We all admire and use reopen last closed tabs on our favorite modern browsers. It comes really handy when we accidentally close a running browser tab or realize immediately after closing it that you missed something.

What if it was possible to ReOpen closed explorer windows, Applications. Thanks to UndoClose, its possible on Windows.

Windows 7 application windows has totally different way of operating, even though it maintains a list of  recently opened programs and items in Start Menu, it doesn’t support bringing them up again using a hotkey.

UndoClose remembers all recently closed folders and applications, and lets you restore them in the same sequence in which they were closed using two hotkeys.

Using two hotkeys you can do pretty much all. Use Ctrl+Shift+F to open last closed folder (in Windows Explorer) and Ctrl+Shift+A, to open last closed application. You can use them multiple times to cycle through the history. You can even change the hotkeys from Settings of the application that sits silently in system tray.

Application is light weight and eats nominal RAM. No installation required, its portable across all version of Windows7.

Download UndoClose

via AddictiveTips

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So far, we’ve covered various Transformation packs for Windows, OSX, Ubuntu and the experience had been outstanding.

Lion UX Pack provides one of the easiest and yet most powerful Transformation pack for Windows 7. Post-installation you can easily select dock configurations, system font and various OS X UI elements. Configuring the start orb, caption button, expose feature and spaces is among the best features of Lion UX Pack. Its a single click transformation!

However, we would like to give a word of warning about rolling back changes. Most transformation packs are impossible to get rid of, once installed. For this one, we found creating a new user helps, but it may not be an optimal thing to do.

Download Lion UX Pack

Key Features:

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You can search based on song title, artist, album and playlists. The app is slick. To get started, all you need to do is select a search criteria, enter a search term, and click Search. You can select a song from the search result by clicking the (+) sign that triggers the download.

GrooveDown is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download GrooveDown

Warning: We’re not responsible for any legal issues involved with Music. We recommend that you download free & unlicensed music.

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Install Bazaar XAP on WP7
Pre-requisites:
1. You must have a developer-unlocked Windows Phone 7 device because Bazaar. It does not work with Chevron-wp7 unlocked devices. At least not yet.
2. You must flash a custom ROM which supports XAP-installation using IE9 e.g. ROMs like DFT, NextGen or Deepshining.
3. Windows Phone Developer Tools and Zune installed on your Windows-based PC.

How To:

Step 1. Download the latest version of Bazaar to your Windows-powered PC. Next, Launch Windows Phone Developer Tools and click on Application Deployment and set your supported Windows Phone 7 Device as the Target.

Step 2. Select the Bazaar .xap file and connect your Windows Phone 7 handset to your PC with a USB cable and sync with Zune.

Step 3. On WP Developer Tools, click Deploy. You’re done.

Note: Bazaar is in its beta stages and developers are working to create a way to purchase paid apps, till then it has free apps only. Officiall thread on XDA has further details.

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Zetro UI is very simple to install and configure. Extract the zip after downloading the theme from the link below. When done, follow the below two simple steps:

• Opening the Extras folder, running the Theme Patcher, and clicking on all three “patch” buttons contained within.
• Opening the Theme folder and copying both of the files inside it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

When finished, Open the Control Panel and “Change the Theme” under Appearance and Personalization. The Zetro theme should be available in “Installed themes”.

The look and feel of the theme makes you windows 7 look simple with white all over the place, which might look a bit odd for the first few minutes. You can tweak it using the extra tweaks available in the readme file that comes along with the zip.

Extending the tweak further, feel free to blend it with something like the Metro-inspired Omnimo 4 theme for Rainmeter.

Source/Download: Zetro UI

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The Windows 8 transformation pack lets you take the Windows 7 boring UI and take it for a jump.

The transformer pack is made up of 8 parts, which are designed by some artists on DeviantArt.The pack is prettymuch in its early stages, and it would get better over time.

Download Windows 8 Transformation pack.

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Update: Run Android apps on Windows

BlueStacks is an application for windows that lets you Run android apps on Windows using a snappier Virtualization mechanism.

Install BlueStacks on your Windows machine and the software allows you to run an instance of Android app right inside windows.

This is no different from installing VMware or Virtualbox and running android inside it, but only being easier and slightly faster.

Right now the BlueStacks website appears to be misbehaving on multiple fronts, behold your patience, the fruit is going to be tasty.

More on this after a break.

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Many of us believe that “Windows upgrade” is buggy and doesn’t work well when you upgrade from older to newer version. We have often recommended a clean install but this video is here to prove every one wrong — A Man uses VMware to emulate old hardware and install DOS to Windows 1.0 and then upgrade it to all the subsequent versions, all the way upto Windows 7. And surprisingly, it worked.

The adventurous guy didn’t include the Windows ME, a big failure. The journey  is documented as a 10 minute video examining the upgrade process a Great recall for all Windows versions.

Twenty Years of Backward compatibility

Before starting systematic upgrades, The Secret of Monkey Island and Doom II were installed to test DOS functionality in each version of Windows.

The results of the experiment are pretty amazing–the games worked in every version of Windows but Vista, which had clumsy DOS support, and problematic everywhere. Twenty years of backwards compatibility? Whoa!

As far as installation times are concerned, they peaked  with Windows 98 and Vista–So we conclude, its possible to upgrade from Windows 1 to Windows 7 without much trouble.

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Windows 8 would get architectural changes, lots of new Features, improvements.

WinRumors claims that Microsoft’s Windows 8 Milestone 2 build has been finalized, and Milestone 3 is on the horizon. After Milestone 3 is done, its just matter of days that we would start seeing Windows 8 beta being seeded to BETA testers and floating on torrents, just like windows 7. The windows 8 beta could arrive as early as summer 2011.

Microsoft compiled 6.2.7947.0.winmain_win8m2_escrow.110218-1608 on Friday, 18th feb 2011. Things are progressing secretly, even inside the company. So far, the leaked information states some recent Windows 8 builds:

6.2.7925.0.winmain_win8m2.110207-1736
6.2.7926.0.winmain_win8m2.110209-1755
6.2.7927.0.winmain_win8m2.110210-1740
6.2.7928.0.winmain_win8m2.110214-1825
6.2.7929.0.winmain_win8m2.110215-1802
6.2.7930.0.winmain_win8m2.110217-1825

Microsoft is also working on an ARM-compatible version of Windows (for tablets), its is actually possible that we might get to see a Tablet version first followed by desktop version. Its evident that Microsoft is struggling to enter the Tablet market, and so far every attempt looks vague.

Windows 8 Milestones, Timelines

What’s interesting to me is how closely this roadmap snippet seems to be mirroring the timelines and build information from a few sites and sources claiming access to leaked Win 8 builds. On February 21, there were reports that Microsoft was just about done with Win 8 Milestone 2. On the roadmap above, final M2 build candidate is slated to arrive on February 23. And according to the roadmap above, the coding for Milestone 3 (M3) is due to start a week from today, on February 28.

There has been evidence that supports “Windows 8 on Tablets“, and we hope to see them floating in the market as early as early 2012. Again, they will be entering the Tablet market late (just like WP7 in smartphones), but we’ve to see how good it gets.

In any case, if Microsoft does follow history and deliver a Win 8 Beta 1, Beta 2 and Release Candidate before RTMing, Windows 8 is looking like a mid-2012 RTM.

Windows 8 has more love for the Cloud, better user interface, more virtualization & networking improvements, core performance improvements,

Full list of Windows 8 Features, Improvements.

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Despite what people, Nokia had to take a move, either could be MeeGo, Android or WP7. Nokia chose x-Microsoft Employee’s decision.

Nokia has dropped the plans from upcoming N series phones, but has revealed new WP7 concept phone which is expected hit market within 2011. We have it on good authority that the technicolor phones on show are conceptual devices produced by the two companies. The shape of these handsets is somewhere between its recent N8 and C7 Symbian devices and there is, as usual for Nokia, a choice of sprightly colors

Even when the partnership has just been announced, the Microkia has actually spent lots of time working together and the phones are coming soon.

image credit: engadget

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Glitches would never go away till it’s a software. And they can be annoying at times, but there are ways you can minimize the annoyances and prevent havocs. One such problem is with Windows Explorer who like to act weird with its “Windows Explorer has stopped responding” “Windows explorer has misbehaved and needs to be closed”, blah blah.

You can always force close it but The Explorer process runs a lot of important things in Windows, and when it crashes, it can really slow you down.

But there is a solution to minimize the damage by sandboxing its process, so that when next time one crashes, others don’t in the fission.

The Solution to windows Explorer crashes

Windows Folder options actually let you create a separate process for the taskbar and desktop from the other open Explorer windows in two different explorer.exe processes (that you see in task manager). This comes handy when one of them crashes.

HowTo: Go to any Windows Explorer (say my computer), Alt+T  > Tools > Folder Options > View > “Launch Folder Windows in a Separate Process”.

If you look more closely, its something that powers Google Chrome browser, new process for every Tab. Instead, there are just two processes. Of course it would be slightly more CPU intensive, but that’s definitely worth it.

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Sure we need to give it some time to mature, it would grow as long as Microsoft is desperate on its mobile OS.

There are lots of new stuff heading WP7’s way in 2011 which would bring it step nearer to Android, iOS. But yeah, it would take 1 full year.

So what’s coming ?

Update 1. “No Donuts”

The first Windows Phone 7 software update, codenamed “NoDo,” will RTM within January, after CES is over. But, it wont be available to new users until February when they start shipping new devices and OTA for existing.The update is supposed to bring

• “copy and paste”
• support for the Qualcomm 7×30 smart phone chipset, a CDMA location stack

Fun fact: “NoDo” stands for “No Donuts” and could be so named because the a minor Android update was called “Donut.” Wow did they copy thaat name as well?

Update 2: “Mango”

This would be a major update which will:

• Introduce Internet Explorer 9 with with the Trident 5 rendering engine, HTML 5 and Silverlight, and gesture support.
• New enhancements related to “entertainment”.

Microsoft had promised Multitasking in 2011, seems like that might be a part of Mango (Windows phone 7.5) which would ship near Q4 timeframe,  if not earlier.
However, it should be noted that there can be number of small updates in between mango and NoDo.
The updates would be available like as ServicePack kind of packages (just like windows), which maynot be OTA as most users might desire for.

More updates soon.

Update: WP7 Updates: Multitasking, IE9, Cross-platform Gaming

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Knowing that Microsoft has grown up to live upto smartphone industry with Windows Phone 7, lets take a look at how well did it do on its first day as compared to any iPhone or Android.

Micrsofot managed to sell 40,000 WP7 devices on its day1 launch in the U.S. If you are under the impression that this is quiet a number, let see how does it compare with iPhones, Androids. Google said last month that it was selling 200,000 Android phones a day. And Apple has said that its iOS sales rate was 270,000 a day.

WP7 was launched on monday, which experts believe is the worst day to launch a new product, when compared to weekends. Beyond the timing, Microsoft may have confused consumers with too many models. Microsoft introduced nine Windows 7 phones at its October press event. “In the phone world, our surveys show that there should be a choice between A or B.” May be it confused buyers more than helping them.

Apart from that there are loads of reasons why most buyers are holding themselves back– The good & Bad of Windows Phone 7:

1. Existing smartphone users won’t switch
2. The Wait for Apps: do you really want to limit youself to 2000 apps as compared to richer apps on iOS, Android?
3. Time to Mature: If took Apple & google 2+ years to prepare a Robust Mobile OS, what is your bet for Microsoft?
4. No Copy Paste, No Multitasking: Welcome to year 2007

So what do we forecast? What can be predicted?

It’s early in the game. Not every product surges right out of the starting blocks. The first Android phone was not a big seller at T-Mobile. A better time to judge Windows Phone 7 will be Christmas, the black friday.

Industry evangelists do forecast that eventually WP7 would gain a share which would become 3rd largest after iOS & Android. How much time will it take? To be honest atleast a year. don’t expect any big growth till the WP7 platform matures with more apps, better platform support.

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Microsoft, today, launched the OS it had been betting on. The OS is beautiful, built ground up with new Architecture, it has little resemblances to any of the leading smarphones OS in the market. Unlike Nokia or RIM, started from scratch and didn’t copy Apple or Google.

The concept of  tiles instead of the icons on iPhone & Android is unique and intuitive, like no other. It shows you all sorts of information from services and your social network up front.

The hardware (the phones) also look promising with top notch hardware from top phone manufactures: HTC, Samsung, Dell, etc.

The Hubs, People, Messaging, Xbox Game center, all the good stuff has already been said by Microsoft

So what could be the Bad?

1. Existing smartphone users won’t switch: For US buyers, it won’t be available on Verizon. That means iPhone owners will have little plans to switch to it, knowing that it just does more tiles than iPhone minus all the apps. And most Android users are very faithful to the platform, they chose the Android platform not because of the visual appeal, but the Features, customizations, openness & power Android offers.

2. The Wait for Apps: Like Andy Rubin said, “we don’t need another platform”. A mobile platform takes years to mature and to have 10s of thousands of apps that iPhone and Android today have. I would be surprised if there are close to 1,000 apps available to start. Compare to Android, with more than 110,000, and iPhone, with 270,000, it would be nowhere for at least next 2 years. After all, apps matter the most.

3. Time to Mature: Like every platform, there will be bugs. Back in 2007, Apple was pretty good, even they had bugs. But Apple had advantage of being first in market, they had all the time to fix/add things. Microsoft is famous for something else: Bugs, crashes (how about ctrl+alt +delete for WP7?) Did Microsoft ever ship a bug-free product? buzz me. If took Apple & google 2+ years to prepare a Robust Mobile OS, what is your bet for Microsoft?

So the whole ecosystem, today, over on Apple & Google is much stronger and less buggy.

4. No Copy Paste, No Multitasking: Welcome to year 2007, when a  new Smartphone launches with so many innovative features that people ignore some basic features like copy/paste, multitasking. Nah, not at all, this is not 2007. Apple & Google have raised the bars. Forget power users, even non-geeks were enticed by iPhone’s Multitasking launch in iOS 4, even when they had little idea about what it really was.

The Verdict

There’s nothing wrong with Windows Phone & its new innovative features. Its just that the time is not right, its too late. If it had been 2007, I could have foreseen Microsoft’s bright future.

For Non-Geeks: If you wish to look stupid among your friends, buy this WP7 and iPhone, Android users would insult you for not having any of the popular apps, that they had been using for years.

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We already know quite a lot about Windows Phone 7 but little was known about the OS Internals until someone got hold of Microsoft’s Documents of Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, Watch Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Launch Event Live

Update: Nine WP7 phones available at launch from HTC, Dell, Samsung, and Dell

Back to basics, Augmented Reality is a term used for live direct or indirect view of a real-world physical environment whose elements are augmented using computer-generated imagery.

Augmented Reality is around for a while now, with Apps like Layar, Google Sky Map (Android) and Wikitude World Browser (iPhone), we’ve seen how helpful and fun can it get. But now its going serious, coming into your real life.

Try On Bathing Suit lets you try new clothes in a virtual dressing room. The app installs to your PC and using a standard webcam it virtualizes your dressing room, at the convenience of your room. Choose among available clothes by using video gestures right from your camera input. Xbox Kinect like gestures are possible and motions to change the size, width and height.

So all you home-freeks, get ready to get shopping at home. Watch the video:

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A year back, Skype became HD capable (720p) and now combined with Group video chat, I see some great opportunities.

The new feature — which is still in beta — will allow groups of up to five friends to chat with each other via video.

For group video conferencing to work, all users must download and install the latest version of the Skype client. Unfortunately, group video chat is only available on Windows users right now, but Skype says a Mac version is in the works and will be ready for download later this year.

While the feature is still in beta, group video conferencing is free, but Skype expects to release it as one of a number of new premium features later this year to compete wit Cisco and other Video conferencing providers. The pricing hasn’t been decided, but,  Skype voice calling and two-way video chat will always remain free for all users.

One existing competition is from Paltalk, which offers up to 10 users video chat that too in a standard web browser using Flash. Will Skype move to webapp? Not yet.

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The Guide contains a lot of information each one of you ahd been waiting to hear about.

System & Kernel: Windows Phone 7 on Windows CE 6.0.  CE 6.0 had been around for a while but was never used with Windows Mobile 6.5. CE 6.0 is a leap ahead of other windows CE.

The shell and application platform reside in user space, while the kernel, drivers, file systems, network, graphics/rendering, and the phone update system run in kernel space. Since we’re talking a 32bit operating system, it can only address 4GB of memory – 2GB for processes, 2GB for the kernel.

The mandated processor will be an ARMv7 design.  Multi-touch, FM Tuner, Wi-Fi, GPS, and camera are also mandated.  The default screen resolution is 800×480 pixels, but developers can go as low as 480×320 (the resolution of the current iPhone).

Connectivity: Bluetooth 3.0 and 4.0 support is noticeably absent, though the phone will support the widespread Bluetooth 2.1 standard.  Microsoft hopefully plans an update at some point to add support for later versions of the wireless communication standard, but there’s no specific details at this point.

Graphics: Windows Phone 7 leverages Direct3D from DirectX 11 for full blown 3D graphics on the mobile. Why is it powerful? It’s exact Desktop replica of DirectX 11, not any trimmed down version. But the scenario is different than the desktop, Phone OEMs will have to write the 2D and 3D drivers for their hardware and Microsoft will deliver the framework.

FileSystems: Windows Phone 7 supports two file-systems: IMGFS and TexFAT. IMGFS  holds the actual system and operating system files and has been defacto in windows mobile phones since long. TexFAT is an extended version of the FAT file system capable of addressing files larger than 4GB, and is used to store “user files”. However, Microsoft has opted for a unified storage approach, which means that applications and users can not distinguish between files in local storage or on a memory card.

The Guide also details the level of control OEMs and carriers would have over the device.They would no longer have control to change everything (like HTC did on HD2) but may alter some limited stuff which includes: connection icons and carrier logo, wallpapers, and change the boot screen, bookmarks, change the default search engine (yes), and install a maximum of 6 applications in the ROM. These applications must be free – no trial software. Apart from that they can add new items to the home menu but cannot delete any of the existing ones.

Software Updates: Updates must be approved by and go through Microsoft’s update service. Like android, small updates will be OTA (over-the-air),  but larger updates will use the Zune software and a USB cable with a windows PC.

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Windows 7 SP1 brings two big features– Dynamic Memory support and a more robust Remote Desktop client which uses RemoteFX. and the other part is the large number of Bug fixes.

It’s been leaked and is freely available to anyone willing to download and install the update from a torrent site.

Though the update is legit, its hard to say what else is included in the update.
However, what’s good is that this build is very recent, with a compile date of March 27th.  The full build string is as follows:  6.1.7601.16537.amd64fre.win7.100327-0053

After the update, the main build number has been incremented by one, so you now have Build 7601. (This is exactly like Vista SP1)

The system was stable for the period I tested after the update. however, you can try it at your own risk.

Download

via GeeksMack

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Of course there are some limitations to Sync and Messenger, restricted to corporate users with Microsoft credentials. Your LiveID won’t let you sign in. But luckily enough the crack is also available, everything works with almost no extra effort.

You can download it here.

Wave 4 has a revamped GUI, and you can theme it to what you want. What comes more is the obvious Windows 7 Integration plus a bulk of new features.

Live Mail

This is much better than Outlook. As far as using Gmail with it goes, it’s  nitty-gritty on features like “Auto Inbox Refresh”, Keyboard shortcuts, Contact Picker Improvements and more.

Live Messenger

Messenger gets Twitter and WordPress connection, Geo-tagging support in Windows Live Photos, New “Friends” view

Live Writer

Live Writer has seen a number of improvements as well (particularly integration with online services like YouTube and Facebook). It’s even better than previous versions — which were already must-haves for desktop blogging on Windows.

Live Photos

Just like Picasa, Live photos has been there for a while. But this update makes it faster and equally competent with most things Picasa can do: Tags, locations, etc.

Movie Maker

Movie Maker for the first time becomes truly usable.  It has new cut, crop, and effects plus uploading to Youtube, Facebook.

via DownloadS

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There’s an app called NetBalancer that let’s you throttle your internet connection (and even LAN connections) by limiting per-application bandwidth. You can choose to assign priorities to each one of them (just like CPU priority) and avoid the sluggish throughput. This application Shapes your bandwidth so as to fairly divide bandwidth among applications.

So next time you run BitTorrent application like uTorrent, you don’t have to worry about how much it wants to eat, you can always restrict it.

You can, for example, designate priority to your web browser instead of your BitTorrent client. You can even specify download and upload priorities separately meaning a process can have a high download priority but a low upload priority.

However, the free version of NetBalancer limits you to setting upload and/or download priorities for 5 different processes and the main features include:

• Set download and upload network priority for any process. Currently supported priorities are:
  • High priority
  • Normal priority
  • Low priority
  • Block traffic
  • Ignore traffic
  • Limit traffic
• Set download and upload speed limits for a process
• Show all system processes with their in and out network traffic speed
• Show current connection for any process
• Show downloaded and uploaded traffic for any process since NetBlancer’s start
• View overall system traffic as a graph
• Show last 15 seconds traffic in system tray
• Fine tune priorities (see Level Severity setting).

NetBalanceris one of it’s kind Quality of Service (QoS) on Windows, avail it for free on Windows Platform: Windows 2003 32/64-bit, XP 32/64-bit, Vista 32-bit, Windows 7 32-bit, 64bit

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Unsurprisingly, Microsoft still won’t talk about Vail officially: “We are not ready to discuss future products but will certainly let you know as soon as more details become available,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. The leaked copy contains the following info:

Windows Home Server – a server operating system with Microsoft, which is targeted at home users (as the name implies) for use in home networks. Windows Server ® Code Name “Vail” is the next generation version of Window Home Server. Vail builds upon both on-premises and cloud technologies to deliver a best-in-class solution for home networks and SOHO. Out of the box, Vail provides simple file sharing, remote access, home computer backup, expandable storage through Drive Extender, and media streaming both inside and outside the home. Vail also contains an application catalog and product-wide extensibility model so that new services such as anti-virus, online sharing, and home automation can be seamlessly and easily added to the solution. Vail will be available pre-installed on systems by OEM partners, and a standalone software package will also be available for those who want to build their own systems.

Vail is based off of Windows Server 2008 R2, meaning it will only come in a 64-bit flavor. WHS version 1 is based off of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.

Here are few facts for this version:

As far as minimum requirements go, you’ll need a 2GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM an as already mentioned 120GB/160GB primary hard drive (NTFS).

It’s pretty work-in-progress butWHS v2 will be one of the most exciting releases to come out of Microsoft in a while.

The WHS going public is still cloudy, not clear if Microsoft plans to have Vail ready this year or next, yeah  last time they said 2010, stay tuned we’ll keep you posted

Few screenshots:

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Unfortunately, Microsoft has a different story. After 17 years of windows, someone found a hole that makes every windows PC on this earth prone to hacking.

This hole allows users with restricted access to escalate their privileges to system level – This is possible on all 32bit Windows Platforms: Windows 3.1 to Windows 7. (and upcoming win7 SP1 too)

The vulnerability is going to have severe impact on a business/office user, on the other hand, a home user might get malware/viruses/worms more easily and readily.

The root cause is Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) introduced to support 16-bit applications for 8086 Mode (VM86) in 80386 processors and other stuff like BIOS calls.

A Typical hack implementation will allow an unprivileged 16-bit program to manipulate the kernel stack of each process via a number of tricks. This can enable attackers to execute code at system privilege level.

Google security analyst, Ormandy, has published exploit which functions under Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Its said that Microsoft was already informed of the hole in mid 2009.

The FIX

For windows 2003: Start group policy editor and enable the “Prevent access to 16-bit applications” option in the Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Application Compatibility section. The settings won’t interfere with 16-bit applications compatibility, but will make it secure for sure.

Windows 3.1, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7:

Users will have to create a Registry Key under:
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\AppCompat
with a D-Word value of VDMDissallowed = 1.

Under Windows XP, to prevent the system from being vulnerable to the exploit, users can place the following text:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\AppCompat]
"VDMDisallowed"=dword:00000001

into a file called vdmdisallow.reg and double click the file. Windows will then automatically import the key.

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Let’s discuss each of the possible improvements, based on proofs from confirmed sources.

Windows 7 would be the last 32-bit OS from Microsoft. Microsoft has already accelerated development of Windows 8 with support for 128 bit platform, and exclusive support by Windows 9.

As per Microsoft:

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP, and IBM.

Robert Morgan is working to get IA-128 working backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64 instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and definitely Windows 9.

User Interface (UI)

UI would go through another overhaul, to something that could make Windows 8 more powerful than today’s Snow Leopard. But you never know the kind of improvement Apple might be coming up with.

Taskbar will be more of the Dock-style, and graphics will be more intuitive. There is a video that demonstrates what Windows 8 could feature:

Read more about them here: Windows 8 “Copenhagen” concepts [Novice]

Virtualization

Clive Longbottom, analyst with Quocirca, predicts virtualization will feature more efficiently and prominently with Windows 8. He said:

“With Citrix, VMware and Microsoft all looking at how to give the ultimate experience to the user, expect to see virtualization within the OS providing enhanced support for virtual desktops, for streaming applications, for access to applications when untethered and unconnected to the internet and so on.”

As per Ballmer‘s comments, voice recognition will be a more-developed feature of Windows 8.

Cloud Integration:

There is the chance that Windows 8 could mark the end of the line for the pure packaged OS as the technology world moves irrevocably away from packaged software towards online platforms with Cloud computing oriented environments.

Microsoft is likely to integrate its work around the Azure cloud platform into the desktop environment.

Networking Improvements