This week, Microsoft quietly released Vista SP1 Pre-Betas (or Betas) to testers. These betas consist of two separate updates that are available now and might see possible deployment in the final version of the service pack.
The dream police do not live in your brain, they live on your hard drive in the form of Microsoft Windows Vista. You may remember we reported on the Astiv software that allowed users to bypass the normal way of signing drivers on 64-bit versions of Vista. Microsoft did not take too kindly to that and has since blocked the program and revoked its driver signing certificates. The Australian company behind the program has taken offense.
While Microsoft maintains it has shipped 60 million copies of Windows Vista, a survey among 250 CIOs, IT managers and network administrators across Europe, Asia Pacific and the US shows business interest in Vista is decreasing.
Vista does not only comes with a host of new OS features, but it also comes with features that will help those seeking evidence of how a particular computer was used, the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal reports in the July issue.
Previously we reported on a similar tool that would bypass Vista’s kernel protection to allow the installation of unsigned drivers that could possibly contain a rootkit. Microsoft has now released Windows defender updates to remove and block the threat.
Microsoft is taking on the pirates in China by reducing the prices of Vista Basic and Vista Premium, it is the company’s hope that people will buy legitimate copies instead of buying them off the street.
A test conducted by Virus Bulletin security certification body on anti-virus products using the 64-bit Microsoft Vista version finds that 30% of the popular anti-virus programs generate false positive results which could harm computer systems and files.
As if this should come as any surprise, Vista has yet another security problem, one that can bypass the very system that was designed to prevent this in the first place. All the blame can’t be placed on Microsoft, at least some of this lies with the manufacturers that provide drivers that don’t perform the proper checks in the first place. Security researcher, Joanna Rutkowska has found faults in both ATi and nVidia drivers under Vista.
While Microsoft is still working hard to convince enterprises to upgrade their computer system to Vista, the software company has also announced the release of Windows 7 in three years time. The announcement has sparked a stormy debate about whether it is best to move to Vista or skip it altogether and just wait for Windows 7 arrive.
Many people are perfectly content to keep their three, five year old or older systems humming along with XP and while it may be possible to keep those systems running until the year 2014, is it worth it?
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