Microsoft | Technology Blog

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta Download

December 4th, 2008

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Microsoft is making the betas of the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 available through their Customer Preview Program. Links are currently up for MSDN subscribers and Technet subscribers with public links announced to follow soon on the very same page.

Windows Vista Service Pack Beta 2 is available in the five languages English, German, Japanese, Spanish and French. Microsoft did publish the release notes for Windows Server 2009 Service Pack 2 Beta and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Beta already. The release notes do not contain many information at this point but they contain information about incompatible applications and updates which should be updated or installed prior to installing the beta release of the Service Pack.

Users with previous versions of Service Pack 2 have to uninstall that Service Pack before being able to install the beta 2. This is done in the Control Panel as usual. The website where MSDN or Technet subscribers can find their download links and where regular users will find their download links as well is available here. Interested users can also take a look at the updates and patches that are included in both betas of the Service Packs.

The Web Explodes With Windows 7 News

October 28th, 2008

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I wanted to write a nice article over at the Windows 7 website that I run with Everton from Connected Internet but the server is running slow all day which is somewhat ironic. The most important day of the year regarding Windows 7 and the Windows 7 site is to slow to post on. We will post all news as soon as the server is up again.

Instead of posting it there I decided to post the information here at Ghacks. The day began with screenshot posts by Paul Thurrott and Tom Warren who both posted lots of screenshots that Microsoft supplied. They managed to create their own as well and their posts show both the official and custom screenshots of Windows 7 M3 builds.

The interface has changed quite a bit in comparison to Windows Vista. Windows 7 sports a bigger taskbar, improved system tray, date and time being displayed by default and gadgets that can now be placed freely on the computer desktop. Two features worth mentioning are preview windows and so called jump lists which appear when moving the mouse over an item in the Windows Taskbar.

New Windows 7 Features Leaked

October 28th, 2008

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Microsoft updated the Windows 7 Pre-release (M3) Privacy Supplement today and it revealed several new features of Windows 7 that have been covered over at the Windows 7 blog. Here is a short summary of what new features have been mentioned in the privacy supplement.

Driver Protection checks a database that is maintained locally for drivers that are known to be problematic. It can be updated via Windows Update and a new feature called Dynamic Update which essentially updates Windows 7 during installation if an Internet connection is available. Windows 7 might prevent those drivers from being loaded which is a somewhat scary sentence if there is no way to overrule the decision.

Internet Printing and the Online Print Ordering Wizard are two new print services. The first makes it possible to send print jobs to computers over the Internet using the http protocol while the second is supposed to make it easier to send digital photos to online print stores to order prints of them.

Homegroup was one of the first new features that came to light. It can connect Windows 7 computers in a home network so that they can share files and devices.

Windows Vista SP2 Registry Hack

October 23rd, 2008

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Joseph was nice enough to send me the required Registry keys for the Windows Vista SP2 update that was distributed to selected testers on October 16. It is a pre-beta update for testers and not suited for anything else but test systems to test the changes of the new service pack for Windows Vista.

There are not any changes yet that can be identified after installing Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista. The service pack 2 currently contains all released patches and hotfixes that have been already released and several files that are required for future updates that Microsoft will release to testers.

Users who are still interested in testing Windows Vista SP2 can download a batch file that is stored at Mediafire which will add the required keys to the Windows Vista Registry. The computer has to be restarted after executing the batch file before the changes become visible.

Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Pre-Beta Released

October 22nd, 2008

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Microsoft began distributing a pre-beta release of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 just a few days after announcing a second service pack for Windows Vista which according to Microsoft would come out before the release of the next Microsoft operating system Windows 7.

The pre-beta release is distributed to a select group of testers who have to run a program that adds a few keys to their Registry which enables the download of Windows Vista service pack 2 on Windows Update.

The release which has the build number 6002.16489 has a size between 290.7 MB to 296.9 MB. It contains all released updates but no obvious changes or additional features according to Within Windows.

Winners of Extensions for Windows

October 13th, 2008

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A couple of days ago I gave some of you the chance to win one year’s license for Extensions for Windows by simply stating the one feature they would most want to see in Windows.

For those of you who didn’t see the article, Extensions for Windows is a set of tools and applications designed to ‘upgrade’ Windows whilst fully integrating with the existing features and functionality. As far as achieving this goal goes, I would say Extensoft gets part-way there… great tools, but the integration isn’t perhaps as comprehensive and seamless as may be expected.

Winners of the competition are:

Bullitt - “One thing I would like for Windows to have built in is a program that keeps your software up-to-date, much like Ubuntu has.”

Agreed, after using Ubuntu I too wanted this functionality in Windows very much. Hopefully with time Windows Update will eventually encompass more software.