Windows Archive

This week, Microsoft began requiring customers to validate their copies of Windows in order to use their Windows Update service. Crackers responded by circumventing the check and within days.

Today, Microsoft released the first beta of Windows Vista. PC Mag reviews it. "After several years of waiting to see the successor to Windows XP, code-named Longhorn, we've finally gotten our hands on Beta 1 of what now will be called Windows Vista." They also have 40 screenshots. Elsewhere, MS has announced the official names for Avalon and Indigo.

Microsoft has released some official screenshots of the just released beta 1 of Windows Vista, their upcoming Windows version. Microsoft has passed a major milestone with the release of its first full test version of Windows Vista, the next generation of its flagship operating system.

Beta 1 of Windows Vista, formerly known as Longhorn, will be released coming wednesday. The download will be available to beta testers an hour after the official announcement.

Dave Solomon of Sysinternals was experimenting about how many services are necessary for at least basic funtionality of Windows. What he discovered, however is that Windows can be perfectly used for almost all basic use, such as web browsing or running aplications, without any services running. In his article he explains how to achieve this. Apparently even Microsoft's own vice president of the Core Operating Systems Division was surprised about this.

Windows Vista beta 1 is due out by August 3. So what can we expect to see? What are Microsoft's goals? Wincustomise's Frogboy shares his views.

Microsoft confirmed that it will deliver the beta 1 version of Longhorn Server on August 3, along with the beta 1 release Internet Explorer 7. They'll be available along with the beta 1 version of Windows Vista, the next-generation Windows formerly known as Longhorn, which Microsoft announced friday morning.

With the announcement of Longhorn's official name, Microsoft has left many users asking: why Windows Vista? Company representatives told BetaNews that Microsoft felt the new version of Windows "deserved a name that was more representative of what it specifically brings to customers."

Is the official new name for the Longhorn operating system is Microsoft Windows Vista? Flexbeta seems to think so, and has posted a domain registration from MS that seems to support this idea. Update: Looks like it's official.

Running a background process on the Windows platform requires running a Windows Service. To run a Windows Service, you must have an application that is Windows Service aware. A Bash script is not Windows Service aware and neither are many console applications. XYNTService allows an administrator to define a console program and its options to execute. The XYNTService application is a Windows Service that reads a configuration file to know which applications to run. Read more...

Microsoft is making big promises about Longhorn and other product development, but will it deliver? InformationWeek spoke with company execs about initiatives in security, server operating systems, storage, convergence and more.

Time to throw out the old Pentium I/MMX computers? Not yet... read this guide on how to install Windows 2000 on a very old computer with only 32MB RAM and tweak it to run very fast.

At a company-sponsored conference in Japan, Microsoft announced that it has finished development of Windows Automotive 5.0. The update is based on the latest version of Windows CE, the CE 5.0 release that came out in May.

Longhorn will have some new features that will be particularly interesting for hardware hackers: The Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSat) is basically a built-in benchmarking tool that should help with determining what affect a new component is having on the system, and another, unnamed feature looks for hardware changes on boot, and, if it finds any, will restart the hardware configuration process.