For those of you in the US or Canada, stop reading now.

Welcome non-US/CA readers! There’s nothing more frustrating than buying a Zune, plugging it in, and discovering the software is “broken” because of how your computer is “configured”. Features like the Marketplace and that snazzy intro video? Completely missing! Yikes.

If you’re positive you should be seeing these features, don’t panic. Microsoft spent a lot of time programming some overrides for you. Simply navigate to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Zune and create a key called FeaturesOverride. Within this key, create a DWORD for each feature you want to enable and set its value to 1. A list of tweakables follow.

• Quickplay
• Marketplace
• Picks
• Videos
• MusicVideos
• Podcasts
• Channels
• Games
• SubscriptionFreeTracks
• SignInAvailable (allows restricted locales to sign in!)
• FirstLaunchIntroVideo
• MBRRental
• MBRPurchase
• MBRPreview

For those that are lazy, you can download a simple registry script to double-click. Don’t blame me if it eats your hard drive though.

In early August, I documented a handle leak that had existed in NVIDIA’s Forceware drivers for some time, affecting all of their newer GPUs. Yesterday, NVIDIA released a new set of WHQL drivers versioned 190.62. In a typical sweep-under-the-rug fashion, NVIDIA made zero references to the issue in their release notes. Having scanned the disassembly of nvSCPAPISrv.exe, however, I can confirm NVIDIA has fixed the problem by calling the appropriate function I suggested. AMD’s fastest GPU – the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 – continues to be unaffected by this issue.

You’re welcome, NVIDIA.

Windows Live Movie Maker, having started off as a glass hammer, has made significant strides in the areas of functionality and usability. If you haven’t already pushed all the buttons in the new release, I recommend you check out Paul’s thorough review.

While playing around with Movie Maker, I tried to import some video content stored on my HP MediaSmart. Just my luck, it’s not supported. As you can plainly see on the right, Microsoft suggests I copy my content – which could theoretically be gigabytes in size – to my local disk.

Uh. How about no?

Poking around a bit, I noticed Movie Maker has an undocumented override switch... but it comes at a tiny cost: The network share housing your media must may need to allow unfettered Guest access. For those that aren’t trying to hide porn on their MediaSmart servers, this isn’t a big deal. I suspect this is either a temporary code issue revolving around the lack of user impersonation or a security feature. Either case, it’s annoying.

(Update August 21, 2009: Tom Warren mentioned he did not require Guest access. YMMV.)

To run the roadblock, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Movie Maker and add a DWORD value named AllowNetworkFiles. Afterwards, simply double-click it and set its data to either 0 (disabled) or 1 (enabled).

Keyboard cat, inside the new Windows Live Movie Maker, playing me off.

Affected: GeForce 8800 GT and higher, 9600 GT and higher, or any GeForce 200 series and higher, using driver version 186.xx and up.

Update (8/10): A NVIDIA representative has indicated the fix will be “available in the next driver release” sometime this month.

While poking around Process Explorer, I stumbled upon a process having a curiously high handle count. Having dealt with leaky components before, I identified the 64 handle/minute pattern almost immediately.

Figure - Process Explorer viewing nvSCPAPISvr.exe open file handles

As the description indicates, this particular component (a Windows service) is responsible for some sort of NVIDIA Stereoscopic feature. With some Bing’ing around, I discovered this functionality is only useful if you use 3D glasses shown on the NVIDIA 3D Vision product page.

While I could have simply stopped the service – which shouldn’t be configured to start Automatically to begin with – I decided to dive a little deeper to understand the issue.

After some disassembly, I found string references to \INF\OEM*.INF which led me to a piece of code wrapped in a loop. My ASM to C++ hand transcribed version of the code (not representative of the real product):

GetWindowsDirectoryA(260, path);
strcat(path, "\\INF\\OEM*.INF");
 
HANDLE find_handle = FindFirstFile(path, &wfd);
 
if(find_handle != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE) {
 
  do
  {
    HANDLE inf_handle = SetupOpenInfFile(
        wfd.FileName,
        NULL,
        INF_STYLE_WIN4,
        error_line);
 
    // [...] Additional code to search for nvstusb.cat/sys
  }
  while(FindNextFile(find_handle, &wfd));
 
  FindClose(find_handle);
}
 

The bug isn’t obvious at first glance. The issue lies within the use of SetupOpenInfFile. The handle returned by this function is never passed into SetupCloseInfFile, leaving various internal file and mutex handles open consuming a large amount of memory (as this user reported in July).

To mitigate this issue, I strongly suggest you stop and disable the NVIDIA Stereoscopic 3D Driver Service. If you use its stereoscopic features, I suggest you only use the service for short amounts of time.

Although the latest drivers I’m using aren’t WHQL signed (190.56), this problem also exists in all drivers versioned 186.xx and up. This range is inclusive of WHQL and non-WHQL signed drivers. I, again, urge Microsoft to include some sort of Application Verifier testing with all components bundled with WHQL submitted drivers.

It’s hard to picture the Windows Taskbar’s evolutionary past at Microsoft, because… well it was developed in the dark. A couple of months ago, I sat down with Chris Holmes and dug up builds from each development milestone at Microsoft and activated the new, secret Taskbar for comparison.

Figure of Milestone 1, 2, and Beta (Milestone 3-like) Taskbars displayed vertically, respectively.

The Milestone 1 Taskbar was switched on with the addition of a Boolean DWORD value named EnableCHS, placed in the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced key. One could infer CHS is a symbolic reference to the Chinese and their government’s way of shrouding everything in secrecy. Microsoft has come out and said CHS stood for Can Has Superbar, a reference to “lolspeak”. This iteration of the Taskbar featured very basic grouping features, live preview, and early support for “pinning” although not completely functional.

Milestone 2 builds featured an improved Taskbar, primarily focused on improving past pinning and grouping work. It also featured the beginnings of what we now know as Jumplists and Aero Peek. Unlike the previous Taskbar, the Shell performed more vigorous checks on who you were, under the Microsoft corporate umbrella, to determine if you were authorized to use the new Taskbar. One could infer these additions denote the point in time in which “new Taskbar builds” of Windows 7 had to be shared outside the Shell group for further work (e.g. the teams that work on Libraries, Find and Organize).

At the end of what you could call the “private development” tunnel, Microsoft started work on Milestone 3 builds of Taskbar. It is at this time, pinning and grouping features were smoothed out, attention jerking elements were removed (e.g. the awful white gradient), and the more subtle icon resources installed in preparation for the upcoming technical preview. Unpictured, Jumplists still had the small arrow that appeared upon hover over a Taskbar button.

The Milestone 3 Taskbar received little polish before being pushed out to the public in the first Pre-beta build of Windows 7. While demoed at the Professional Developers Conference in 2008, the Taskbar was not intended for public use. Having received a tip of the new Taskbar’s existence, however, I circumvented its Milestone 2-based protection and developed a tool to enable its public critique. (After all, we, the users, were the ones that were going to be using this from now until the next major Taskbar change. I felt it was important to perfect it now before code freeze.)

Updated July 30, 2009: Added proper definition of CHS, as per Microsoft.

On October 22nd, the main version of Windows 7 to be sold, in the various EU-participating countries, will be Windows 7 “E”. What is this you ask? Windows 7 “E” is merely Windows 7 sans Internet Explorer, the EU’s OS of choice. Consumers will quickly discover, however, it’s a huge pain in the ass to download a browser of their choice… without a browser.

Mom and Dad will likely get a pre-built machine, by either a popular manufacturer or their kids, so this isn’t a problem for them. Us, on the other hand, are incredibly lazy. We won’t want to bend down and grab one of a million USB fobs. Or put yet another executable on our NAS. Or heaven forbid, waste a CD. We need something clever. This is one such clever.

Step 1 – Launch (and configure) Windows Media Player

Throughout the OS, you’ll find references to Windows Media Player. Click one of them. You’ll be welcomed by a wizard that takes a good five minutes to go through, if you don’t choose the Recommended option.

Step 2 – Search for your browser, using the Windows Media Guide

If it isn’t already on your screen, open the Windows Media Guide. You can do this by clicking the very large Media Guide button in the lower-left corner of Windows Media Player. In the upper-right corner of the Guide, type your browser of choice into the Search box. Purely for example purposes, cough, I typed “Firefox”.

Step 3 – Click an ad, download your browser

Upon completion of your search, you’ll be presented with some advertising. We’ll use this to our advantage to hop outside the cage we’re in. Pick an ad, click it. If it doesn’t take you to the manufacturers site in less than a few clicks, go back and pick a different ad. Eventually you’ll end up at the desired location with the binaries you need trickling down to your desktop.

For those that wish to download Internet Explorer, you can simply type the keyword IE8 or Opera. I’m serious.

Figure 1, 2 -- Windows Media Player being used to search for and download Mozilla Firefox

In an unsurprising better-late-than-never manner, Microsoft has announced (on the Windows Team Blog) a new coding contest titled Code⁷. The rules are pretty simple: Write a native Windows application (sorry Adobe Air people) that utilizes a new feature or five in Windows 7. Prizes include travel to LA, entrance to the PDC 2009 conference, and/or a heap of cash.

Click Code⁷ for more details.

Known only by its codename at the moment, Microsoft Office “Outspace” (MOO?) is one of the more noticeable changes to the new Office suite. Upon clicking of the Office button, you’re whisked away into a fancy task-oriented view that lets you manage your open document, presentation, or spreadsheet at a much higher level. (More details pending technical beta release.)

Figures 1 and 2 -- Microsoft Office “Outspace” turned on and off (Microsoft Word)

For those of us that hate change, fear not. You can revert back to the old way of doing things with a quick registry tweak. Simply navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Toolbars (creating that key if it doesn’t already exist) and create a DWORD named UseOutspace. Give it a value of 0 or 1 (representing disabled or enabled, respectively) and you’re done. You’ll notice with Outspace off, a piece of the original Office button shows up. This is a bug that’ll be cleaned up as the product matures.

For those that spending countless hours maintaining what you think is the ultimate Windows-related website, blog, or forum: Submit your site to the Best Windows Website Contest running at The Windows Club. If you’re picked for one of the top five slots, you could win anything from an I’m a PC shirt to a serious collection of Windows 7 and Office software!

Your scrutinizing peers include myself and these other old farts:

Ed Bott, MVP, EdBott.com
Paul Schottland, Product Unit Manager for Microsoft
Steve Sinchak, MVP, Tweaks.com
Lowell Heddings, HowToGeek.com
Howard Lo, Microsoft’s Regional Team Manager (APAC)
Emil Protalinski, Ars Technica – One Microsoft Way
Corrine Chorney, MVP, Security Garden and The Windows Club Moderator
James Fisher, MVP, Windows Talk and The Windows Club Moderator
Anand Khanse, MVP, The Windows Club Administrator.

You have nothing to lose by submitting, so don’t be a lazy bum.

In March, I announced that my unsigned theme patch-less vision was being realized. Today, I’m happy to let everyone know beta bits of UxStyle Core are now available for public testing!

UxStyle Core does not currently have a theme manager or even a UI. UxStyle Core is exactly what it sounds like – the absolutely bare minimum (core) needed to enable third-party theme usage. Nothing more, nothing less. Later in the beta, we’ll push out a “bundle”, containing both the core software and a theme manager developed by our close partners.

Install UxStyle Core. Download some themes. Give them a whirl, everything should “just work”. Let us know how it went, bad or good, in the forums.

Thank God, no more patching.