September 23rd, 2008

Posted by Jason Perlow

One month and still going strong. I guess.

One month ago, I pledged that I would try Windows Vista on my new PC for a month before deciding whether I would keep it or revert back to Windows XP as my primary desktop OS.

The verdict? I’m sticking with Vista, begrudgingly.

Since I resolved my initial issues with the machine, obtaining a faster video accelerator to do digital photo and video editing and upgrading to the 64-bit edition with all of Dell’s crapware removed, its been running propecia sale pretty smoothly. Of course, I’ve tweaked the box considerably, disabling UAC and adding a number of other housekeeping programs such as Advanced SystemCare and Norton Internet Security 2009 (Which I will note is a MAJOR improvement in terms of performance and systems overhead over previous Norton programs in the past, it’s practically a complete rewrite). Besides photo, video and sound editing with Open Source applications such as GIMP and Audacity I primarily use my Vista box for running Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet browsing. Recently I’ve been experimenting with TVersity which is this slick free multimedia gateway application that allows your PC to be the central video, audio and feed hub for all your consumer electronics devices, such as DVR set top boxes, PS3s and XBOX units.

Still, there isn’t much I do on that Vista machine that works any better than on my Windows XP systems. None of the software I run “requires” Vista. My company issued Lenovo T60 laptop runs on XP and most of the same software, although it’s only a 32-bit Core Duo and not a 64-bit Core 2 Quad, so naturally it’s not as snappy. My 4GB Athlon 64 X2 that my wife is using to run many of the same applications as the Vista box is also running smoothly, although it can only take advantage of 3.5GB of its total memory due to 32-bit limitations in the OS.

My servers all run various virtualized versions of Windows Server and different flavors of Linux, running the hypervisor of the week that I happen to be playing with, whether it be KVM, Xen, or Hyper-V.

I have no intention of reverting to XP on my Vista machine because at this point it would be a major hassle to re-install the system now that everything is stabilized. But that doesn’t mean I am necessarily HAPPY with Vista or that I think my current computing experience is any better than my previous setup. I’m simply resigned to stick with it because there would be no net benefit for me to downgrade at this point. The machine was designed to run Vista, and its working, so I’m not going to mess with it. I’ll note however that with 4GB of total system memory, I hover between 50 and 60 percent RAM available when I have Norton, Skype, Pidgin, UltraVNC and Advanced SystemCare running in the background with Aero fully enabled and my wife’s 3.5GB  XP machine is 70 or 80 percent free with the same system processes running.

Now the question begs, do I intend to upgrade any of my other PCs to Vista? No, at least not until I need to get new desktop PCs. My wife is happy with XP SP3 and I have no desire to disrupt her perfectly stable computing environment  — but if it goes south at some point, I’ll probably put her on a combination of Linux and virtualized Windows applications using some sort of Thin Client.

My laptop Windows XP OS is corporate managed, and my employer provides me with patches and updates. I have a removable hard disk that I can use to run Linux on it when I need to, and the company I work for supports Linux for most of our internal applications, so I might consider migrating to it as my full time work OS once we get all the Microsoft Office format issues licked with Symphony to the point where we can completely eat our own dog food and safely exchange files with customers without things getting botched in the process. But in my current role as a Systems Architect I pretty much live in Visio and many of our customer deliverables are in complex Word and PowerPoint documents with lots of embedded stuff, and I just don’t feel like virtualizing XP or or running CrossOver to make that stuff work in Linux on a 2GB laptop to futz with it right now. Maybe when they give me a new laptop that has 4GB of RAM on it.

Have you too “begrudgingly” accepted Windows Vista? Talk Back and let me know.

Download here

September 10th, 2008

Posted by Ed Bott

Update, 12-September, 5:45AM PDT: Apple has issued a revised download for iTunes 8 intended to correct this problem. My analysis is in this follow-up post.

I’m reading lots of complaints about the new iTunes 8 update causing horrific problems on Windows machines, including widespread reports of STOP errors, aka the Blue Screen of Death. My colleague Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has asked readers for reports and Gizmodo has a sketchy post as well. How can this be happening? Assuming that the underlying hardware is working correctly, STOP errors can only be caused by kernel-level drivers or system services. A poorly written program can crash itself but not the entire system. So how can a supposedly simple software update cause a fatal crash?

Maybe because this isn’t a simple software update. Once again, Apple is using its automatic update process to deliver massive amounts of new software to users, including a device driver that has a long and checkered history of causing the Blue Screen Of Death to appear. And it’s delivering this massive payload without even a pretense of proper disclosure and without asking consent from its users.

I was able to reproduce a crash using an iPod and iTunes 8 and fixed it by removing the suspicious driver. I’ve dissected the process and put together a gallery that shows how extensive the infiltration is and where you can find the likely culprit.

To see what software is sneaking along with the upgrade,
see my image gallery: Apple’s sneaky iTunes 8 install

Here’s a blow-by-blow analysis of what happens when you allow Apple Software Update to install iTunes 8:

The first thing you see is a notice from Apple Software Update. It promises an update to iTunes+QuickTime and says nothing about any other software.

Next, you accept a license agreement, which also makes no mention of anything other than iTunes. According to a code at the end of the license agreement, it has not been updated since October 2007.

After you enter your administrator’s credentials in a dialog box, the download and installation proceed automatically. The downloader dialog box notes that the complete install package is nearly 80MB in size, but the size shown in its progress bar changes several times.

Opening the folder where Apple Software Update stores its temporary files reveals what’s really going on. The download consists of five installer packages and a master setup program. In addition to iTunes and QuickTime, the package includes the Bonjour service (which has been a part of iTunes for a long time), plus Apple Mobile Device Support and MobileMe. The latter two packages appeared for the first time, according to Ars Technica and other sources, in the July update to iTunes. And a look inside Control Panel shows that this time around, Apple is giving Windows users an opportunity to uninstall MobileMe, which they didn’t do in the previous update.

When I used an antispyware tool (Sunbelt Software’s VIPRE), it detected that a new Apple program was loading at startup. Although it went by the prosaic name AppleSyncNotifier, its icon reveals that it’s actually MobileMe.

But in addition to all that software, Apple is also sneaking a couple of driver updates onto the system. One is a USB controller update, which is apparently used when connecting an iPod or iPhone to the system. On my system, this driver file was copied to the system but was not installed until I connected an iPod Mini via a USB port. Most of the trouble reports on the Apple forum indicate that this driver is identifying itself in the text that appears on the STOP error page. The only clue that this driver is being installed is in the System Restore dialog box.

In addition to this driver, the system also updates the GEARAspiWDM.sys driver (in Windows\System32\Drivers). I had to dig deep to discover this change, which is not documented anywhere. This driver is typically used with third-party programs that write to CD and DVD drives. The old iTunes versions of this driver is dated January 29, 2008. The new one is from April 17, 2008. This driver has a long and colorful history of causing Windows crashes. [Update 17-Sep: After looking deeper, I can confirm that Apple’s driver is the culprit and that Gear’s driver is unrelated to these crashes. In fact, Gear’s signed driver might even be an innocent bystander in a separate iTunes support issue. See my follow-up post “Apple, not Gear, deserves the blame for iTunes crashes” for details.] I remember dealing with it back in Windows 2000 days. And sure enough, a search for GEARAspiWDM.sys BSOD turns up thousands of hits. I’ve also found anecdotal reports of this driver causing iTunes to crash, including this one from the Gear Software forum last May. The image below shows the Previous Versions dialog box, which I used to determine that the file had been updated.

When I plugged an iPod Nano into my Windows Vista system for the first time, it offered to install a driver and then asked me to reboot. When I restarted, I plugged in the iPod again and the machine locked up solid. No blue screen, just a black screen that didn’t respond to any input. After a restart, I tried again and got the same result when I attempted to open iTunes.

For the third try, I decided to replace the GEARAspiWDM.sys driver file with its earlier version. I used the Previous Versions feature of Windows Vista Ultimate to find the older version, copied it to my desktop, deleted the newer driver, and then copied the January version to the Drivers folder. This time iTunes opened just fine, displaying the contents of the iPod. (When I simply deleted the driver file, I got an error upon starting iTunes warning me that my installation was incomplete and that I might not be able to burn CDs or DVDs until I completed it.)

I can’t say my tests are conclusive, but my long history with this file suggests that it might well be at the root of the problem for others as well.

An even bigger problem is Apple’s attitude toward its Windows customers. These additional software packages and drivers are being installed with no disclosure propecia prostatitis and no consent. A pile of software, including the troubled MobileMe service, is also being installed and enabled at startup on Windows machines, even where the user has no MobileMe account and, for that matter, no mobile device.

Apple’s Get a Mac ads love to tweak Microsoft for its frequent crashes. Someone from Apple needs to look in the mirror and realize that they’re the problem in this case.

August 26th, 2008

Posted by Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft is stepping up its war on software pirates by rolling out new Windows Genuine notification software for what it is calling its most pirated version of Windows: Windows XP Professional.

In an August 26 posting to the Windows Genuine Advantage blog, Director of Genuine Windows Alex Kochis said XP users should expect Microsoft to begin rolling out a new version of Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) notifications starting this week. Microsoft is expecting the rollout to take several months.

The new WGA notifications, which Microsoft will deliver via Windows Update (and which already is available for download by individuals from the Microsoft Download Center), will behave like the WGA notifications introduced with Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 1 back in December 2007. Specifically, users whose XP copies are deemed “non-Genuine” will see their screen backgrounds default to black and notice a translucent notice, warning them that their Windows might be counterfeit.

(Update: Microsoft officials noted that WGA for XP never did default to “reduced functionality mode,” a k a, the kill switch, which was part of Windows Vista when it first shipped.

“Windows XP did not contain the reduced functionality mode commonly referred to as the ‘kill switch,’ and it still doesn’t,” a spokeswoman said. “The update simply reconfigures the notifications experience to mirror notifications in Windows Vista SP1.”)

The new WGA XP notification update is going to make it easier for Microsoft to detect stolen or pirated software, as well as fake product keys, propecia persistence Microsoft officials said. It will add new hindrances for users trying to circumvent product activation, as well, according to the new blog post.

The new release is aimed specifically at XP Professional users. From Kochis’ post:

“Another thing we’re doing with this release is focusing on the product edition that is most often stolen. This will reduce the number of customers that will be offered the package. This release will be offered to the most pirated edition of Windows XP and therefore to users with the highest likelihood of having a non-genuine copy, those using Windows XP Pro. We’re also offering it to those using editions based on Pro code such as Tablet and Windows Media Center, but plan to narrow the offering to Pro in future releases.”

XP users who previously have not opted in to WGA notifications will be asked to accept an End User License Agreement (EULA), rather than an installation wizard. Users who agree to the EULA are agreeing to allow the anti-piracy validation control to auto-update itself with fewer releases.

“Microsoft is making these changes to simplify the installation process (making it easy for customers to stay up-to-date), to increase the effectiveness of these notifications, and to align experiences across Windows XP and Windows Vista,” according to a statement provided by a company spokeswoman.

Microsoft received kudos from many users when it replaced the Vista non-Genuine “kill switch” with mere nagware. I wonder if XP Pro users will feel the same have any feelings, one way or the other, about the new notification scheme coming their way….

On the Advanced tab of the Power Options Properties dialog box, Microsoft Windows XP provides you with several built-in shortcuts for putting your computer in Suspend mode — either Standby or Hibernation. These shortcuts allow you to reconfigure the operation performed when pressing either the Power or Sleep buttons. (If you’ve enabled the Hibernation feature from the Power Options Properties dialog box, using these shortcuts will put your computer into Hibernation mode. If you haven’t, using these shortcuts will put your computer into Standby mode.)

Figure A

Power Options dialog box — Advanced tab

This blog post is also available in PDF format in a TechRepublic download.

propecia or proscar

However, if you wish to expand your alternatives, you can create a standard shortcut that will put your computer in Suspend mode. You can the put the shortcut on your desktop or place it on the Quick Launch bar, where you can easily put your computer in a suspended state with a click of your mouse.

Here’s how: