Here’s the contents of a few messages as I was streaming my installation of Windows7, which I had to cut short the streaming because my GF entered the room and I respect her privacy. Just as I had people picking up the stream after my flatmate got it linked on EVE Radio .
Sorry for those who were cut off so soon!
urgh.. come on microsoft, why can’t I delete a dynamic drive from the setup? do I *really* have to go into another instance of windows to do it? BAD FORM
ok, after some jiggery and pokery with storage and moving data across I’m now *finally* moving with installing win7. Just got the 45 min copy of files to wait now :/
well, after having a play around with the settings and a nose about media centre, the damn thing packed in on me and wouldn’t boot back up again. I think it’s more down to a buggered HDD than the OS. Will explore tonight.
Had plenty of problems, primarily with the fact that I only had sata hdd’s at hand but the machine I was using didn’t have onboard sata. Sadly, the only sata card I have is an Adaptec 1210S which never had vista drivers built and win7 doesn’t have any native support.
I then tried a HDD from an old system, a tiny 10gb and was rejected “windows requires 12gb of free space”.
Found another, but was a dynamic disk and just like vista it refuses to deal with it. This is quite a bad failing really, there should be no reason why you can’t convert it within the setup interface! I had to boot to another OS in order to sort it out before win7 setup (winPE) would even accept the HDD.
To anyone with influence at MS, please get this looked at!
I will be continuing this tonight, as I try to resurrect the damn thing and grab some screenshots. One thing I did notice is that all the changes are very subtle right now.
I know the major interface changes have been omitted right now, but there are still plenty - something I noticed immediately is that the “explore” option when right clicking [my] computer has been eliminated because it is all one view - which it has been since vista.
The display settings interface has been tidied up a bit, I really wish I had got screen caps before it died. It looks a bit more friendly to less experienced users.
Win7 seems to accept vista drivers for hardware quite happily, so maybe the driver hell won’t be as pronounced with this version. I had my sound card (ADI onboard) and Hauppage TV card (PVR350) running quite happily from drivers downloaded from their respective sites.
Windows picked up its own drivers for the 6600GT I was using for the video card, I used an fx5200 when installing it. Wanted to see how it would handle a vid card swap. No problems.
Something I didn’t notice was the performance scoring system, it just let me go straight into the aero style without having to redo anything. Whether this will be in the final version or not remains to be seen.
Media Centre is very usable, with some tweaks here and there - teletext buttons onscreen was a nice touch that I don’t remember being there before. It seems to have lost the double right click to go back to the EPG for some reason.
I just plain didn’t have enough time to go through it as it crashed in media centre and wouldn’t let me get to the task manager before it rebooted on its own and complained about the boot device, halting my playtime.
Also, if you’re thinking about running the beta win7 in virtual PC don’t bother. The VM additions software will blue screen on you and stop it from booting. On the plus side, I got to see the recovery wizard that will run through a diagnosis for you and then spit out its recommendation - in this instance it suggested I do a rollback using system restore, don’t know if it will always suggest that or if it can do other things too.
Expect some screenshots in the near future, until now it’s text only
You see it every time you plug a new device into your system or have the gall to update your drivers the manual way.
It gives you the option of always using Windows Update to find drivers, but where is the "fuck off and don’t bother me" option? Surely if I’m offered "yes, always" there would be a "no, never!"?
Well, there is… only Microsoft, in their infinate wisdom, decided to hide it from you.
To find it you’ll need to open up run and type gpedit.msc
Press enter then browse to the following
User configuration\administrative templates\system
You’re looking for the following item: Turn off windows update device driver search prompt
Change that to Enabled and you’ll never see that damn waste of time again! Hurrah!
We all hear plenty of complaints about Windows and how Microsoft has dropped the ball of late; coupled with the traditional bitching over the multitude of flaws in their OS or shit that is just plain missing. But, it’s funny how you never hear anywhere near as many people making suggestions on how to address this!
Something I have mentioned in the past is that active directory has many capabilities that could really improve the home experience. I’ve also pointed out the missed opportunity where MS could have shipped a super wizardised version of active directory with WHS that would have brought many of these great features that I have been using for the past 6 or 7 years now from behind the scenes of an IT department into the home of the average person.
And I really mean super wizardised, of course there can be an advanced mode as well for those who are used to the normal interface and know what they’re doing.
I’ll be randomly highlighting capabilities of AD that I believe could enhance the windows experience and admins have been using to control those pesky users all these years.
This time it’s roaming profiles.
With the release of OSX 10.5, the apple world got a taste of roaming profiles, only it was tethered to the .mac system - which gives the added bonus of it working on any mac with a net connection, a very nice touch but one you have to pay for.
I heard a few people at the time claim that the ability to have your settings travel from one machine to another was “yet more features osx has over windows”.
This is patently untrue - windows has had roaming profiles for a long, long time. Only you would encounter them in a corporate environment rather than in the home.
It’s also quite invisible, unless your IT department decided to not make use of folder redirection and you save everything in your documents folder and the desktop; then you’ll notice it when logging off and logging in as it takes an age to sync your data to or from the server.
In which case, learn basic file management and avoid this by filing away your data instead of splurging it across 15 different locations where 12 of them are copies of the same damn “funny internet pictures and videos” that have been doing the rounds since the dawn of net-time!
Breathe… where was I? Yes.
As homes begin to fill up with different windows based PCs - and there’s nothing stopping MS from building a linux plugin either - the ability to log into any of your machines and your settings move around with you could become an extremely handy feature and it’s about time it moved into the home too.
And it’s easy to make a distinction between a laptop and a desktop within AD, so the desktops can make use of folder redirection to keep your docs on the WHS, reducing logon times and making sure your important docs get backed up! Laptops can then be set up to save a local copy of your files so you’re not tethered to your local network, but your changes get sync’d when you are.
Tell me that’s not a great way of improving the user experience for those encumbered with windows!
And all this technology already exists! The only problem is with the totally retarded decision by microsoft to remove the AD joining capabilities from their windows crippled home versions. Which means an AD bolt-on pack would be needed for those without the “real” versions of windows.
Have you just performed a fresh install of windows and can’t seem to enter anything into any of the zone sites?
Whenever you try, it spews out the following:
You have entered an invalid wildcard sequence:
Examples of valid patterns:
*://*.microsoft.com
http://*.microsoft.co.jp
ftp://157.54.23.41/
file:\\localsrv\share
*://157.54.100-200.*
Examples of invalid patterns:
http://microsoft.*.com
ftp://*
And yet your domain is valid?
Well, it appears you’re missing a registry key (yup, even though it might be a completely fresh install!).
Either of these missing will cause your problem. More than likely it will be the current user one and will be down to the profile of the user not being generated fully for some reason.
The thing I am yet to see anyone tackle in the user argument of “which is better windows, linux or mac” is that of the corporate world that makes up a much larger part of the computing world.
Now, I’m not talking about the more specialised world of unix powered data centres and specific applications but that of the integrated small to medium sized business.
These people want easy to use services be they data storage points, CRM packages, office application suites and various collaboration tools that intertwine their tendrils thru all corporate applications and the ubiquitous email system using a myriad of mechanisms to access it.. be it a web browser, a pda/smartphone, a desktop, a thin client or even a bespoke appliance.
Couple this with a need to manage and control all of these machines and services through a single directory mechanism that can alter what people see and access using a single, auditable account (in order to trace what they have been doing and when).
Now, I’ve not had any experience of using ldap outside of a microsoft environment (just 9 years worth of experience being the sysadmin over initially an NT domain, then migrated over to an Acitve Directory one) but I can’t really imagine a small to medium business using anything other than a microsoft active directory model - the many things you can do with active directory and the various services MS develop that hook directly into this make for a formidable opponent to fight when you begin looking for open source alternatives - especially when you don’t really need to pay for highly specialised courses for an end user to be able to use the tools available as well as for the admin team to manage and administrate them.
Remember, there’s more to the cost of a corporate network than the software you buy.
I do notice that many of the “why don’t we use something other than windows” comments are made by people with practically zero experience of actually managing a corporate network.
This isn’t to say that the MS way of doing a corporate network is the best and only way, it’s just that it’s often the most used way because it’s a very easy and yet extensive system - the hardest part is getting your head around their perplexing licensing system, there’s courses that deal with just the licensing alone!
I would love to see the *nix community highlight how you can use *nix to centrally manage and administrate a corporate network in order to cater for your users in the way that group policy, wsus, wds, sharepoint, MOM, active directory, isa, live communications server and exchange already does for the windows world.
Once you can present a manageable alternative to these, then *nix will be ready to take on microsoft in the corporate network, so come on you *nix advocates - educate us as to how you would use *nix to manage a corporate network!
When news about a windows home server (WHS) product broke, I was quite excited about the possibility of average homes being able to utilise active directory and group policy in a very user friendly wizard interface in order to bring some control and parental guidance to a home.
However, in their mad paranoia Microsoft seem to be under the impression that WHS would canabalise small business server (SBS) sales without considering that the only reason why a company would buy SBS in the first place is because of exchange - WHS doesn’t have exchange. Also, many small companies prolly pirate their versions of server 2003 standard and exchange 2003 until they can afford to go legit or they stick with just a workgroup and use the email offering from their hosting/isp company.
Yet, with active directory and group policy coupled with an optional extra of ISA locked into web proxy config WHS could provide homes with the ability to control what people can do on their computers as well as provide a means to log what their kids are doing as well as centrally control windows updates as long as it is configurable using really simple and easy to follow wizards for the novices and an advanced mode for those more accustomed to it. Imagine being able to set a log on time window for your kids? Imagine being able to limit the very applications that they can run…
All those who claim that active directory is overkill for a home is looking at it on a enterprise level (yes, they don’t need things such as federation and RAS) without looking at how the basic functionality of AD can add so much to the windows experience. The simple premise of roaming profiles would be immensely handy and is something that apple has actually added to their .mac accounts as of 10.5.. why not use what has been around for nearly a decade now to fight off the threat that apple is posing in the home market!
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