I self host Windows 7 everyday; except I have the luxury of more recent builds than the general public. However, to ensure I can discuss features and bugs as beta testers see them, I have both the beta and the most recent build (give or take a week) installed. To differentiate between the builds I wanted to rename what is presented in the boot screen. Since Vista, boot.ini is no longer an option, so here is how to accomplish the rename:

From an administrative command prompt, type bcdedit. This will list all the installed operating systems known by the boot manager. To change one of the attributes (such as the description), you need to know the identifier. Copy the identifier value (from the output of bcdedit.exe) for the OS you want to change the description for, then:

bcdedit /set ID_YOU_COPPIED description “Win7 Rocks”

If you want to change which OS is started by default:

bcdedit /default ID_YOU_COPPIED

I get asked this question so frequently that I thought I’d share my feelings more broadly. I personally feel Vista is a great alternative to XP, but doesn’t resonate as the feature-packed release consumers longed for after five years of development during a time of significant competitive pressures in the consumer space. Much of this is perception driven by those positioned to gain from misinformation; however, there are clearly lessons to be learned and improvements to be made. Perception and emotional connection are definitely related.

I use Vista every day, and have come to appreciate the many subtle improvements such as deeply integrated search. Vista looks more polished than XP too. I find that I’m able to navigate more quickly, interact with files and peripherals more meaningfully, and generally accomplish frequent tasks much more efficiently than when using XP. I’m more productive using Vista than XP. There are many reasons why Vista is a better client OS, but the majority of these reasons are related to more agile architecture, scalability, and new software development platforms. Vista provides a platform for amazing new software to be written; however, built-in applications (which are not actually part of “Windows”, but users don’t distinguish) didn’t consistently leverage these new platforms and therefore demonstrate the platform as an example.

In a nutshell, Vista has stronger roots as a technology release than a user-facing feature release

Because the focus in Vista development was on technology (the plumbing), we ended up with significant changes in all major driver models: networking, audio, and video; not to mention peripheral connectivity (e.g. USB and network attached devices). All of these major changes caused massive churn with our hardware partners, and ultimately led to a period of instability when the OS was released; just at the time when users expected a polished, rock-solid product. Now that SP1 is behind us, these instabilities from driver partners are largely gone. Vista today is very compatible with devices and software; in fact, I’ve not yet encountered a piece of hardware or software that does not work with Vista that has been released in the past five years.

We needed Vista. Each of these new driver models and technologies were necessary to increase stability in the long term, and to springboard innovation for our future releases. I don’t argue that Vista planning was not executed well, and such drastic changes should have been balanced better across releases (jog before sprint) to minimize user and partner impact – believe me, this was one of many lessons learned. All this said, the advances made in Vista are allowing us to deliver best-of-breed features in our next release; for that, I am proud of the advances in Vista – even if they are mostly plumbing.

Changes in the company have been made (publicly for that matter) to address these areas by way of reshuffling of top talent and organization ownership adjustments. The company will also, very soon, respond to the perceptions and misinformation about Vista. As I mentioned earlier, I am an avid Vista user and am very happy with my experience (especially since the dust has settled after the release of SP1). Having been involved in planning and development of our next release (Windows 7) at many levels, I am very proud to say we have our MOJO back. I’m impressed every day at the quality of work, and progression being made. I have no doubt this next release will inspire confidence and a new found emotional connection for Windows users. I can’t wait to start talking about this work in detail. Stay tuned!

I should have already known this, but learned yesterday that you don’t have to manually traverse/modify/view the Windows Registry via RegEdit. From a command line, type reg /? to see your options. For example, I’m often reviewing a knowledge base article that involves viewing or editing a registry key. A quick copy/paste via the command line will really speed things up.

By way of example, if you wanted to see Outlook policies for HTTP RPC, you could type:

reg query "HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\RPC"

Someone sent me an email recently letting me know I was quoted a bunch of times in a new book titled Tricks of the Microsoft Windows Vista Masters. Specifically the quotes came from some of my posts on the Windows core networking blog. For the record, I do recall the author asking my permission many months ago. Cool.

Microsoft shipped first-party (it’s own) MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital decoders in Windows Vista to support DVD, live/recorded TV, and HDV (home video editing) scenarios. These decoders are included by default for the Ultimate and Home Premium editions; however, large OEMs have the option to pre-install the Microsoft decoders for Business, Home Basic, and Starter editions (primarily for DVD playback support). Mileage may vary depending on the OEM (I don’t know which OEMs choose to do this).

Why would Microsoft do this? To ensure a quality and consistent user experience of built-in applications like Media Player, Media Center, Movie Maker, and DVD Maker. Each of these applications leverages MPEG-2 in some way and it would have cost Microsoft significantly to license a third-party decoder per copy of Windows, and they wouldn’t be able to innovate or handle quality control. Further, Dolby Digital has an explicit per-application licensing policy, so in addition to quality control concerns, it would be a challenge (if at all possible) licensing a third-party solution that met legal requirements for each internal application that required its use.

Dolby licensing policy requires that Dolby Digital implementations not be sharable. Only a vendor’s specific software player can legally decode Dolby Digital from their specific decoder;  i.e. vendor-A’s software player cannot use vendor-B’s decoder.

Lastly (and importantly), Microsoft had to implement their own MPEG-2 decoder to ensure an end-to-end protected media path for enabling Windows as a platform for premium content such as digital HD cable (OCUR), HD-DVD, and BlueRay (with premium satellite solutions to hopefully come in the future). Specifically, it was necessary to ensure certain precautions were taken at encoder input and output such that the decrypted stream couldn’t be compromised during the component transition, and that decryption keys are protected.

Speaking of a protected media path, new to Windows Vista is the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR), which provides many enhancements over video rendering platforms prior to Vista, in addition to support for Protected Video Path - Output Protection Manager (PVP-OPM) and Protected Video Path - User Accessible Bus (PVP-UAB). A couple noteworthy are support for DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA), and resilience to glitches (see Multimedia Class Scheduling section in my post about Vista Kernel Improvements). While the MS MPEG-2 decoder supports other (pre-Vista) renderers for output of the decoded stream, only EVR supports the protected media path (and the many other enhancements). If you’re the geek type, and want intricate details, check out the EVR WinHec presentation. Also, recognize that EVR is for rendering on display attached to the Windows Vista PC, not when streaming content across a network for rendering within a Media Center Extender for display on a TV. While the PC-network-TV end-to-end “path” is also fully protected, EVR is not a component used in this scenario.

For all of the aforementioned reasons, Media Center in Windows Vista will not allow use of third-party MPEG-2 or Dolby Digital decoders like prior editions did. However, while Media Player uses MS decoders by default, it is possible to register third-party decoders for decoding within that application.

Media Center will use 3rd party video and audio decoders for anything other than MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital respectively; it will only ignore any registered 3rd party MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital decoders. Unlike Media Center, Media Player will not ignore 3rd party MPEG-2 decoders (even though it uses the Microsoft version by default). Media Player will; however, ignore 3rd party Dolby Digital decoders and only use the Microsoft version.

I’ll write follow-up posts to discuss why the MS MPEG-2 decoder may have some short-term challenges, and ultimately why it (combined with the new video pipeline) will yield the best possible results.

Any questions or comments?

I recently read this article titled A more secure OSX before Leopard, aimed at hardening the default installation. The important thing to me about this article is that each approach taken to harden OSX Leopard is what Windows Vista employs out-of-the-box.

Operate as a non-root user:

Windows Vista by default employs User Account Control (UAC) to address this issue. In past versions of Windows client, the default user has administrative privileges, but in Vista, even administrator is not a true administrator without user elevation for certain system operations. The process for creating a new non-root user in OSX is not without pain, but a step in the right direction. And, what do you know, the new non-root user is prompted for root credentials whenever certain system tasks are attempted, much like the default Vista behavior.

Enable the network firewall:

If you can’t find the firewall configuration in OSX, that’s because it is non-intuitively placed in the sharing preference pane. The author points out that even if you enable all of the options, you still have some work to do using the command-line ipfw tool. Not consumer friendly. Apple has not innovated at all in this area, and the default firewall settings do not provide consumer-friendly insight to end users, but enabling the defaults is definitely a step in the out-of-box Vista direction.

User comments to the article provide other valuable information for making OSX more secure, so I encourage folks who aren’t booting their MacBook into Vista to take the steps to be more secure.

Windows Vista does do a good job of being secure out-of-the box, but looking forward, there is a lot of work ahead to improve/balance usability in the face of such security improvements.

Quite simply, those of us who have built our own MediaCenter PC are out of luck when it comes to CableCARD; at least for the near future anyway (I’ll get to this later). Vista has shipped, but there are no OEMs offering CableCARD support for their MediaCenter offerings yet. This is mostly due to the heavy weight CableLabs certification process (which I won’t get into in detail). So what are your options for getting CableCARD for premium digital cable (including HD) in the near future?

(1) Purchase a Vista MediaCenter PC today from an OEM who promises you an upgrade path (make sure it’s in writing too). Note that I’m not aware of any OEMs who have explicitly said they provide an upgrade path for customers who have purchased a Vista-Capable logo’d PC. In all honesty, while it may be possible for an OEM to get CableLabs certification for a particular MediaCenter PC model that was shipped prior to general Vista availability, i.e. with a Vista-Capable logo, I’m not sure whether this will happen or not. My feeling is that if the option is feasible, only the most customer caring OEMs will do so due to the significant cost of certification (note that this certification cost is per unique system). If such a loving OEM does exist, the process would have to be one of the following:

• Purchase a Digital CableCARD Tuner from them when they become available, and download the necessary system updates that enable the digital tuner to work. Of course, you would have had to install the Vista upgrade first.
• Send your MediaCenter PC back to the manufacturer for all necessary upgrades.

The second option seems the most feasible considering that OEMs likely don’t want the system updates getting distributed illegally (not that I’m sure option-2 would thwart such a thing anyway). This option does have considerable cost though, both monetary for shipping the PC, and in terms of customer loyalty because they’ll be without a PC for some time. This option will likely only happen for an OEM that has sold a lot of these MediaCenter PCs and are willing to cover the costs to slightly ease customer pain. My intuition is that I doubt either will happen, but we’ll see if an OEM steps up to do the right thing. 

(2) The other option is to wait for OEMs to start shipping their CableCARD ready machines. This will probably be in full swing within the next few months. Obviously, this option has less unknowns and is the safer bet.

Let me know what you think about all this, and considering the restrictions, what OEMs could do to make you feel better about whatever decision they make. Also, if you have any thoughts other than “there shouldn’t be any restrictions”, I’d like to hear them.

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PC World recently wrote an article about The Most Annoying Things About Windows Vista that I wanted to comment on. Some areas I agree, others I correct, and some I disagree.

Home Basic - There’s no reason to buy this

The authors highlight that Vista Home Basic is crippled from a feature perspective, including Aero Glass, and that it will run more slowly than XP on the same hardware. As such, people shouldn’t waste their time with this version. Hogwash I say!

All Vista offerings bring significant security value over Windows XP, including Home Basic. Also, the kernel improvements I went into limited detail in a prior post also add significant value to the Basic edition. Tightly integrated search, vast improvements for setting up, discovering, and diagnosing devices and services on a home network, Parental Controls, streamlined Start menu, ReadyBoost for speeding up your system, and many more seen and mostly unseen but felt features make Home Basic a valuable upgrade. I won’t spend any time talking about the Sidebar or built-in apps like Photo Gallery because you can arguably download similar 3rd party apps on XP. Also, things like SuperFetch that are provided in the Home Basic edition do have memory requirements, so I’ll take that off the table too (even though it is there)

As for making your computer run slower, the only time I’ve ever seen an XP upgrade run slower is when the hardware was a stretch even for XP. This is one of those Vista myths that has very little merit. In almost every case, Home Basic is a worthwhile upgrade for someone who doesn’t have the cash to buy a new PC, but can part with $99.

Of course, I do agree, that to get the full Vista experience, Home Premium is the way go to.

Ahh! My screen blacked out!

Here the authors complain of constantly being prompted to do simple things like change the system font, and that the prompts black out the screen causing a “stop everything” reaction. This of course is by design. User Account Control (UAC) by default throws up a secure desktop (the screen blackening) so that malicious applications can’t do bad things when an elevation prompt is requested. I do think there are improvements to be made in this area, but I truly feel the authors are venting on first few uses with UAC enabled. The everyday usage of Vista doesn’t throw these prompts up; only when you want to change something system wide. The author mentions fonts, but how often is a user going to change their system font? The same is true for installing software or adding new devices. There may be times when this is done a lot, such as when you first install Vista, but after that, things *really* settle down. I’ll spend a whole post talking about UAC in the near future, but in the mean time, I’ll suggest something the authors didn’t research to figure out. Rather than completely disabling UAC, if you don’t like the secure desktop, you can just disable that.

From the search box in the ‘Start’ menu, type ’secpol.msc’ to launch the Security Policy editor. On the left-hand pane, expand ‘Local Policies\Security Options’ and scroll to the bottom in the right-hand pane. Here you can set ‘User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation’ to ‘disabled’.

I highly suggest you not disable the secure desktop because it’s there for a good reason, but it’s is better than disabling UAC all together.

The large-print edition

Here the authors complain that desktop icons are not in the same place as before he upgraded and the size of the icons are much bigger. Huh; I’ve not experienced this, but I have not done an XP-to-Vista upgrade. If this is the case, I completely agree. The upgrade experience should be as seamless as possible, and people do get attached to how their desktop looks. Out of curiosity, did XP upgrades maintain the arrangement of desktop icons?

Ultimately Expensive

Here the authors suggest that Vista is more expensive compared to XP, and complain about feature parity. I talked about this before when Having Fun with Vista Versions. The authors are simply wrong unless I’m really missing something huge. The Vista equivalents to XP are the same price. The features Vista Ultimate has over XP Premium are completely new features that are ultimate features. Second, the Business Edition is, as the name suggests, for businesses not consumers. I have a difficult time with reviewers that try to strengthen an argument by comparing apples and oranges. The business-focused BitLocker is not on consumer editions for good reason; it requires a hardware chip that is only found on laptops focused toward business professionals. As for PC backup, which the author claims only exists on Vista Ultimate, my Home Premium PC includes this feature. Perhaps the authors should take a closer look next time before sending to print

Is this my OS or Hollywood’s

Here the authors complain about the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions and requirements for displaying premium HD content. I went into a lot of detail surrounding The Real Deal on Vista’s HD Restrictions back in January, which the authors should have read.

The downgraded upgrade disk

Here the authors don’t like not being able to do a clean install using a Vista upgrade disk by simply using the full XP disk in the CDROM. I agree with the authors on this one. I’m betting that this capability was removed because a pirated XP disk (no valid key) could be used to install a clean Vista upgrade. However, the same pirated copy of XP could be installed clean then upgraded to Vista. Pirates will spend the extra time doing the pre-install to get a cheaper version of Vista (if they aren’t pirating it).

Search instantly anywhere (as long as by ‘anywhere’ you mean ‘where Microsoft thinks you should’)

Here the authors complain about integrated search only indexing (and thus searching) the user’s folders on the system disk by default. I agree with the authors on this one. All hard drives should be transparently indexed without the user having to do anything. This is an obvious oversight or poor decision in my humble opinion.

Who’s in charge around here?

Here the authors complain that even administrator has to elevate some applications. I would have thought they would have looked into UAC a little further (prior complaint) to answer their own question. All users, including administrator, run in a lower privileged account for much improved security. More and more I’m talking myself into writing a post on UAC and the other security enhancements in Vista. My post on Vista Productivity Goodies describes how to easily run any tool/app elevated.

Where, oh where, are my network places?

Here the authors complain that ‘My Network Locations’ doesn’t exist anymore, and that they don’t want to look through the massive amount of computers, devices, and services displayed in the Network Explorer for their work network. They are looking in the wrong place; mapped drives (DAV, FTP, SMB, etc.) are in the Computer folder (formerly My Computer). Network places are at the end of the day hard drives across a network that you access, so this is the right place for them. Perhaps a link should have been placed in the Network Explorer that opens a unique view of only the network shares in the Computer folder. What do you think? 

Vista, Game off!

Here the authors complain that 3rd party video drivers (I’ll add sound to this mix) have not yet provided Vista versions that support gaming. Amen! I completely agree, as will my friend Mark There is no excuse for why high profile ISVs can’t get their drivers for a world changing OS done in time.

OEMs, such as IBM, HP, Dell, Sony, etc., add all sorts of differentiating features to their PCs that clutter improve the end user experience of maintenance, backups, usability, etc. As a platform, Windows Vista further supports this differentiation, especially for laptops. IBM in particular has created a suite of software that extends the out-of-the-box Windows user experience for mobile professionals, touting the ThinkVantage moniker. This suite of software modules provides: maintenance (driver and ThinkVantage software updates), backup, security (password and fingerprint management), mobile settings management (power, presentation), etc.

I haven’t dug too deep into all of these ThinkVantage modules, but did get a chance to look into the long awaited Vista support for my built-in fingerprint reader and some of the mobility features. 

Improved Vista support for biometric credentials

Simply put, the Graphical Identification and Authentication (GINA) module in Windows XP was not extensible; you know, the login screen and processing of various forms of logon credentials. Because of this, independent software vendors (ISVs) who wanted to enable various forms of logging in, such as smart cards, fingerprints, retinal scan, facial recognition, etc. had to completely replace the GINA library and logon UI. This was obviously not a well thought through architecture, and ISVs had to suffer to differentiate their systems. Vista *finally* resolves this trouble by introducing a new authentication model where the logon UI and credential providers are separate but communicate directly. This means ISVs no longer have to mess with the UI, but rather only author a credential provider for the particular authentication mechanism desired, such as the fingerprint reader in my Thinkpad. Note that credential providers can all live together happily, so if I choose to login with my standard password rather than scanning my fingerprint, that is okay. Because of this architectural change, all GINA library replacements that worked on XP will not function on Vista; hence why it took some time to finally get biometric support from the OEM for my laptop.

Windows Mobility Center

A new feature to Vista is the Mobility Center, a one-stop shop for managing the mobile features of your laptop. OEMs can extend this feature, and Lenovo has done this for Thinkpads.

The Windows Mobility Center provides a central console for managing wireless, presentation settings, multiple monitors, power, etc.

 

As you can see, new modules for controlling zoom, keyboard light, and active hard drive protection are added. Check out the mobility center (control panel) to see if your OEM has provided some extensions.

There are *many* other areas for OEMs to extend, so if I stumble across any more, I’ll talk about it. If you find any, or have questions about what you find, let me know and I’ll dig deeper.

Deb Shinder over at TechRepublic wrote a great article called Don’t be misled by these 10 Windows Vista myths, which is definitely worth a read. Of the myths mentioned, these are my favorites:

• Vista requires a new PC
• Vista is no more secure than XPSP2
• New DRM prevents listening to ripped or previously purchased music

A lot of what I’ve read in some major reviews is total garbage; especially from ignorant folks who believe an operating system should be rated alone on its visual pleasantness. I don’t discount how important that is, but saying Vista is just another service pack to XP is ignorance at its finest. Authors of reviews which have wide circulation have an obligation to do some research and ask questions of the experts before serving up an ill informed cocktail (koolaid perhaps) of rubbish to an impressionable audience. I’d settle for stating what was and wasn’t liked about the experience, but speaking as though fact is a disservice and hopefully impacts the credibility of future writings.

Now that my rant is over, I’ll keep this series going whenever I hear a new and improved myth

I have more to say about the visual user experience, but will save that for another post.