and all the entertainment features that you want for fun.”

In the past, consumer versions of Windows (such as Windows 98 and Me) have clearly been underpowered compared to their enterprise siblings (Windows NT and 2000). Windows Ultimate marks the first time an edition of Windows has been hyped as having all of the features of an enterprise OS, but is getting less support.

Have a Windows tip? Readers receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for sending tips we print. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page.

Scott Dunn is associate editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter. He has been a contributing editor of PC World since 1992 and currently writes for the Here’s How section of that magazine.

Dual-booting XP deletes Vista restore points

By Scott Dunn

My Feb. 14 article explained how to set up a Vista machine to dual-boot between that OS and Windows XP.

But booting to XP on a dual-boot system has the negative side-effect of deleting any Vista restore points, in addition to all but its latest backup file, and a Registry workaround is required to prevent this.

XP dual-boot is not system-restore friendly

Ian Brown was the first to describe an unfortunate fact of dual-booting XP and Vista:

• “Dual-booting XP/Vista is wonderful; that is my current setup. But in a dual-boot scenario, XP deletes all system restore points on the Vista partition! This is well documented on the Web, and it appears a simple Registry hack on the XP side can fix this.”

Unfortunately, the problems Ian describes are not limited to system restore points. If you boot into Windows XP after using Vista’s so-called Complete PC Backup feature, XP deletes all but the most recent backup file.

According to an unofficial site known as VistaX64, the problem is caused by new disk structures Vista uses that XP does recognize.

Although there is no perfect solution, Microsoft recommends two different workarounds. Both of the techniques involve preventing XP from accessing the Vista partition. This means you won’t be able to use your Vista hard drive when you’ve booted into XP. However, when you boot into Vista, you will be able to access all your drives, including the partition holding Windows XP.

For details on the two workarounds, see Knowledge Base article 926185.

Free and easy boot-loader management

Commenting on dual-booting Vista and XP, Allan Wright had this to say:

• “I think it would be worth mentioning a free product called EasyBCD, which enables you to easily manipulate the Vista boot loader without recourse to the command line. It facilitates multiple booting of many operating systems, allows installation in any order, and comes with easy-to-follow steps to get most configurations up and running as painlessly as possible. Thanks for the article and keep up the great work.”

Although I have not thoroughly tested EasyBCD, it definitely provides a more user-friendly way to perform the steps described in step 13 of last week’s story and the steps for customizing your boot menu. Best of all, it costs you nothing to use it. Thanks, Allan!

Several miscellaneous dual-boot questions arise

When setting up a dual-boot system, Ron Acher has a question about licensing:

• “I have a valid Vista license, and my XP discs were for another computer that is still running XP. If I do your XP dual-install on the new computer and then run both computers in XP, what happens? Effectively, do I have to buy up additional XP licenses before June 30, 2008 [when Microsoft stops selling XP]?”

Windows XP’s end user license agreement (EULA) states that you can only run that product on one processor at a time. “You may move the Product to a different Workstation Computer,” it notes, but “after the transfer, you must completely remove the Product from the former Workstation Computer.”

In other words, it’s a license violation to leave XP running on your old machine. You should note, however, that if you install XP on a new machine and activation fails, you can phone Microsoft, explain the situation, and the operator will usually provide you with a new activation key.

Reader Jim Engh speaks for many when he writes:

• “The article describes a need for the Vista DVD. If Vista was factory-installed and no DVD was provided, what is the alternative?”

Sadly, this situation is faced by many who purchase a new computer with Windows preinstalled.

Having no Vista DVD leaves you without the important repair and recover options the disc includes. Fortunately, Windows Secrets columnist Susan Bradley tells you how to create your own Vista recovery disk in her column in the paid version of today’s content. To get the paid content, please see how to upgrade.

Michael Gasca was one of many to ask about a situation that’s the reverse of the one the article addressed:

• “What if you have XP and want to add Vista and still dual-boot?”

Fortunately, going the other direction — installing Vista on a machine that already has XP &#8212 is much simpler than the process described in Feb. 14 article.

First, make sure you have a separate drive or partition that’s big enough to hold Windows Vista (roughly 10GB). Next, run the Vista installer, taking care to install Vista on its own drive or partition. The Vista installer will do all the work of setting up the dual-boot menu for you.

Readers Brown, Wright, Acher, Engh, and Gasca will each receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for sending comments we printed. Send us your tips via the Windows Secrets contact page.

Roll over, Beethoven

Chopin. Strauss. And now Robbi-985. In this two-minute clip by the afore-mentioned composer, a musical masterpiece is created using nothing but sounds from Windows XP and 98. The results are hilarious and certain to entertain those of us who have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft’s flagship product. Who says you can’t teach an old operating system new tricks! Play the video

Vista Service Pack 1 — boring but necessary

By Woody Leonhard For those of us who lived through the toe-curling changes in Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft’s new Vista Service Pack 1 rates as a real yawner. I’ve had a chance to put Vista’s upcoming SP1 through its paces, however, and my toes didn’t even twitch.

Vista SP1’s big new secret features

Umm, er, there aren’t any.

Microsoft found itself in a hurry to release Vista Service Pack 1 not to add screaming speed improvements, glam the already-glittery interface, shore up massive security holes, or deliver new drivers to the driver-deprived digerati. Nope. Microsoft really needed to get SP1 out the door so Vista would start playing nicely with Windows Server 2008.

Hard to believe, but Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 run the same kernel deep down inside. In a very real way, Microsoft changed Vista so it plays well with itself.

When you read about SP1 and all of its Big Improvements or Horrible Disappointments, keep in mind the simple fact that SP1’s real reason for existence lies in the way it brings Windows on the desktop into synch with Windows on the server. Microsoft replaced the plumbing. Everything else is gravy.

If you’re interested in a detailed explanation of all that’s new in Vista Service Pack 1, download Microsoft’s 17-page white paper entitled Notable Changes in Windows Vista Service Pack 1. The white paper describes SP1’s newfound support for UEFI (which will supplant BIOS some day), exFAT (for big flash cards), Direct3D 10.1, Blu-ray device detection, backup of EFS (encrypting file system), a revised Startup Repair Tool, power consumption improvements, and much more. My toes were unimpressed.

Vista’s vaunted file-copy performance tweaks

Everybody expected Service Pack 1 to deliver big improvements in file-copy speeds. In its white paper, Microsoft claims Vista Service Pack 1 runs “25% faster when copying files locally on the same disk on the same machine, 45% faster when copying files from a remote non-Windows Vista system to a SP1 system, [and] 50% faster when copying files from a remote SP1 system to a local SP1 system.”

Über guru Mark Russinovich (now a Microsoft employee) explains how Microsoft undertook the speedups in a blog posting earlier this month. It’s complicated.

In the real world, the gains appear illusory at best. PC World reports a mixed bag of results, with some copying faster and some slower under SP1. ZDNet/CNET came up with similar scores. Computerworld found SP1 slightly slower than the original Vista at real-world copying.

No doubt the folks at Microsoft feel slighted by these test results, because the testers didn’t measure the specific areas where the SP1 team focused their efforts. That’s a valid criticism from a technical point of view — but it doesn’t mean a whole lot to you and me.

In my tests, I didn’t notice much of a difference at all.

Bottom line: in certain circumstances, copying goes faster with Service Pack 1, and in many circumstances the “Estimated Time Remaining” value comes closer to reality. But to most people, most of the time, you won’t see any speed difference between the original Vista and Vista SP1.

Other SP1 changes, big and small (mostly small)

The other visible changes in Service Pack 1 fall into the “blink and you’ll miss it” category. Vista Service Pack 1:

• Kills the Kill switch. This is arguably the most significant change. If your copy of the original version of Vista fails Microsoft’s WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) checkup, the OS falls into “Reduced Functionality Mode” — a near-death-experience the press took to calling the “Kill Switch.” With the new, enlightened Service Pack 1, if your computer fails WGA, you merely see a black desktop with messages that say Vista is “not genuine.” I guess that’s better than calling Vista “disingenuous.”
• Changes the Remote Desktop Client. There’s a new user interface in Remote Desktop.
• Removes Search from the Start menu. Microsoft took the “Search” option off the right side of the Start menu, figuring you’ve already adjusted to typing directly into the Search box (and not-so-coincidentally working on its June 2007 agreement with the Department of Justice, in response to Google’s complaint about Vista’s integrated desktop search). If you like, you can get the search option back using a Registry tweak, as described in Susan Bradley’s blog.
• Tones down the Extra hype. You see much less promotion of those elusive Windows Vista Ultimate Extras, as criticized last September by Long Zheng in his Istartedsomething blog.
• Clobbers some cracks. SP1 nullifies the year-old pirating techniques described by Softpedia and others as the 2099 Grace Timer Crack (which resets the activation grace period to end in the year 2099) and the OEM BIOS hack (which tricks Vista into thinking it was preinstalled on a PC).

Not exactly earth-shattering…

So why should you bother to install SP1?

If you think the lack of toe-curling improvements obviates your patching responsibilities, think again.

Vista SP1 rates as a must-have megapatch. You may not need what SP1 offers now or in the immediate future. But down the road, that new plumbing will form the basis of all future changes to Vista.

Miss the patch and (with apologies to Bogart) you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

How to get the OS on your machine Service Packed

‘Softie Mike Nash has posted details on the way Microsoft is rolling out SP1 to the masses.

To a first approximation, if you were in the official SP1 beta test group, you already know how to get the final SP1 bits. If you subscribe to MSDN or TechNet Plus, the files are available online. Just be aware of the fact that the current version of SP1 only works with English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese versions of Vista. If you have other languages installed on a Vista Enterprise or Ultimate machine, you must uninstall the language pack before installing SP1. (See Ed Bott’s description.)

Big corporate sites will get their SP1 soon, but most Vista customers still have to wait a while. Some time in the next few weeks, SP1 will be made available, first as a downloadable file, then via Windows Update.

If you have a reasonably fast Internet connection, Windows Update is by far the best way to install SP1. There are several prerequisite patches and the installer is smart enough to only download the pieces of SP1 that you need. (Please see Susan Bradley’s column this week about problems people are having with automatic installation of the prerequisite patches.)

If you’re stuck with a slow Internet line, wait a bit longer and CDs will undoubtedly appear. I’ll have the details in a future Windows Secrets column.

As usual, I advise you to wait a bit before installing this (or any other) patch. Better to let the “automatic update” rookies take first swing at the new software, and wait to see what problems appear before stepping into the batter’s box.

The toes you save may be your own.

Woody Leonhard‘s latest books — Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies and Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies — explore what you need to know about Vista in a way that won’t put you to sleep. He and Ed Bott also wrote the encyclopedic Special Edition Using Office 2007.

Now is the time for debunking the Mocmex threat

By Ryan Russell I’m going to do something a little unusual for me; I’m going to tell you that a particular security threat isn’t as bad as it seems. You’ll never catch me saying a particular security problem is impossible or can’t happen to you — I’m often warning about possible future threats — but this time I smell hype.

Malware found in digital picture frames

I plan to finish in my next column the Process Monitor series that I last wrote about on Feb. 7. This time around, I have a timely topic I want to cover.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article on Feb. 15 about a “new” Trojan horse named Mocmex. This malicious software, which infects memory cards, has been found in some digital picture frames sold by major retail chains.

The primary source of Mocmex information in the article is Brian Grayek of Computer Associates (CA), with some supporting information supplied by SANS. (Disclosure: The company I work for, BigFix, resells CA antivirus products.).

The Chronicle article, like many in nontechnical publications, gets a lot of details wrong. For example, in the first three paragraphs, it uses the terms Trojan horse, worm, and virus to describe the same thing. And then it quotes Grayek as saying, “This would be a nuclear bomb” of malware.

All right, stop right there. Nuclear bomb? I’m going to have to call you out on that one.

I don’t want to point fingers at any particular individuals. I’ve been quoted in many articles myself, and I’m guilty of being misquoted in addition to spicing things up a little to make a reporter happy. I have some idea how this works.

So let me just share with you the information that’s available to me and my take on it.

No, Virginia, autorun is not unstoppable

There are two main points to look at with these picture-frame Trojans. The first is the autorun mechanism these frames use to infect victims. The second is how bad the Trojan is, once it’s installed. Let’s start with the autorun infection vector.

Basically, you should disable autorun. What does the Chronicle article have to say about that?

• “Doing so requires some computer expertise, and this Trojan re-enables Autorun if it’s turned off, according to Brian Grayek of Computer Associates. ‘If you plug in (the frame), you’re already infected,’ he said.”

I agree that it’s easy to get fooled. In my June 15, 2006, column, I described my difficulties in getting a USB drive to quit autorunning.

Fortunately, I’m happy to report that all of you have “some computer expertise.” You simply have to follow Scott Dunn’s instructions in his Nov. 8 column on how to disable autorun and the resulting attacks. There, you’re now protected from nuclear picture frames.

Let me be clear. The threat of malware from random USB devices that appear to be a drive is real.

One thing I think the Chronicle writer did that was a genuine service was contacting retailers and getting statements on how the infected picture frames got into stores. Responses ranged from none, to “we don’t know,” to theories on “infection during manufacturing.” Any or all of these answers might be true.

If someone’s test machine at the manufacturer is infected, the virus could be passed along. Or someone might have knowingly or unknowingly infected a frame at home and then returned it to a retailer. This is true of picture frames, cameras, printers, flash cards, or any other device that ends up mounting as a drive. Disable autorun right now, following the procedure in Scott’s article.

The Mocmex Trojan isn’t all that horrible

The relative badness of a piece of malware is a moving target. Ten years ago, Trojans that steal your identity and your financial information used to be a hypothetical worst case.

Now those things are what most Trojans do. Jaded antivirus researchers yawn and tag something as yet another bank-login–stealing piece of malware. It takes a hypervisor rootkit or the newest, biggest botnet in the world to get them excited.

In that context, Mocmex looks to be pretty typical to me. But, strangely, hard information on this particular Trojan is a little difficult to come by.

For example, CA has no information about the virus on the company’s Web site. The site has a virus database you can access but, as of this writing, Mocmex is missing.

The only mention I can find is that the virus is now covered in the company’s signature updates. If you search the signatures carefully, you can find a number of baddies with “mocmex” in the name.

This is where I start feeling fairly skeptical. I tracked down some information at the SANS site on picture-frame infections. Sure enough, one of the victims reports specifically that his CA product found Win/32Mocmex.AM.

But that SANS article is dated several weeks back on Jan. 4, 2008. The organization first brought up the subject in a Christmas 2007 diary entry. So we’re talking about a discovery that goes back at least two months. (SANS posted an interesting follow-up article on Feb. 19.)

Further googling leads me to articles such as a MaximumPC story on the topic. Assuming the magazine’s reporting is accurate, I glean two bits of information from it. The Trojan steals game passwords, and McAfee calls it W32.Autorun.worm.e.

Visiting the McAfee link, I see an entry that looks rather typical. It confirms that one of the virus’s aliases is “Win32/Mocmex.AM,” so we know we’re talking about the same thing. The risk assessment has been “updated to Low-Profiled due to media attention.” Elswehere, low-profiled is defined as “low risk but warrant[s] additional monitoring.” A SecurityFocus article at The Register is linked to as an indication of the media attention. That article is dated several weeks ago, Jan. 11, 2008.

Finally, check McAfee’s date on the first signature version that detects the virus: June 20, 2007.

This thing is at least eight months old. The virus has the ability to disable antivirus programs, just as thousands of other viruses before it can. And, at present, it just steals gaming passwords.

So what’s new? As near as I can tell, only CA public relations about it and the resulting article in the Chronicle.

The Perimeter Scan column gives you the facts you need to test your systems to prevent weaknesses. Ryan Russell is quality assurance manager at BigFix Inc., a configuration management company. He moderated the vuln-dev mailing list for three years under the alias “Blue Boar.” He was the lead author of Hack-Proofing Your Network, 2nd Ed., and the technical editor of the Stealing the Network book series.

Microsoft pulls buggy Vista 'prerequisite' patch

By Susan Bradley Microsoft on Feb. 19 halted automatic downloads of a Vista patch that caused numerous PCs to reboot uncontrollably. The patch, numbered 937287, is a “prerequisite” or “preliminary” patch that was intended to prepare machines for the installation of Vista Service Pack 1, which is expected to be released in March.

937387
Patch gets Vista stuck installing and rebooting

In most months, we all make it through Patch Tuesday just fine. Unfortunately for a few Vista users, one patch this month suffers from a “configuring updates” disease. This causes some systems that installed the patch to get stuck in a loop, saying “Configuring Updates Stage 3 of 3 — 0%,” and a few seconds later rebooting. This behavior repeats over and over.

In what is hopefully not a harbinger of bad tidings for Vista SP1 itself, Microsoft product manager Nick White announced in the Windows Vista blog on Feb. 19 that patch 937287 was being pulled from distribution due to the issues it was causing on some machines.

You can prevent the reboot problem from occurring by installing patch 937287 separately, not at the same time as any other updates. Several people have been able to fix affected machines by rolling Windows back to an earlier restore point, and then installing 937287 manually. This procedure has been described in Joaquim Anguas’s blog.

To obtain 937287 and install it separately, you should visit Microsoft’s official Download Center to get the 32-bit version or the 64-bit version.

Windows Secrets contributing editor Woody Leonhard reports a different workaround: “The solution seems to involve blocking automatic updates to the Vista Media Center patch, 947172, which was also patched on Patch Tuesday,” he says. “Once you install that patch manually, everything seems to work right. 947172 certainly isn’t an SP1 prerequisite patch.”

That Media Center patch should (the operative word being “should”) only be offered to users of Vista Home Premium and Ultimate. The bottom line, as a fellow patch MVP recently said about this situation, is that the safest approach is to set Vista for “notify only.” You then download everything from the Download Center and install the patches manually. As of today, that seems to be the best way to patch fragile Vista.

If you’re one of the unfortunate folks whose Vista machine is suffering continuous reboots — and you can’t seem to roll back to a previous restore point as described above — I have some guidance to get your machine back into working order.

Step 1. If you have an original install disc from the manufacturer of your PC, follow the steps described here. If not, read the section below on how to roll back without an install disc.

Step 2. Boot from the Vista DVD and choose Repair your computer. Once the Vista system has booted from the DVD, select Repair your Vista installation and choose a restore point that’s dated before the problem began.

Step 3. If your PC won’t boot from a DVD, you may need to change the boot order on your system. If so, use the key combination that’s supported by your PC to access your BIOS settings when your PC starts. Configure the boot options so the PC boots from any disc found in the DVD device.

Step 4. You then choose to boot from a DVD during startup by pressing any key when prompted.

Step 5. Choose Install Windows and select the language you need. On the next screen, instead of clicking Next as you would in an ordinary install, click Repair your computer, choose the drive letter where Windows is installed, and only then click Next, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. More than one copy of the operating system will be displayed for you to choose from, if more than one OS is installed.

Step 6. You will now have the ability to choose System Restore and roll back to a time before the updates were applied. Click Next.

Figure 2. Several restore points may be displayed for you to choose from.

Step 7. You will now be offered a list of the times when the system took a snapshot. In one test computer that I have, you can see that I have several “snaps” to choose from, as shown in Figure 2.

How to roll back without an install disc

The instructions above work for people who have original install discs. But what if your OS came preinstalled and you received no discs with your machine?

In this situation, you may be able to start System Restore and roll back to an earlier point without first booting from a DVD.

To do this, boot up the machine, press F8 during startup to get a menu of choices, and select the Safe Mode option. If you can’t open the System restore applet from the Start menu once Windows has started in Safe Mode, click Start, Run, enter rstrui.exe and click OK. This launches System Restore, and you can then choose a date before the constant rebooting started, as described above.

How to burn your own repair media

On all of the cheaper OEM systems that I’ve purchased, an install disc does not automatically come with the machine and I must take the time to burn the proper recovery media.

I urge you right now to take the time to make a recovery disc, if you haven’t already done so. It typically takes 15 to 20 CD-ROMs or 1 or 2 blank DVDs to burn this recovery media, so get started in case disaster strikes.

Every OEM has its own procedure to create or order a recovery disc (if one is available from the OEM at all). You’ll need to check your system’s documentation or the OEM’s Web site for details. I’ll describe how to burn a recovery disc using Hewlett-Packard computers as an example.

On typical HP systems, you click Start, All Programs, and look for a program called PC Help and Tools (or similar). Open the HP or Compaq Recovery CD/DVD creation software and follow the on-screen instructions to burn a recovery disc or discs.

You may also be able to order recovery media from the Web, as noted on the HP Web site. You won’t be able to burn a second set of recovery discs, so keep them in a safe place.

HP provides two online articles for reference: Using HP Recovery Manager and Obtaining a Recovery CD or DVD Set.

If you have a machine that won’t allow you to make a recovery disc, you may find that a recovery partition is available. After you follow the instructions, your system will be rolled back to its original state (solving the reboot problem but erasing everything in the process).

If you can’t get a recovery disc from the manufacturer of your PC, a Vista recovery image file (an .iso file) is available for download from a site called NeoSmart, although it’s not clear from reading the site that this copy is authorized by Microsoft. Whether or not you download and use that file, NeoSmart offers an instructional page explaining how to burn a bootable .iso file to disc using my favorite utility, MagicISO, and several others.

Before another Patch Tuesday rolls around, it would be very wise for you have a recovery disc handy.

Installing SP1 for Vista can mute your sound

Some people have downloaded Vista SP1 from TechNet Plus and MSDN, which made Vista SP1 available for download at the request of many subscribers. If you find that your system has gone mute after installing SP1, you may need to go into the System control panel and have the system discover the audio driver again.

Fellow SBS 2003 MVP and mobile phone guru Chris Rue found this out the hard way. He’s posted a description of the situation and a set of workarounds on his blog.

If you find yourself in the same situation, browse to the Control Panel, then open the System applet. Look in the drivers section and see if the audio driver is showing up with an exclamation point (!) next to it. If so, have the system find the driver again.

As in Chris’s case, once he did that, all was well.

The Patch Watch column reveals problems with patches for Windows and major Windows applications. Susan Bradley recently received an MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award from Microsoft for her knowledge in the areas of Small Business Server and network security. She’s also a partner in a California CPA firm.