Statistics show that Windows XP lost 2.4% percentage points of usage share to post a December average of 46.5%, a new low for the decade-old operating system. Commentators suggest that if usual trends repeat themselves, Windows XP will lose an even larger chunk of usage share this month, expected to be by as much as 3.5 points this month.

Goodbye XP

This should not be a surprise. In one of my news items on www.ancarb.com website back in January 2011 I announced that Microsoft's latest release of IE9 would not run on XP. In addition, in July 2011 Microsoft told customers to was "time to move on" from XP reminding everyone that the Operating system would exit all support in April 2014. Before this the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) team had dismissed XP as the "lowest common denominator" when they clarified why it wouldn't run IE9.

Projections based on research now indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April 2012, several months earlier than previous estimates. And by the time Windows 8 debuts (October is the suggested on-sale date), Windows 7 will have captured between 50% and 52% of the operating system market.

So what does this mean for us all? Well for resellers, like Ancar B, it is now virtually impossible to get a machine that runs XP Pro and/or find drivers for XP Pro to apply to new desktop PCs that we supply. For clients, it is important to check that any third party application(s) you run are Windows 7 compatible should you purchase a PC and wish to use it to run them. Microsoft publishes details surrounding the compatibility of Windows 7 with many leading third party applications, but it is important to check with the manufacturers of the application also.

If the third party application you are using is not compatible with Windows 7 then the only logical step is to upgrade the third party application to a version that is compatible with Windows 7.

Alternative if you are looking to upgrade a third party application, but cannot afford to purchase new hardware to run it - you should considering hosting the application on our virtual platform in the cloud. The application can then be accessed over the internet using a Terminal Server connection and without having to upgrade desktop hardware (in most cases*). Call 0845 077 8882 for details.

* This assumes the hardware is of a minimum standard and the client has an internet connection.

Thanks

Richard

For advice on upgrading to Windows 7 or the compatibility of Windows 7 with third party applications, please call Ancar B on 0845 077 8883.

What is it?

Service Pack 1 is mainly a big collection of fixes and changes that have already been available within your automatic updates.   They have simply wrapped it up into one large update to make it more convenient.

Do I need it?

Currently the update is only “optional”.  If you have kept on top of your Automatic Updates then you should have most of the fixes already installed.  Therefore we would recommend you wait until Microsoft have found/repaired any bugs or wait until it becomes an “important” update within your Windows Update system.

New Features in Service Pack 1:

There is no major new feature in Service Pack 1.  There are a few little improvements though, the most notable here:

• Improved HDMI audio device performance: there’s a small update that helps reliability of HDMI audio devices after rebooting. This is listed as a feature in the release notes, but really feels like a bug fix.
• Corrected behavior when printing mixed-orientation XPS documents: If you’re trying to print XPS documents that have landscape and portrait pages in the same document, now they will print correctly. All 5 of you can now rejoice.
• Change to behavior of “Restore previous folders at logon” functionality: If you used the “Restore previous folders at logon” feature in Folder Options, the folders would restore into a cascaded set of windows. Now they will restore to where they were.
• Support for Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX): supports a newer processor extension that improves performance for floating point intensive applications.
• Improved Support for Advanced Format (512e) Storage Devices: hard drive manufacturers are transitioning to a new 4KB physical sector size, and now Windows 7 supports this better.

System Administrators:

If you don’t want all your computers to download the update individually (and saturate your internet connection) you can download the installation files here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda&displaylang=en

Be sure to download the correct version for your PC’s.

If you need any help, please feel free to contact our Helpdesk Facility in the usual way and we will happily assist.

We’ve seen this problem quite a bit on our helpdesk facility.  We’ve tested this on a few Windows 7 machines, installed Office 2010 on them, and had this problem a few times.  We tried multiple possible fixes such as re-creating profiles, reinstalling and repairing Office, applying all the updates, even the Helvetica fix and then we figured it was purely a PST issue.  Specifically, the location of the PST – having your PST in a network location. The PST must be local, or else Outlook 2010 screws up eventually, usually when indexing or trying to index, causing the system to hang.  Only a reboot will stop the running OUTLOOK.EXE process.

Why has it put itself in a network location?  It used to be in the local Application Data folders…?

There is a new default location for Outlook PST’s - they’re now in the “My Documents\Outlook Files” folder.  This will inadvertently cause a problem for most businesses as best practices dictates we should backup all our users “My Documents” folders and most of us simply syncronize them to our file server.

So if, for instance, your “My Documents” folder is set to a place on the network (e.g. on the Windows 2003/2008/2011 server), then your PST gets created on the network, and Outlook 2010 is bound to have problems.

How to fix it?

• Firstly, reboot your PC so that OUTLOOK.EXE is not a crashed or running process
• Copy your PST file to a local location – eg. Desktop or the original Application Data folders
• Open Outlook 2010 and quickly go straight to the “File”, “Account Settings” drop down and choose “Account Settings”
• Go to the “Data Files” tab
• Click “Add”
• Browse to your local PST file (the one you copied above) and add it
• Close the “Account Settings” window and close Outlook
• Check the running processes, if you managed to get out quick enough and OUTLOOK.EXE closed properly then move on.  If not, reboot…
• Open Outlook again and go straight back into “Account Settings” as before
• Go back to the “Data File” tab, select your local file and then “Set as Default”
• Close the window again, and close Outlook
• Check the running processes, if you managed to get out quick enough and OUTLOOK.EXE closed properly then move on.  If not, reboot…
• Go back into Outlook, into “Account Settings”, “Data Files” and remove the network copy from the list.
• Close the window, and now Outlook should be running just fine.
• The best way to check is to do a quick search for something in your Inbox.  If the results fail due to there being no index built yet, then let it sit open for a few minutes (depending on the size of your PST) and try again.  As soon as you start getting results then you should be in the clear…

If you need to create a connection using 256 (8bit) colour mode, follow the instructions below:

1. Open the Remote Desktop icon
2. Create the connection with the required details, computer Name, Username etc
3. Click the options button so you can see the Save option
4. Click the Save as option and Save this to your desktop
5. Open Notepad and then drag and drop the RDP icon onto the newly opened notepad
6. You will now see loads of text, search through untill you see “session bpp:i:16” (the end number could say 8, 24 or 32)
7. Finally edit this so it says “session bpp:i:8” and save
8. now if you double click the saved RDP icon it will connect in 256 (8bit) colour mode!!