Windows 7 Security

Steve Gibson's Security Now podcast does an extensive overview of Windows 7 security. Ever the curmudgeon, Steve insists that he'll wait a year to see how Windows 7 endures the inevitable flurrry of attacks it will suffer once it's out but is impressed by the work that Microsoft has done in fixing the mistakes it made with Vista.

I for one am pretty happy with the Windows 7 Release Candidate. It's fast and fixes most of Vista's annoyances. I'm running it on two computers and plan to install it on a third....

Windows 7's Potentially Show-stopping Boot Up Problem

Image by Mimi_K via Flickr

I have installed the Windows 7 Release Candidate on two computers now and for the most part, it works very well. But there is one very serious potentially show-stopping problem which I have encountered. I first installed the 64-bit version of Windows 7 on an old laptop with 32-bit Windows Vista. The first couple of times that I rebooted, the computer complained that "ntldr" was missing and would not boot up unless I inserted my Windows 7 DVD. This problem eventually went away and I dismissed it as a fluke. Then I installed it on another computer....

The story begins a few months ago when I tried to build a file server with Via's new Artigo 2000 box using 32-bit Windows XP Professional and two 2 Terabyte Western Digital hard drives. It was a pretty nice little machine but it just wasn't robust enough to handle moving thousands of little files across a network. It would crash from time to time and couldn't reliably transfer video files to my TiVos. So I decided to scrap the experiment and maybe try later with a dedicated server OS like FreeNAS. In the meantime, I still had a lot of files to move around multiple computers. So I rebuilt my Shuttle XPC with a dual core processor and 2GB of RAM. While I had used this computer as a file server before I hadn't been happy with the results and felt that it was overkill for just serving up files to other computers. Nevertheless I stuffed the two Western Digital drives in that box and installed the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 RC on it. The result was a very fast computer with 4TB of storage space that didn't crash when I used it to serve video to my TiVos.

Things went great with my new rig until Windows 7 decided that it needed to install updates and reboot. When it rebooted, the dreaded "ntldr missing" message reappeared and unlike with my laptop, it has stuck around for several reboots. Poking around the Internet, I saw that is happening to other people as well. I have tried several solutions but have yet to find one that works....Other than keeping my Windows 7 DVD in my CD drive during boot up.

Now perhaps this problem is my own fault for being careless but still it is a serious problem troubles me.

Windows 7 RC Quick First Impressions

About two hours ago I inserted my Windows 7 Release Candidate disk into my spare laptop's CD-Rom tray and for the most part I'm done. Windows 7 is still complaining that I need to install an anti-virus program and I do need to re-install the software I normally use on my computer but other that I'm up an running having installed Firefox.

The installation process was fairly straightforward. I already had the Windows 7 Beta installed on this machine. It was the 32-bit version and I used the 64-bit version of the release candidate so I couldn't just upgrade the Beta. Microsoft recommends a "clean install" anyway so I restarted the machine with the RC in the CD-Rom tray and let it install. This took about an hour. The computer restarted several times during this process.

Near the end of the install, Windows offered to activate itself automatically and asked for the key to my wifi hotspot. This was a fairly clever thing for it to do. Unfortunately, I have a 63 character wifi key which I keep on a USB flash drive and there was no way to get the wifi key off the flash drive and into the connection dialog box. No biggie, I just let Windows start and it already had a connection icon in the taskbar. I just clicked on the icon, chose my wifi hotspot from the pop up list, and copied and pasted the wifi key into that dialog box. I've noticed in the past that Windows Vista allows you to export your wifi key onto a flash drive in some (hopefully encrypted) format but never bother to use this feature. Perhaps people who have used this feature might be able to just insert flash drive into their computers and have Windows 7 recognize their wifi keys. Despite this problem, one of the big improvements going from Windows Vista to 7 is the improved ease in connecting to secured wifi hotspots.

When Windows finally came up it was with a fairly generic configuration at a relatively low resolution of 1024x768 giving my laptop's widescreen a fuzzy, squashed appearance. As I poked around the interface, Windows continued to look for updates and found seven of them, including the software drivers for my NVIDIA graphics card. I let Windows install the updates and reboot. Suddenly my laptop took on a more familiar appearance at its full 1280x800 screen resolution. Curiously, Windows went with a basic theme for my computer and I had to choose an Aero theme in order to get its pretty transparencies to appear. Windows was ready to go.

Now for first impressions. So far there are no surprises. I've been using the Beta for months and the changes which the Release Candidate brings are fairly subtle. While it gets rid of many of Vista's annoyances, there are still many which remain from Vista. Windows Explorer for example still tries to hide its menu and status bars and still comes with default settings which hide system files and generally make it a lot less useful. Luckily, as with every version of Windows, you can change these settings and make Explorer a much more useful program for organizing your computer.

Many have regarded Windows 7 as "Vista Service Pack 2.0." I prefer to think of 7 as "Vista done right." For example, unlike Windows Vista where themes and appearance mean two different things, they are pretty much the same in Windows 7. If you choose an Aero theme, Windows Aero Glass interface starts with it. If you choose a basic theme Aero shuts down. Vista by contrast has its themes and it has its color schemes. You can shut down Aero without changing themes in Vista and vice versa. By contrast if you want to shut down Aero in Vista, you have to choose a basic or high-contrast theme. While this led to some confusion for me at first, the more I think about it, the more Windows 7's way of doing things makes sense. Why bury so many options someplace which most users never see? In Windows 7 these options are displayed beneath the more popular ones and are easy to get to.

Many have always regarded Windows itself as a rip-off of the MacOS and Windows 7 definitely does take some of it cues from MacOS X. In fact it takes a few too many many cues from OSX. I've always felt that the OSX Dock while very pretty has always been very disorganized and sometimes confusing for new users—a triumph of aesthetics over usability. In Windows 7 the taskbar hews more closely to the Dock, removing the labels from running applications and mixing them together with Quick Launch shortcuts. Fortunately, you can restore the labels. One change that actually improve the user experience by adding thumbnail displays of your applications to the taskbar.

It a continuing the trend from Vista, 7 adds a lot of pretty eye candy with lots of themes and lots of background pictures and a link to more online. It also adds subtle performance improvements and a much smoother interface than Vista. I never expected to find myself excited by a new version of Windows but 7 definitely gives me something to look forward to in the Windows world.

Windows 7 Release Candidate is Out

There isn't much to say about this; Windows 7 RC was released a few hours early last night by Microsoft. It will remain usable for a year (the current Windows 7 Beta expires in June). So Microsoft is giving its users a rare opportunity to play with its software for free for a year. I've been running the Windows 7 Beta on a spare laptop and while it's not spectacular, it does subtly improve upon Vista in every way. It's slightly faster, the interface is slicker and some of Vista's annoyances have been remedied. Connecting to a wifi network for exactly is a simple matter of bringing up a list of available hotspots from the taskbar.

I downloaded the release candidate overnight and plan on installing it sometime this week....