Windows Archive

The saga around the WMF flaw in Windows continues. "A cryptographically signed version of Microsoft's patch for the Windows Metafile vulnerability accidentally leaked onto the Internet late Tuesday, adding a new wrinkle to the company's round-the-clock efforts to stop the flow of malicious exploits. The MSRC (Microsoft Security Response Center) acknowledged that a slip-up caused 'a fast-track, pre-release version of the update' to be posted to a security community site and urged users to 'disregard' the premature update."

Like a lot of people who have worked in the business, I find myself in conversations about computer security with people who are having problems or know people who have problems. I wrote this to save me from explaining the same thing over and over again to different people, and to save them the trouble of having to make notes as we talked. It was meant to be something you could give to a 'naive user' and have them be able to read and follow it more or less unaided, and while not being a complete guide, at least be something that made them more secure than before they got it.

Microsoft has updated its advisory today on the critical Windows flaw to state that development of the patch is complete, and they are now in the process of testing it. The expected release date for the patch is currently set for January 10, which will be included as part of Microsoft's monthly release of security bulletins. In the meantime, Microsoft advices against using a third party fix which appeared.

I recently saw a post on Neowin which said that Vista will no longer allow the use of region-free DVD drives for movie playback; I found this strange considering in some nations region-coding DVDs is illegal as it goes against consumer rights. Neowin also links against an MS developers blog, where he talks about MS lacking any region-free drives to test legacy code on, and this may lead to lack of support for those drives. So where does this leave consumers who have region-free drives? Well you'll be able to still use DVD-data discs you just wont be able to play encrypted/region-coded DVDs anymore.

MS is holding a contest in Europe & Pakistan, in which you have to guess what date MS will launch their long awaited next version of Windows. All legal residents of Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK who are 18 years of age or older have the chance to win from 1 of 3 prizes available in different prize bands; 1st Prize: Be live at the Launch Event in the USA: the full package with entry, flight and 3 nights in a 4-star Hotel, 2nd-4th Prize: New XBOX 360, 5th-10th Prize: XBOX Core System. NOTE: It seems to require IE to sign up, as it doesnt work in Safari, it may work in FF however.

"In December 2005, Microsoft released a Community Technology Preview of Windows Presentation Foundation, the new presentation subsystem for Windows that unifies development of documents, graphics, and applications into a common platform. In this article, we take a brief look at some of the new features that are part of the December CTP as well as the changes that have been made since the previous releases."

Microsoft has published a set of guidelines on which decisions to make now, so that your computer will be ready to run Windows Vista. They claim that any mid-range AMD or Intel processor will do, and even low-end ones will pack enough power to run Vista. 512 MBRAM is advised, but for more advanced users, 1GB is recommended. As for graphics card: "If you are building or buying PC today, you probably want to avoid the low end of the current GPU range and make sure you get a GPU that supports DirectX 9 and has at least 64 MB of graphics memory." My take: I can confirm that the Windows Vista December CTP, with all the effects turned on, runs more than fine on my aging AMD Athlon XP 1600+, 512MB SD-RAM, Ati Radeon 9000 128MB DDR-RAM (DirectX 8 compatible card, so not a DX9 card). Just so you know.

Love-him-hate-him Paul Thurrot has released a four part in-depth review of Vista's December CTP. "I think people are going to be surprised by how good the Windows Vista December 2005 Community Technical Preview (CTP, or build 5270) really is. After years of painful delays and an uncertain couple of months since the last CTP, Microsoft shipped a near-feature-complete Vista build to testers this week, and the prognosis is extremely positive. From what I can see, Vista has turned the corner. The December CTP is an exciting release, stable and full of new features. In this review, I'll examine those new features, and the features that have changed since the previous CTP, build 5231" Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.

Windows Vista will improve search functionality on a PC by letting users tag files with metadata, but those tags could cause unwanted and embarrassing information disclosure, Gartner analysts warned.

"The current Win32-based Windows UI graphics subsystem, found in Windows XP, has been around for nearly 20 years. It's aging and limited, and as a result, user interface development has been somewhat, well, constrained at best. The Windows Presentation Foundation, which is built on the .NET Framework, provides new techniques for developing applications, and makes better use of current hardware and technologies. In this article, we'll show you 10 of the most significant advances that make WPF superior to its Win32 forebears." In related news, here are shots of Vista server.

Alongside the December CTP of Windows Vista, Microsoft has released build 5270 of Windows Server 'Longhorn'. Both operating systems are available on the same DVD image. Although development is currently in line with the client build, the next Windows Server won't be ready until 2007.

The December CTP of Windows Vista has been released. ActiveWin has published screenshots, and a list of features, of the latest CTP of Windows Vista. Key areas of improvement in this CTP are security (Windows Defender, parental control, enhanced firewall, control over installation of device drivers, and more), performance, power state transitions, and the user interface ("evidence of Aero's progress in the December CTP includes the translucent 'glass' appearance of open windows, smoother transitions between windows and a re-designed start menu").

Channel9 met with Bill Hill and the ClearType team again and see what's the latest with the fonts in Windows Vista. They talk about trends in display resolution, research done in aesthetics and quite a few other things.

Windows testers will get a new beta version of Windows Vista, dubbed the December Community Technology Preview beta build, just before next week's holidays, according to tester scuttlebutt. New to the December release, testers say, will be a number of features and user-interface tweaks. a new defrag module; tight integration of Windows Defender (formerly known as Windows AntiSpyware); and a functional parental-controls filter are all rumored to be in the December Vista build.