Tag: Drivers
November 01, 2009 by
Jason
Microsoft’s “Better Together” slogan apparently applies not only to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 but also to the latest iteration of the Windows client and the Redmond company’s peripherals. The vast majority of products offered by Microsoft Hardware features the Windows 7 Compatible logo and comes with device drivers designed to play nice with the successor of Windows Vista from the get go. Windows 7 was released to manufacturing on July 22nd and hit the shelves last week on October 22nd, with Microsoft applauding strong support and compatibility for the OS.
The Redmond company even features a webpage dedicated to Microsoft Hardware products and Windows 7, advertising a match nothing short of the perfect marriage between peanut butter and jelly. More importantly, the Microsoft Hardware + Windows 7 page contains a collection of special offerings for customers. The software giant noted that the special deals on Microsoft were open to all customers.
Microsoft Hardware products including mice, keyboards, LifeCams, gaming devices and notebook accessories, all compatible with Windows 7, are also available at discount prices from a variety of online retailers including the Microsoft Store. The only exception to the Windows 7 compatible line-up of Microsoft Hardware items is the Fingerprint Reader, which does not play nice with the operating system, the company informed. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows 7 | No Comments »
October 28, 2009 by
Jason The first part of this article are here.
6. Prepare for distributed security.
During your initial strategy meeting, set aside time to discuss how you want to handle the many distributed security features in Windows 7. You’ll want to determine a course of action early in the project because those decisions will have a substantial impact on your test matrix.
First, consider whether you want turn on the desktop firewall. When OS-based desktop firewalls were first introduced in XP SP1, many organizations turned them off with a Group Policy and that was that. The firewall in Windows 7 is much more flexible and warrants reconsideration. You can turn off the firewall while the machine is connected to the domain and turn it on when the machine is connected to a home/work network or to the Internet. You can define granular exclusions, too. Try a mix of options with the first wave of pilot users; take their feedback, along with input from your security team, to make a final decision on firewall settings. They’re completely configurable by Group Policy.
Second, do you want to use AppLocker to restrict applications permitted to run on your desktops? AppLocker allows you to put together a whitelist of approved executables that you can select individually by file hash, in groups by location or in groups by publisher (that is, signed by the publisher’s certificate). Once configured, these rules are downloaded by Windows 7 clients running the Application Identity service. From that point forward, only the whitelisted apps can execute. All other executables are forced to sit on the sidelines, kind of like me during my high-school athletic career.
Because AppLocker permissions are applied via Group Policy, you can tightly target the rules to computers based on OU, group membership or WMI filters.
Sifting through a mountain of applications trying to determine which should be on an AppLocker whitelist doesn’t sound like much fun, but the situation shouldn’t come to that. Most line-of-business machines have a fixed and limited suite of apps. Start there. After all, if you can keep the night crews from plugging flash drives into your factory kiosk machines to run games rather than build widgets, you’ve solved quite a few operational problems. Deal with the back-office machines later. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 1 Comment »
October 14, 2009 by
Jason Keeping Windows 7 and Windows Vista running under normal parameters takes much more work than is done in Redmond alone. Fact is that the ecosystems of software and hardware products designed to integrate with the Windows clients have to do this seamlessly, especially when dealing with solutions that hook into the core of the operating system. Driver update failures for example, can easily cripple Windows 7 and Windows Vista, causing the two platforms to no longer start.
“This problem may occur if any one of the following conditions is true: The new device or the driver causes conflicts with other drivers that are installed on the computer. A hardware-specific issue occurs. The driver that is installed is damaged,” Microsoft explained.
In case you performed a driver update for a device component of your computer and Windows 7 and Vista are acting up, then your best choice to resolve the matter is to roll back the changes. Reverting the driver update will cause the issues introduced by the refresh to go away. First you will need to boot into Windows.
Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
September 10, 2009 by
Jason Microsoft has made available for download the gold version of its solution accelerator designed to automate the deployment of its latest Windows client and server operating system released. The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2010 was released to manufacturing over a month following the RTM of Windows 7 itself. MDT 2010 comes to the table with support not just for the deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but also for previous releases of Windows, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.
“MDT provides you with the following benefits: unified tools and processes required for desktop and server deployment in a common deployment console and collection of guidance. Reduced deployment time and standardized desktop and server images, along with improved security and ongoing configuration management. Fully automated Zero Touch Installation deployments by leveraging System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate and Windows deployment tools. For those without a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 infrastructure, MDT leverages Windows deployment tools for Lite Touch Installation deployments,” Keith Combs, Microsoft evangelist, revealed. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows 7 | No Comments »
September 02, 2009 by
Jason
Microsoft is offering Windows 7 RTM as a free download. That’s right! Completely free, no catch, no strings attached. The Redmond-based company is delivering customers the possibility of continuing the testing of its latest iteration of the Windows client even after the Release Candidate Build 7100 development milestone downloads have been discontinued. In this regard, the Windows 7 RTM Enterprise edition bits are currently up for grabs straight from the software giant. Customers will be able to test drive the release for no less than 90 days.
Stephen L. Rose, Senior community manager, Windows IT Pro Client, explained that the free Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-day evaluation comes as a consequence of direct input from IT professionals. “Many IT pros we talk to have been looking for a way to continue their work with the Release Candidate to test their applications, hardware and deployment strategies with final Windows 7 bits. In response, we have created the Windows 7 Enterprise 90 Day trial edition, available beginning [September 1, 2009],” Rose noted.
Microsoft is already offering the RTM of Windows 7 via a variety of channels to specialized audiences. However, the free Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-day evaluation comes with no limitations, and is available for download for all IT pros independent of the subscription-based or volume licensing sources. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 6 Comments »
With the releasing to manufacturing of Windows 7 on July 22nd, 2009, Microsoft has started updating all the resources adjacent to the operating system also to the RTM milestone. It is the case of Windows Driver Kit Version 7.0.0. Developers are now able to grab an updated version of Windows Driver Kit Version 7.0.0 specifically tailored to the gold development build of Windows 7. Starting with the first half of August 2008, software developers have available the resources necessary to build drivers for Windows 7 RTM Build 7600, but also for previous releases of the Windows client and server operating systems.
“The Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Version 7.0.0 contains the tools, code samples, documentation, compilers, headers and libraries with which software developers create drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003. This development kit does not contain device drivers for your personal computer,” reads an excerpt from the overview for Windows Driver Kit Version 7.0.0.
But in addition to the WDK, Microsoft has also updated the documentation made available for developers in order to better leverage the resource. While WDK for Windows 7 RTM has been live for a few weeks, the updated documentation was only offered to devs on August 14th, 2009. The Windows Driver Kit documentation is currently available for download and integration with Windows 7. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
The time it takes for your computer to start up and run has been massively improved under Windows Vista. One of the reasons older versions of Windows, such as Windows 95 and Windows 98, took so long to boot up was because those versions of Windows were running on top of another operating system MSDOS.
With Windows Vista this is no longer the case, so start-up times are a lot faster. If you have a brand new computer or a fresh installation of Windows Vista, it will take no time at all for your PC to start up, so you can begin using your favourite programs at once. Unfortunately, after a while, with the more programs you install and the more files you have on your PC, you may begin to notice that your computer takes longer and longer to start up. Before you know it, you’ll be able to get up, make a cup of tea and drink it while waiting for Windows Vista to load. When things get this bad, you know you have to do something about it.
We recently asked visitors to the pctipsbox.com website how long it took for their PCs to start. The results varied from less than a minute to over ten!
There are plenty of factors that could make your PC startup grind to a halt, so there are plenty of tweaks to try to get your PC starting up in a flash. It’s all very well listing these tweaks, but do they work? Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
Microsoft is making it easy for users running Windows Vista Service Pack 2, but also SP1, to resolve sound problems affecting the operating system after the deployment of a service pack. In this manner, the Redmond company is acknowledging that Vista users can run into issues related to sound once they upgrade their platform either to SP1 or to SP2. Fortunately enough, the software giant provides users with an automated solution for eventual sound problems via KB948481. Microsoft is essentially providing a Fix It button and associated solution that will help users troubleshoot any sound issues introduced with the installation of a new service pack.
“After you install a Windows Vista service pack, you may experience one or more of the following problems with sound: no sound is produced when you play audio files or run programs that have an audio component. The speaker symbol next to the clock in the notification area may display the following message: No Audio Output Device is installed. The Sound Controller in Device Manager displays a yellow exclamation point. The sound quality changes. For example, if you previously had surround sound, you may now have stereo sound,” Microsoft explained. Read More»
Posted in Hardware, Windows Vista | 3 Comments »
With the next iteration of the Windows client having hit the Release Candidate stage, Microsoft has introduced an update to the resources designed to streamline development and testing of drivers for the successor of Windows Vista. Developers will be able to take advantage of refreshed documentation for the Windows Driver Kit via MSDN. The update to the Windows Driver Kit was introduced to keep up the pace with the evolution of Windows 7, which is available for public download as Release Candidate Build 7100 since May 5th, 2009.
“The WDKUA team is pleased to announce that we have refreshed the WDK documentation for Windows 7 RC on MSDN,” revealed Kevin Shirley, WDK programming writer. “We have also provided an improved feedback mechanism with this documentation refresh. Near the bottom of each WDK documentation topic is a “Send feedback on this topic” link. You can use the link to provide targeted topic feedback to the WDK documentation team. Please note that while we attempt to address relevant submissions in a timely manner, it may take awhile for us to update any given topic.” Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
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