Archive for the ‘Microsoft’ Category

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Regained 52.6GB Disk Space After Windows Vista SP2 Update: Also 45005 Registry Changes

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

vistasp2_45005reg

After seeing this in PC World…

Windows Vista SP2: Readers Report Big Increases in Free Disk Space

…I decided to take some notes when updating the only PC I have running Windows Vista to Service Pack 2 (SP2). Here’s what I found.

1. I had 74.4GB free hard disk space before beginning the SP2 update. I had 137GB free after the process and before rebooting the system. So, I recovered 52.6GB of disk space.
2. The SP2 update includes two reboots. The second reboot comes after the second phase of the three phase update process.
3. My screen went text-only during the second phase of the update and 45,005 registry changes were made during this phase based on the messages on the screen. You can see a frame grab above from a video I recorded during this process.
4. There was still 137GB of free space remaining after the second reboot from the third update phase.

Posted in Microsoft, Windows Vista | 2 Comments »

Windows 7 RC Pushing Us to Go Green?

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

I mentioned a few days ago that migrating an old desktop PC from Windows 7 Beta to Windows 7 Release Candidate seemed to result in a noticeably slower system. I think I know why now.

Taking a look at Win7RC’s power options on the desktop showed just the “Power Saving” and “Balanced” settings visible. I had to dig into the Advanced Options to find the “High Performance” power setting. Selecting this seemed to restore the desktop’s performance to what it “felt like” with Win7Beta (I haven’t performed any actual performance tests).

I wonder if Microsoft is trying to force users to go green (or buy faster PCs) by thinking that Balanced is the faster processor performance option available after a quick glance?

If your PC seems slower after migrating from Win7Beta to Win7RC, check your power options and hunt for the High Performance power setting.

Posted in Microsoft, Windows 7 | 1 Comment »

Windows 7 RC Installations: 1 Fast, 1 Slow - No Idea Why

Monday, May 18th, 2009

I installed Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) on two computers so far.

The first was an Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook that had Windows 7 Beta installed on it. I performed a clean non-formatting installation where the Win7Beta and associated directories were moved to another folder that RC does not look at. This installation took, perhaps 30 minutes including moving the old Beta related files to an archive folder.

The second was an old desktop PC with an AMD Athlon processor. It too had Win7Beta installed. The Beta installation took about 30 minutes. The move to RC, however, took hours. It took so long that after about 90 minutes I had to leave to run some errands and simply left the PC on to continue the installation process. The update had finally completed while I was out running my errands.

Here’s another oddity. Win7RC seems to be running as fast as Win7Beta on my netbook (Eee PC 1000HA with an Intel Atom N270 processor). However, Win7RC seems much slower on the AMD Athlon based desktop PC. I haven’t run any benchmarks to compare the two yet. However, tasks like starting the Firefox browser seems much slower on the desktop running Win7RC compared to the same PC when it ran Win7Beta.

Posted in Microsoft, Windows 7 | 4 Comments »

Patch Tuesday: Windows Update Brought my Quad-Core PC to its Knees

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

patchtues_4core_perf

This is not news. But, I’m amazed every Patch Tuesday that Windows Update can bring a quad-core PC with 4GB of RAM running Windows Vista to its knees. You can see a typical Windows Task Manager performance chart snapshot above.

Posted in Microsoft, Windows Vista | No Comments »

Will There be a Windows 7 Release Candidate 2?

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

I recall reading statements from Microsoft that there would be one Windows 7 Beta and one Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). So, why does this Microsoft On10.net blog item…

Top 7 Things to Check Out in Windows 7 RC1

…mention “RC1″. Is it a simple typo? Or will there be an RC2 that pushes Windows 7’s release date a bit further out. I sure hope not. I ran Windows 7 Beta from January through the end of April. And, I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC last week Friday (May 1). These installs were on the netbook I take nearly everywhere with me including two trips to Seattle and New York in March. It is a “production” machine and, quite frankly, has been running a lot better than the “production” version of Windows Vista on my quad-core desktop.

Posted in Microsoft, Windows 7 | No Comments »

Windows 7 Release Candidate Clean Install Does NOT Involve Reformatting

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

I’m a bit behind in listening to the Windows Weekly podcast by Paul Thurrott and Leo LaPorte. So, I just listened to WW #104 a few hours ago. During the course of the podcast, Paul and Leo discuss Windows 7 Release Candidate and commented that the best way to install the RC is a clean install because it does not support upgrading from XP or 7 Beta (all true).

However, they then mention that a clean install involves reformatting the drive. This is not true for the RC or the previous 7 Beta release. Here’s what happens.

win7rc_oldfolder

If you are performing a clean install for the first time on an existing Windows XP installation, the XP folder is moved to Windows.old. If you, like me, are performing a clean install on a PC that had XP on it first and currently has 7 Beta, the old XP files remain in the folder Windows.old while the 7 Beta files are placed in Windows.old.000.

win7rc_foldersinc

However, the former version of Windows is not the only thing placed in those .old folders. You can see that the Program Files, Perflogs and Users folders along with autoexec.bat and config.sys files are also placed there. The new Windows 7 RC files completely replace those folders and the files in them to create a clean install. So, you won’t see your old software or configuration. But, they are all there in the old folders until you delete them.

I actually looked for an option to either low-level format the partition or simply format the existing NFTS partition but did not see it during the Windows 7 RC installation process.

Posted in Microsoft, Windows 7 | 2 Comments »

Virtual PC 2007 vs. Windows Virtual PC Feature Comparison Table

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

Microsoft released Windows 7 Release Candidate today (I’m downloading my copies of it plus Windows 7 server right now). It includes the Windows XP Mode which is essentially a specialized virtualization container. Microsoft provides an informative table that compares Virtual PC 2007 to Windows Virtual PC at…

Compare some of the many features of Virtual PC 2007 to Windows Virtual PC

Windows Virtual PC includes a bunch of features that a lot of people have been clamoring for for years including:

- USB support (finally!)
- Clipboard sharing
- Drive sharing

Note that unlike Virtual PC 2007, Windows Virtual PC requires either AMD-V or Intel VT-x hardware virtualization support. So, old PCs and Atom 270/280 based netbooks can’t run it.

And The Windows Blog has a useful item for those of you planning to deploy Windows XP Mode in the enterprise…

How MED-V v2 Helps You Manage Windows XP Mode

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Posted in Microsoft, Virtual PC and Server | No Comments »

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Weighs in at 509MB

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

office2007sp2updates

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 was released today and it is gigantic. Although Windows Update reported that it was 397.3MB large, the actual download was 509MB.

It is supposed to be faster (Outlook 2007 SP2 is said to be 26% faster) and more stable. It also provides built-in support for working with ODF and PDF files which previously required add-ons to do so.

Here’s what I’d like to know though: Why does an Office update require Vista to reboot? That just seems wrong.

Posted in Microsoft, Office 2007 | No Comments »

Instructions for Upgrading from Windows 7 Beta to RC

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Microsoft’s Engineering Windows 7 blog has instructions for upgrading from Windows 7 Beta to the upcoming RC.

Delivering a quality upgrade experience

The primary advice is to reinstall Vista and then upgrade to Windows 7 RC. Um, ack! My Asus Eee PC 1000HA came with XP. So, their primary advice is a no-go for me. And, here’s their slightly less ugly alternative instructions.:

Here’s what you can do to bypass the check for pre-release upgrade IF YOU REALLY REALLY NEED TO:

  1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
  2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
  3. Browse to the sources directory.
  4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
  5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000.
  6. Save the file in place with the same name.
  7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

Posted in Microsoft, Virtualization | No Comments »

Video Demo: Microsoft Surface Table in Seattle Sheraton Lobby

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

The Seattle Sheraton Hotel has three Microsoft Surface tables in its lobby. They are configured to display visitor related information and are not as general purpose computers. I recorded the brief video above to demonstrate how information is displayed on manipulated on the Surface tables there.

Tags:
Posted in Microsoft | No Comments »

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