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Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 95 • 2007-02-08 • Circulation: over 265,000
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For links to every subtopic in this issue, scroll down to the
Index |
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TOP STORY More on the Vista upgrade secret
Vista workaround is a deliberate feature My previous article explained that the Vista upgrade will succeed, and will validate, when any previous version of Windows is running at the time. That includes a 30-day trial version of Vista. Every retail copy of Vista allows a trial period by installing the product without entering a product key. (See my previous story for the exact steps.) The evidence is mounting that this upgrade policy is an official decision by Microsoft. It's clearly not any kind of hacker trick. The steps to install without a product key, and to upgrade regardless of what version of Windows is running, is hard-coded into Vista in such a way that it can't be a mistake. One source of mine shared with me some of the thinking within Microsoft on Vista upgrades. I'm withholding the source's name to protect his relationships within the Redmond company. He exchanged e-mails with a support engineer who said (I'm paraphrasing here):
I wrote last week that upgrading Vista over a copy of itself might violate Microsoft's EULA (End-User License Agreement). Now I'm not so sure. Is it a violation to install the product in a way that Microsoft itself programmed the product to operate? I'd like to acknowledge a couple of readers who wrote that it might be unethical to install the Vista upgrade without having purchased a previous version of the product. I agree. The clean-install method should only be used by people who did purchase a copy of XP or 2000, but can't install the Vista upgrade over their copy for some legitimate reason (as described in the next section, below). If Microsoft doesn't want the clean-install method to work at all, the company can easily change its policy. The Redmond firm could simply code Vista Home Premium's setup routine, for example, so it actually does check for XP, 2000, or a lower-priced edition of Vista, such as Vista Home Basic. When a Vista clean install may be necessary Reader George Walker describes several situations in which Microsoft technical support would need a back door to allow Vista to be installed without a running copy of Windows being present:
This view is supported by a comment written by my "Windows Vista Secrets" co-author, Paul Thurrott, in the 8-step outline of the procedure that he published on Jan. 29. I tested the process and printed a complete, 11-step version of the procedure in my Feb. 1 article. Paul's sources say that the Vista clean-install method is documented in the internal knowledge base that's made available to Microsoft support people. Upgrade trick works with MS Office, too Reader Kent Hansen reports that Microsoft Office also upgrades itself over a nonactivated version of itself:
Vista's behavior of installing its upgrade version over any install of Vista looks more and more like a deliberate decision on Microsoft's part to make the install easy and less expensive than the full version of its software. The full version increasingly resembles the "golden casket" that undertakers routinely show to bereaved family members. No one expects the family to actually buy the gold-plated model, but it makes the other models seem less overpriced. European prices for Vista seem jacked-up Our readers in the United Kingdom are reporting that Microsoft is charging inflated prices for Windows Vista that are the same numbers in pounds as Americans are paying in dollars. That represents almost double the U.S. price. As Chris Bunton puts it:
OEM versions and educational discounts to come I said last week that I'd write about other ways to get Vista for less than full price. These include buying OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) versions and by using educational discounts. I received so many great leads this week from my readers on the Vista upgrade process, however, that I couldn't get to everything that I wanted to reveal about discount marketing channels. I'll just say again that buying the OEM version of Windows doesn't qualify the buyer to receive telephone support from Microsoft. Buying a retail package in a store usually does. I promise to cover these topics and more in the next few weeks. Readers Walker, Hansen, Harris, and Bunton will receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of their choice for being the first to send me tips that I printed. Brian Livingston is editorial director of the Windows Secrets Newsletter and the co-author of Windows Vista Secrets and 10 other books. |
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LANGALIST TIPS What's the value of a .name domain?
A .name domain works like any other Have you seen some Web sites with names that end in somewhat unusual designations such as .biz, .info, .name, or .pro? Reader George McDaniel bought himself one such domain name and now is wondering if he wasted his money:
Wikipedia has a truly outstanding article on the domain name system, but it's over 5,000 words long. So here's the fast-forward short form: In terms of the Internet domain hierarchy, site names are read right to left, and every site name has two or three parts. Consider www.windowssecrets.com, for example. In this case, .com is the top-level domain, or TLD. The .com domain is one of the seven original generic domain names for the United States that date to the early days of the Internet: .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org. Top-level domains were also set up at that time for other countries, such as .jp for Japan. Each top-level domain contains many, many secondary level domains. In our example, windowssecrets is our second-level domain. But microsoft is also a second-level domain. So is google or itunes or yahoo or any of the millions of other .com names in use. Some names may also include a third-level domain, which is www in our example. Other third-level domains you may have seen are ftp, mail, forum, and so on. This basic domain-name setup worked for a while, until the Web boom in the late 1990s. But by the year 2000, some felt that the seven generic U.S. TLD names had become too watered down. Many personal sites, for example, were in the top level .com domain, even though those sites had nothing to do with commerce, which is what .com names were supposed to be for. So several new TLDs were created to help sort out different types of sites. Four new generic TLDs (.biz, .info, .name, and .pro) and three other "sponsored" TLDs (.aero, .coop, and .museum) were added to the original list of generic TLDs. The sponsored TLDs are a special class; they're not available to just anyone. But the new generic TLDs (.biz, .info, .name, and .pro) are wide open. And that brings us, in highly compressed shorthand form, to the answer to your question, George. The .name TLDs are completely legitimate and on an equal footing with .com, .edu, org, or any of the other more-familiar TLDs. Enforcement of the naming system, however, is lax. An individual can still register a .com domain and a commercial enterprise could, in theory, register a .name domain. The sponsored TLDs and most of the 240+ country-name extensions, such as .jp, are more tightly regulated. Because things are so loose, having a .name domain for your personal site is 100% correct, George. But it really doesn't gain you much of anything in practical terms. So, is it a scam? Not at all. Will it become more popular in the future? Yes, probably, but very, very slowly because enforcement of the categories varies. Is it worth it? That's your shot to call. But at least now you have a context in which to make your decision. You can see the current list of TLDs recognized as valid by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in the Norid directory. The ICANN site has an excellent, relatively short description of TLDs. In combination with the Wikipedia entry mentioned above, this should give you a more complete idea of the Internet naming system than I could provide in this limited space. More on making data unrecoverable The item "Erasing data to make it unrecoverable" in the paid edition of the Feb. 1, 2006, issue generated some interesting reader mail, including these question:
You can achieve a reasonable level of security by using software that employs the "government wipe" technique — overwriting the old data seven or more times with random data. But even then, specialized data-recovery devices may be able to read at least some of the data. Part of the reason for this is that hard drives aren't perfect. Head placement can vary slightly over time and from run to run. Although this has no effect in normal operation, it means that areas alongside the normal head positions may contain readable data. In addition, magnetic fields don't stop abruptly but diminish over a distance. Accessing and reading this off-track data is, in fact, one of the techniques used by high-end commercial data-recovery services. Encrypting your data beforehand is a great idea, as long as it's done early in the process. A hard drive that's set up to encrypt everything from Day One will be very hard for unauthorized persons to recover data from. But if encryption happens late in the life of the drive, then the earlier, non-encrypted data may still be readable. Yes, a strong magnet will erase a drive, up to a point. Commercial "degaussing" tools use a rapidly-fluctuating magnetic field to scramble the data on a disk and make it much harder to recover. But even there, you'd have to take special care to make sure that every section of every platter in your hard drive was equally exposed to the full degaussing field. Otherwise, you're wasting your time. Here's what I did when I had to discard a hard drive that contained sensitive information on an old e-mail list. This data was always stored in encrypted form to begin with, and that was my first and most important line of data defense. But when the drive was dying and needed replacement, here's how I did it: Step 1. I repartitioned the drive, then reformatted it (empty). Step 2. I used a "government wipe" tool that filled the entire drive with seven passes of random data. Step 3. I physically removed the drive from my PC, opened the drive housing, and ran a screwdriver tip across both sides of all the platters, scraping off large amounts of oxide. Step 4. I discarded the disk at a recycling center. I suppose government-level spooks might have been able to recover some data from that drive, assuming they somehow found it. But the steps I took made the drive extremely safe from any ordinary data-recovery techniques. Overkill? Maybe. But I didn't want to take any chances with the personal data. The bottom line is that if someone really, really wants what was once on your hard drive, there are ultra-sophisticated techniques that can recover at least some of the data, unless you physically destroy the disk by melting it or grinding it into dust. So you have to ask yourself: How safe do you want to be? Once you answer that question, you'll know how far you have to go in making your old drives snoop-proof. There's lots more information in my InformationWeek article, The "Dead Drive" Security Loophole. Choosing the best backup software Reader Dave Davidson asks whether my original advice on backing up a PC needs to be updated:
Generally speaking, there are three main kinds of backups: imaging tools, file-backup tools, and rollback tools. First, there are the "imaging" programs. Imaging tools don't copy files, per se. Instead, they're disk-oriented, and make a bit-by-bit, sector-by-sector copy of your hard drive. This is important: These imaging tools not only capture what's on your drive, but also the exact placement and order of each bit, byte, cluster, and sector on the drive. When you restore an image, you're not just putting the files back: You're actually putting the hard disk into exactly the same state — bit for bit — it was in when the image was made. That's why, if you image a "perfect" setup (error free, defragged, etc.) then when you restore it, you get that perfect, defragged setup back in one step. In fact, whatever was on the disk, no matter what, will get put back in exactly the same way it was. This is why imaging is the "gold standard" of backups. Imaging tools include Ghost and my personal favorite, the tool built into Bootit NG. (The same site that offers Bootit NG also provides the stand-alone utilities "Image for DOS" and "Image for Windows.") There are several other imaging tools, too. A Web search will show you the full range of choices. Moving down a notch, there are the standard file-oriented backup tools, like the NTbackup tool built into XP and available at Microsoft.com in command-line form or GUI form. File-oriented backup utilities make no attempt to replicate the placement or order of data on your system; instead, they simply focus on copying the files themselves. When used to restore files to the disk, a standard backup usually will do a good job restoring user-created data files, but may or may not get everything — especially files that are in use at the time of backup — 100% back into the same configuration as before. Better tools use a technique called "shadowing" to try to capture "open" or "in-use" files. This usually works pretty well. But it's still not as dead-to-rights certain as imaging. And in any case, a standard backup usually will not get your drive into perfect, defragged condition in one step. Moving down another notch, rollback tools like GoBack and XP's built-in System Restore work by tracking some or all of the changes you make on your system. This happens in real-time (as you work), on some preset schedule, or when triggered by specific events, such as installing new software. If you have a problem after installing some software, you may be able to get your system running again using System Restore, because the utility can return your system files to a prior state. But System Restore won't automatically clean up leftover files and Registry entries caused by the bad install. It also can't, for example, let you selectively restore just one data file you erased but now want back. GoBack does offer file-level recovery, but has its own limitations. Even GoBack's makers clearly state in their documentation that Go Back is no substitute for full backups. Of course, any kind of backup is better than no backup at all. But if you're trying to construct a decision tree, consider this: System Restore is better than nothing. A tool like GoBack is better than System Restore. Standard backups are better than GoBack. And "imaging" a drive is better than a standard backup — imaging is as good as it gets. How to predict CDR and DVD-R longevity Reader George Butler asks a question that's increasingly important, since all forms of removable media (floppies, tapes, zip disks...) fade away as they age. What's the lifespan of the blank CDs and DVDs you use to burn data, music, and whatnot? If you haven't thought about this before, you may be surprised — and dismayed — by the answer!
First, just to make
sure we're on the same page: This question isn't about commercially-produced,
prerecorded CDs and DVDs, such as those you buy at music or movie stores.
Those have very long lifespans. They're mainly vulnerable to physical damage to the
readable surfaces of the discs. The following LangaList Plus tips are in today's paid newsletter: • Group Policy tricks available for XP Home • PivX preEmpt provides ActiveX protection • Another tool to create hard-drive inventories • More on offloading your document scanning • Confusing updates for Daylight Time switch • Run Windows 98 and XP on the same PC • Synchronizing mail on different desktops |
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USEFUL LINKS Lead generation via affiliate marketing If your business depends on a constant flow of new customers, and you're not attracting traffic from consumers who are searching the Internet, you may be leaving a large amount of money on the table. (By Brian Livingston, Datamation) More info |
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WACKY WEB WEEK New PC videos slam the Mac
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YOUR SUBSCRIPTION The Windows Secrets Newsletter is published weekly on the 1st through 4th Thursdays of each month, plus occasional news updates. Vacation breaks occur in late August, Thanksgiving Week, and Christmas/New Year's. Publisher: WindowsSecrets.com LLC, 300 Queen Anne Ave. N. #456, Seattle, WA 98109 USA. Vendors, please send no unsolicited packages to this address (readers' letters are fine). Editorial Director: Brian Livingston. Editor: Fred Langa. Contributing Editors: Susan Bradley, Scott Dunn, Mark Edwards, Woody Leonhard, Chris Mosby, Ryan Russell. Research Director: Vickie Stevens. Program Director: Brent Scheffler. Managing Editor: Jody Braverman. Trademarks: Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. The Windows Secrets series of books is published by Wiley Publishing Inc. The Windows Secrets Newsletter, WindowsSecrets.com, LangaList, LangaList Plus, WinFind, Security Baseline, Patch Watch, Perimeter Scan, Wacky Web Week, the Logo Design (W, S or road, and Star), and the slogan Everything Microsoft Forgot to Mention all are trademarks and service marks of WindowsSecrets.com LLC. All other marks are the trademarks or service marks of their respective owners. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: Anyone may subscribe to this newsletter by visiting our free signup page. WE GUARANTEE YOUR PRIVACY: 1. We will never sell, rent, or give away your address to any outside party, ever. 2. We will never send you any unrequested e-mail, besides newsletter updates. 3. All unsubscribe requests are honored immediately, period. Privacy policy HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: To unsubscribe from the Windows Secrets Newsletter,
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