Tag Archives: windows 7

IE9 nears 10% market share

IE9 boasts nearly 10% market share. According to the Windows Team Blog Internet Explorer 9 has nearly reached the 10% market share milestone.

IE9 went live on March 14th and since then has garnered more respect than most of the company’s other browser releases. Despite leaving Windows XP users in the shade, it appears IE9 is one of Microsoft’s biggest success stories in recent years. IE9 has already raced passed Opera 11, which holds a modest 2.18% share.

Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin:

This month’s share report from Net Applications continues to show some great momentum around Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7, with share about to pass 10% for the last day in April. We’re excited about that.

But Microsoft is not resting on its laurels; the company already has a preview release of Internet Explorer 10, which can be downloaded here. This next release will be excluding users of Windows Vista as well as XP, making IE10 a Windows 7-only release.

Windows 7 milestone, Microsoft wants you to ditch the “habit” of XP

Windows 7 on the rise; XP support is running out. Windows 7 is 18 months old today. Back in October 2009 Microsoft launched the follow-up to the luke-warm reception of Windows Vista.

Since that time Windows 7 has seen widespread adoption, sold more than 350 million licenses and just 2 months ago got its first service pack. This coupled with the arrival of Internet Explorer 9, it’s pretty clear the Windows 7 platform has been a success for Microsoft.

With all that in mind the company is taking this opportunity to give people and organizations advice on how to put XP in the recycle bin; the ageing OS still has over 46% of the worldwide market share. With only 1081 days left until XP’s support runs out, Microsoft wants everyone to ditch what they refer to as “the habit” of Windows XP. It may seem like an insensitive way to talk about one of their most successful operating systems, but given the fact that XP is nearly 10-years old it kind of makes sense.

If you’re leaning towards Windows 7, check out the Windows Team Blog’s 10 steps to point you in the right direction:

So how can Springboard help you to get off Windows XP and move to a modern OS? Here is 10 ways we can help?

We dove deep into that topic during our most recent Virtual Roundtable, “Is XP Good Enough? Really?”. Check out the virtual roundtable to hear common issues and solutions around moving off XP.

Test your skills at deploying Windows 7 in the Deployment Learning Portal.

Check out the free Springboard Series Tour which will show Office 365, Windows Intune, Office 2010 and the latest Windows deployment techniques.

Check out the Windows deployment sessions at TechEd in Atlanta.

Become a Springboard Series Insider and get monthly tips and tricks on Windows, Office and Internet Explorer.

Check out our Springboard Zone for Office, Internet Explorer, Windows Intune, MDOP and Desktop Virtualization.

Watch for local events from STEP (Springboard Technical Experts Program) members in your local city worldwide.

Follow our twitter feed at MSSpringboard for great IT pro information. We were picked as one of the top IT pro feeds to follow by 26 different sites.

Before you begin to deploy Windows 7, download the Windows 7 90-day Trial and get started testing your apps and hardware.

Did I mention the cool desktop gadget? Download the Windows XP EOS Gadget (available soon in 10 languages) and see the countdown for yourself!

Is Windows 7 finally overtaking XP?

The US seems to be more pro-active in Windows 7 adoption compared to other countries. The answer according to an Irish Web analytics company is a resounding yes, at least in the United States.

Figures released by StatCounter show Windows 7′s average daily share was 32.2% in April, compared to XP’s 30.7%; the first time Microsoft’s flagship OS surpassed the 10-year old Windows XP.

The figures for worldly use paints a slightly different picture. Although Windows 7 has a healthy 31.5% market share, XP is still flying high with 46.8%.

What about gamers? According to Steam statistics for March, Windows 7 64-bit accounts for 36.77% of all Steam users. This is quite a bit more than XP can claim at 22.70%.

I suspect in the coming months (especially for gamers), use of Windows XP will dwindle. Most software that works on XP will work on 7. Given the fact that Windows 7 has been out since late 2009 getting drivers for hardware is rarely an issue. It already has its first service pack out, plus an OEM copy Windows 7 can be had for as little as $99 on Amazon. There’s really no need to be stuck on XP, unless it’s what you want.

Microsoft offers students a Windows 7 upgrade for $29.99

Are you a student still using Windows Vista? If so Microsoft wants to help you move on from that tragedy to Windows 7.

For a limited time Microsoft is giving students the chance to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 Professional for only $29.99 (usually $64.95). All you need to do to take advantage of this offer is to be enrolled at a university, have a valid student ID and email address.

If you have all that just go here to register and purchase a digital license key. That’s it.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 publicly available today

It’s finally here. The first service pack for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system is finished after more than 8 months of beta testing. Although it doesn’t yet appear on Microsoft’s download center it is expected to be up in the next few hours. You will also be able to snag the service pack via Windows Update, in fact that is what Microsoft recommends for most users.

The service pack isn’t much to get excited about from the point of view of the average PC user, it’s just a roll-up of security updates for the most part; nothing on the scale of XP’s second service pack or Vista’s first. On the server side a few new features pop up but for you and me it’s more of a giant security patch.

Update: Download the .iso here.

Stay tuned for a slipstreaming guide in the coming days, for folks that want to create an updated install.

Microsoft set to release Internet Explorer 9 on March 14th

Internet Explorer 9 coming March 14th

The release candidate has been available for a number of weeks now but it seems the bugs are ironed out and Microsoft is ready to finish it off and release the final build of their next browser.

According to sources of download squad the company plans to announce the release at an SXSW conference on March 14, where there will be a party of sorts.

Anyone that has the release candidate installed will not need to download the final build, as it will automatically update to the finished version.

This information tallies nicely with what we already know: Microsoft has said that there will only be one RC, and March 14 very nearly fits the six-week release cycle that Internet Explorer has so far stuck to. Most importantly, though, the IE team is holding a party at SXSW — and parties generally celebrate something.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1, not quite ready

SP1 Build 7601

Rumour has been circulating these past few weeks that Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is ready and already shipped to OEMs by Microsoft. It all started with a Russian site that claims to have the final RTM build of the first service pack, which was allegedly finished back in November. However, Paul Thurrott of Win Supersite has said that this is actually not the final build and anyone thinking of downloading from a torrent site should err on the side of caution.

Thurrott claims that this is a near-final build and Microsoft will be ready with the finished version very soon. Either way the service pack yields little in the way of benefit for gamers. It’s more a culmination of previously released security updates and minor tweaks:

An updated version of Remote Desktop Services. This is required for a change that is coming in Server 2008 R2 with SP1 (RemoteFX).

Better support for third-party federation services. With this update, Windows 7 now supports services that utilize the WS-Federation passive profile protocol.

Improved HDMI audio device performance. SP1 fixes a bug in Windows 7 where a small percentage of users experienced a disruption of audio over HDMI after a reboot.

Minor XPS document fixes. For the rare case where an XPS document contains both portrait and landscape pages, SP1 fixes a bug that prevented correctly-formatted printing.

Hot-fixes and other bug fixes. Like any service pack, SP1 also contains an aggregation of previously released and new hot-fixes and other bug fixes.

Sneak Peek: A Quick Look at Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Windows 7 64-bit crippled by AVG update

AVG on damage control after update

If you’re a user of Windows 7 64-bit and AVG 2011, you probably can’t read this because your computer is buggered. An update released on the 1st of December caused the majority of 64-bit machines using AVG 2011 to fail while loading the OS. The company are on damage control and have a guide on how to get your Windows back up and running. It basically involves a USB stick or a rescue CD.

AVG are asking customers to first try and run Windows System Restore from within safe mode, and restore their machines to a time before the update was applied.

Or use AVG Rescue CD -> menu Utilities -> Midnight Commander -> navigate to /mnt/sda1/program files/ (or program files (x86)) and rename by F6 AVG folder to other name (for example AVG_old).

Windows 7 Startup Repair
Described at this Microsoft website – follow section “To open the System Recovery Options menu on your computer”

Then start your system again and re-install AVG.

Please accept our apologies for any inconveniences caused by this situation.

If you know someone who needs advice on this matter, head on over to the AVG forums where they are offering more solutions if you’ve tried everything else.

Happy 25th, Windows!

Seeing as Windows is now 25 years old, I felt it incumbent upon myself to drudge up an old favourite; Ballmer selling Windows 1.0 from 1985. Watching this video again, I’m reminded of the overabundance of cocaine in the 1980s.

Happy 25th Windows! I’ve still not forgotten about Vista, but Windows 7 eased the pain somewhat.

MS offering free hard drive with Win 7 Pro upgrade

Seagate FreeAgent Go Portable 500 GB Hard Drive (Black) Microsoft have a couple of late October deals at the Microsoft Store if you need to buy Windows 7.

First off they’re offering a 500 GB Seagate FreeAgent Go portable hard drive when you buy Windows 7 Professional upgrade. The hard drive costs $109 if you buy it on its own. The offer is valid while supplies last, check it out here.

They’re also offering $150 off a new PC when you buy a Win 7 Home Premium Family Pack. The range of PC’s this offer applies to is fairly large, and covers the price range of about $400-$2000. This offer is also valid while supplies last, check out the range of PCs here.

How to clone your Windows 7 DVD onto a thumb drive

Here is a short guide to show you how to clone your Windows 7 DVD onto a USB thumb drive, for use in Windows installations. Using a USB thumb drive to install an operating system has become much more accessible and easy in the last year or so.

Where this comes in most handy is on Netbooks with no optical drive, but there are other benefits in using this method even on your desktop. When you install Windows with a USB thumb drive it’s also a lot quicker than using a DVD, so the install for Windows 7 can take anywhere between 10-12 minutes, which is great.

What you will need is:

1. Windows 7 DVD

2. USB thumb drive (4Gb capacity)

3. Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB tool (free)

4. ImgBurn (free)

5. At least 5 Gb of free space on your hard drive

6. 1 x DVD drive

Step. 1

Firstly what you want to do is make an image (copy) of your Windows 7 DVD on your hard drive. This is simple but may take a few minutes. Make sure your Windows 7 DVD is in your drive, then install ImgBurn and open it up. You will be presented with a few options. What you want to do here is click on “Create image file from disc” as highlighted below.

This next screen shows you where ImgBurn will be saving your copy of Windows 7 to. You really don’t need to change any options here. It will usually save the .iso file to the root directory of your hard drive that has the most free space. All you need to do here is click on the disc icon with the blue arrow as highlighted below.

After a few minutes this will be complete, so just close down ImgBurn. Your new Windows 7 image backup should be in your root directory (usually on the C: drive). Mine is called “GRMCHPXFRER_EN_EVD.ISO” but yours may be different.

Step 2.

Now you want to put your thumb drive into an available USB port. After you’ve done that, install and open up Microsoft’s USB tool. You then want to tell the program where your copy of Windows 7 is.

ImgBurn saved it to the root directory of your drive, so press the browse button, find it and select it. As you can see, the Windows 7 USB Tool saved mind to the D: drive. Simply find yours, click on it and press open.

Now click on the next button.You will be warned about your thumb drive being formatted and all data being erased. I should stress this right now, you don’t want to have anything on this USB drive that is of any significance (photos, music etc) as it will all be erased. This thumb drive will only be used for the purpose of installing Windows 7.

This next screen is pretty self-explanatory, all you need to do is press the “USB device” button as highlighted below.

Make sure to select the appropriate letter that coincides with your thumb drive. You can easily find this out if you are unsure. Just open up My Computer and have a look at the drives. You can check the capacity and obviously your USB drive will be approximately 4Gb in size.

After clicking on “Begin copying”, the program will start copying the OS files onto your thumb drive. This will take a few minutes or more, depending on the power of the system you’re using. But generally speaking it shouldn’t take more than 3-5 minutes unless you’re using a extremely old PC.

After Windows is finished the procedure of copying the OS installation files to your thumb drive, the program will let you know and the green progress bar will have reached 100%. Close the program down, and unplug your USB thumb drive and you’re done.

Conclusion:

What you have in your hand now is an exact clone of the contents from your Windows 7 DVD. You can now use this to install Windows 7 on any PC, Notebook or Netbook as long as they have a spare USB port. As I pointed out before, installing Windows from a thumb drive is a cinch and it takes significantly less time than using a DVD. And as a lot of people are moving away from optical drives I think this procedure will be used more and more.

One thing I want to stress is when installing Windows 7 with your USB drive, make sure you unplug it after the first restart. If you don’t, the installation procedure will just loop back to the beginning. This has happened to me once or twice so make sure and stick around while you’re doing the install and after the first restart simply take out the USB drive as all the installation files are already copied to your hard drive at this point and the USB drive is no longer needed.

Good luck.

XP Is Dead. Long live Windows 7!

XP Grave

O.K. don’t break out the Kleenex just yet, but it seems the process of ridding the PC world of Microsoft’s aging Operating System is going into overdrive. The word from Dell is that they will no longer be offering XP preloaded on any of their machines come October 22nd. Dell will however be offering driver support up until December 2012 but next month will see a hammer blow for the 9-year old.

Frankly no gamer should be using XP at this stage in the proceedings. Sure, I know Vista scared a lot of people (myself included) and we ran back to XP faster than an SSD boot-up. But Windows 7 has been available for nearly a year now – it’s very stable, has support for directx 11 and is offered at a very reasonable price.

So really, if you’re still on XP and want to play the latest games, it’s time to open a window and let some fresh air in. XP is dead. I have an enormous amount of respect for XP but like that dog you had for 12 years and loved – you need to let go. XP (like Rover) is going to a better place.

Source: PC Mag