Behind the Scenes of Windows 8

Larry Osterman returns with another installment of his Behind the Scenes... series.  This time with Windows 8.  Larry is a developer for the team I work on.  If you haven't caught it yet, take the time to read how the team developing Windows Runtime experienced this release.

Follow my adventures at //build/

This week I'm attending the //build/ conference where Microsoft is revealing many of the details about Windows 8.  If you want to see what is going on, follow my Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/steverowe,  I'm posting some pictures, linking to summaries, etc.

The Sidebar is Back!

I'm apparently in the minority, but I really liked the sidebar in Windows Vista.  On a widescreen monitor, there is horizontal space to waste and it was really convenient to have all of my gadgets showing over on the right-hand side.  In Windows 7, the sidebar was removed.  Gadgets are still there, but to me they became less useful because they were either hidden below all my windows or obscuring them.  There was no way to have them always show and have windows flow around them.  I've just discovered a new gadget called 7 Sidebar that acts just like the Vista sidebar, but for Windows 7.  You can find it here if you too liked the look of the sidebar.

More Win7 Previews

Previews of some specific parts of Windows 7 which are of interest to me:

Audio

Media Center

Win7 Previews Starting To Appear

Windows 7 is being unveiled for the first time at PDC and the initial previews are starting to hit the net.  Here is a sampling:

Gizmodo (covers Device Stage with lots of pictures)

WinSuperSite (lots of pictures of the shell)

Ars Technica (mostly new UI)

NeoWin (UI plus Device Stage)

Windows 7 Will Be Officially Called... "Windows 7"

After Millenium, XP, and Vista comes... Windows 7.  Yep.  Not a lot of imagination in this one.  As unexciting as the name is, I'm excited that we're finally starting to talk about it.  It's shaping up to be a really nice OS.  I can't wait until you all get to experience it.

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2008/10/13/introducing-windows-7.aspx

 

Cause of "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet Site" found

Perhaps you, like me saw a rash of sites giving the error "Internet explorer cannot open the Internet Site" yesterday.  At first I thought one of my machines was messed up.  Then I saw it on another machine.  This one running XP.  A virus perhaps?  I can't recall doing the same thing on both machines.  How would I get a virus on both?  A worm maybe?  Updated the antivirus just in case.  This morning the errors seemed to be gone but still the mystery.  What caused it?

It appears that a tool called SiteMeter was causing the problem.  Mystery solved.  More detailed information here.

Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 Beta Is Available

At long last, there is a preliminary fix for the corruption issue that has dogged WHS since its release.  The WHS team released the fix with its Power Pack 1 beta.  See their blog post for details and a link to download it.  In addition to the corruption fix, many other bugs are fixed and it is now possible to back up your shared folders to an external drive.  The power pack also adds supports for connecting x64 machines.

I've been using Windows Home Server for several months now and find the ease of backup unparalleled.  Just connect your machines to the server and they will be backed up each night.  No need to fiddle with anything.  I've been using early versions of the power pack and have found it very stable.  It's still a beta so treat it as such, but in my experience it's solid.  If you are running WHS, consider trying out the beta.

Update on Windows Home Server Corruption Issue

The WHS team has an update on their blog regarding the corruption issue.  In short, they fully understand the issue and are working on a fix.  The issue is at a low level of the operating system and so requires a lot of testing to be sure that the fix works and that it doesn't break anything else.  The ETA for a fix is June 2008.

 

Update is here.

Drobo + Windows Home Server = Goodness

I've been using Windows Home Server (WHS) for a little over a month now.  While there is still an issue with data corruption if you work on files directly on the server, as a backup tool, it is great.  The system is practically foolproof.  Install the server, install the connector software on each machine in the house, and let it go.  Every night it will back up each computer.  In addition, it makes a great location for centralized files.  The shares are readily available from each machine.  Additionally, it can stream media to devices around the home.  I've been using mine for backup and centralized storage but I haven't actually played with the media streaming yet.

For the backing store on my WHS, I have chosen to use a Drobo.  Drobo is essentially an easy-to-use, flexible RAID solution.  It's not really RAID, but it's similar enough that thinking of it as a RAID isn't going to cause problems.  The advantage of the Drobo is two-fold.  First, it duplicates everyone on the machine.  WHS shares can be marked for duplication.  In that case, each file on the share is stored on 2 drives in the server.  However, the backup files are not themselves backed up.  The Drobo mirrors or stripes each file so they are all backed up.  In this way, losing a single drive won't cause the loss of any data.  The second benefit is that it makes for a slightly cheaper storage solution.  Because WHS uses redundancy for its backup model, it can only effectively use 1/2 of the drive space.  Drobo uses striping so with 4 drives, it can effectively use 3/4 of the drive space.  This makes storage a little cheaper.  However, you have to add in the cost of the Drobo so it's not really significant.  Of course, you have a Drobo afterwards...

Setting up the Drobo with WHS was trivial.  Ars Technica indicated early on that the Drobo wouldn't work with WHS but I found that not to be the case.  I had the 1.1.0 firmware on my Drobo and WHS saw it as a 2TB USB drive.  I was able to just add it to my drive pool. 

A few pieces of advice:

First, WHS treats all non-primary drives the same.  If you have the Drobo plus another drive in your storage pool, you'll lose much of the benefit because any files placed on your non-Drobo will not be backed up.  If you use a Drobo, use only a Drobo.  The Drive Extender Migrator will migrate all files off the primary drive to one of the secondary drives.  Stick with only 2 drives in the machine (boot/primary + Drobo) and everything will land on the Drobo.

Second, turn off all duplication of folders.  The Drobo already does this for you.  It just wastes space to duplicate further.

Finally, WHS seems to set aside 10% of a drive for shadow copies.  Because the Drobo appears as a 2TB drive, this means it will take up to 200GB for shadow copies.  You can see how much is actually being used with the Drive Allocation add-in.  To lower the amount of space allocated to Shadow Copies:

1. Log into WHS via remote desktop


2. Open My Computer


3. Right-Click on the C: drive and select properties


4. Select the Shadow Copies tab


5. Click Settings


6. Select c:\fs\B (or similar) share


7. Now change the limit.  I'd recommend 10% of the space you actually have on the drive.

Note that this is totally unsupported.  I think it's safe but I can't promise.  Do so at your own risk and only if you are comfortable playing with this part of Windows.  If you don't understand the instructions, don't try to follow them.

Note:  I'm not on the Windows Home Server team.  Nothing said here is official.  In fact, using a RAID-type solution with Windows Home Server is unsupported.

Trying Windows Home Server

Over the weekend I installed Windows Home Server on a spare box that I had.  So far, I'm impressed.  The interface is very slick.  Installation of the client software called the "Connector" is easy.  Go to a share on the server and install.  All connections and setup are automated from there.  The main purpose for the system, backup, is easy.  By default all drives and everything but temporary files are backed up.  You can configure the backup to exclude any drives or directories you want.  Backup was quick over my gigabit network.  Backups are scheduled each night between 12:00 and 6:00 am.  The server will retain 3 backups by default but you can change this.  I haven't yet tried restoration from any of the backups so I don't know how well that works.  I'll need to try that before I'm fully comfortable with the system.

The installation takes the first 20gb of your largest drive and installs the OS on it.  It takes the rest of that drive as for the drive pool.  The first drive, also called the primary drive, is reserved for tombstone files which apparently mark the location on the other drives where each of the files resides.  Reportedly if the primary drive fails, the tombstone files can be recreated from the additional drives.  Backed up data is not stored here unless it is the only drive on the system.  Initially it was for me but when I added a second drive, the server automatically rebalanced all of the files to the second drive. 

There are two sorts of data that WHS handles.  There are backup files and there are shared folders.  Backup files are more or less hidden from you and are accessed via a special interface.  Shared folders are network shares that can contain files, music, photos, etc.  Each of the shared folders can be set to be duplicated across the drives or be left as a single instance.  As near as I can tell, the backup files are not duplicated.  If someone knows differently, please let me know.

When drives are added to the system, they can either be made part of the storage pool or kept separate.  If separate, they act just like any drive on a windows system.  If made part of the storage pool, they are virtualized into one large drive.  WHS will balance files across the storage pool and can be made to create redundant copies of any file folders you designate.  Drives can be removed from the pool if there is space to move the files to other drives.

The server is extensible via what are called add-ins.  Installing add-ins is done by copying them to a particular shared folder.  After that, they show up as available in the server console.  Installing them is just a few clicks.  I've found two that are very useful.  Whiist allows you to create simple web sites.  The Duplication Info add-in shows you which drives duplicated files are located on.  It can also be used to see what sort of files are on each drive.  By default WHS treats the pool as one large, opaque virtual drive.  This lets you penetrate that barrier and see how the server is utilizing the space.

I have visions of making my storage pool be a Drobo.  I have a Drobo on order.  I'll see if it works at all in this role.

Overall I'm very impressed with Windows Home Server.  It's not designed for those who want to be able to turn every knob but for the fire and forget crowd, it's great.

Note:  I'm not on the WHS team and don't have any inside information so don't take anything I say here as canon.  These are just my observations.

Vista SP1 Release Candidate Available to the Public

Vista SP1 RC1 has just been released for public consumption.  If you want to try it out, you can do so here.  I'm running this on most of my machines without incident.  This includes my Media Center at home.  So, from my few data points, it seems quite stable.  Don't expect any major changes in functionality.  This isn't XP Service Pack 2.  It's more like a traditional service pack.  Lots of bug fixes, but it's not being used to roll out big new features.  If you want to read about it, check out Paul Thurrott's review.  Remember, this is the release candidate, not the final build.  If you install this, you'll have to uninstall and upgrade to the real one whenever the final is released.

XP Machine Can't See Vista Computer - Solution

I'm at my brother-in-law's place and had to troubleshoot a network issue.  I didn't see quite this situation on the web so I'll post it here in case it can help someone else.

The issue was that his laptop (XP) couldn't see his desktop (Vista).  The easy guess was that it was a firewall issue but I looked and the Windows firewall was disabled.  To throw a wrench in the works, my laptop (Vista) could see the desktop.  I surmised then that it couldn't be a firewall issue.  A firewall would block both clients, wouldn't it? 

After some investigation, I noticed something.  When I pinged the desktop from the Vista laptop, the ping address was IPv6.  When I did the same from the XP laptop, it was IPv4.  I tried the IPv4 address on the Vista machine and it now failed to get a response to the ping.  Very strange. 

The web didn't appear to be any help.  I tried several things none of which helped so I won't enumerate them here.  In the end, I found the culprit.  It *was* a firewall issue afterall.  The desktop happened to have McAfee SecurityCenter (v 7.2) installed which had its own firewall.  Disabling that firewall fixed the issue.  The data at hand would seem to indiate that this particular firewall only protects the IPv4 stack, however.  Oops.

 Hopefully this will help at least one of you solve a similar problem.

Windows Live SkyDrive Is In Open Beta

Windows Live SkyDrive is now open to the public in beta form.  From what I can tell, it is basically 500 megs of drive space on the web that you can use to store personal documents or things you want to share.  This isn't the first time something like this has been done.  I can think of older stuff like xdrive, but this is the first time I recall a major player doing it.  It also has very slick integration with the system.  With the installation of one activex control, you can drag and drop things between your computer and the web.  Quite cool.

Vista Performance Update

We just released two update packages which improve the performance and compatibility of Vista.  As far as I can tell, they aren't on Windows Update yet so you'll have to go get them manually.  The most significant in my mind is improvement for file copies from the Vista shell.  Anyone who has tried to copy even a small amount of data in Vista knows how painfully slow it can be.  These updates are reported to fix that.  I'm installing them now.  Here is Ars Technica's writeup on them.

The performance update is here.

The compatibility update is here.

 

List of ReadyBoost Compatible Devices

I've been interested in ReadyBoost for a while now but it's hard to find out which devices will work and which will not.  Performance specs do not provide enough information to tell because often they list speeds in only bursty situations.  Some manufacturers will tell you on the packaging but most don't mention it.  For those, the only way to tell has been to buy the part and try it out.  Even though you might be able to return an incompatible unit, that gets old fast.  I just ran across a cool site which, as of this writing, lists the compatibility of 1109 devices.  Of those, 674 are supposed to be compatible.  You can search by manufacturer or just peruse the list of compatible devices.  Quite a valuable resource.

Note:  I'm not on the ReadyBoost team and have no connection with them.  This is in no way an endorsement of this list or the devices on it by Microsoft.

How We'll Avoid the Animated Cursor Bug Next Time

Michael Howard provides a very insightful look at how the animated cursor bug bypassed the numerous security measures in Vista.  He dicusses the -GS flag, address space randomization, static analysis tools, and fuzz testing.  He also talks about the steps we're taking to make sure it can't happen again.  Besides giving details on the .ani attack, he also provides what turns out to be a good primer on Vista security measures.  If you have an interest in security, go read this post.

Why Windows Can't See 4GB of Memory

Interesting post by Hilton Locke about why installing 4 GB of RAM on a 32-bit box doesn't actually give you 4 GB of RAM.  Instead it gives you something like 3 GB of RAM.  A 32-bit operating system should be able to access 4GB.  Worse, a 64-bit operating system might not be any better.  What's happening?  The short answer is that a lot of space it taken up by memory-mapped IO.  The RAM can't be seen because that space is used for IO devices.  I hadn't considered that.  For the long answer, read the whole post.  There's a lot of interesting info in there.

Showstopper!

I just finished reading Showstopper! by G. Pascal Zachary.  It recounts the creation of Windows NT starting with the hiring of Dave Cutler in October 1988 and ending with the shipping of the first version of NT on July 26, 1993.  The book puts a lot in perspective.  NT took nearly 5 years of grueling work.  The book spends a lot of time talking about the impact work on NT had on the personal lives of the team members.  Many didn't see their families much at all for extended periods of time.  It wasn't uncommon for people to pull repeated all-nighters.  We seem to have learned something from this in the past decade.

The book also calls out the contribution of the testing teams.  This is rare in these sort of books.  I've read about the creation of the Mac, the IMP, the XBox, etc. and almost never is testing mentioned.  It's good to read a book which recounts not only the work done by developers but also the heroic efforts of the testers.

If you have an interest in computing history or in the development of large systems, this book is a good one to pick up.  It puts you in the middle of the creation of the OS that runs on so many computers across the world.

I also ran across this interesting paragraph talking about the app-compat work:

The conflict stemmed from the differing priorities of the two sides.  Intent on refining their general model, programmers didn't want to distract themselves by fixing bugs.  Meanwhile, testers wanted to test.  This was a pointless activity when they saw the same bugs week after week. (p. 257)

That sounds a lot like what I was mentioning in my post about single-focus roles.  Each side is so focused on what it is tasked with doing that it doesn't take into account the needs of the other side.

Copy As Path

Here's a cool little Vista trick I just learned:

1. Browse to a file. 
2. Hold down shift and right-click on the file.
3. Select "Copy as Path"

The path for the file, include the filename, is now in your clipboard.  You can paste it into any app.  This is useful when sending a network file's path in mail or when trying to execute a file with command-line parameters (just paste into the run prompt or a cmd window).