Mozilla rolled out Firefox 2.0.0.8 a few days ago, being a version which was supposed to patch approximately 200 glitches. Although it fixed most of them, it appears that it also caused some others making the application a little buggy. However, Mike Beltzner of Mozilla wrote on the company’s blog that Firefox 2.0.0.9 is currently in labs and might be released next week for all the users. The matter can be called “an update to fix the update” because the new patches will be released to repair the fixes which were launched a few days ago.

“The 2.0.0.8 release fixed some 200 issues, but accidentally regressed a few things. Most users won’t see any difference or experience any problems, and those 200 fixes make the 2.0.0.8 update very valuable, but you should never have to choose functionality over security. (more…)

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Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest operating system, shipped to corporate customers in November 2006 and to the general public in January 2007. This move from the Redmond company was designed to emphasize the fact that Vista’s natural ecosystem could stretch with no real issues between the home and the business environments, blurring the lines that separate customers. In fact, with Vista, Microsoft aimed to catalyze an accelerated adoption in the corporate world. Having streamlined the upgrading process for home users as much as possible, Microsoft offered extensive support for Vista migration for businesses, but the matter is largely out of the company’s hands. (more…)

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Multilingual User Interface packs for Windows Vista and Windows XP Professional are not as easy to come by as Microsoft partners and customers would expect. The general presumption seems to be that the MUI packs are available as separate downloads from the Redmond Company. This is not the case. Far from it in fact. The MUI packs are designed to provide support for multiple languages during the operating system’s installation. Microsoft has applauded that fact that its latest operating system will change the strategy associated with multiple languages. There is however a little detail that Microsoft failed to emphasize, the MUI packs are not available for all Windows Vista editions.

“We advise that the MUI for Vista is not available as a separate product and that this functionality is included in the Windows Vista Ultimate and Enterprise Editions. (more…)

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The default installation of Windows Vista weighs in at approximately 8 GB. In fact, Microsoft’s latest operating system won’t even install with less than 15 GB of space available on the hard drive. This is valid for both the low-end and the high-end editions of the platform. A full Vista installation will take up no less than 40 times more hard disk space compared to Windows 95’s 200 MB and five times more than Windows XP’s 1.5 GB. Part of the reason why Vista hugs so much hard disk real estate space is the fact that the operating system brings to the table a plethora of built-in administrative tools that ship by default with the platform.

In this context, the term hidden, is not entirely accurate. Advanced users and system administrators have no problems tracking down and using the administrative tools in Vista. But at the same time, an average user could pass right by them, just because of their low footprint in the operating system’s fabric, as they simply have a way to go by virtually undocumented and unnoticed. But this does not mean that the tools are not there, it just requires a bit of digging under the surface. And you will be surprised of how many long-time Windows users have failed to take a deeper look under the hood of the operating system, even if it would make their life so much easier. (more…)

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Windows Vista “out of memory” errors are intimately connected with the way the operating system manages virtual address space. On Microsoft’s latest operating system, applications have their very own private virtual address space. You must understand that there is no correlation between the virtual address space available to a certain program and the total volume of physical memory installed on the computer. On 32-bit platforms, applications are generally limited under a 2 GB boundary as the maximum size of the virtual address space. In this context, the “out of memory” errors in Windows Vista are generated by applications that have eaten up all the virtual address space allocated to them.

“Every memory allocation, file mapping, or library that is loaded by an application consumes space in this virtual address space. When the application consumes all its virtual address space, any additional such operations fail. Although all applications should be coded to handle memory allocation failures, many applications do not recover correctly from such failures. Therefore, the programs may become unstable or stop responding after they recover from such failures”, Microsoft informed. (more…)

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Concomitantly with the release of the security bulletins as a part of its monthly patch cycle, Microsoft also made available an update affecting the core of 64-bit Vista. More specifically, the feature is designed to stop third party code from altering the operating system’s kernel integrity. “An update is available for Kernel Patch Protection included with x64-based Windows operating systems. Kernel Patch Protection protects code and critical structures in the Windows kernel from modification by unknown code or data. This update adds additional checks to this protection for increased reliability, performance, and resiliency of Windows,” Microsoft revealed.

The Kernel Patch Protection technology is nothing new to the 64-bit editions of Windows Vista. Microsoft’s latest operating system is just the latest in a series of Windows platforms to feature PatchGuard, (more…)

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