What Were They Thinking?

By DustinPosted on

We’ve all seen the Seinfeld and Gates commercials, some have seen the Family Guy promo’s. I’m not sure if you were as confused as I was as to where they were trying to go with them. I thought it was a joke, or possibly a Mac ad with a Bill Gates look a like at first. But, I have to admit: it did get our attention. May not have had the attention that Microsoft wanted, but they definitely got us to perk our ears up a bit. TechFlash tries to answer the question with an interview with David Webster, from Microsoft.

Well, mystery solved, I guess. Today I sat down for a surprisingly entertaining discussion with David Webster, the chief strategy officer in Microsoft’s central marketing group. We talked about lots of interesting and wonky tech business stuff, such as how the company is attempting to make its advertising more persistent and true-to-life, and how it’s trying to shape its overall brand image not through a broader corporate campaign but instead by aiming to project a consistent personality through the advertising for its individual products.

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10 Reasons Why you Shouldn’t Wait For SP1 on Windows 7

By DustinPosted on

A few people, and a lot of businesses notoriously wait for the first service pack to upgrade to a new operating system. eWeek has compiled a list of 10 reasons why you don’t need to wait for the upcoming (and already leaked on torrents) service pack to upgrade to Windows 7.

But Windows 7 is a different story altogether. It doesn’t have the kind of issues that XP and Vista did when they first hit store shelves. It’s a robust operating system that can be relied on even before the first service pack is released. Simply put, users who are on the fence about Windows 7 shouldn’t wait for Service Pack 1.

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Windows 7 SP1 Leaked

By DustinPosted on

GeekSmack has released screenshots and information on the upcoming Service Pack 1 for Windows 7. While this is a leaked version, it is a recent build, from March 27th. Fast install, hopefully a few fixes not available yet. SP1 is also supposed to support USB3, and a better Bluetooth and WLAN stack. No word on those, though.

The install process is much of what you would expect from a service pack installer, but one thing I noticed is the installation is MUCH faster than the install process for service packs on Vista was, which is a very welcome change.

Windows Server 8 Only x64

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft has stated that the still in development Windows Server 8 will support only 64-bit processors, minus the Intel Itanium. This is good news for most, as most (if not all) server grade processors are already 64-bit and have been for quite some time. Some of us still have older servers for development and testing and will be forced to upgrade, which is a shame (ok, it’s a great excuse to upgrade my home server!).

With the advent of Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft dropped support for 32-bit (x86) CPUs. In fact, at this point in time, the best choice for customers running servers with x86 processors, as far as Windows Server is concerned, is to run the plain vanilla version of Windows Server 2008. Reger argued that it was only natural for Windows Server vNext to move on from Itanium, just as Windows Server 2008 R2 moved on from 32-bit processors.

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XBox 360 Supports USB Storage

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft has released the newest update to allow it’s XBox 360 console to use USB memory sticks for your storage. It has a 16 GB limit, and you can use any USB drive you can get. Of course, Microsoft will be selling it’s own branded drives for a few bucks more than what you can buy from any other vendor: $70 for 16 GB or $40 for 8 GB. A little steep for something that normally costs so little.

Microsoft has been aggressively upping the storage ante for its Xbox 360 console of late. Two weeks ago, the Redmond outfit released a 250GB standalone hard drive with transfer kit after previously saying the company had no plans to do so. Could Blu-ray be next? Don’t hold your breath.

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Recover Windows Password

By DustinPosted on

We’ve posted another article, this time for those that have forgotten your Windows password. I’ve gotten several email requests asking for help with this issue, and thought I’d put up a couple of my favorite tools. Enjoy.

Forgetting your password in Windows can be troublesome at the least. Windows Vista and 7 have a place to backup your password and make a recovery disc, but that usually hasn’t been done. Most people don’t think they will forget a password. Of course, there comes a time in your life when your brain doesn’t rememberwhat it used to, as you get older…. Or, you just forget a password after you try to set it to something hard to guess!

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Recover Windows Password

By DustinPosted on

Forgetting your password in Windows can be troublesome at the least. Windows Vista and 7 have a place to backup your password and make a recovery disc, but that usually hasn’t been done. Most people don’t think they will forget a password. Of course, there comes a time in your life when your brain doesn’t rememberwhat it used to, as you get older…. Or, you just forget a password after you try to set it to something hard to guess!

Here are a couple programs that can find or reset your password in any Windows NT based operating system (From Windows NT, 2000 – 7). You need to have the computer physically available, meaning you cannot do this over the network to try and “hack” a password.

1. Ophcrack

The first program, and often called “the best”, is a very fast and easy to use password cracker. I’ve used the boot disk often enough with excellent results. There is also another version that can run on the local machine if you happen to lose the password of a different user, but still have access to another local user.

Download: http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/
Ophcrack is a free Windows password cracker based on rainbow tables. It is a very efficient implementation of rainbow tables done by the inventors of the method. It comes with a Graphical User Interface and runs on multiple platforms

2. Offline NT Password & Registry Editor

The second program is another boot disk that is quite a bit smaller of a download and can fit on a floppy if needed. It works good, but has a few more caveats and is text based, rather than a GUI, like Ophcrack. This is also available on the UBCD (available: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com), if you want a more feature rich CD for fixing a lot of other PC problems.

Download: http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html
I’ve put together a single floppy or CD which contains things needed to edit the passwords on most systems. The CD can also be installed on a USB drive, see readme.txt on the CD.

Either one of these programs will recover or reset your password in Windows. If you have any others you’ve had experience with, or have any suggestions, please feel free to comment!

Microsoft Squashes 1,800 Bugs in Office 2010

By DustinPosted on

Microsoft has found and fixed 1,800 bugs in their newest version of Office, 2010. While not all are security related, a few of them are. I’m glad they are taking a much more active approach to security lately. Didn’t Bill Gates say 10 years ago or so that he was starting a new campain to make Windows more secure? This must be the start!

“We found and fixed about 1,800 bugs in Office 2010’s code,” said Gallagher, who last week co-hosted a presentation on Microsoft’s fuzzing efforts at the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. “While a large number, it’s important to note that that doesn’t mean we found 1,800 security issues. We also want to fix things that are not security concerns.”

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