Windows 7 builds flying fast and furious

We’ve got new builds of Windows 7 all over the place.

Build 7068 is on the newsgroups, and you can retrieve a pirate copy if you feel so inclined. Paul Thurrott just posted screen shots of build 7068’s Home Basic. The most remarkable part of build 7068: it lets you install most of the different versions of Windows 7, so if you’re curious about what’s in, say, Home Premium that isn’t in Home Basic, build 7068 should ring your chimes.

Not to be outdone, Ars Technica has shots of Build 7070. There’s an interesting story behind the shots. They came from a site known as Facepunch. Facepunch has a thread about Windows 7 that’s 180+ pages long, peppered with completely off-the-topic inanities and more than a little commentary of the “WTF” nature. Apparently somebody posted the shots of build 7070 with this explanation:

I just came back from Microsoft, since my Dad works there. He works for in the SQL server division and here are some screenshots I took about the new build 7070. I don’t know if there is anything new to this build, but they installed it yesterday, so it probably will be leaked soon. They said it was a major update; maybe not to the user interface but more to the Kernel. Just letting you guys know 😛

I have no way of verifying the veracity of the statement, but it’s certainly provocative. 😛

Emil Protalinski at Ars Technica goes on to say:

I’ve heard that the last three (7070, 7071, and 7072) are being considered to be labelled as the RC-escrow build. That build will be sent to testers sometime in April, and we already know that the RC download page may come in May. That’s what I’ve heard, though what Microsoft will end up doing in the end, I can’t guarantee.

I’ll stick to my original guess: widespread availability of Release Candidate 1 in April. Official posting in May. RTM in July or August, with shrinkwrapped product on store shelves by September 1.

Conficker’s All Fools Day

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

I know it’s true because I read it in … let’s see … where was that? Oh, it’s right here in the newspaper. Just above the ad for washing machines. Yeah, see that? Toldja so.

Gimme a break. Yes, Conficker is changing on April 1. No, you don’t need to worry about it.

There’s an excellent, reasoned blog post about Conficker on the F-Secure site. What? An antivirus manufacturer says you don’t need to panic, while the venerable Sun says “MILLIONS of computers around the world could go into meltdown on April 1 because of a deadly virus.” Gawrsh. And they have a very nice ad for washing machines, too.

If you’re still running Windows XP, it would behoove you to hop over to the F-Secure Q&A. Down at the bottom, there’s a link to the F-Secure scanner, which will detect and remove all known versions of Conficker.

And you won’t get hit up about dirty laundry…

Windows 7, Build 7068, and May

A screenshot of Windows 7 build 7068 just hit the Web and the enthusiast sites are all over it. I wouldn’t call it terribly englightening, but if you’re curious, hit this Japanese language site on the MSDN blog.

I just discovered that the pirate software sellers in Bangkok are selling build 7057. Yep, selling it. It’s a Real Big Deal.

The press has been breathless over a page that was posted a bit ahead of time that points at Microsoft releasing its Windows 7 Release Candidate to the world in May. I’m still expecting to see RC 1 on the newsgroups in April. And I’ll stick with the prediction I made six months ago that we’ll see shrinkwrapped copies of Windows 7 on store shelves around September 1.

Ed Bott has an interesting connect-the-dots post about the latest Windows 7 release date revelations. Er, non-revelations.

Windows Home Server PowerPack 2 docs released

Although it won’t be available until tomorrow, the Windows Home Server team blog just announced the official availability of Windows Home Server Power Pack 2.

Power Pack 2 will be made available via Windows Update. Users need to have Windows Home Server with Power Pack 1 already installed on their home server. Power Pack 2 will automatically install as part of Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on the home server… The English version release date is March 24th. Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish is currently scheduled to be available before the end of April.

The blog has an overview of the (impressive) new features, but if you want to see all the details, check out the Windows Home Server Release Documentation, which just went up on the Microsoft download site.

Problem viewing this site with Helvetica installed

Reader CG had trouble viewing this site a couple of weeks ago. Ends up that the Helvetica font he had on his PC (from a LaserJet driver installed eons ago) was taking over AskWoody, rendering it virtually illegible.

Just got an update:

Just accessed your site again with my notebook. Noticed the font had gone to hell again. Remembered that I have recently installed a LaserJet 2015 printer, and sure enough, those pesky HP versions of Helvetica had appeared again, even though there was no warning, no permission, But it must have been that because although the files are the same, they have later dates, in this case 17 June 2003, compared with 1 September 1998 of those I deleted. Deleted these again, and your site looks good again.

Thought you should be aware, since there may be others who get caught with the same gotcha, and blame your site (as I mistakenly did).

Fascinating. I remember Helvetica well – right up there with Univers. Funny it should come back to haunt me after all these years….

Shift on autologous transfers?

Reader MA writes:

You recommend using the “shift key workaround” when inserting memory rather than installing KB 967715. That makes sense for memory that may have been used on a variety of systems but do you extend the recommendation as well to memory that has been used only on one’s OWN system?

No need to use the shift key if you’re re-inserting a USB drive or SD card that’s never seen another system. If your machine’s clean, the memory will be clean, too.

AVG Free begging for money

Reader SA writes:

It appears that AVG wants to sell the new upgrade AVG 8.5. The popup warning rather dire looking: threat of no more updates after April (something like 14th). I only want to use the Free edition.

I remember when someone posted a comment, recently on your newly designed website, about how angry he got at another company doing that.

I recall about a year ago, or a bit longer, they did the same thing: giving a date that it will end and then it didn’t.

You noted you like using free AVG in your comment.

The scary warnings are ….scary. They didn’t stop last year.

I still use AVG, although I’m getting less and less enthusiastic about it because of this bogus warning, the attempts to steer you to a for-pay package, and its default installation of a “phone home” component that sends your complete browser history to the folks at AVG. I turn off LinkScanner (that’s the “phone home” piece) through AVG’s control panel, but it’s a pain in the neck.

Seth, who’s a regular here, prefers AVIRA. NOD32 used to have an excellent free package, but it looks like they’ve changed to a free 30-day evaluation only.

It you want to stick with AVG Free – I still run it on most of my computers, including my Windows 7 computers – here’s how to do it:

1. Download but don’t install AVG Free.

2. Disconnect your computer from your network and the Internet.

3. Click Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs and remove AVG Free. You’ll see some detailed instructions about stopping AVG Free before it can be removed, and you’ll have to re-boot your machine.

4. Double-click on the downloaded copy of AVG Free. Follow the instructions to install it.

5. When AVG Free says it wants to check the Internet for updates, then – and only then – plug your compute back into your network and the Internet. Then proceed with the installation.

That’s a generic sequence for uninstalling an old antivirus product and installing a new one, safely and effectively. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well with Norton, which leaves pieces of itself scattered everywhere, and it notoriously difficult to remove completely.

Best antirootkit scanner?

Reader PM has a question about rootkit scanners:

Do you have any suggestions for an alternative to sophos? They do not support the 64 bit Vista Home Premium edition edition.

I recommended Sophos in Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies, but unfortunately Sophos pulled support for Vista from its free product after we went to press.

Vista is significantly harder to rootkit (is that a verb?) than XP. For that reason, I’m not overly concerned about scanning my Vista machines for rootkits. But, of course, it never hurts.

Scott Spanbauer at Windows Secrets Newsletter has a roundup of the top free antirootkits.  There’s also an excellent review of the effectiveness of antirootkit products in Mark Joseph Edwards’ column in the same edition. (Scott’s article is free; Mark’s requires a subscription, but as you undoubtedly remember, you can subscribe to Windows Secrets Newsletter and pay whatever you feel it is worth.)

Why is the fake anti-virus business so lucrative?

Rob Rosenberger hits the nail on the head with his recent VMyths blog post:

Two decades of hysteria convinced everyone to take it on blind faith that antivirus software is the fo shizzle answer to our online woes.

It’s no wonder that computer users will blindly trust an antivirus product that pops up on their screen saying “alert, alert, your PC is infected!” A fake-AV scam will demand $x9.95 to clean up the viruses it finds – which is exactly the same amount a legit antivirus firm will charge if you want their product to do exactly the same thing.

Right on, right on.

Pwn2Own conclusion

The annual pwn2own (I pronounce it “pone to own”) contest just wrapped, with interesting results. DVLabs reports:

The contest uncovered 4 new and unique critical vulnerabilities affecting the latest and greatest versions of IE, Safari and FireFox. The Chrome browser gets a small nod for being impacted by one of the flaws, although exploit is not possible using any current known techniques.

You’ve probably seen the headlines about Internet Explorer 8 – the version that just came out – getting hacked, and how Microsoft swears it has a patch, less than 12 hours after the original “pwn” but just hasn’t delivered it yet.

Interestingly, none of the mobile operating systems – Blackberry, Android, iPhone, Nokia/Symbian, or Windows Mobile – got hacked. I betcha bucks to buckaroos that’ll change next year.

Windows 7 performance boost due to popularity of Netbooks?

Emil Protalinski just posted an insightful piece on Ars Technica that says, in essence, we can attribute the (significant) improvements in Windows 7 performance to Microsoft’s attempts to wean Netbook users away from Windows XP.

Microsoft is very much aware that it’s not going to make much money offering XP on netbooks forever. So it’s really no surprise that when Microsoft announced the Windows 7 editions last month, it promised that all editions would run on netbooks. To achieve this goal, the company has been tweaking like no tomorrow. It’s never bothered doing that with a new Windows release, at least not to the extent that it is doing with Windows 7.

You bet your sweet bippy. That’s exactly what happened – and one of the main reasons why this ol’ boy with an admittedly jaundiced eye welcomes Windows 7 with open arms.

I’ve been running Windows 7 Ultimate on an ASUS EEE PC 1000H netbook for a month now, and it’s slick. It isn’t fast. But it’s fast enough. And compared to that monster “laptop” I used to lug around, it’s positively liberating.

Erratum: Vista All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies and secpol.msc

Reader PM writes:

I purchased Windows Vista All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies and tried to follow your instructions for disabling user account control. When I type in secpol.msc the search yields no results. Am I doing something wrong?

Nope. What you’re doing is right.

The latest edition of the book makes these corrections:

Page 104 – replace the graf that starts “If you’re absolutely sure…” with the following :

If you’re absolutely sure that UAC only gets in your way, and that it doesn’t contribute one iota to your system’s security, you have several options.

You can turn off User Account Control completely. The quick way: click Start, then click your picture at the top of the right-hand column. Click Turn User Account Control On or Off. Uncheck the box marked Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer. Click OK and reboot your computer. Unfortunately, that approach turns off UAC for all users. Anyone using your computer with a Standard account won’t even be prompted to supply an administrator account and password.

If you have Vista Business, Enterprise or Ultimate, there’s a much better way: you can selectively disable UAC prompts for Administrator accounts only. Unfortunately, this option doesn’t exist in Vista Home Basic or Premium; see Scott Dunn’s article in PC World for some alternatives.

Microsoft removed secpol.msc from Vista Home Basic and Premium. That’s why you can’t find it.