The problem stems from a registry hack that allows Windows 7 to use UTC in the CMOS real-time clock (RTC). All adult OSes expect that the RTC will be in UTC, and then the OS calculates the corrects time to display for users based on the time zone and daylight savings time. Windows has forever expected the RTC to be in local time, however, which can cause all sorts of problems, such as moving the clock twice for a DST change. Recent versions of Windows have incorporated a registry hack to allow the RTC to be in UTC, but it’s not working perfectly, as I’ve discovered.

For when that hack is in place, when you sync to an internet time server, the correct time is not written to the CMOS RTC, as it is when the RTC time is local time. I believe the problem started on my computer when the CMOS battery was dying and the clock was losing time. When I replaced it, I of course had to set the time in the BIOS manually, and so I got it close enough, thinking that after I did an internet time update it would be written with the correct value. However, this didn’t happen: it kept on losing time. At first, I thought the new battery was dead, so I replaced it, going through the time-setting process again, and guessing even farther off from the correct time. Of course, this incorrect time was the time that Windows kept falling back to after I did manual time updates.

Eventually, after many reboots checking the behaviour of Widows with the RealTimeIsUniversal registry key both “true” and “false”, I discovered that Windows will write the correct time to the CMOS RTC when they key is “false”, but not “true”. And hence the problem.

The solution, if you want to keep UTC in the RTC, is to use another clock to manually set the correct time in the BIOS, because using internet time update won’t save the correct time. This is not cool and pretty much makes internet time update useless. Hopefully, Microsoft will fix this in a future version of Windows. As I said before, all other OSes work just fine with the CMOS clock being UTC, and it really does make the most sense from a computing standpoint. Get with the program!

If you are in a corporate IT environment, you know the drill for setting up a computer: install all the software you need, configure everything for the user, make a disk image of that setup, and then distribute it. Pretty simple stuff, and there are many, many tools out there to help you do it. One part of that process is setting up the Default Profile, the profile that all new users start out with. In the past, with Windows XP, setting up the default profile was easy: you get a user profile the way you want it, copy that profile over to the Default Profile folder in Documents and Settings, and voilà! Easy as pie.

Not anymore. Windows 7 has seen fit to change this. It is now impossible to copy a profile to the default profile. Instead, you have to follow an insanely complicated process using the Windows Automated Installation Kit and sysprep and a bunch of other things that are overkill for creating a default profile. I don’t want to create a fancy automatic Windows setup script, I just want to copy over an existing profile to the default!

Microsoft really needs to create a simple tool for users to do this, without having to get involved with WAIK and Windows Images and all that nonsense. Creating a default profile is so common, and so necessary for IT folks, that making it this complicated is a huge inconvenience.

My other beef with Microsoft is this: it took me over a day to download WAIK because the download kept failing in the middle of the process. Please, please release torrents for files like these. Torrents are incredibly useful for legitimate file distribution; they are not just for pirates. Here’s a perfect example: I downloaded the latest version of Open Office the other day. Downloading it from their server would have taken over an hour. The torrent took less than ten minutes. For tiny files, a torrent may not matter. When you are trying to download a 1.7 GB file and it fails an hour later after downloading 1.2 GB…believe me, your users will thank you if a torrent is available.

• Current Mood: Sunny
• Currently Listening To: "Have a Cigar", Pink Floyd

My old setup went like this: my main desktop was running Windows XP Pro 64-bit edition. Julia has a Mac running Mac OS 10.4. I have a laptop running Windows XP Home 32-bit edition. I have a Canon Pixma iP4600 printer (actually, it’s Julia’s) that was connected to my desktop and shared. Surprisingly, despite the mix and match of 32-bit and 64-bit, Windows and Mac OS, both laptops could print to the shared printer! It took a bit of jiggering, mainly because Mac printer drivers are ridiculous, but it worked.

After the upgrade to Windows 7, however, it no longer wants to play nice. I can kinda print from my Windows XP laptop, but the Mac is no good at all. Strangely, if I share a folder in Windows 7, the Mac can see that, but it can’t see the shared printer at all.

I’ve tried messing with the security settings, tried setting it up on the Mac various ways, tried mucking about with the SMB settings (another angry rant: Hey Microsoft, why can’t you at least include the Group Policy Editor in the Home version? It’s all accessible anyway in the registry, why do you have to be suck jerks about it?). Nada. Based on this thread, it’s a common problem.

Other than that somewhat important issue, I like Windows 7. But fess up, Microsoft: What did you break in Windows 7 to cause this problem?

First, a quick-and-dirty summary of how things work: in Windows, you can either have an account with full Administrator privileges that allow you to do anything to the computer, such as change settings and install programs, or you can have a limited account that allow you to do neither. Although this is a gross simplification, it works well enough. Ideally, you will do things as a limited user except when you need to be an Administrator and explicitly ask for a privilege elevation. That way, if you accidentally download a virus or something else that is nasty, it won’t be able to do any damage since you are running without Administrator privileges.

Windows has long had a "Run As…" command, and starting with Vista, it has UAC. Both attempt to improve the Windows security situation, but both fall short. As I learned with Windows 7, when you get the UAC prompt on an installation, for example, or if you explicitly do a "Run As…", the installer runs as if the Admin account is calling it, not my limited user account. For some installers, this means that program shortcuts end up in the Admin user’s Start Menu or desktop, or that program settings are in that user’s profile path, not my path. I was wondering why some programs I installed under my account weren’t showing up or starting correctly, and I determined last night that this was why. They were all being installed to my Admin account.

This problem exists because the installer is running as the Admin user, not as my account with elevated privileges (hence, the "Run As…"). That’s not what I want. What I want is to elevate my account temporarily to run the install program as me, so it is configured correctly for my account. Instead of a "Run As…" command, we need a "Run With…" Administrator privileges. This is exactly what Sudo for Windows, which I was using in XP, does. I thought that Windows 7 and it’s new, improved UAC would eliminate the need for something like Sudowin, but I am wrong.

So, Microsoft, tell me this: why doesn’t Windows have an integrated "sudo" command by now? If it did, I think it would make things a lot easier than the current confusion with "Run As…" and UAC. What users really need is a prompt that essentially says, "Okay, you are installing a program and making changes to Windows. Are you doing this on purpose? Do you really want to do this?" That would drastically reduce malware infections, while making it easy for users who are installing something to be able to do that with minimal fuss.

Of course, there are lots of security problems with Windows, and this is just one of them. But I think this would be a fairly easy solution that would pay dividends.

If I had to pick one feature that represented the greatest improvement of Windows 7 over XP, it would have to be the search box on the Start menu. No longer do I need to drill down through folders or remember where I put something, I just search for it. This also comes in handy for settings; I have no idea where in the new Control Panel interface the mouse settings are, so I just searched for “Mouse” and found it immediately.

Appearance-wise, it’s a set up. Of course Aero is nifty, but everything else just looks better, from the fonts to ClearType. Looks a lot more polished.

The new taskbar is also great, allowing you to “pin” icons to the bar (getting rid of the old QuickLaunc bar) and rearrange icons on the taskbar (finally!). It’s clear that they took this from the Mac OS Dock, but if it works, it works.

Another thing they stole from Apple is a much cleaner “Devices and Printers” interface for dealing with all of the things that can attach to your computer, be they printers, scanners, card readers, what have you. It looks very Mac-like, and it seems to be a lot handier.

One thing that people complain about, including myself, is Windows security. The best way to minimize the chances of getting viruses, spyware, and other malware is to do your computing as a rights-limited user, not with an account that has Administrator privileges. Normally, Windows makes it a pain to do this (despite the fact that it’s been good security practice for, oh, several decades now). When I was on Windows XP, I used a utility called Sudo for Windows to give Windows a sudo command that made elevating my privileges easier when running as a regular user. In Windows 7, I’ve turned on UAC, the much-maligned beast first introduced in Vista. Although UAC has its share of problems, frankly it isn’t too bad. I invoked it most frequently when installing all of my apps, as expected, but it wasn’t too irritating and now that I have everything installed I’ll be using it a lot less. It’s far better than running as an admin.

I have almost zero complaints about Windows 7 so far. The only driver issue I have is with missing drivers for my coprocessor, but it doesn’t seem to affect anything and finding the correct drivers shouldn’t be too hard. And…that’s about it.

Most people say that you should wait for SP1 to come out before you buy a new version of Windows, but this time, I think upgrading now is just fine. If you are running XP and are looking for an upgrade (and you have the power to run it), by all means get Windows 7. If you are purchasing new hardware, don’t be afraid to go with 7. You won’t regret it.

• Current Mood: Cold
• Currently Reading: "Balkan Ghosts", Robert D. Kaplan

Yesterday, Windows 7 release day, I got my download link and product key. I downloaded the ISO file and burned a DVD. The DVD was corrupt. No problem, I just downloaded it again on another computer (the first computer has had issues with burned media in the past, so it wasn’t too surprising). I got a working copy and gave it a go.

As an IT person, I do a lot of tech support. One thing I’ve learned is that you always, always do a clean install of an OS. Not an upgrade, a clean install. The point was moot in my case anyway, as you couldn’t do an upgrade from XP to 7, but even if I was upgrading (shudder) Vista I’d start from scratch. That way, you start with a clean slate, free of the cruft that accumulates after years of computing.

A nice new partition in front of me, I started the install. It went very quickly, surprisingly so. But when it came time to enter my product key, the product key that I had in an email from the Microsoft Store, the legitimate product key that I paid $50 for, it said it was invalid. Invalid? On release day? Googling around I saw that I could get around this during the install process by simply leaving the key blank. Doing a Twitter search showed me that sadly I was not the only person with this issue.

I get Windows 7 set up and successfully get to the desktop, and noodle around a bit. I then try to activate from within Windows. Again, it says that the key is invalid. It was getting late, and I was tired, so I decided to leave it until later; I had 30 days to activate, after all.

The error message the second time around at least gave me a hint: it said that the product key was only valid for “upgrades”, not clean installs. First of all, it is impossible to do a true upgrade from XP to Windows 7, and Microsoft knows that, so I didn’t understand quite how I could do an upgrade install. Second, Microsoft also knows that you should always do a clean install anyway, so discouraging people from doing that will just cause problems and make Windows 7 look bad. Third, this was completely different from how Windows upgrades used to work in the past: with all the Windows versions I was familiar with, if you did a clean install with an upgrade version, all you had to do was pop in the previous install DVD (in my case, my Windows XP install DVD, which I still have along with a valid product key) and all was well. But apparently not for Windows 7.

So today when I got home from work, I charged up my Bluetooth headset knowing I would need it, and called Microsoft. The first call to their automated activation line told me that the code was invalid. Well, duh. They suggested I call tech support. I did, and got somebody who was less than useless. That person sent me back to the activation line, where (surprise surprise) my code was still invalid 15 minutes later after calling the exact same number the first time. My urge to kill rising, I called tech support again and said I needed to talk to somebody with a clue who could get it to work.

I did talk to a real tech, but when I explained what I was doing, he insisted that the upgrade version of Windows 7 would not work with XP. I was flabbergasted: this directly contradicted the Microsoft Store’s own website! I very sternly insisted that what he was telling me was flatly untrue, and after conferring with his supervisor with a few minutes, his mind was changed. He then told me the solution: not a new product key, not somehow inserting my XP disc during the install, but doing an in-place upgrade of Vista over Vista!

This took about an hour and a half, and did eventually work. And to tell the truth, this is the solution I found earlier in the day after Googling around for a bit. I had debated just doing this from the get-go instead of calling Microsoft, but I figured that surely there would be a more elegant solution than that. Sadly, I was wrong, and two and a half hours of my night went down the drain.

So what have we learned? First of all, if you have Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade version, you do a clean install from XP, and you get an “invalid product key” error, an in-place upgrade will fix it. Simply leave the product key field blank during the Windows 7 install, then once you are in Windows 7, insert your install DVD and do an upgrade. It will take forever, but it will work and you can successfully activate your copy of Windows using the product key you have.

Secondly, we’ve learned that Microsoft thinks that its customers are not important to them. Instead, customers are treated like criminals. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never pirated Windows or other Microsoft software, it doesn’t matter that I have a legitimate copy of XP, it doesn’t matter that I bought Windows 7 from the Microsoft Store itself. What Microsoft cares about is an activation procedure so ridiculous it frustrates average users who are trying to avoid problems by doing a clean OS install. Not only that, but Microsoft’s own tech support people don’t know that the Upgrade version of Windows 7 can, in fact, be used to upgrade from XP. And instead of simply giving me a new product key that works, and trusting me, they make me waste over an hour doing a install over an install (and, incidentally, why does installing Vista over Vista take four times as long as a new install?)

I don’t know why Microsoft decided to change their install procedure to remove the quick, put-the-previous-install-DVD-in-the-drive method of verifying that yes, you are upgrading from a qualifying OS. Probably to cut down on piracy or other such nonsense. Well, I hope they enjoy that extra 0.5% of revenue.

As a result of all of this nonsense, I’m taking a much, much dimmer view of Microsoft from here on out. I’ve defended Windows to plenty of Linux and Mac fanboys, and I’ve always done it truthfully. I’m using Windows 7 right now to write this, and frankly I like the OS a lot from my short time using it. But if Microsoft is going to treat a paying customer like a pirate, then they can forget my support, not only as an individual user, but as somebody who works in IT and has input in purchasing decisions.

If Microsoft doesn’t turn this around, their decline will be well-deserved.

• Current Mood: Frustrated

I recently purchased a third monitor for my home computer. Why, you ask? Well, the extra screen area is useful, especially when it comes to using programs like Lightroom, but yes, the coolness factor of having three monitors staring back at me also played a part. I was looking forward to getting things up and running, but before long I ran into a show-stopper of a problem.

But before I get too far into that, some background and context is needed. I run Windows XP Professional 64-bit edition on my computer and have ever since I built its first incarnation almost four years ago; it currently has SP2, which turns out to be very important.. The two monitors I already had were running on an ATI Radeon HD 4800 video card, with no problems. The motherboard I have is an Asus M3N78-EM with integrated NVidia GeForce 8300 video.

I never used the integrated NVidia video before since I had the Radeon card, but the new monitor meant that I would have to enable it and use it for monitor #3. I did so, and at first, everything appeared normal: desktop on all three monitors, things working well enough. But when I started up a program with video, bam, BSOD: “The driver is mismanaging system PTEs”. After more experimentation, it appeared that ANY video on any monitor would crash the system, even something as simple as looking at the radar loop on the NOAA website. Obviously, this wouldn’t fly.

So I did some research, and it didn’t take long at all before I determined that this is a known problem, and a widespread one at that: turns out that people running Windows XP 64-bit with SP2 see this all the time with NVidia drivers. Solutions were very few and far between, though, and plenty of people were very upset that NVidia had not come up with a fix despite many complaints, and despite the time that had elapsed: I found reports of the bug as early as March 2007.

I tried mucking about in the registry as described here, but it did no good. I tried removing all of the video drivers and using Driver Cleaner and CCleaner to get everything out, then installing the latest drivers, also no good. Most of my research devolved into finding threads like this, where there is no solution and everybody vows never to buy NVidia again. Finally, though, I found this magic thread, and a possible solution.

I downloaded the file and gave it a try. At first, when I tried to copy the SP1 version of the videoprt.sys file, Windows System File Protection service simply replaced it with the current, SP2 version. After booting into Safe Mode, though, I was able to make the switch stick, and voilà! Three monitors without crashing!

Thus, my solution was as follows:

1. Download the SP1 version of videoprt.sys
2. Boot into Safe Mode.
3. Rename the existing videoprt.sys files in both Windows\system32\drivers AND Windows\system32\dllcache to something else.
4. Copy the SP1 version of videoprt.sys to both of the above folders.
5. Reboot into normal mode.

Who’s to blame here? Well, despite the fact that NVidia says this is an “Operating System” issue, the fact that they let this go on for years without a real driver fix puts the blame squarely on them. Yes, Windows Update breaks software. It will continue to break software. But when this happens, it is the duty of the software makers to fix it, not blame Microsoft. I doubt that the technical issues surrounding the fix were so daunting that NVidia could not have figured out a solution. That they didn’t shows that they don’t care much for their users, even if Windows XP 64-bit users make up just a tiny slice of their user universe.

As for Microsoft, I like the concept of System File Protection. I don’t like that I can’t easily get around it or explicitly say “Yes, I know what I’m doing, get out of my way”. I realize that given your security philosophy, System File Protection is useful in protecting Windows against malicious code, but it seems hacktacular. Find a better way.

Finally, I’ve learned my lesson: I won’t be buying NVidia anymore either.

• Current Mood: TGIF

I’ve been running Windows XP Pro x64 edition on my home computer for over three years now. (Side note: I’ve never had any compatibility problems with 64-bit computing, such as not getting Adobe products to run, and I hope that the day will soon come when there is no 32-bit computing anymore.) XP has served me quite well, being more than stable enough, especially in my current config (a Phenom II X4 920 with 8GB of memory and a Radeon HD 4870 video card). When Vista came out, I played around with it briefly and decided that there was no way that I would upgrade to Vista, and the feedback I got from people who had done so did nothing to change my mind.

Windows 7, however, does seem to be slimmer and less irritating than Vista, and so far the reviews have generally been positive. Will I upgrade? I’m not sure; it depends on how much it’s going to cost. The only thing I’m really missing in XP right now is DirectX 10, and since I’m not a gamer that doesn’t matter very much. Other things coming up on the tech horizon, like USB 3.0, may not be supported by XP and that could prompt an upgrade. For now, though, I’m content to wait.

…What about Linux, you may ask? I’ve used Linux a fair bit, mainly on a couple fileservers I’ve set up in the past. I’m definitely pro-open source and pro-free software. Unfortunately, although there are lots of alternatives to Windows programs on Linux (a good list is here), noticeably missing is Adobe Lightroom. I also use Quicken for my finances, but the quality of Quicken software has degraded so much with its latest releases that I have just above given up on it, even if it entails a painful migration. Lightroom, however, is still the biggie, and so until Adobe ports it to Linux, I’m sticking with Windows. The next laptop I get, though, will probably be a netbook, and if so, it will run Linux.