I’m guessing that many of you have attempted to download the latest version of Windows Live Messenger or other Windows Live Software but have been prompted with the following error:

“Sorry, Windows Live programs cannot be installed on Windows Server, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, or Windows operating systems earlier than Windows XP Service Pack 2.”

You’re not alone, as I have received the same error when trying to install the latest version on Windows Server 2008 64bit.

The folks at Microsoft included support in the installer for all operating systems during the Windows Live beta(s). However when Messenger 8.5 went RTM, they removed support for all of the operating systems mentioned above. Many are outraged that Microsoft took this stance because they supported it while it was in beta, and then launch and say we don’t support it and won’t ever support it.

“A special note for those of you running Messenger 8.5 Beta on Windows XP 64-bit or Windows 2003 Server: the final version of Messenger 8.5 will not install or run on your OS. We don’t want you to get stuck out in the cold so you will not receive the mandatory upgrade to the final version. However, these operating systems won’t be supported by future Messenger versions. You may stay on your current beta version, or to get to a more stable final version we recommend that you uninstall Messenger 8.5 and go back to Messenger 8.1.” ( Windows Live Messenger Blog ).

Many are wishing Microsoft would remove this limitation from the Windows Live installer. For more information visit the messengergeek blog.

Luckily there is an easy work around to installing Windows Live on Windows 64bit operating systems and Windows Server operating systems if you have a 32bit windows operating system available. Just follow the steps below and you will be up and running in a few minutes with the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Writer and various other Windows Live programs.

1. Download the installer on your 32bit Windows machine from http://get.live.com. Note: I used Windows XP Service pack 3.
2. Run the Installer (WLinstaller.exe). Note: It will download and install the latest version of Windows Live onto your machine.
3. Go to the following folder(C:\Program Files\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources or C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile\AppData\Local\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources\).
4. Copy or email the executables of the various Windows Live programs installers to your Windows 64bit or Windows Server operating system. Below is a list of applications names that correspond to the filename (diTii.com ).

Windows Live Writer
Install_{9176251A-4CC1-4DDB-B343-B487195EB397}.msi
Windows Live Messenger
Install_{508CE775-4BA4-4748-82DF-FE28DA9F03B0}.msi
Windows Live Sign-In Assistant
Install_{AFA4E5FD-ED70-4D92-99D0-162FD56DC986}.msi
Windows Live Mail
Install_{EDB619FD-4E71-403C-8E99-DFC9CF9DD345}.msi
Windows Live Toolbar
Install_{C6876FE6-A314-4628-B0D7-F3EE5E35C4B4}.msi
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Install_{AA436FBD-2595-479B-8DDE-E9C36F50D99D}.msi

1. Finally install the above msi’s onto your machine. You should now be on the latest and greatest version of your favorite software.

Article – http://windowscoding.com/blogs/blake/archive/2008/07/01/how-to-run-windows-live-software-on-64bit-windows.aspx

Wondering what the experience is going to be like next week when Apple makes its long-awaited iPhone Software 2.0 (see my preview) available? Well, wonder no more: I’ve gotten my hands on near-final versions of iPhone Software 2.0 and the Windows and PC versions of iTunes 7.7, and can show you the install experience as well as some of the MobileMe and Microsoft Exchange integration pieces. Let’s jump right in.

Note: This is a first look only and should not be construed as a review of any kind. I will be reviewing iPhone Software 2.0, the iPhone 3G, and Apple MobileMe separately in the weeks ahead.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/iphone2_upgrade_preview.asp

Brief Description
Windows® SteadyState™ 2.5 is now available on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet café, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them.
Windows SteadyState runs on genuine copies of Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, and Windows Vista Starter. And, Windows SteadyState is offered free of charge to Windows Genuine Advantage customers!
Validation Required
Before Windows SteadyState can be installed, you are required to validate that your computer is running genuine Microsoft Windows. As described in the privacy statement, Microsoft will not use the information collected during the validation process to identify or contact you. By running genuine Microsoft Windows®, you can download and install Windows SteadyState, as well as enable certain product features and obtain non-security updates and product support from Microsoft. For more information, see the Windows Genuine Advantage Web site.
SteadyState Helps Make it Easier to Manage Your Shared Computers Shared computers are commonly found in schools, Internet and gaming cafés, libraries, and community centers. It is increasingly common for owners, teachers, or non-technical personnel to manage shared computers in addition to their many other responsibilities.
Managing shared computers can be difficult, technically challenging, time-consuming, and expensive. And what’s more, without system restrictions and protections, users can inadvertently change the desktop appearance, reconfigure system settings, and introduce unwanted software, viruses, and other harmful programs. Repairing damaged shared computers can require significant time and effort.
User privacy is also an issue for shared computer environments. Shared computers often use shared user accounts that make Internet history, saved documents, and cached Web pages available to subsequent users.
Windows SteadyState provides a more effective way to help defend shared computers from changes by untrusted users and unwanted software installations. It can also help safeguard system resources.
Windows SteadyState Features Windows SteadyState includes the following features to help you manage your shared computers:

• Getting Started – Provides the initial steps to help you during your first time use of Windows SteadyState.
• Windows Disk Protection – Help protect the Windows partition, which contains the Windows operating system and other programs, from being modified without administrator approval.Windows SteadyState allows you to set Windows Disk Protection to remove all changes upon restart, to remove changes at a certain date and time, or to not remove changes at all. If you choose to use Windows Disk Protection to remove changes, any changes made by shared users when they are logged on to the computer are removed when the computer is restarted
• User Restrictions and Settings – The user restrictions and settings can help to enhance and simplify the user experience. Restrict user access to programs, settings, Start menu items, and options in Windows. You can also lock shared user accounts to prevent changes from being retained from one session to the next.
• User Account Manager – Create and delete user accounts. You can use Windows SteadyState to create user accounts on alternative drives that will retain user data and settings even when Windows Disk Protection is turned on. You can also import and export user settings from one computer to another—saving valuable time and resources.
• Computer Restrictions – Control security settings, privacy settings, and more, such as preventing users from creating and storing folders in drive C and from opening Microsoft Office documents from Internet Explorer®.
• Schedule Software Updates – Update your shared computer with the latest software and security updates when it is convenient for you and your shared users.

Download Link – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=d077a52d-93e9-4b02-bd95-9d770ccdb431&DisplayLang=en

In August, Microsoft will ship Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, the second major milestone of its upcoming Web browser. Whereas Beta 1, released in March, focused primarily on developer features, Beta 2 will be about end users. And while I wish I had some new UI bits to show you today, that will have to wait. Instead, this week, Microsoft is talking about the new and improved security features that it will debut in IE 8 Beta 2. These features constitute the bulk of the work Microsoft is doing around security in IE 8, so this overview will provide an interesting snapshot of what we can expect.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/ie8_security.asp

Adobe announced Tuesday that Google and Yahoo are adding search capabilities that will enable users to look inside the content of files encoded in Adobe’s Flash file format — SWF.

The content inside SWF files has heretofore been ignored by the search engine giants, but Adobe has worked with both companies to make sure that their search engine technology can now look inside existing and future SWF content, including text, hyperlinks, audio and video content

Full Article – http://www.macworld.com/article/134229/2008/06/googleyahooflash.html?t=201

A new whitepaper was release this week describing how to set up, configure and troubleshoot Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) with Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering.

With Windows Server 2003 and earlier versions, organizations had to deploy multiple certification authorities (CAs) to provide redundancy in case a critical network server failed. You can still have multiple CAs operating in your Active Directory forest, but with failover clustering there is no need to deploy more than one CA to protect AD CS from unexpected failure.

This white paper explains the detailed steps that are required to set up failover clustering with Windows Server 2008 and to run AD CS on shared storage with a network hardware security module (HSM).

Title: Configuring and Troubleshooting Certification Authority Clustering in Windows Server 2008

URL: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=15c75333-be26-4955-a32c-03077daf1631&DisplayLang=en

No feature of Windows Server 2008 is more widely misunderstood than Hyper-V, which previously went by the codename Viridian and its more pedestrian original moniker, Windows Server Virtualization. Part of the reason is timing: Unlike every other Windows Server 2008 feature, Hyper-V didn’t ship in final form with the rest of the product back in February. Part of it is confusion over the bifurcated nature of Hyper-V: There are actually two versions of Hyper-V available (or soon will be), the feature that’s part of Windows Server 2008 (which Microsoft refers to as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V) and the completely separate standalone product, which the software giant will market as Microsoft Hyper-V.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/win2008_hyperv.asp

In April, the number of web attacks rose sharply, and Microsoft was quickly blamed for the problems. The software giant investigated and concluded that security groups had jumped to conclusions and that the attacks were not related to security vulnerabilities in IIS 6.0, ASP, ASP.Net, or Microsoft SQL technologies. Instead, it was found that the attacks were due to automatic exploits of SQL injection vulnerabilities, and the company pointed to its own guides on following good practices to avoid such attacks.

Full Article – http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/06/26/microsoft-offers-tools-for-fighting-sql-injection-attacks

“Microsoft has published a new whitepaper on Windows Server 2008 power savings, and the results and methodologies of the tests run to develop the paper.

This is an excellent document, which outlines the test results (downloadable in separate spreadsheets) and the role of virtualisation in optimising energy efficiencies in your data centres.

Check it out at: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61d493fd-855d-4719-8662-3a40ba3a0a5c&displaylang=en

A demo showing Windows 7 and its touch functions can be viewed here.

http://blogs.msdn.com/springboard/archive/2008/06/25/windows-7.aspx

Hello everyone,

we heard a lot of feedback from you about the need for the Remote Desktop Connection client 6.1 to be made available as a standalone install for Windows XP SP2 to ease deployments of Windows 2008 Terminal Services.

In response to this feedback, we have released the Remote Desktop Connection client (RDC 6.1) for Windows XP SP2 on x86 platforms.

You can download RDC6.1 for Windows XP SP2 from the Microsoft Download Center (KB 952155) for the following languages:

Arabic, Chinese – Simplified, Chinese – Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese – Portugal, Portuguese – Brazil, Russian, Spanish – Spain, Swedish, Turkish.

We have also released the MUI package for RDC6.1 on Windows XP SP2 from the Microsoft Download Center (KB 952230).

These are some of the supported features of Remote Desktop Client 6.1 for Windows XP SP2:

• Windows Server 2008 & Windows Vista feature support
• TS Web Access support
• TS Easy Print support
• TS Remote Programs support
• TS Gateway support

Please review the complete list of features and details about RDC6.1 for Windows XP SP2 in this Knowledge Base article.

RDC6.1 is now available on the following platforms:

Windows Server 2008

Windows Vista SP1

Windows XP SP3

Windows XP SP2 (KB 952155)

Hello Windows Live Messenger beta testers!

This is a reminder that the Messenger v9.0 Beta program will close TODAY.

Thanks again to everyone for all of your time and energy during this beta testing period. Your feedback has been super helpful to us as we planned the next version of Messenger, and we can’t wait to get your reactions to the new beta version! Look for announcements about the next beta in the coming months.

The Windows Live Messenger Team

How has Bill Gates’ thinking evolved over the years? Internal Microsoft memos and e-mails provide a glimpse inside his mind, showing how he has approached the struggles and opportunities facing the company, from BASIC to Windows Vista. Microsoft has made some of these messages public as part of its historical record, but many were disclosed in lawsuits against the company. Click the links to read the source documents.

February 1976: “An open letter to hobbyists“: In this seminal message, a young Bill Gates rails against software piracy among early computer hobbyists and displays the blunt approach for which he will become known: “As the majority of hobbyists must be aware,” he writes, “most of you steal your software.”

Full Article – http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141871.asp?source=rss

Since launch last week in excess of 17.3 million downloads of Firefox 3 have taken place.
The browser saw eight million downloads within the first 24-hours of its release, more than ever downloaded in a single day before and a statistic currently being considered for inclusion within the Guinness Book of Records.
Firefox 2 was downloaded 1.6 million times in its first 24 hours of release; to date, it has been downloaded more than half a billion times, according to Mozilla.

In case you haven’t heard, this week is BillG’s last week as a full-time Microsoft employee as he transitions to working full-time at his foundation. Sure, he’ll still be the Chairman of the board and there are some projects that he will work with directly, but it is still a bit weird to think about Microsoft without Bill Gates.

In this 30 minute Channel 9 interview with Charles Torre, you’ll hear Bill talk about his transition, Ray Ozzie, competing against Google, improving Microsoft’s agility, what’s going to be important for our platform in the next decade and of course Bill’s role at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Link – http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2008/06/23/bill-gates-transition-interview-on-channel-9.aspx