Springboard Series - The Resource for Windows Desktop IT Professionals : Windows Vista

Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 is Released to Manufacturing

Celine Allee — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:55:00 GMT

Today we are proud to announce the Release to Manufacturing of Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Service Pack 2 (SP2) represents the latest step in Microsoft’s commitment to continuous improvement. It includes all of the updates that have been delivered since SP1, as well as support for new types of hardware and emerging hardware standards. And since it comes with a single installer for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, SP2 will be easy for IT Pros to manage, deploy, and support. For an overview of the changes introduced in SP2, check out the notable changes document.

Business customers with Windows Vista will find that the transition to Windows 7 will be significantly more straightforward due to the high degree of compatibility between Windows Vista and Windows 7. If your Windows Vista SP1 deployment is already underway we recommend you continue with SP1 as planned. Then you can deploy SP2 using your systems management infrastructure. If you are in the early stages of deployment or still planning Windows Vista deployment our best advice is that you plan on testing and deploying Windows Vista SP2.

Windows Service Pack Blocker Toolkit

Celine Allee — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:21:00 GMT

Here’s an update for those of you who have installed the Service Pack Blocker Tool for Windows XP or Windows Vista. This code temporarily prevents the installation of a service pack through Windows Update, typically for one year after general availability of the service pack. The expiration date for the Service Pack Blocker Tool for Windows Vista SP1 is April 28, 2009; for Windows XP SP3 the tool expires May 19, 2009.

For more information on the Service Pack Blocker Tool, please see the FAQ available through the Springboard Series on TechNet.

TechEd 2008: Windows Vista and the Road to Windows 7

Celine Allee — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 02:25:00 GMT

Hola from TechEd 2008 IT Professionals in Barcelona! Tuesday marked the first public overview to IT professionals of several new features in Windows 7, providing greater security and manageability for remote and local PCs, while improving on the fundamentals of performance and reliability.

There were a number of interesting sessions on Windows 7 features for IT pros. The Windows Client Product Management team opened the day with a feature-packed overview of the upcoming client OS.

I already reported on a first look at Windows 7 in a previous post, so I thought I’d take the time to provide some additional highlights from the day, especially for those of you who are wondering about whether to keep going down the path of Windows Vista deployment. Beyond the new features, the primary message at the show was around compatibility, management consistency and maintaining the progress that Windows Vista has made with the hardware and application ecosystem.

Most software that runs on Windows Vista will run on Windows 7. Exceptions may be applications that call low-level code (anti-malware, some firewalls, defrag utilities, etc.)
It’s expected that hardware that runs Windows Vista well, will also run Windows 7 well.

One of the notable demonstrations at the event was by Jeremy Chapman, a Senior Product Manager in the Windows Product group, who showed how applications not compatible with Windows Vista share similar incompatibilities with Windows 7—underscoring that the work to remediate with Windows Vista will not be lost. He continued the demonstration by fixing an extremely incompatible application in Windows Vista using a shim database (SDB) file; he then transferred that same SDB file and installed it on a Windows 7 machine to fix the application. It was an enlightening demo that showed how application compatibility testing and remediation for Windows Vista carries forward to Windows 7.

The demos kept coming with new security features demonstrated by Paul Cooke, a Director of Product Management in the Windows Client group. Reiterating the compatibility story between Windows Vista and Windows 7, Paul spoke about how the changes in Windows 7 security would not affect application compatibility. With an eye on securing portable drive data, Windows 7 extends the Windows Vista BitLocker data encryption functionality to external USB sticks. Newly dubbed ‘BitLocker To Go’ it can also be Group Policy enforced. Paul went on to show an update to Software Restriction Policies – called “AppLocker” – to whitelist or blacklist applications from running on policy-managed machines.

The session highlight of the day however, was from application compatibility guru, Chris Jackson, an architect with Microsoft Services, where he displayed his shimming wizardry in a demo-intensive and nearly slide-less session on application shimming (the process of adding a translation layer between the OS and the application). All this work applies to Windows Vista and Windows 7 alike; I can’t wait to see more from him.

We’ll return with more insights from TechEd 2008 IT Professionals in Barcelona after Springboard’s spokesman and Microsoft Technical Fellow, Mark Russinovich, delivers his “Case of the Unexplained” series and Steve Riley, a Senior Technical Evangelist with Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative, continues to beat the security drum in Barcelona. Adios for now and stay tuned!

Celine