Windows 7 Upgrade: Isolated Problems, Not Disaster

Speed Up Windows XP With System Mechanic 10.8

System Mechanic 10.8 Put Through The Test

We've all seen those annoying television commercials that promise to speed up a slow computer, but do such solutions really work? The CRN Test Center put Iolo's System Mechanic 10.8 through its paces and was impressed with the results.

Our test subject was an old Pentium III-era PC running Windows XP so slowly that the machine was completely unusable. Just opening the Start menu easily took 20 seconds, opening an app required about a minute, and we could fix a steak-and-egg breakfast in the time it took to reboot this dinosaur.

But it was perfect for our purposes. We installed System Mechanic 10.8 and, after running a scan, the tool reported that the overall system status was poor and health and security were at alarming levels.

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As expected, the floodgates were opened last week on Windows 7 upgrades. From some of the histrionics on the blogosphere, one would almost surmise that an upgrade to Windows 7 was nothing short of a painful, abysmal failure. Much of the spotlight focused on upgrade problems with the Windows 7 Student edition -- one of the more understandable gripes about the upgrade process. Accusations about a host of glitches, such as endless loops of Windows 7 startup, abounded.

However, some of the outrages over Windows 7 upgrades are dubious, at best. As Channelweb.com's Kevin McLaughlin reported, many users are complaining that that they cannot do clean installs with Windows 7 upgrade media.

Say what? When has Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) ever made it an option for a user to do a from-scratch install with an upgrade CD? Legitimately, that is, without any workarounds?

It became a bit hard, during the course of last week, to separate justifiable gripes about the Windows 7 upgrade process from the lone freak incidents and overall general biases against Microsoft. However, upon a deeper dig into a disparate sampling of users all over the Internet recording their Windows 7 upgrade experiences, our verdict is that most problems were more incidental with third-party hardware drivers, line-of-business applications, and just random quirkiness.

We conducted our own independent tests on the upgrade process. What we found were very specific, yet irritating incidents that don't significantly undermine Microsoft's promise that "if it works in Vista, it will work in Windows 7." Furthermore, we did not find any issues in our testing that should render a business system inoperable. Note, all upgrades were done using 32-bit software.

In our initial test, we upgraded a Toshiba Portege 500 laptop from Vista SP2 to Windows 7 Ultimate. The full-blown version of Ultimate, and not an upgrade version, was used for the test. We first attempted to do a clean install over an upgrade, but Toshiba's native hard disk drive software prevented a complete wipe-out of the system. So, we moved on, doing just a plain old upgrade. The upgrade process was successful. There were no issues with drivers or any other preinstalled software.

One nuisance we noticed after upgrading to Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 was a persistence of IE8 to open new IE sessions and tabs at 150 percent zoom. Somewhere during the upgrade process, the previous settings for IE were adjusted, but that is probably more of an issue with the upgrade from IE7 to version 8.

Next, we upgraded a year-old Dell (NSDQ:Dell) XPS laptop, again, with Vista SP2 to Windows 7. There also were no issues with the upgrade process, save for a broken link to a shortcut we had on the Vista OS desktop to wireless networking.

An upgrade of a Dell Vostro 220 mini-tower also gave no problems. All shortcuts and drivers transitioned over to Windows 7 without incident.

This should be of some comfort to home users. From our testing, all of the major OEMs seem to really have prepared for the final release of Windows 7. For business users and those in the channel, it appears that the biggest headaches will be caused by incompatibility issues with LOB software and any other proprietary software or unique hardware. Of course, a solid testing plan along with backing up of mission-critical data and system registries should alleviate any major issues with a Windows 7 upgrade.

Our expectation is that most businesses will opt for clean installs anyway, or replace dated machines with preinstalled Windows 7 ones. It would seem that so far, the Windows 7 upgrade process is a relatively painless one and does not merit the drama it has seemed to attract.

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Microsoft announces 7 bulletins for May 2012 Patch Tuesday, closes book on MAPP data leak

In addition to its advance notification for Patch Tuesday, Microsoft uncovers the party responsible for leaking security information and exposing customers to attacks against RDP


Just hours after releasing the advance notification for May's Patch Tuesday release, which consists of seven bulletins, Microsoft brought some closure to its biggest security threat of the year.

RELATED: Microsoft's MAPP reportedly hacked, RDP exploits coming sooner than expected

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In a post on its TechNet blog, Microsoft blamed March's information leak in the Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) that led to several threats against a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) vulnerability on Chinese partner company Hangzhou DPTech Technologies.

"During our investigation into the disclosure of confidential data shared with our Microsoft Active Protections Program (MAPP) partners, we determined that a member of the MAPP program, Hangzhou DPTech Technologies Co., Ltd., had breached our non-disclosure agreement (NDA)," Yunsun Wee, director of Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, wrote in the blog post. "Microsoft takes breaches of our NDAs very seriously and has removed this partner from the MAPP Program."

The breach, which came at the hands of hackers in China, granted the cybercrime community access to information to attack the RDP vulnerability before Microsoft customers were given the information needed to patch it. Wee added that Microsoft "took actions to better protect our information," while senior program manager Maarten Van Horenbeeck provided more visibility into the inner workings of MAPP.

Given the relatively light load of security bulletins, Microsoft chose an opportune time to close the book on March's security scare. Three of the seven bulletins were rated critical, the most interesting of which was Bulletin 1's critical patch for Office, Qualys CTO Wolfgang Kandek says.

Threats against Office typically require the user to open a file containing a malicious program, Kandek says. Microsoft has traditionally been more prone to issue the "important" rating to threats that involve user interaction, he added, making this month's critical bulletin "kind of interesting."

Marcus Carey, security researcher at Rapid7, speculated that the Office vulnerability patched with Bulletin 1 "is an underlying issue on how it processes data." Citing the recent phishing attacks against Mac systems, Carey says threats coming through Microsoft productivity software are "becoming a recurring theme for organizations and end users because it's primed for phishing attacks."

Beyond that, the remaining two critical patches will attract the most attention, primarily because they address vulnerabilities in Windows versions XP through 7, Carey says.

"This means that all organizations and the entire user base will be affected by these critical bulletins," Carey says.

The other four bulletins were all rated important. Bulletins 4 and 5 address remote code execution vulnerabilities in Office, while bulletins 6 and 7 address elevation of privilege in Windows Vista and Windows 7.

With seven bulletins in April, Microsoft's total bulletins for 2012 rises to 35, compared to the 36 issued by the same point last year. Interestingly, Microsoft's release schedule has been far more consistent than in years past. From January through May 2012, the total number of Patch Tuesday bulletins issued in a single month has dipped as low as six and risen only as high as nine. In the same period last year, those totals ranged from two in both January and May to 12 in February and 17 in April.

This trend shows a sign of stability in Microsoft research and makes the jobs of systems administrators much easier, Kandek says.

"I'm not sure how they do this internally in terms of planning, but it seems to me going to a more steady stream is a sign of maturity, and from my systems administration perspective I prefer that than every two months getting something bigger," Kandek says. "I personally prefer a steady stream coming out. I can deal with that better, rather than things where suddenly my capacity is stretched more."

Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, also took note of Microsoft's continued move away from the "feast and famine" approach of last year. However, the number of bulletins is less relevant than the number of common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs), Storms says, and the security community should put more focus on Microsoft's increase in that area this year.

"Bulletin numbers don't tell the whole patch story," Storms says. "CVEs correspond to the number of bugs fixed, and this year Microsoft is on a CVE streak. With the 23 CVEs in May's patch, Microsoft's CVE count has already reached 70 for 2012. This time last year Microsoft issued just 59 CVEs."

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Microsoft may take on Kindles and Nooks

Microsoft pays $300M for a Barnes & Noble app for Windows 8 and may build its own e-reader

Microsoft is investing $300 million in a Barnes & Noble spinoff that has agreed to create a free Metro style Windows 8 application so customers can shop at the spinoff's store, but Microsoft reserves the right to compete against Barnes & Noble with its own e-reader hardware presumably based on Windows 8.

As part of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that details the agreement between the two companies, Microsoft can make its own e-reader -- akin to Barnes & Noble's Nook and Amazon's Kindle -- and include an interface to the store and support any content customers buy there.

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HARDWARE: 12 available devices to test drive Windows 8

The new company, called NewCo for purposes of the filing, will create a Metro style application for x86 Windows 8 machines as well as Windows RT for ARM-based devices, including tablets.

"If Microsoft creates a reader, Microsoft may include an interface to the NewCo Store in that reader and may surface in that reader all Content purchased by customers from the NewCo Store," the filing says.

The app itself will be available free at the Windows Store, and NewCo will support it once it's installed on customers' machines. NewCo will also update the application as needed, the filing says.

The application will include other functionality, but what that is exactly is redacted from the SEC filing because Barnes & Noble requested confidential treatment.

Barnes & Noble commits to directly shift its agreements with publishers for content such as e-books and digital magazines to NewCo if possible.

The agreement also hints at more cooperation with Microsoft. "NewCo will make good faith commercially reasonable efforts to enhance the NewCo Windows App to exploit features and functionality available through Windows and its extended Microsoft ecosystem," the filing says.

It further states that the company will help Microsoft software and services interoperate with the NewCo store under specified circumstances. "NewCo will use good faith efforts to enable Microsoft Products and Services to be used with the NewCo Store and distribution system in the following scenarios, the delivery and nature of which will be subject to the Microsoft product and service strategy," the filing says. The scenarios are redacted from the filing.

The agreement has a clause to prevent Microsoft from hijacking the NewCo Store name or masking the fact that Microsoft customers are accessing it and giving the impression that it is a Microsoft store. "Microsoft will not white-label (which for the avoidance of doubt includes rebranding or presenting as Microsoft's) the NewCo Store or obscure NewCo's branding or the fact the NewCo Store is the NewCo Store, including in Microsoft Products and Services," the filing says.

The agreement calls for transferring to NewCo its e-reading assets and content, and to sell the content in a marketplace called the NewCo Store, apparently a replacement for the Barnes & Noble Store. As long as Barnes & Noble holds the majority stake in the company, Barnes & Noble will use its influence to supply digital content to the NewCo Store. The pricing of content available on the Windows application will be set by NewCo, according to the filing.

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