Short theory

BIOS or EFI will read the MBR and the boot sector. Boot procedure then continues by loading Windows Boot Manager (BOOTMGR). Boot manager will then access first active partition and read Boot Configuration Data (BCD). BCD is a replacement for boot.ini and in the end it will display the boot menu. If you pressed F8 or you had more than one option in the boot menu, if not, it will simply boot your Windows.

Sometimes if you move partitions here and there, delete them and rename them, the information in BCD will not reflect the situation on your hard drives. Windows will not allow you to delete System partition even if there is no Windows installed on it. That’s because a system partition contains necessary data for booting your system.

How to break things?

If you are strictly a Windows user, then it will be hard to do that. If you are using multiple operating systems and you don’t play around with fdisk or other disk tools you are also pretty safe. However if you decide to reinstall your Windows to a new disk drive, without completely clearing your old installation, and you later delete partition that was marked as System partition in Windows disk manager, then you will end up with broken machine. Again, this cannot be done with Windows disk management tools, you will have to use some other tool.

A message similar to this will surprised you when you try booting Windows.

Windows failed to start. A Recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, and then click next
3. Click "repair your computer."
Status: 0xc000000e

Repairing a broken installation will also fail and you are pretty much stuck.

Just reinstall, you can’t fix that and you’ll spend hours trying to repair it.

That’s what they told me. However, not all is lost and you probably don’t have to reinstall and it will only take a few minutes to repair the whole mess.

How to repair things?

With a little help of BCDEdit (Boot Configuration Database Edit) you can pretty much fix most of the problems. If you boot with install DVD and you enter the command prompt you will be able to run bcdedit. Running it without any options and you will get a list of all the bootable partitions and boot manager. So, a healthy, working BCD will look similar to this:

C:\Windows\system32>bcdedit
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \bootmgr
description             Windows Boot Manager
locale                  en-US
default                 {current}
displayorder            {current}
timeout                 30
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {current}
device                  partition=C:
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7 Home Premium
locale                  en-US
recoverysequence        {b20ad2c6-2111-11e0-9e5a-fff6f1e7349c}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                partition=C:
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {c5e53405-20c7-11e0-829f-806e6f6e6963}

Take a look at the identifier field in the Windows Boot Loader. In your case it probably won’t say {current} but it will contain a UUID. If you have more than one Windows installation then you will have more than one Boot Loader entry and bcdedit will display all of them. Those entries are equivalents of (now obsolete) boot.ini entries. A broken boot loader entry will look similar to this:

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier              {3de3a01-127a-3e20-af15f-b15e6f78c963}
device                  unknown
path                    \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description             Windows 7 Home Premium
locale                  en-US
recoverysequence        {b20ad2c6-2111-11e0-9e5a-fff6f1e7349c}
recoveryenabled         Yes
osdevice                unknown
systemroot              \Windows
resumeobject            {c5e53405-20c7-11e0-829f-806e6f6e6963}

This is a broke boot entry in your BCD, device and osdevice are unknown. You will have to set them manually in order to boot. For example if your Windows installation is on your first partition then you will have to issue the following two commands:

bcdedit /set {3de3a01-127a-3e20-af15f-b15e6f78c963} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {3de3a01-127a-3e20-af15f-b15e6f78c963} osdevice partition=C:

First command will change the value of device parameter and the second command will change the osdevice parameter. If you have your Windows on a second partition, then you would use D: instead of C:.

BCDEdit is also used for changing boot order if you have multiple installations of Windows or ore operating systems on your hard disk. Also, you can tweak many other parameters with it, but you better be careful. :)

A word of caution

BCDEdit is one of those tools that can help you a lot and at the same time you can really mess things up if you are not careful and that is why it will need administrator privileges to run. When booting from install DVD you get those privileges automatically. When you are running Windows and you are logged in as a normal user, you will have to run bcdedit from cmd.exe that has administrator privileges otherwise it will fail to work.

Don’t over use it and you’ll be fine.

Did you ever have any problems with Eclipse? With initial versions of Galileo and in previously released Gynamed there was a problem with preassigned keyboard shortcuts on some locale’s. The problem that Eclipse created when using Slovene keyboard layout was that while programmer wanted to type the ] key, Eclipse run File Search action.

Slovenian users are not to blame that their keyboard has ] key mapped to AltGr+G key combination. And Eclipse developers could browse through Wikipedia to discover what obscure keyboard layouts exist.

Any competent programmer will notice that with the default key mapping Eclipse guards programmers from using too many arrays since typically array is marked with [] key combination. They are advancing object oriented design and programming. But in some cases arrays actually make your code faster and optimize memory usage and fragmentation.

To discover how to remedy the problem read on.

Fortunately Eclipse has built in keyboard mapping manager. Until Eclipse developers don not remove the mapping or replace it with something more appropriate you can do the following:

1. Open Window->Preferences->General->Keys
2. Sort table by Binding and find the one that is bothering you. Unbind all commands that are bind to the combination. If you don’t know which combination you should be searching for use Binding text box and type in the key that is bothering you.

There you have it problem is solved. File search gone by removing the CTRL+ALT+G or AltGr+G key combination from Eclipse key mapping. If you can not live without the combination you could replace it with something more appropriate.

On the October 23, 2009 AuthenTec released information about update to Windows 7 driver infrastructure. About 2 weeks ago I noticed an optional update in Windows 7 update section. It read AuthenTec Inc. driver update for AuthenTec Inc. AES2810. I was pleased to finally get the final version of the driver.

Immediately checked it and started the 32Mb download procedure. Smooth download, smooth install. Went to Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Biometric Devices and the  AES2810 was still available. I decided for clean setup so I removed my existing fingerprint data by clicking and confirming the Remove your fingerprint data dialog. Then I clicked on Manage your fingerprint data and waited for my password dialog. None appeared. Frustrated and angry about the stupid update I started to minimize the windows and was presently surprised by the TrueSuite login screen. Typed and retyped in password of my account and voila I was ready to enroll my fingers.

TrueSuite Application has changed a bit. Must say that it is simple and intuitive to use. You have 2 options. Enroll finger by selecting a finger to enroll and repeating finger swipe 3 times and delete an enrolled finger. Additional nifty feature is available when you enroll a finger.  When TrueSuite application is run through manage your fingerprint data call you are presented by the password login screen. But now you can use your enrolled finger to authenticate your self. No more password typing.

I repeated the update on both HP notebooks that I own. So I can confirm that the driver works for HP EliteBook 8530p and HP Compaq 2230s. Bravo AuthenTec. Now if you could only release data which would help to create or create a Linux driver then I would be in heaven.

I am not sure if this is related to the fact that µTorrent is downloading on TrueCrypted drive, but I am not going to test this theory. The impostor was already removed from my disks and I was just copying a load of stuff to and from the encrypted drive for two hours now and no freezing.

Microsoft support was VERY helpful and they told me that I can use my existing serial number to install 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium OEM, not the retail version, but OEM. Great! Unfortunately they told me to get the installation DVD somewhere else.

Read on if you want to know how I solved my problem …

The trouble was that somewhere else didn’t have the Windows Home Premium 64bit OEM installation medium. All I could find were retails of Ultimate and Enterprise version. I could have looked longer and harder and I’d probably managed to find them.

But I stumbled on a better solution. Windows 7 DVD’s are all the same, there is just this configuration file that tells the installation program what to install. It is called EI.CFG.

It resides in the /sources directory on a DVD and it looks similar to this:

[EditionID]
Ultimate
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

In this particular example installation program will know that it is installing Windows 7 Ultimate from a Retail package. I needed Home Premium from OEM channel.

Grab 4GB USB flash drive, format it and copy the contents of the Windows installation DVD to the root directory on USB drive. Then edite EI.CFG file to suit your needs. Mine looked like this after editing:

[EditionID]
HomePremium
[Channel]
OEM
[VL]
0

[Update 12/11/2009]:
We were told that the best way to do this is to simply delete this file from USB drive. Installer will then ask which version you want to install and you can simply select it from a drop down menu. You still need to select the correct version otherwise your key will be unusable and you will have to repeat the installation.

After that you will need to make USB drive bootable. Luckily the tools needed for this are on the Windows 7 installation DVD. Open cmd.exe and switch to boot directory on the installation DVD.

c:\> d:
c:\> cd boot

Then you need to run bootsect program and specify the drive letter of your USB key:

bootsect /nt60 e:

In the above example boot sector for Windows Vista (or Windows 7) will be created on drive E:. Now you need to reboot and tell your computer to boot from USB drive.

Windows 7 installation should start and you will be installing the version that you specified in the EI.CFG file.

Keep in mind that your serial number determines which version of Windows you can install. If you have serial number that belongs to Retail package you won’t be able to install OEM version with it and if you have serial number for Home Premium, you won’t be able to install Ultimate version.

The whole procedure in four short steps:

• Format 4GB usb drive
• Copy contents of Windows DVD to USB drive
• Edit \sources\ei.cfg if necessary or even better, delete this file from USB drive
• Make USB drive bootable with bootsect /nt60 e:

Many thanks to OmegaBlue for all the tips and PaJo for the update. :)

While preparing my new workstation I stumbled upon a problem on how to boot VirtualBox machine from a USB fash drive. Pretty soon I discovered that VirtualBox has no support for booting from USB devices. Something with their BIOS not supporting it and that implementing this wouldn’t bring a lot to the whole package.

Read on if you want to know more.

I am using Ubuntu 9.0.4 and I installed VirtualBox from Ubuntu repositories. Accessing physical devices in Linux is restricted to root user only, so you’ll have to run your VirtualBox as root, which is rather inconvenient, however this is the only way I got things to work.

The trick is to tell VirtualBox that your USB drive is just an ordinary IDE drive.

sudo -s
virtualbox &
mkdir /root/.VirtualBox/HardDisks
VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk \
   -filename /root/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/usbdisk.vmdk \
   -rawdisk /dev/sdi -register

First you switch to root shell and then run VirtualBox in the background. If you did this before and you have virtual machines already running as root then you can probably skip creating HardDisks directory. With VBoxManage you create vmdk file that is connected to /dev/sdi device and register it with internal registry of hard disks.

Two important things to note: First, path to image file must be absolute starting with / and second, raw disk device must be your actual device. It might not be called /dev/sdi, but something completely different. Plug in your USB drive and then run dmesg in console. Output will be similar to this:

... snip snip ...
[181685.693389] usb-storage: device found at 5
[181685.693392] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[181690.692200] usb-storage: device scan complete
[181690.692918] scsi 12:0:0:0: Direct-Access                               0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[181690.694539] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] 7897088 512-byte hardware sectors: (4.04 GB/3.76 GiB)
[181690.695037] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Write Protect is off
[181690.695040] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
[181690.695043] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Assuming drive cache: write through
[181690.702414] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] 7897088 512-byte hardware sectors: (4.04 GB/3.76 GiB)
[181690.702910] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Write Protect is off
[181690.702913] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
[181690.702916] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Assuming drive cache: write through
[181690.702922]  sdi: sdi1
[181690.830974] sd 12:0:0:0: [sdi] Attached SCSI removable disk

This is your newly plugged USB drive. If you are not sure about it, you can open file manager and mount your drive then check the output of mount command to see which device was just mounted.

After VBoxManage has completed check if the file was created.

ls -l /root/.VirtualBox/HardDisks
total 4
-rw------- 1 root root 624 2009-09-08 12:50 usbdisk.vmdk

If all seems to be in order and you got output similar to this, then you can go create a virtual machine using your USB drive. When you get to the disk image creation you’ll be able to select usbdisk.vmdk.

Before you start the virtual machine make sure you add one more disk if you plan to install something from your USB drive. This way you can also add other physical storage devices to Virtual Box.

Not so long ago BigWhale wrote about Windows 7 RTM. Sure Windows 7 have some installation quirks, but which operating system does not have one or two of those? Some operating systems can live without the constant need for GUI updates. But not Windows. Their micro GUI developers are working hard. So hard that they have a new GUI concept ready even before Windows 7 accumulated some dust on the shelves. Now that is why I call ahead of time market.. – development.

If you want to see Microsoft dreaming machine in action read on and take a look at a possible future of Windows 8.

By looking at video I found out the following about Cullen and Mary. Cullen has a tendency to use Skype and μTorrent and is an early bird. Creating a gazillion Word documents and occasionally a web page. Obviously he is a nature lover with pimped out laptop or notebook which contains his pictures, music, videos and more. He is constantly connecting to his friends computer. Strangely his name is Ben. Explorer on this desktop evolved into web browser … sorry is looking like a web page with lots of useful links and ingenious folder and document icons. Sorting is done with new Windows subsystem which is similar to Rails on Windows technology. Icons are painted with Paint and animated using Silverlight technology.

Like all the people in this Universe he likes to watch TV Series … on his laptop or notebook. Currently he is a fan of Futurama series and understands a dead language. His new operating system brings has an additional “My Something”. And a pimped out plugin that was available years ago for Firefox browser which is integrated into operating system. Taskbar has totally animated icons. And can be moved independently of the Start icon. But wait the best is yet to come. Start icon can be moved around.

Mary is more private person. But I think she likes cats.

So Copenhagen Concept. A concept no doubt. I like the idea of Explorer evolving into a web browser. But to be able to run this GUI monstrosity I will probably need Dual Intel Octave processor with a tendency to high-end consumer graphics card which will probably use a minimum of 1GB of 3.56Gz memory for smooth transitions. Is that a users curse?

Image by 'smil via Flickr

And what about licensing? Will we get free Windows 8 operating system with payable update service? Probably not! We will surely get multiple choices of Professional, Home, Student, Ultimate, Unseen versions of Windows 8.

Every version will be packed with goodies of which normal user will probably use 10% + Solitaire. With clever marketing campaign titled “Deal me one” Microsoft will surely win over the Linux desktop distributions, like Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, openSUSE and others and once for all take over the desktop market.

I have already setup my banking account and will save precious euros to buy Windows 8, but in the mean time I will wake up and install Linux – Ubuntu to be precise and see what the open source community has to offer.

Recently I wrote about installation of Windows 7 on HP Compaq 2230s. I had a few problems with device drivers which were resolved by downloading Vista drivers from HP site and installing them. My initial idea was to be able to use all devices on the notebook. I was specially interested in notebook fingerprint sensor and its capability to login to Windows account by using my fingerprint scanner.

The notebook has an OEM version of AuthenTec AES2810 fingerprint scanner. After installation of HP device driver fingerprint reader will be recognized and you will see fingerprint sensor. Since Windows 7 got a new Biometric Framework it is only prudent that the framework will get its own configuration section in Drivers and Hardware section. But this is where ASE2810 fails. When looking at Start->Control panel->Hardware and Sound->Biometric Devices you can see the AES2810 device but Windows 7 tells you that it is unavailable. If you are interested how this can be solved then read on!

AuthenTec provides you with a BETA version of their software where you can enroll your biometric data. You can download the software from their web page:

• 32bit version – Download

• 64bit version – Download

Since my version of Windows 7 is 32bit I downloaded and installed 32bit version. Restarted the computer and checked if I can start TrueSuite 2.0. You should do the same. You probably can not, because although Windows 7 shows AS2810 device as found you can not use it since AuthenTec drivers installation is not working as it should. If by some miracle you are able to access and run TrueSuite then “Bravo to you”!

Then I started to check what went wrong and I found out that the only way to get the scanner working with this software is to do the following:

1. Run C:\Program Files\AuthenTec, Inc\Authentec WBDI Driver Package\WIN7TS32.exe which uninstalls  the software
2. Reboot the computer
3. Install the WBDI Driver Package again by using installer from previous location C:\Program Files\AuthenTec, Inc\Authentec WBDI Driver Package\WIN7TS32.exe

Now I assume that this complication is due to BETA nature of AuthenTec drivers. I was able to get the fingerprint scanner working on the following HP notebooks:

• HP Compaq 2230s (NN340ES) and
• HP EliteBook 8530p (FU617AW).

I was able to access fingerprint enrollment in Start->Control Panel->Hardware and Sound under Biometric Devices section. By clicking on Biometric Devices you can see list and status of biometric devices that are detected by the system. At this point status changed to Manage your fingerprint data. By clicking on it you will run TrueSuite application and you can enroll or remove a fingerprint for specific account. With Remove your fingerprint data enrolled account fingerprint data will be completely removed.

In the login screen a fingerprint scanner is seen as a user account icon. Once you have enrolled your finger, logoff and try logging in with your enrolled finger. Swipe your finger and login.

A note of warning: after you decide which finger to enroll, be careful with whom you share this information. If you’re not too careful it could cost you a body part … … or at least a finger ;)

Update: Final version of Windows 7 AES2810 driver is available via Windows Update. If you are interested in what will be broken after installing it check this post.

Since HP declared that 32bit version of the Windows Vista operating system will run on the notebook in question I decided to put that statement to the test. Actually I used bleeding edge technology, because I was not ready to buy Windows Vista and Microsoft is kind enough to provide you with a free license for Windows 7 RC version. HP notebook had FreeDOS installed as an operating system. I really used it to its maximal potential. It brought back some fond memories from 10 years ago but unfortunately I had to say goodbye to it. If you want to know how then read on.

I did not have any problems with Windows 7 installation. Previous undertakings of BigWhale convinced me to remove all partitions from the disk and create one 150GB partition of which Windows 7 installer informed me that he might create smaller partition due to its internal usage.  That was fine by me and in an hour or so I was able to look at the picture below.

Windows 7 Desktop

Windows 7 installation happened without major problems. Creation of user account, HomeGroup password and that is all. I was interested how unpopulated the device list will be but I found out only 3 major problems with HP drivers. They were:

• USB\VID_08FF&PID_2810&REV_1703 (USB\VID_08FF&PID_2810) – Fingerprint Sensor – Solved by installing AuthenTec Fingerprint Driver (32-bit) for MS Vista – Download

• ACPI\HPQ0004 – Solved by installing HP 3D DriveGuard for MS Windows Vista – Download

• ACPI\HPQ0006 – Solved by installing HP Quick Launchs Button for MS Windows Vista – Download

If for some reason you are craving for up to date version of HP drivers you can get them here.

I have not noticed any performance drawbacks. Measuring Windows Experience Index informed me of 3.6 score. Quite low since every component except the graphics card rated higher than 4.9. Graphics card rated 3.2 and I guess that graphics card is what runs this operating system.

On average My Experience Index is telling me that this version of Windows is running a little faster than Windows Vista and a lot slower than Windows XP. I was pleased with the installation which bear in mind was performed on empty disc and it did not require much effort or administration knowledge. I have tested WiFi and wired network connection and both worked out of the box, on already setup and tested router without problems. The fingerprint scanner is not working as I have hoped. Device is detected but I can not logon using it. It will need some hacking.

Overall I am quite pleased.

It was time to finally install Windows 7. Released To Manufacturing version. I must admit, I was quite skeptical about this because it seems that I have been cursed in my youth and Microsoft products simply fail with me. No, seriously, I have had so many issues with Windows that even Chuck Norris can’t count all of them, and he counted to infinity, twice. I do hope that you are not affected by the same curse.

So why Windows 7 if nothing works for me like it should? Windows 7 was, and still is praised by a lot of fans. It is even praised by some people that are not, you know, typical fan-boys. I wanted to see what this praise was all about and what is so great on Windows 7. I already had Release Candidate 1 downloaded but I decided to obtain Ready To Manufacture version, they said that it is the shit.

First I made backup of existing Windows Vista partition. I had it installed on first partition on the first hard drive and I have few hundred GB free on my Backup drive, so all I did was:

$ sudo dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/media/Backup/Vista.img bs=4096

Yes, this is all you need to do, to get a working (and mountable) image of your hard disk partition. If you’re using Linux or some other unix-like operating system that has the dd command.

After a reboot and a long wait at the Starting Windows screen I was able to proceed with installation. Unfortunately it seems that the curse is still on me. Installation stopped before it even started. I wasn’t able to install Windows 7, why? I had no idea at the time, take a look at the screen shot.

Why on earth?

What did I do? I wanted to install on existing partition and Windows 7 told me that old files will be moved to some other place. Not good enough since I wanted them to disappear. I formatted the partition and tried to install. I failed. Then, I deleted the partition and again tried to install, and again failed. There was no way to install Windows 7. Repartitioning the whole disk was out of the question.

Deleting didn't help.

What’s next? First a reboot, maybe installer will change its mind after new partition was created. It didn’t. Then I went into Repair Mode. Windows 7 installation gives you an option to repair broken Windows 7 installations. I was wondering how this would apply to me since I had no installation and there was nothing to repair. However, I was able to run console and consult with the diskpart program about disk setup. I was happy. I deleted the partition, created new one and formatted it, all in commad line.

It didn’t help. I wasn’t able to install. The story of Windows 7 seemed to be coming to a grinding halt, sad story without they lived happily ever after ending. Then I remembered to take a look at the BIOS settings. It appeard that I had my first SATA hard disk marked as my second hard disk. I have two equally the same 320 GB hard disks for system installations. One hosted Vista and OS X, the other one hosted Linux and their order in BIOS was reversed. I have no idea why, but I’m sure I had a good reason to do this. Not so long ago Ubuntu 9.0.4 installed without any problems on this configuration.

I put the drives in normal order and I was able to install. Couple of reboots later I was stuck again. Installation stoppped at the “Completing the installation …” and wouldn’t continue. This was a little easier to resolve. I ejected the DVD and installation continued with a reboot. After the reboot I was back in Business, err, Ultimate. ;)

Windows 7 did install quite quickly not counting all the trouble that I had to go through to get it to work. I am sure that the big dinosaur in Redmond called Microsoft has this big switchboard with a bazillion lights on it, some sort of the blinkenlights machine, and each time someone installs Windows the light gets turned on, so I made them happy for a while. However my first search term in Bling when I opened Internet Explorer 8 was Firefox … Then it was Pidgin, then Thunderbird, then X-Chat, …

I did noticed few annoyances in Windows 7 already:

• Dragging window by its title bar and hitting top of the screen will draw an outline of a maximized window, releasing mouse button at this point will maximize the window. I hit this feature at least five times in less than an hour. Keep in mind that I really dislike maximized windows. I dislike them so much that I remove Maximize buttons when using KDE.
• Firefox 3.5 is always bitching about starting in safe mode. I have no idea why. So far I have installed only Adobe Flash plug-in.
• Righ clicking on pinned icon in task bar doesn’t bring the old right click menu. You only get options to run the program and to unpin the icon. What about finding the source executable?
• Icons on task bar now represent running programs too. If icon is lit/turned on this program is aready running. By clicking on the icon, program is maximized or brought to the front. Want to run another instance? Right click on the icon and select first option. Quite annoying for someone that wants to open six or seven putty terminal emulators.
• Task bar is bloody huge when un-grouping applications and trying to get the old look back, using small icons helps a little.
• When un-grouped, currently running applications are mixed with icons of non running applications the whole task bar looks rather messed up. Clearly Microsoft would like me to believe that their new task bar works better in the grouped mode and this is how I should use it.
• Switching between regional settings and keyboard layouts is weird! Coming from a country that needs its own keyboard layout and regional settings, this is highly annoying. When I start putty my settings are SL with US Keyboard, when I start Firefox, settings are SL with Slovenian keyboard. Pressing Left-Alt + Left-Shift to change keyboard layout in putty just switches to EN setting with US keyboard. When running Putty, I settings are SL with US Keyboard and LALT+SHIFT change to EN with US keyboard. Which is, keyboard-wise the same. I have to switch keyboard manually if I want Slovenian keyboard. And I can’t remove US keyboard from Slovenian language settings. Update: This appeared to be PEBKAC. The whole problem would go away sooner if LALT+SHIFT could be used for switching different keyboards for one locale settings.
• Pressing Print Screen or Alt+Print-Screen still does nothing useful. It just copies current screen or currently selected window to clipboard. It is really annoying to run Paintbrush, re-size the default image, paste the content and save, if you want a screen shot.
• Regarding previous post, ALT-F2 or CTRL-SPACE does nothing. In some other operating systems it brings up the quick-run tool where you enter a name of the program you wish to run. Now you have to click Windows button and click on search, type pbrush and press enter.
• TrueCrypt told me that it doesn’t work like it should on Windows 7. So far no problems. I mounted the volume, but didn’t try to use it yet.
• Time management. When, oh When will Microsoft realize that system hardware time needs to be on UTC! Always! Now, if I let windows manage my daylight savings time setting, they will set my hardware clock to UTC+2 to compensate for daylight saving, when I boot to Linux which handles time as it should, my time will be off by couple of hours. If I don’t let them set my DST then applications that depend on time will be screwed up. Twhirl for example.

Is Windows 7 ready for  manufacturing? Microsoft says it is. So far I think it is just Vista upgrade and that they could do better at those more specific and advanced tasks. How do I remove Maximize button and how do I select thickness of window frames or remove them completely?

Later today, I will be installing some games …

Update: RTM is of course Released To Manufacturing not Ready To Manufacture.

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