If you’ve spent minutes on end waiting for Vista to start up or shutdown, you might think nothing could be more painful. But for some employees, the real pain comes when they look through their paychecks.

Microsoft is launching a free anti-virus service for Windows users. If it takes off, it could be a serious threat to commercial security products.

Windows 7 won’t be released until next year at the earliest, but that hasn’t stopped would-be pirates exploring ways to get around measures designed to stop people using illegal copies. The interest has been sparked by the first distribution of physical copies of the system to people outside of Microsoft.

The 64-bit edition of Windows Vista continues to gain in market share. However, some are questioning whether it’s really an important issue for consumers, or if it might even cause more problems than it solves.

Newly released court documents confirm Microsoft relaxed its criteria for declaring a computer ‘Vista Capable’ after lobbying from Intel. The chip maker complained that the original rules would exclude some of its products and cause lost business in the billions.

Security experts say one of the vulnerabilities fixed by this week’s Windows Update has been a known problem since at least 2001. The Server Message Block issue has even been used in security training events.

This month’s Patch Tuesday update is, by Microsoft standards, fairly quiet. There is only one fix rated critical and one rated important, though the firm does warn both the associated vulnerabilities are at particular risk of exploitation.

The popular AVG anti-virus program has wreaked havoc for some XP users by leading them to mistakenly delete a core system file. It’s left some people unable to start Windows at all.

Microsoft has revealed that printers are the devices most likely to cause driver problems in Vista. Nearly 12 percent of attempted installations fail, around four times Microsoft’s own target.

Microsoft has unveiled steps to make solid state drives run far more efficiently in Windows 7. It’s the third boost for the technology announced this week.

Microsoft is promising the fundamentals of Windows 7 will be a noticeable improvement over Vista. The firm has spoken of longer battery life, quicker start-up and fewer crashes.

Microsoft has officially withdrawn the Windows operating system. (Well, the Windows 3.x series at least.)

Microsoft has released a list of the most likely compatibility issues in Windows 7. It’s also revealed some of the enhancements designed to make it easier for both users and developers to deal with any problems.

A new Microsoft security briefing reportedly says most major security issues in Vista are down to third-party applications. It claims that’s a big change from XP where Windows itself was responsible for many of the security gaps.

We wrote yesterday that Microsoft is slimming down Windows 7 to make it more suitable for netbooks than Vista. Further comments from a senior Microsoft boss suggest that will be an ongoing process across future editions of Windows.