In the flurry of Windows 7 news and rumors, I almost lost sight of this factoid: Microsoft yesterday announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is complete. The Notable Changes document suggests that it’s a solid collection of bug fixes that will make your life better if you use Vista on a single machine or deploy it on multiple PCs. In addition to bug fixes, the SP rolls up support for Windows Search 4.0, adds the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, and adds support for the exFAT file system and Windows Connect Now wireless configuration.

The press likes to talk about Windows Vista as if it’s already dead. The reality is it will continue to power tens of millions of PCs for years to come.

Microsoft’s reluctance to commit to firm release dates remains in place, with the public announcement saying only that downloads will be publicly available in the current calendar quarter, which ends on June 30.

Over at ZDNet, I’ve put together a list of answers to frequently asked questions about the Windows 7 Release Candidate. I’m sure I left a few out, so feel free to add your questions in the comments here (or there, if you don’t mind fighting off the trolls).

What you need to know about the Windows 7 Release Candidate

It’s the first of several pieces I’ve have this week on the RC. Coming up next: a closer look at changes in the RC, and some hands-on advice about the best ways to install and/or upgrade.

The Windows 7 Release Candidate is complete. It’s currently being unofficially distributed on BitTorrent networks, and the official release has begun as well. Technical beta testers, MSDN/TechNet subscribers, and the general public (in that order) will be allowed access to Microsoft-run download servers in waves between now and May 5.

I have a copy of the RC code, obtained through official channels, and I’m spending this weekend in a flurry of upgrades and clean installs. I’ll be sharing details and lessons learned from my experience over the next few days and weeks, mostly at ZDNet.

Based on my initial experience, though, I think I can solve one mystery. It’s not one of the great riddles of the ages, but I’ve been curious to know which of the 70xx builds wound up being declared the official release candidate and recompiled into build 7100. I think the answer is 7077.

I found the best clue is in the Sources folder on the installation media. The file Cversion.ini determines whether upgrades are allowed or blocked from the current build. The settings in the official release are as follows:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7077.0
MinServer=7000.0

If you try to use this media to upgrade a system running the December Beta release (build 7000), you’ll be blocked unless you edit this file. You’ll also be blocked if you try to upgrade from most of the interim builds (7022, 7048, 7057, 7068) that found their way onto BitTorrent sites in the past few months.

But if you’ve been running build 7077 or later, the upgrade will complete without any problems. I can’t say for sure, but that suggests to me that the underlying code is identical and that the only change is the date stamp and the build number.

Update: Several Microsoft insiders have made it pretty clear to me that there were indeed significant “iterations” in the code base between 7077 (April 4) and 7100 (April 22). Thanks for the correction.

If you’re already running 7077, you don’t need to jump through any hoops to upgrade to the RC when it’s available. You can run Setup directly over that installation and it will work just fine.

A flurry of news today:

• The Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available for download by the public on May 5, with early access for MSDN/TechNet subscribers and beta testers on April 30.
• The Release Candidate build is officially 7100, but functionally it’s identical to the leaked builds that have been circulating for several weeks. No changes, no new UI.
• One new feature announced today (I had an early warning about it) is called Windows XP Mode. In a nutshell, when Windows 7 is released to manufacturing Microsoft plans to release an add-on called Windows XP Mode for users of its business versions of Windows 7 that will include a fully licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 running in a virtual machine.

I’m also told that some early reports of Windows XP Mode are inaccurate. I’m still waiting for more details and code. The fact that this add-on isn’t available in the RC suggests it’s still under development and you should be skeptical of any reports you read now.

Update Apr-27: Here’s what I’ve posted in the Windows 7 RC FAQ:

Microsoft has announced that it will release a custom version of Virtual PC with a licensed copy of Windows XP SP3 and make the combination available as a download for licensed users of the business editions of Windows 7 (Professional and up). This add-on, called Windows XP Mode) will not be included with the release candidate, nor will it be part of the final RTM product.

I’ve posted my update on XP Mode at ZDNet today (“Why all the fuss over XP Mode?” Hint: It’s not about tech, it’s about licensing.)

If you want a hands-on look, Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott have a report on an early pre-beta release of the add-on. Those who are interested in the gory technical details can read Rafael Rivera’s breakdown of Windows XP Mode Internals.

I’ve mentioned this before but it’s worth repeating. You can follow me on Twitter and keep up with all sorts of things that will be of interest to anyone who finds this blog interesting. Think of Twitter as a “microblog,” with lots of ideas and links that I would never take the time to post here.

You’ll find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/edbott.

It’s not just me, apparently:

Over 66 million consumers across demographic categories are using the Internet while camped out on their sofas watching TV, according to market research firm In-Stat. Based on In-Stat’s recent survey, 33% of all male respondents, across age groups, reported that they are sometimes using a personal computer simultaneously while watching TV. Among some male age groups the behavior was as high as 50%. In contrast, about 25% of female respondents reported using a PC while watching TV.

There are only a handful of programs that demand and get my undivided attention. How about you?

This is very strange. If you’re running a recent build of Windows 7 (I don’t know whether it happens with the January Beta, Build 7000), and you go to Adobe’s website to download the free Adobe Reader, here’s what you’re offered:

The latest version of Adobe Reader? I think not. Reader 7.0.9 was released in January 2007. The latest version is 9.1—or, if you prefer the 8.x versions then you can get 8.1.3.

If you download the version you’re offered and then try to install it, here’s what you see:

I suspect that this glitch is caused at least in part by the User-Agent string that IE8 (in Windows 7) sends. Using IE8 on Windows Vista, Adobe offers me Adobe Reader 9.1, and when I used a free utility to change the UA string for IE8 in Windows 7 to match the UA string from Vista, I was sent to the correct page. (Update: I get sent to the wrong page using Firefox as well, so the most likely explanation is that the Windows NT 6.1 part of the User-Agent string is confusing Adobe’s back end. And indeed, when I change a single character in the U-A string, reporting the versions as NT 6.0 instead of 6.1, everything works fine.)

Adobe, if you’re listening, you might want to fix this soon, as a lot of people are going to be running a fresh build of Windows 7 real soon now.

[Update: I’ve found another possible solution to this issue, one that doesn’t require extra hardware. See A fix for Media Center’s Black Screen of Death?]

Over the last few years, I’ve spent a fair amount of time hooking up various video devices to my big-screen HDTV. There are lots of different options for doing that, but HDMI is always the best choice, from a standpoint of convenience and audio/video quality.

Right now, I have two full-time HDMI-connected devices in use in my living room: a small-form-factor Media Center PC (dual-booting Windows Vista and Windows 7) and an HP MediaSmart Connect digital media receiver/extender.

One of the biggest problems that I’ve run into with HDMI connections is one I fondly call the “black screen of amnesia.” This occurs when you power up a device and the TV doesn’t recognize it. Sometimes, flipping to a different input on the TV and then back to HDMI is enough to jog the connection into working again. But I’ve occasionally had to power everything down and restart in the right sequence to get things working.

But all those problems went away for good about six months ago when I picked up a tiny HDMI switcher for under $20. This picture shows front and back views:

Although it has a connector for a power adapter and a tiny remote control with an external infrared receiver, you don’t actually need either one in my experience. It does a great job of detecting an HDMI signal and switching to it. On the rare occasion when I have both devices powered on and I want to use the one that isn’t on, I can press the button on top of the switch.

Since getting this little gizmo, I have not had a single failure to sync up properly with an HDMI device. It handles HDCP signals (Blu-ray and CableCARD copy protection) perfectly, and the picture quality is exceptional.

Highly recommended.

If you’ve spent any time on this site, you know that one of the things I do regularly is to debunk Windows tips and tweaks that don’t work as promised. It’s that time again.

Lately I’ve seen an old, discredited Windows tip enjoy a sudden resurgence in popularity. The claim is that you can speed up Windows Vista (and Windows 7) boot times on a PC with a multiple-core CPU by telling the operating system to use all of the cores during startup.

If you follow the instructions, you’ll see a dialog box that appears to do what the tipsters claim. Except they’ve got its function absolutely backwards!

The setting in question is part of the System Configuration utility, Msconfig.exe. On the Boot tab, you can click the Advanced Options button and then select the Number of Processors check box to see the settings shown here (if you look in the Windows XP version of Msconfig, you’ll see a similar setting on the BOOT.INI tab, which sets the /NUMPROC switch – same thing):

Aha! If I increase that number from 1 to 4, I’ll get to use all the resources in my quad-core CPU, right?

Sorry, no. The good news is that your system is already using all of your CPU’s multiple processors as soon as it starts up. The purpose of this advanced setting is to help you disable multiple cores as part of a troubleshooting process, or to work around an installation routine that balks when it runs into multiple CPU cores. This Microsoft Knowledge Base article, for example, describes a problem you might run into when installing SQL Server 2005 on a Windows server with a multi-core processor. The solution is in the Workaround section:

To work around this problem, before you install SQL Server 2005, temporarily change the number of logical processors to one. This makes the computer appear to be a single-processor system, and SQL Server 2005 is installed successfully.

It then proceeds to walk you through the settings in the screen shot above, setting the Number of Processors value to 1.

The older XP setting is documented in KB 833721:

This switch sets the number of processors that Windows will run at startup. With this switch, you can force a multiprocessor system to use only the quantity of processors (number) that you specify. This switch can help you troubleshoot performance problems and defective CPUs.

So there you go. To use all of the CPU cores on a Windows PC, just install Windows. You don’t need to adjust any other settings.

Journalism runs in my family.

My youngest brother, Don Bott, has been teaching high school journalism in our hometown of Stockton, California, for a long time. He’s a superb teacher, as evidenced by his receipt in 2002 of the National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year award (the award is co-sponsored by the Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition). Later this week, he’s taking a group of his students to Phoenix for the annual convention of the Journalism Education Association, where he’ll receive the 2009 Diversity Award.

But I think he’s most proud of a profile written by a former student who is now the online editor of his hometown paper; the profile was published in today’s Stockton Record. Here’s a sample:

"He wants us to reach out to people who we’d never thought to before," said Arianna Perez, 16. "He wants us to see what their story is, to bring out what’s under the surface."

Chelsea Collura, 15, said Bott pushes students to explore Stagg’s vast diversity, making their reporting more reflective of the campus.

"We have students from all over," Collura said. "We get better stories when we explore."

Take, for example, the cover story in the edition scheduled for release Friday. It’s about how the recession is impacting students on campus.

Bott said most of Stagg’s students don’t think about how their peers are being affected when parents have no money to put food on the table or make ends meet.

He encouraged his journalism students to reach out to that population of the campus.

This isn’t new. His students often tackle niche populations on the campus of 1,800, while reporting the big-picture stories.

"You can’t just do the same things all the time," said Samantha Espinoza, 17. "You have to change it up."

At Stagg, it’s not uncommon to have 10 or more nationalities and ethnic backgrounds in one room at any given time.

The students get it.

"We come from different backgrounds and we come from different cultures," said Lissette Rodriguez, 16. "We are able to see our school through different eyes."

And Bott helps them see potential in themselves they wouldn’t otherwise.

Nicely done, little brother. We’re all proud of you.