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UPDATED: Microsoft has quietly pushed back the third official service pack for Windows XP to 2008. Whether or not this is an issue seems to be one for debate.

This isn’t the only service pack that’s pulling a Godot, according to Microsoft’s Service Pack Road Map. The second service pack for Windows Server 2003 has been pushed back from late 2006 to Q1 of 2007.

Service Pack 3 for Windows XP was long-believed to be planned for mid- to late-2007 release. It was largely going to be a collection of cumulative fixes and patches, IE 7, and .Net 3.0, although its contents were still up in the air.

Microsoft was not available for comment at press time.

Pushing the third service pack to 2008 leaves a four-year gap since Service Pack 2 came out. That’s not a good practice or message for business customers, said Mike Cherry, analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

“I don’t understand how on one hand Microsoft says it wants predictable releases of operating systems but on the other hand doesn’t see that the predictable release of service packs would be equally valuable,” he said.

Microsoft has refined its patching system through auto update, but there are still a lot of fixes to install since SP 2 was issued, he points out. “Granted, it’s done automatically, but it would be nice if it was all rolled up into one package and tested against each other,” said Cherry.

But Michael Silver, senior analyst with Gartner, said organizations are generally not in a rush for a new service pack.

“Support on SP1 just ended and there are a lot of companies that have not been able to get to SP2 yet because of application breakage issues or because it was low priority and they just haven’t gotten around to testing their apps,” he said.

Waiting longer for SP3 won’t bother most organizations, Silver maintained. IE7 just shipped and they’ll be more concerned with deploying that and the forthcoming .NET Framework 3.0.

There could be another reason, according to Rob Enderle, principle analyst with The Enderle Group: Microsoft doesn’t want to promote XP.

“They want to put all the focus on Vista and not have an XP service pack come out in a Vista launch year,” he said. “If they do a major refresh during the launch of a new OS, then people will get confused. They want the message to be clear, to move the customer to Vista and not patch XP.”

Microsoft seemed to confirm Enderle’s suspicion regarding priorities.

“Right now our priority is Windows Vista. We’ll have more information to share about the next service pack for XP after Windows Vista ships,” said the company spokesperson. He did confirm that a third service pack is planned for the first half of 2008.

Enderle said there hasn’t been a huge rise in demand for a third service pack, and he notes that by the time SP 3 ships in 2008, new machines will be coming with Vista installed.

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Sometime in the next few weeks, an official beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista will be released, according to the Windows Vista Team Blog, with the final release expected in the first quarter of next year.

A Beta release of Windows Vista SP1 is slated for availability in the next few weeks.  A small group of testers has been putting a preview of the SP1 Beta through its paces to help prepare for broader release.  We made the choice to start with a very small group of testers because we think it’s better for both our customers and for Microsoft to keep the beta program small at the start.

A later pre-release of SP1 will be available to a larger group of testers  via MSDN and TechNet subscribers.

But Ed Bott says chances are good you won’t be one of the lucky few to get your hands on it.

Microsoft says the next SP1 beta will be released to “a moderate sized audience.” Invitations have already gone out, and testers who’ve been accepted to the beta program have received confirmation via e-mail and online at Microsoft’s Connect portal for beta programs. There’s unlikely to be a public beta until a release candidate is available, although it’s virtually certain that the code from the upcoming beta will leak onto public websites and spread via torrents within hours of its official release.

Mary Jo Foley has even more specific numbers:

Vista SP1 will go to about 10,000 to 15,000 selected beta testers by mid-September, officials said. The SP1 beta build will be made available to these testers for download form the Microsoft Connect site. A broader public beta of SP1 is likely around the time Microsoft delivers a release-candidate test build of the service pack, officials said, while declining to provide a timeframe for that build. The final “gold” release of SP1 is now slated for some time in Q1 2008.

What’s in it? As expected, not much in terms of features or interface changes. Look for performance enhancements and bug fixes, including a fix for Vista’s nasty sleep/resume problems.

A white paper from Microsoft has more details about what’s inside.

Also coming in the first quarter of next year: Windows Server 2008. Coming in the first half of next year: Windows XP Service Pack 3.

Vista has a nifty little feature called the Network Map. It can show you the design of your network, and even give you some basic information about the computers connected to it.

This map shows two hardwired computers connecting to a switch, which jacks into a wireless router that also has three Wi-Fi-connected PCs linked to it. In some cases (when Windows’ own Wi-Fi drivers are being used) you’ll see the quality of the wireless connections, which is great when troubleshooting a connection that may be on the other side of the house.

However, at this stage in Vista’s adoption by consumers, there are apt to be a lot of mixed networks, with both Vista and XP systems. And XP systems don’t show up on the map.

That’s because Vista has a technology called Link Layer Topology Discovery, or LLTD, which is not in XP. But, Microsoft has an update that will let you add it. There’s also a Knowledge Base article with more details. Note that Service Pack 2 for XP is required.

It installs quickly and, in the cases where I’ve put it on XP systems, it has not required a reboot. If you’ve got a mixed XP/Vista network, it’s a must-have.

So how much music do you have on your computer? Dozens of songs? Hundreds? Thousands?

How would you feel if you went to play some tunes and suddenly found all of them . . . gone?

A new computer worm that works on Windows-based computers erases MP3 files — all of them. From Ars Technica:

. . . A newly-uncovered worm called W32.Deletemusic does exactly what its name implies–it goes through a PC and deletes all MP3 files in sight. And that’s it. Simultaneously low-threat and highly annoying, the worm makes its way from computer to computer by spreading itself onto all attached drives of a given PC, including flash drives and removable media. If that media is then removed and inserted into another computer, it continues its music-eating rampage on the new host.

Fortunately, antivirus vendors are rating this low-risk — it’s in the wild, but not widespread. There’s no indication that this is currently being delivered via the usual high-traffic methods, including e-mail or infected Web sites. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be.

But because it moves from drive to drive — even removable ones — it would be particularly deadly on a home network, where each family member might host his or her stash of music. Oh, the humanity!

As the Ars story points out, this isn’t the first piece of malware to target music files:

. . . Nopir-B made its rounds some two years ago and posed as DVD copying software, according to security firm Sophos. When users tried to run it, Nopir-B scolded them for participating in piracy and proceeded to delete all MP3s from their computers. Similarly, last year’s Erazer trojan deleted not only MP3 files, but AVIs, MPEGs, WMVs, and ZIP files as well in a “crusade” against piracy.

. . . And it likely won’t be the last. I’m not going to say that this is an evil move by the greedy recording industry, which hates what digital music has done to their fiscal Nirvana. But I bet that, deep down inside, they’ve got to be secretly pleased.

If you’re an amateur to the web world specially web hosting then there are many decisions you have to make. Hosting provides the concrete base on which every E-business works as well as blooms. There are numerous choices available in the market but it’s the Linux and Windows hosting which heads the list. Everyone has their own knowledge bag according to which they govern their business but which is profitable to you may not be profitable for someone else. That’s why majority of the people are in trouble waters while choosing the hosting server for their business. Let’s delve into each hosting and get the clear picture. The usual cost involved in running a server generally doesn’t affect the cost of complete web hosting package. Windows Hosting is owned and developed by Microsoft whereas Linux is an open source and free too. The crux is that using Windows Hosting can be more expensive at times but it has its own benefits too.

According to the common myth people assume that because their computer runs Windows they too have to buy Windows hosting package. But this myth is absolutely wrong. You can normally access your web account through FTP or a control panel and both the servers support these methods. But the major difference lies in the FTP commands that are somewhat different in Linux and Windows. In short, occasionally when you try to get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message. Still, this won’t happen very often. Linux and Windows Hosting provide same features that include PHP, mySQL, POP3 and many more. The major difference arises when you want to create your site using Access, Windows Streaming Media, ASP, .NET environment, FrontPage or any other Microsoft technologies. Then you’re bound to use a Windows as your hosting server. However, in Linux there is a limited support for these technologies and what all are available are very expensive. That’s why it’s wise to think twice before selecting a hosting server as shifting from one server to another can be very hard.

The next points to argue are the reliability and stability of the servers. Windows is far more insecure in comparison to Linux. Windows is widely used operating system for home PC’s but not Linux. However, Linux is equally insecure as whooping number of successful hack attempts have been made on it till now. Thus, in the end we can say that the security of both the servers usually depends upon the competency of the system administrators. Herein, if you’re security minded then you’ll choose the best and secured hosting company irrespective of the chosen server. Now discussing the performance there isn’t much difference between the two. Linux is faster than Windows as Linux is loaded with extendable implementation. Whereas Windows tries to provide “’all in one” package which isn’t fruitful at times. There isn’t much difference between both the servers but in terms of performance Linux outshines Windows.

Thus, if you’re hunting for the server for your E-business then think before you jump on any conclusion and don’t leave any stone unturned.

Last month, Microsoft announced that when it provides advance information about what would be coming for its regular Patch Tuesday fixes, it would offer more details about what software titles were affected.

The Security Bulletin Advance Notification for June is out, and sure enough, we know more about what Microsoft will deliver to Windows users on the second Tuesday of the month.

You can expect six patches. Four fix Critical vulnerabilities, one is rated Important and the last Moderate.

The software affected includes Windows 2000, XP and Vista; Windows Server 2003; Internet Explorer 5, 6 and 7; Windows Mail in Vista; Outlook Express; and Visio 2002 and 2003.

Microsoft is saving the good stuff — the details about the flaws themselves — for Tuesday’s release.

Also coming Tuesday: Seven high-priority updates for various Microsoft products that aren’t security-related. There are no details as to which products those updates involve, however, the notification does indicate they are not for the Windows desktop operating systems.

Update: Mary Jo Foley says one of the patches will be a major one — Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.

The area of greatest risk associated with the new Windows DNS exploit resides within intranets, where Windows Server domain controllers are running DNS and might become compromised, according to Ken Dunham of VeriSign iDefense. Microsoft said its security team is hard at work developing a security update to fix the DNS vulnerability.

In what has become a string of vulnerabilities in recent weeks, Microsoft has confirmed limited, targeted attacks against its Windows Server Domain Name System (DNS) service.
Microsoft said its initial investigation reveals that the attempts to exploit this vulnerability could allow an attacker to run code in the security context of the DNS server service. That opens a door for phishing attacks, directory services issues, and e-mail disruptions.

The latest Microsoft zero-day vulnerability affects Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4, Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2. Windows 2000 Professional Service Pack 4, Windows XP Service Pack 2, and Windows Vista do not contain the vulnerable code and are not affected.

Proof-of-Concept Exploit

Microsoft said its security team is hard at work developing a security update to fix the issue. However, Christopher Budd of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) urged customers to deploy workarounds as quickly as possible because the company is aware of proof-of-concept code that can exploit the vulnerability. The SANS Internet Storm Center has confirmed at least two exploits.

Microsoft’s internal investigation reveals that the vulnerability occurs in the processing of remote procedure call (RPC) traffic by Windows DNS. The DNS service is only installed on Windows server systems, not on client systems, and is not enabled by default on all Windows servers. That safeguards a percentage of customers.

What’s more, even though the vulnerability is in the DNS service, Microsoft said it cannot be attacked over standard DNS port 53. An attempt to exploit the vulnerability has to be made over RPC, which uses traffic on port numbers above 1,024. However, on Sunday, Budd reported that it is also possible for a user with valid logon credentials to exploit the vulnerability over port 445.

Risks and Workarounds

The area of greatest risk potentially resides within intranets, where domain controllers are running DNS and might become compromised, according to Ken Dunham, director of the rapid response team for VeriSign iDefense. These servers store all the passwords for a Windows network.

“It is feasible that a bot may incorporate an intranet spreading routine to exploit vulnerable computers within the network to help it spread,” Dunham explained, noting that a bot can be programmed to spread through the recent ANI vulnerability to infect clients and then use the zombies to exploit the DNS service against the local domain controller to gain complete control over an entire network.

“Malicious actors that compromise DNS servers will likely reconfigure the server to silently redirect Web traffic to compromised Web sites for monetary gain or corporate espionage,” Dunham predicted. However, as Microsoft noted, there are workarounds. And for those who use Symantec security tools, the company already has released Bloodhound.Exploit.136 signatures to detect threats designed to exploit this vulnerability.

For now, Redmond is encouraging customers to evaluate the workaround that would disable remote management over RPC for DNS servers. Other recommended workarounds include blocking unsolicited inbound traffic on ports 1,024 to 5,000. In Windows 2003, Dunham added, data execution prevention is also helpful in blocking the exploit.

1: Start the System Configuration Utility

Click Start, click Run, type msconfig, and then click OK.

The System Configuration Utility dialog box appears.

2: Configure selective startup options

a) In the System Configuration Utility dialog box, click the General tab, and then click Selective Startup.

b) Click to clear the Process SYSTEM.INI file check box.
c) Click to clear the Process WIN.INI file check box.

d) Click to clear the Load Startup Items check box.

e) Click the Services tab.

f) Click to select the Hide All Microsoft Services check box.

g) Click Disable All, and then click OK.

h) Restart the computer

When you try to start your Windows XP based computer, you may receive this error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

CAUSE

This issue can occur if the System hive for the Windows XP installation is missing or damaged.

RESOLUTION:

Use the Recovery Console Tool:

To restore a damaged registry hive, use the Recovery Console to restore the backup copy of the hive from the Repair folder. The Repair folder contains a copy of the system’s registry hives that were created after the first successful startup of Windows XP.

To replace the damaged registry hive and restore the backup copy of the hive from the Repair folder: Start your computer to the Recovery Console. In Recovery Console, change to Windows folder.

Type cd system32\config and press ENTER

Type dir system, and press ENTER

If you can run the preceding command successfully, type:

ren system system.bak and press ENTER

Type copy c:\windows\repair\system, and then press ENTER

You should receive a “One file copied” informational message.

Type exit, and press ENTER to quit Recovery Console and restart the computer in normal mode.

Visa is growing everyday and becoming popular among 3d Fanatics. Directx10 , the secret of Vista has been boon to both game players and user experience on desktops. Vista themes are like skin on your default vista. They make vista look amazing by providing different icons or wallpapers and yeah the sound and graphics effect.

I found these 7 amazing themes which all vista users can use on their desktops. You can choose whichever suits your taste. Some of the themes might require Free Theme Manager. Click on the images and it will take you to download page.

Please Backup Your Vista Before you install these themes. Thats for your safety. The author is not responsible for a third party tools.

Balck Light

 Alpha OS Suite

Moon Shadow II

Eplison

Design II

sotArt

Azure

So what are you waiting for, go ahead and download it

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