One of my favorite new blogs is Hacking Windows 7 Media Center, where proprietor Michael Healy has been serving up a steady diet of tasty tweaks for Media Center fans like me who are testing the feature in Windows 7.

But I have to disagree, vigorously, with yesterday’s post explaining how to change the default blue theme to an edgy black (the original instructions were posted to the Australian Media Center Community site). Yes, the new look is sleek and very cool. See for yourself:

What’s the problem? Well, in order to make this change, you have to change permissions on areplace a crucial DLL file, ehres.dll. And that means downloading a hacked file from an unknown, untrusted source.

That’s problematic for two reasons: First, you have no idea what changes were made to the contents of that DLL. I doubt that it contains any hostile code, but do you want to find out the hard way? Second, and more important, this trick defeats the whole point of beta testing, which is to discover bugs and incompatibilities in code that is still under development. If you start tampering with system files, you add another variable and render any bug reports suspect.

By the way, the same caveats hold true for the instructions over at MissingRemote on how to enable concurrent Remote Desktop sessions in Windows 7. In that case, the hack involves replacing the DLL that handles Terminal Server duties with one that’s been hacked to remove the one-session limitation. I won’t be installing it here.

While going through some boxes full of old stuff I ran across this pass from the Windows 95 launch party in Redmond, hosted by Jay Leno on a glorious August day in Redmond in 1995. I also found a pass from the Windows XP unveiling in February 2001.

The actual launch party was a very subdued occasion held in New York City in October 2001, when the country as a whole had other things on its mind. The event kicked off with the singing of “God Bless America,” and Bill Gates was introduced by Rudy Giuliani. I didn’t attend.

I don’t recall a formal launch party for Windows Vista, unless you count CES, which fell midway between the business introduction in New York on November 30, 2006, and the consumer release, also in New York, on January 30, 2007, as documented by Mary Jo Foley.

Microsoft hasn’t had good luck with Windows launches this decade, and Windows 7 is probably going to continue that unfortunate tradition. If the economy had remained strong, the Windows 7 launch probably would have been a big and glitzy affair. Now, though, with layoffs underway at Microsoft and customers worldwide tightening their belts, I expect a much more restrained, even businesslike, event. If the kickoff is in July or August of this year, I anticipate that I’ll be heading to Redmond, where the long summer days are perfect for a party. I certainly wouldn’t want to go to New York in the dog days of summer.

Last week I spent a day or so getting a small-form-factor Dell Studio Hybrid set up as a dual-boot test bed. I’ll be switching between Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows 7 Ultimate for some upcoming digital media reports, including an update on how well Blu-ray and PCs work together.

As purchased, this system was configured with Windows Vista Home Basic and Service Pack 1. I had an unused upgrade copy of Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 hanging around the office, so I decided to use it to upgrade the Home Basic installation.

The upgrade process seemed to go OK. After a few hours of copying, installing, and migrating, it had nearly reached the 100% point. But then, it inexplicably displayed this error message:

Failed to upgrade one or more components. Windows will reboot and undo the upgrade.

And, true to its word, the system then proceeded to restart and roll itself back to the previous installation.

Basic troubleshooting dismissed all the obvious candidates:

• I had previously run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor and knew that this system had no problematic devices.
• I had not installed any antivirus software or third-party security programs that might be interfering with setup.
• The installation media was not damaged or corrupted in any way.

A bit of searching turned up a few newsgroup postings from others who had experienced the same problem. It also turned up a long list of suggestions. Most were dead ends, but one actually worked.

In Control Panel, I clicked Programs, then clicked Turn Windows features on or off, under the Programs and Features heading. This dialog box opened up:

I then cleared the following options, which had been enabled as part of the original, default installation:

• XPS Viewer, under the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 heading
• Remote Differential Compression
• Windows DFS Replication Service

After a restart, I tried the upgrade again, and this time it completed without incident. After verifying that everything was working properly, I went back into Control Panel, selected the three features I had previously removed, and restarted.

Is it necessary to disable all three of those features? I have no idea. I’m just happy that it worked. If you’ve run into this setup error, give this workaround a try and let me know whether it works for you.

Update: There’s a KB article that covers this situation: KB946078.

Like Steve Riley, I want a Model 22 HDD Hard Drive Disintegrator.

You put 10 hard drives on the conveyor, and 30 minutes later they’re a pile of metal chips.

Considerably more cost-effective and less messy than running them over with a steamroller.

On December 30, Lars-Goran Nilsson published this on Fudzilla:

The rumor that Microsoft was set to lay off people on January 15th, 2009 is no longer a rumor but a fact. Staff at Microsoft have been informed that the company is readying major layoffs to its worldwide operations and it’s not a small cut, either.

Currently Microsoft employs about 90,000 people across the world and from what we’re hearing, some 15,000 of those are expected to be giving marching orders come January 15th. That’s almost 17 percent of Microsoft’s total work force, not exactly a small number.

The tech press fell all over itself amplifying this unsourced, literally incredible report. (I hate to use that word, because this wasn’t really reporting but appears to be flat-out lying.) Anyway, here’s what the train wreck looked like on TechMeme, the official echo chamber of the Apocalypse:

January 15 came and went with no announcement. Today, January 22, Microsoft did indeed announce layoffs:

In light of the further deterioration of global economic conditions, Microsoft announced additional steps to manage costs, including the reduction of headcount-related expenses, vendors and contingent staff, facilities, capital expenditures and marketing. As part of this plan, Microsoft will eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, legal, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today.

No doubt about it, that’s bad news, especially if you’re one of the 1,400 people losing your job at Microsoft today. But that is less than 1/10 of the number that Fudzilla published as “no longer a rumor but a fact” and that was amplified by a bunch of high-traffic websites that should know better.

Dear tech press: Can you please remove Fudzilla from your RSS readers and stop giving them any credence? There really should be consequences for getting something so tragically wrong. Rumors are not news, and calling something a fact doesn’t make it so.

David Pogue of the New York Times and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal have been consistent Mac fans and Vista bashers for the past few years, so yesterday’s first-look reviews of Windows 7 were eye-opening.

 [Update: In the comments to this post, David Pogue rightfully chides me for stereotyping his previous writings about Windows Vista, so I’ve struck through that part. See his comment and my reply for more discussion. And be sure to read this post of mine from April 2005, especially the last paragraph, where I point to Pogue’s review of OS X Tiger and conclude: “If you write reviews of technology products, take note – this is how a pro does it.” ]

Not surprisingly, both men decided to frame their reviews with yet more Vista-bashing. Pogue’s piece is entitled “Hate Vista? You May Like the Fix.” (For some odd reason, that second part appears as “You May Like Microsoft’s Sequel” in the page title.) Mossberg, meanwhile, entitles his piece “Even in Test Form, Windows 7 Leaves Vista in the Dust'”

Pogue’s review goes through all the things he his Twitter followers hated about Vista and concludes that Windows 7 has fixed most of them. On speed, for example, “Microsoft definitely got the message…. Even in the test version, you can feel that a lot of things are faster: starting up (40 seconds on my three test machines), shutting down, reconnecting to wireless networks, copying files and inserting flash drives, for example.”

On page 2, he reviews the new stuff in Windows 7. This type of praise is rare:

HomeGroups are fantastic. Type the same one-time password into every Windows 7 computer, and presto: instant, automatic home network, without having to fool around with accounts, permissions and so on. Every PC can see the other computers’ pictures, music, movies and documents, and folders that you specify, as well as share one another’s printers. Even in the test version, it works like a charm.

Mossberg was able to test Windows 7 on two machines: a Lenovo notebook supplied by Microsoft, and the Sony VAIO that he has used as a Vista whipping boy for years. But surprise!

[E]ven the beta version of Windows 7 was dramatically faster than Vista at such tasks as starting up the computer, waking it from sleep and launching programs.

And this speed boost wasn’t only apparent in the preconfigured machine from Microsoft, but on my own Sony (SNE), which had been a dog using Vista, even after I tried to streamline its software. Of course, these speed gains may be compromised by the computer makers, if they add lots of junky software to the machines. Windows 7 is also likely to run well on much more modest hardware configurations than Vista needed.

In their final grafs, Pogue and Mossberg call Windows 7 “exciting” and “promising,” respectively. For Microsoft, that’s as close to a slam-dunk as it gets.

Raymond Chen’s post today is specifically about why screen resolution isn’t a per-user setting, and in  the course of the post he goes through a fairly exhaustive discussion of the many issues that have to be accommodated when designing a Windows feature. I especially liked this part at the end, which will henceforth be my standard response whenever I hear someone say, “Microsoft is so stupid…” when complaining about a feature:

I’m not saying that these problems can’t be solved. They probably can, given enough thought, but not all of the solutions will please everybody all the time, because no matter what you do, somebody will tell you that you’re an idiot. And think of all the time and effort necessary to design how the feature should work, nail all the boundary conditions ("What happens if your per-user setting conflicts with an administrative policy?"), then code it up, write automated tests for it, run it through usability exercises ("Does the behavior match what users intuitively expect?" The answers may surprise you.) write up the documentation and help text, and continue maintaining the code, tests, and documentation for the feature’s anticipated lifetime (which in this case is probably forever). Could all those resources have been spent on something that would have a greater total benefit to the customer base? (The answer to that is always "Yes"—everybody and her sister-in-law can find a way to finish the sentence, "I can’t believe they wasted all that time on this stupid feature instead of fixing…")

Exactly.

Unthinkable!

As someone who performs almost every computing task on a Mac (for the past one and a half years) and tells anyone who will listen that the average consumer should be using a Mac instead of a Windows machine because of security and stability, I’m starting to prep myself for the single moment that I thought would never come: I’ll be using a Windows 7 machine as my main computer and telling anyone who will listen that, believe it or not, using the latest Microsoft operating system is truly worth it – once again.

And from another diehard Apple fan:

Those who think I continually bash Microsoft products for no reason, like to label me an Apple fanboy. But as I’ve said time and time again, I’m more than willing to give any product or service a shot, I just have one requirement: It has to be good.

For the past several years that just hasn’t been the case with most of the Microsoft products I’ve used (the Xbox being one exception), and I’ve had no problem saying as much. But get ready, I think I’ve found one I like — and it’s a big one: Windows 7.

[…]

I like it because it looks fairly nice (thanks to yes, borrowing some elements from OS X), runs smoothly (especially for a beta) and is fast — even on the machine I have it on which is nearly 3 years old. … I honestly would not mind using Windows 7 on a daily basis.

(via Sarah)

I’ve got a few too many computers hanging around the office here, so it’s time to help some of them find a new home.

The first candidate is an HP Pavilion tx2500z Entertainment notebook. I ordered it last July because I needed to test some software on a touchscreen. I now have another touch-compatible PC, so this one is surplus.

You can see HP’s official description here.

It’s a nice machine, especially at the price. Here are the specs:

• AMD Turion(TM) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-82 (2.2 GHz)
• 12.1" diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) w/Integrated Touch-screen
• 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
• ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics
• Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
• HP Imprint Finish (Echo) + Microphone + Webcam + Fingerprint Reader
• Wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth
• 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
• Two batteries: 6 Cell and 9 Cell (Lithium Ion)

It’s still under warranty. It runs Windows 7 very well and supports basic touch functions (but not multi-touch, because that requires a capacitive touch screen, which this one doesn’t have). It’s an excellent way to get started with Tablet PC technology without paying a fortune.

This model has been replaced in HP’s lineup, but a similar model (less powerful CPU, less RAM, only one battery) is currently available at HP’s outlet store for $900.

I’m letting this one go for $750 plus shipping. If you’re interested, send me an e-mail: ed[at]edbott[dot]com.

If you’ve installed Windows 7 beta on a computer that uses Microsoft-branded peripherals, you’ll want to bookmark this page:

Microsoft Hardware Windows® 7 Support

There, you’ll find Windows 7 beta versions of IntelliType Pro and IntelliPoint software (x86 and x64 versions) for Microsoft keyboards and mice. You’ll also find drivers and support software for Lifecam webcams, LifeChat headsets, and Xbox 360 controllers.

I’ve got the software running well here with several Microsoft peripherals, including a Wireless Entertainment 7000 keyboard.