In June 2009, Microsoft are phasing out the subscription service for OneCare, their all in one Antivirus, Antispyware solution. 

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Microsoft-to-Phase-Out-Windows-Live-OneCare/

Now my reasoning for using OneCare is simple.  It seems to work pretty well, I hate Norton’s all in one solution and logic dictates that if anyone should know how to protect their operating system it would be Microsoft.

I’ve just had to switch IE8 to compatibility mode.  Obviously WordPress 2.7 does something that MS don’t like – I kept typing, it kept going out of the right hand side of the edit box and off the page.  Super. 

So, back to the point.  I managed to get hold of three Windows 7 beta keys yesterday.  The plan was to run it on my laptop for a while, upgrade Sue’s laptop and the main PC and see how we go.  See what the compatibility is like and see how it runs.  Also interested in the Media Centre stuff and how it’s updated (if at all) to work with the Xbox 360.  Still chasing that xvid compatibility for MCE. 

I performed an upgrade rather than a fresh install – I’ve reinstalled the OS on this laptop more than enough times the last few months.  The pre-upgrade check pulled The Sims 2 as having possible issues with Windows 7 but nothing else.  After I’d booted into the new OS Daemon tools decided it wasn’t going to be compatible and OneCare is dead. 

Now I remember from the pre-beta build I was looking at pre-Xmas that OneCare didn’t work, I presumed they were working on it and they’d release a new version.  My subscription is up in February so I’d ordered another OEM pack from Amazon (£16 rather than the £40 MS charge). 

This morning I’ve opened a support ticket with billing, I want a refund.  I’m just glad I didn’t pay out £40.  Then I’d have been really annoyed. 

More info to come on Windows 7 as I find it.

The signup page – found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/dd353205.aspx has been replaced with a message simply stating:

Windows® 7 Beta coming soon!

I wonder how long it’ll be until they bring it back online

**update**

Thanks for your interest in the Windows 7 Beta. The volume has been phenomenal — we’re in the process of adding more servers to handle the demand. We’re sorry for the delay and we’ll re-post the Beta as soon as we can ensure a quality download experience.

Had a fairly major issue with the laptop this morning.  I’ve noticed the last few days that I was suffering from the same problem I had a few months ago – basically the laptop wouldn’t boot first time whenever it was started from cold.  It’d get past the green progress bar, just to the part where it launches the GUI and would sit there on a black screen.  To recover you had to hold the power button down, hard power off, power back on and it booted straight into Windows. 

Basically it’s down to the issue detailed in this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946532

It’s caused by a problem with a transactional NTFS process apparently.  The issue is rectified in SP1, the problem is if you’ve experienced a lockup prior to installing SP1, the only solution is to wipe and reinstall. 

Due to me fiddling around with the Windows 7 beta, then deciding to go back to Vista so that I could do something or other less than a month ago, I’d been through a resetup recently and so didn’t really have all that much installed.  I decided to back up my iTunes library, WoW installation and Steamcache to the second hard disk and prep the laptop to take into work and rebuild whilst I was doing other things – after all everyone knows that 99% of the time you’re waiting around for installs to finish/updates to install anyway.  I generally reformat every 6-12 months just to keep my install clean, get rid of any crap leftover from apps that don’t uninstall properly and it just feels nice :p

I got to work this morning, booted from the Vista DVD, wiped the partition on the HDD and started the install.  Stage one went smoothly, got to the reboot, BSOD.  Great.

Most of the time, a BSOD on setup is hardware fault related.  I haven’t had the laptop 12 months yet so everything is still under warranty – still a pain in the arse though.  It’s not as easy as diagnosing a fault with a PC, the components are harder to remove for testing and they’re a bit meh. 

I decided to try again, got to the hard disk configuration page and my hard disks had switched.  Drive 1 was now listed as drive 0 and had 50gGB of space remaining, drive 1 now had 141GB remaining.  SHIT! I thought, I’ve wiped the wrong drive. 

Booted into repair mode, command prompt, went to D:, data was still there.  Decided to remove the drive with my backup on and zero the first one.  Took out the drive, tested the boot to make sure I’d removed the right one – straight into Windows.

Curiouser and Curiouser! /Alice

I’d also unplugged the mains cable.  I had a memory flashback to me plugging in the power supply and it sparking the 4-way.  Seems kinda daft now but it seemed relevant. 

Disk back in, PSU plugged back in, Windows was up.  Decided to install SP1.  Installed, rebooted, BSOD.

Fuck.

Removed the drive again, reinstalled vista, BSOD

Ran a memtest from the Vista DVD, no errors. 

Left the drive doing a full chkdsk whilst I went out for lunch, came back and watched it finish – no bad sectors, I was sure it wasn’t a HDD fault. 

What I couldn’t fathom out was that I was doing exactly the same thing I’d done three weeks ago, nothing had changed – I was still using the same installation media, everything was the same – there was no variable. 

Then I remembered – When I was on the Dell website looking for Drivers, I’d noticed a BIOS update and had installed it.  I wondered if it had done something to the mobo that vanilla Vista from Jan 2007 with no additional drivers couldn’t handle. 

Disabled AHCI and Turbo Caching mode on the HDD, booted into Windows, ran some tests, all good. 

Installed office, ran some windows updates, shut down and came to York. 

Booted back up here and it was still a little iffy (I’m guessing from having run the thing in AHCI mode and switching to native SATA) so decided to reinstall from scratch again. 

Vista went on first time, Office and various other apps installed without a problem, I’m 85% of the way through downloading 600MB of Windows/Office Updates. 

Absolute fucking ballache and one reason why it’s a bad idea to update your BIOS if you’re not having any problems with it :p

I found it extemely annoying because as far as I remembered there was no variable, nothing at all.  I guess the Windows updates between a base install and me installing the BIOS update meant that there were no issues for me three weeks ago. 

Ah well, at least it’s sorted now. 

It’s ironic because just before I started the reformat I was defending Vista to several workmates, an hour later I was cursing it