Writing this out of my love for you.. Microsoft!!

Yeah! I am saying it. I don't mind saying this because as far as i can remember, a good part of my computer experience has been on windows operating systems.

And I love these guys. For what people appreciate Apple for their iDevices, was the same love i share for Microsoft when it comes to their operating system.

Beg or steal.. these guys pretty much set the standard for what the graphical UI you and i know that is today.

Of course, they are commercial and they are not open as Linux.. but that doesn't make them evil. But i do know instances where these guys showed their dark side (killing Netscape.. which again i think is back in a different avatar as FireFox) for which i hate them a lot.

Most of their products right from Windows OS, Office Suite, Exchange/Outlook, etc. (hope this not the entire list :)) ) have set a different standard for usability and convenience.

Ok.. So why am i telling all this.. its because i am concerned about the direction in which they are heading. But again, what am i concerned about here.

The concern is that i am not sure if I am ready for any other products apart from the ones mentioned above, for my day to day use. Comeon folks, Apple iPad is much more closed than Windows, Google wants me to use web a lot and Linux is still not ready for mainstream retail use.

I have been techie enough to be branded as a geek. I have built my own distros of Linux and hacked stuff. But still i love Microsoft's products for the sheer pleasure of using them. The difference is that of being a TV Electronics repair guy and the same guy watching TV at the end of the day sipping hot coffee!

You might be wondering what the hell is wrong with me while Microsoft is still here doing just fine. Believe me.. Microsoft is still here.. but i am not sure if they are ready for tomorrow.

Well the trigger for this post was this post here by Russell Beattie - The end of WIMP and rise of Touch. This trigger was backed by a slow build up of frustration on Microsoft's misfirings with their products' strategy.

These guys have lost focus on some of their products. The most important of them of all was Internet Explorer. Having killed Netscape, it was the end of fun and of course business. With literally no competition until FireFox and Chrome actually munched away a good portion of the browser pie. This was too much of a oversight on Microsoft's part.

Browser is the window to a whole new world of connectedness. Children of this generation take this one product/application for granted.

How could you lose sight of a product so important and waiting until guys like Google and Apple to actually catch up with you!!

There has been a steady downfall in terms of their product quality and usability since IE6. I guess a bit of branding change with a serious effort to revamp their technology should do the trick of winning back customers.

With Companies like Apple and Google who are changing the rules of the game by winning customers over by bringing in disruptive technologies (examples: search and iPhone) which have great usability and performance, its time for Microsoft to start taking its products seriously.

The next most important product of all, Microsoft Windows Operating System. Windows has not been doing well since XP. Vista has been good for me though, but a lot of things had gone wrong in Vista too. Customer Expectations, bad PR and negative press/blog coverage did take its toll. Though i haven't used Windows 7 myself, i do hear great reviews from the blogosphere and that its usability is same as, if not better than, Apple Mac OS.

But as Russell Beattie has mentioned in his post, the future is moving towards Tablets which obviously will use touch as the preferred (or the only) interface. I am not confident that Windows is ready as a tablet OS.

Again, I don't think its too late for Microsoft. If it can regroup and focus correct, it can do a great job of coming with a tablet version of its OS. Look at the Apple. I came up with a totally different UI and Usability for its iPad. That should be the approach for Microsoft as well.

The next biggest goof up was with Windows Mobile. In all practical sense, there is no way Microsoft can do anything about it now, unless and until it was do something as drastic as giving away its Mobile OS to OEMs for free and think of a different business model around it.

Guys @ Microsoft.. you are making mistake after mistake and I hope you correct yourself soon. Again i am big fan of your remaining products (though I stopped using IE for many years now).

I know you guys are doing a lot to get things back on track. You are doing good with your Office suite. can see that you are regrouping in terms of your developer languages and tools. But do it fast and get your products back on track.

How to get information on Hardware, Software, Driver versions, environment variable and other useful information about your Windows PC?

Its very simple.. from [windows]+R (Run - Utility), start the application "msinfo32".

Msinfo32 gives you every bit of information about your PC in this one place.

I used it for getting driver version of the Nvdia graphics chipset on my HP Pavilion Notebook.

Screenshots of Windows 7 Engineering build

If you want to know how the next version of windows is going to look like, then you can look at this site where snapshots of the next generation windows (named Windows 7) have been posted.

I did not find any big deviation from Windows Vista except for changes in the look'n'feel of applications like calculator, wordpad and paint. All of these have their menus looking like that of Office 2007.

I am sure there must be a lot cooking than improvements to these utility applications.

Below is a video of how the calculator looks in this engineering build of Windows 7.

WinXp License Question: Reinstalling Windows XP on a new PC or Hardware

I have a Genuine Windows XP Home Edition which I had got last year. You can read my earlier post (in wordpress blog) on this topic.

Now, I am planning to get a laptop for my wife, which has FreeDOS installed on it. So, I have been thinking of uninstalling Windows XP from my desktop (I will have linux alone on my desktop) and install Windows XP on the new laptop that I intend to buy. Basically, my wife cannot live without Windows and I can live happily with Linux (I occasionally use Windows.. I love it too.).

Now, I read it somewhere that Windows forms a complex key (called a Installation ID) using 10 different hardware components on the installed PC and then activates Windows using the same. The idea is to ensure that we do not install Windows on multiple PC (this is for a single license windows). So, I install the same Windows on a second PC, Microsoft can talk to second instance of Windows on the new PC and will come to know that its a different hardware.

So, I started wondering if uninstalling WinXP from my desktop and installing it again on Laptop would make Microsoft think that my Windows XP is a pirated version. I was worried if they would blacklist my genuine windows thinking it is actually a pirated one.

I started searching the net to find out if I can go ahead and transfer my Windows XP to a new hardware (laptop in my case) without any licensing issues.

Searching Google did not get me any relevant results. So, I thought let me chat with Microsoft Customer Support to get this answered.

This is what I asked Customer Support.

I have a doubt on windows xp license. Can I uninstall winxp from my old hardware and install it on a new PC. Will the license still be valid ?

And this is what the Customer Rep had to say.

Please note that, the End User License Agreement (EULA) for Windows XP stipulates that this software or product can be only installed on a single computer. If you wish to install it on a second computer, please purchase an additional license for Windows XP. However, you can uninstall it from the old Hard Drive and you can install it on new Harddrive without purchasing additional license.

The Rep also told me that.

I recommend that you contact Microsoft Product Activation Team at the following toll free number: (888) 571-2048. They are available 24 hours per day.

You see the entire chat conversation by clicking on the below image.


I also checked the Windows XP Product Activation page and this is what they have to say (refer the red colored font quoted below).

Product Activation Overview

Microsoft Product Activation is an anti-piracy technology designed to verify that software products have been legitimately licensed. This aims to reduce a form of piracy known as casual copying. Activation also helps protect against hard drive cloning. Activation is quick, simple, and unobtrusive, and it protects your privacy.

Product Activation works by verifying that a software program's product key has not been used on more personal computers than intended by the software's license. You must use the product key in order to install the software and then it is transformed into an installation ID number. You use an activation wizard to provide the installation ID number to Microsoft either through a secure transfer over the Internet, or by telephone. A confirmation ID is sent back to your machine to activate your product.

The installation ID number includes an encrypted form of the product ID and a hardware hash, or checksum. None of the information collected during product activation will be used to personally identify you. The confirmation ID is simply an unlocking code for the Windows XP installation on that particular PC.

If you overhaul your computer by replacing a substantial number of hardware components, it may appear to be a different PC. You may have to reactivate Windows XP. If this should occur, you can call the telephone number displayed on the activation screen to reactivate the software.

So basically, this answers my question.

You can reinstall WinXP on a new hardware (harddrive) after uninstalling the same from the old hardware (harddrive). I would be asked to reactivate Windows XP and I may be required to call Microsoft.

Booting Windows from within Linux using QEMU

They say "Inside every good there is a bit of evil"

I did just that.. I installed evil inside the good.. Okay, don't worry.. I was not touched upon by angel and visited by God. I was talking about installing and booting Windows from inside Linux.

I used a VMM (Virtual Machine Monitor) called Qemu for this. Qemu came installed in my Dapper Drake.

I had some problems figurging out using the options. The options tell Qemu what to do and what hardware resources are available.

So here I what I did.

First, I create a virtual harddisk image using the utility qemu-img. Below is the command that I used. The below command creates a 4 GB virtual harddisk.

qemu-img create ./hda 4G

Second, I boot from Windows CD by specifying the cdrom device and also specify the virtual harddisk created by me in the earlier step. Once I execute the below command, I boot from the Windows CD and then go on to install Windows on the 4GB virtual harddisk.

qemu -hda ./hda -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d

I found that the performance of Windows running as a guest OS is not that bad. It is close to real.

Qemu, emulates a default set of hardware. For example, it emulates a RealTek NIC (Network Interface Card) to Windows. Windows installs the driver for the RealTek NIC. The last screenshot shows hardware configuration of the virtual machine.

Recovered my Windows - That too in less than a minute

How stupid it makes me look - talking about my over-confidence!!

I was trying to do all kinds of crap in trying to modify the faulty c:\boot.ini.. I was trying to mount the NTFS partition as read-write and I was today trying to boot windows from within Linux (using Qemu). I think I was thinking too complicated.

It just struck me as to why not I try this simple thing - Try booting from my Windows XP CD and get into recovery mode.. if there is one. To my surprise there was a recovery mode which just gave a command prompt. I just replaced my faulty boot.ini with the original backup. And thats it.. I am done!!

I had my windows boot as normal as before. :)

But it I learnt a great deal from the whole experience.. about mounting NTFS partitions and about loading Windows from within Linux.

My Windows Boot Time optimization effort ended up in disaster.

I had been very unhappy with the Windows XP boot time for quite some time. In the initial days, the boot time was pretty impressive and I used to get the desktop in a minute and a half.

But as I kept installing lot of software and some of which includes drivers for peripherals such as web cameras, I noticed that the boot time got really bad. As of yesterday, my windows xp home edition took around 4-5 minutes to load everything and stop showing the timer cursor on the desktop.

So I could not put up any more and so I was determined to find out what was causing the slowness.

I wanted to try out the following options to speed up the boot time and I wanted to do it in the order given below:
1.) Remove unwanted startup applications that get launched.
2.) Stop unwanted services permanently from starting.
3.) Look at the boot time logs to see if there were any errors or any drivers were taking time to get loaded.

For point 1.), it is fairly simple to stop applications from getting launched. You can goto Start->Programs->Startup and look at the applications that get launched at the startup of windows. You can either delete these applications under the "Startup" menu or drag and move them to directly under "Programs" or under any other menu item.

For point 2.), goto Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services to see the list of services available in the system. One of the columns tells you the state of the service - Started, Stopped or Automatic. You can know about what this service does by right-clicking on one of the services and then clicking on properties. Service is nothing but a program which runs in the background doing some job which is necessary. For example, Microsoft's indexing service runs in the background indexing files and directories. This indexing ensures that search is very fast.

Now, these services of course consume a good amount of CPU time thus making foreground applications slower.

After reading through the service's description, you will have a fair idea on whether or not you need this service to run. For example, if you don't have wifi at home, then you may not want this service which helps you configure wifi with ease. There are good number of services which run by default, which you may not want. Surprisingly, you may find services that get installed whenever you install applications. For example, when you install iTunes, there are services which get installed which help you detect a new version of iTunes and one which is used to detect an iPod whenever it is inserted. You may want to comment of the first service which is used to check for an updated version of iTunes. You can as well check for that manually. I have services from Google, HP, Symantec, etc. which got installed later.

There is a much easier and safer way of doing Points 1.) and 2.). You can use the application "msconfig" to modify startup programs and services. Launch "msconfig" from Start->Run.

It is easier this way, but why is it safer ?? Its safer because you can undo the changes that you have done.

I would love to post the detailed steps with screenshots. But unfortunately, my windows is screwed up and I am left with the option of only recollecting whatever I remember and write the same over here.

I am yet to talk about option 3.) which is much more dangerous and not recommended for novice users. In fact, having worked on windows internals and driver development in the past, I still managed to screw up my windows installation because of this option.

There are kernel (OS) traces which can be enabled whenever you want. This is primarily used during device driver development. The way you do it is that you specify the "/debug" flag in the file "boot.ini" under C:\. You may want to take a backup of boot.ini file before modifying it.

Debug traces will be diverted to the COM port. So you need to specify the baudrate and other com port details along with the "/debug" flag. Once you have done all that, you can connect the Windows machine being debugged (called as Target) to an Host PC through a Null-modem serial cable and view the debug traces. And if I remember correctly, once the booting and loading of drivers is done, it breaks at some execution point so that you get control from there on to continue debugging.

But I did a stupid assumption that giving "/debug" in the boot.ini and not giving other com port details will dump the debug traces on the same target machine. That was a wrong assumption. When I rebooted my windows with the modified boot.ini (containing "/debug" flag), it took sometime to boot. But I never got any debug traces on the screen. After sometime, the booting came to an halt and nothing happened. I think, the windows broke its execution for me to takeover. But without a second PC, I would never know what actually happened.

Before trying out the "/debug" flag option in boot.ini, I had tried an utility called BootVis.exe which was released by Microsoft earlier. It is not supported right now, but you can still download it from other places. This utility is supposed to profile and tell you where exactly we have the delay in the boot time. But when I tried this utility, it told me at the application level as to where the delay is, but I could not get any information about boot time delays. Thats the reason why I wanted to try the debug option in boot.ini.

So ultimately, my effort to optimize the windows boot time has left my windows installation useless.

I got an idea to recover my windows partition. All I had to do was just replace the modified boot.ini with the orginal boot.ini which I had backed up.

One way I could do this is from Ubuntu (yes, my PC is a dual-boot). I could mount by primary windows partition as a read/write and then modify the boot.ini.

I would like to explain about my experience trying to mounting NTFS partitions as read/write in a separate post such that it will benefit others as well.

So.. Wish me luck!! :)

Mobile platform-specific Google Maps!!

Wow.. finally Google Maps specifically created for S60 Symbian platform.

Here are some screenshots of the new Google Maps installed on my Nokia E61 :).









By the way, I found this review at All About Symbian about the new Google Maps very useful.

I knew this would eventually happen. This is what I was suggesting to Schrep in my comments to his post. I was mentioning about my thoughts on how Firefox for mobile phones should follow a strategy where first they come up with a Java based firefox so that they can capture the mass market and then they followup with a platform specific firefox application which gives a better performance.

Now, Google did just that. They first came up with a java-based Google Maps. This ensured that most of the phones start using Google Maps (capture the mass market). Now they've come up with a platform-specific Google Map which is available for Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian and Blackberry, which gives a better performance and also utilize phone-specific features. For example, the new Google Map uses the phones' GPS if that's available. So if you install the new Google Maps on your Nokia N95, then it will automatically use the inbuilt GPS to show your location on the map.

For those who are not familiar with mobile applications.. what this means is that the previously available Google Map application (software) for the mobile phones was written (developed) using Java. Which means any Java enabled phone was install and use Google Maps on their phone. So you must be asking whats the big deal about Google Maps now?!!

Well, any Java-based application runs on top of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) which in turn runs on top of the mobile OS (platform). Which means there will be a comparable difference in performance between a Java-based application and a platform-specific application. Obviously, platform-specific applications are must faster. Also, developing mobile applications using the platform specific APIs (Application Programming Interface) will let us utilize any in-built phone features like GPS (as I've mentioned above).

Windows Live Writer lost its gas ??!!

It has been 10 months since I wrote my detailed review on Windows Live Writer. Though I liked the Windows Live Writer a lot then, I never really used it for blogging actively.

After so many months, I thought I wanted to use Windows Live Writer for one very lengthy and comprehensive review of something on the web (not going to tell you what it was about :) You will have to wait to see that blog). Blogging a lengthy post staying online would take lot of time. I thought using Windows Live Writer, I could blog as and when I find time and then publish it in one shot.

But then I just remembered that my PC was reinstalled with Window XP once and I had not installed Windows Live Writer since then. So went about searching for "Windows Live Writer" on Google and came across this official blog cum home page for Windows Live Writer. I believe this is being maintained by the developers of Windows Live Writer.

Having been away from Windows Live Writer for so long I was really curious to know what was happening to this blogging client. So I clicked on this link to see their posts. To my surprise, since November 2006 there has been not a single post in their "OFFICIAL BLOG" :)

Has Microsoft realized that blogging client is by no means generating money for them. Whatever be the reason, one thing is for sure - Windows Live Writer has lost its gas and I believe you are not going to see any more releases of Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Writer.... RIP!!

Having problem synchronizing time on Windows XP? - Day Light Savings

As you know, the day light savings for 2007 has started in US. The DST starts on 2nd Sunday of March 2007 and then ends on 1st Sunday of November 2007.

For most of us using Windows XP, the time should automatically adjust as per the daylight savings (provided you have selected the option "Automatically apply daylight savings" in your clock).

As for me, for some wierd reason, the daylight savings were not being applied automatically inspite of checking the "Automatically apply daylight savings" option in the clock.

I tried everything from ensuring that the Windows time service is running to trying out every knowledge base article on MSDN. But nothing helped.

Then finally, I hit upon this particular page in MSDN which gave somekind of a hotfix for fixing time sync issues. Refer to the below link and download the hotfix (required OS validation).
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=66F1420C-DF2D-400B-A8A9-EF9061A9A3CA&displaylang=en

The above link gives a hotfix for Windows XP 32bit edition. The hotfix is also available for other flavors of Windows. Refer to the below link for the same.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836/

After having applied this fix, the time got synced up automatically. Though it synced up automatically, I am still not sure if it would sync up again if the DST changes.

Those of you who know me, you must be wondering how come I am worried about daylight savings as it does not apply for India, we'll I am on a business trip to US :).