IT Expert Voice

The hiring climate in IT is gaining momentum, tech staffing agencies report, but its recovery pace is akin to that of a snail going about its business after recovering from a coma.

“It is gaining momentum at a very deliberate pace,” said John Reed, District President of Robert Half Technology in the Central United States. “I would say it’s continuing to improve every month, every quarter.” READ MORE

Microsoft has essentially extended Windows XP’s sales life, and many observers expect that Windows XP’s support life will also last longer than expected. So should your enterprise stick with Windows XP or continue on to Windows 7?

It seemed so clear. Like it or lump it, the top brass realized, your company would move its enterprise desktops to Windows 7 as Windows XP came to the end of its sales and service life. Then, Microsoft changed the rules. At the same time that Microsoft announced the beta program for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 SP1s, the company “decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1.” This means you’ll still be able to “downgrade” PCs from Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows XP Pro until early 2015. READ MORE

The official word from Microsoft is you can’t upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7; you need a clean install. But in fact you can upgrade, including moving your data, applications, and settings. Here are some tips to help.

With Microsoft having abandoned Windows XP SP2, late-adopting companies still using XP are being pushed to make the upgrade to Windows 7. Windows XP is a dying breed.  It’s time to upgrade. Microsoft says only Windows Vista systems are eligible to upgrade, while Windows XP users need to make a clean install of the new operating system:

You can’t directly upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7, says Microsoft.

Thankfully, you can avoid the need to wipe the disk of each PC and clean-install Windows 7 manually.  Some tricks are more effective than others. Let’s look at some of these upgrade options, the DO’s and DON’Ts, and pick the slickest (and cheapest) and method.
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People have dug deep into Windows 7, in the several months since the operating system’s release, and they found all kinds of hidden gems. One big surprise is the major overhaul given to the most modest of built-in applications: Windows Calculator.

Yes, the native calculator. We’ve all used it to do some quick math. Microsoft keyboards even have a hotkey mapped to the calculator. But did you ever think you could do scientific or financial calculations on it? You can now.

In Windows Vista, Microsoft basically didn’t do anything except give the calculator an Aero skin, but this version in Windows 7 is in fact quite different. It has a new layout to support multi-touch displays, since Microsoft built a lot of touch screen support and functionality into Windows 7.

You now have four modes to choose from when operating the calculator: Standard, Scientific, Programmer, and Statistics. Let’s cover them individually. READ MORE

If you are trying to track down a particular program that owns a file or to try to kill a process for a particular application, then you might want to look at Sysinternals Process Explorer. This short screencast shows you what it can do.

Process Explorer v12.03 is a neat — and free! — little utility that extends what you can do beyond the task monitor that is found in Windows.

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If your Windows 7 systems need half an eternity to boot up, there’s clearly something odd going on. Dealing with slow boot problems is annoying and – let’s face it – is mostly guesswork. Guesswork that costs money and time. We have got you covered: Learn how to analyze the startup process, find the cause in no time, and get rid of bottlenecks once and for all!

Windows 7 is a fast beast, especially when it comes to its startup process which was optimized dramatically compared to Windows Vista. No wonder, as Microsoft has a dedicated team focusing strictly on startup performance. And it shows: On one- to two-year-old hardware, Windows 7 usually takes only 20 to 40 seconds to boot up. Even the performance-wise challenged netbooks rarely need more than a minute to be ready for work!

Certainly, boot times vary significantly from one computer to another. This is nothing new. But if Windows 7 clients need way longer – and we’re talking way over one or two minutes – then you’re looking at a resource hog. So what could be causing the problem?

• You just installed a new driver, which hasn’t been WHQL-certified and delays the boot up process. It could be a simple driver bug!
• You installed a piece of resource-intense software that initializes a process or a service during startup.
• You updated existing software or Windows 7 itself. Yes, it’s not unheard of that some updates cause a significant boot delay.

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For some reason, we still don’t know why, some Windows 7 installations are deleting Windows 7 Restore Points. Here’s what we know and what you can do about it.

One of the few original contributions to operating systems that Microsoft can claim is its Restore Points feature. First included with Windows XP and the now-forgotten Windows ME, Windows automatically creates copies of system and application files, at stated intervals or before changes are made. If a new program installation or other “learning experience” wrecked the user’s system, these backed-up file collection and system settings, called Restore Points, could be used to restore a PC to a working state. What makes Restore Points different from a mere automatic back-up system is that it doesn’t touch documents and other user work files. To say, “This was much appreciated” is an understatement, especially when it’s your work that was saved.

Restore Points — and System Restore, the program behind them — worked well… until it didn’t. It turns out that many users are having serious trouble with Restore Points in Windows 7 . Whether the Restore Points are made manually, automatically by the system timer, or invoked by installing new software, they may vanish after any system reboot like morning dew on a sunny day. READ MORE

For organizations waffling about migrating to Windows 7, especially those still running Windows XP, the clock is ticking.

According to analysts at Gartner, it takes 12–18 months to prep for a client operating system change. That’s a year to a year and a half of application testing, dealing with issues the tests reveal, and overall planning. Then there’s the actual migration which, as administrators know only too well, can take a significant chunk of time in itself.

Plus, since support for Windows Vista RTM (the original release with no service packs applied) has ceased, Windows XP SP2 support will stop in July 2010, and even extended support for Windows XP SP3 will end in April of 2014, the experts agree that the time to move is sooner rather than later.

Mark Tauschek, research director at Info-Tech Research, thinks that Windows XP shops are most at risk. For organizations running Windows Vista (admittedly, he says, a very small percentage) with Service Pack 2, there’s no pressing need to move, and a Windows 7 upgrade could get expensive for them unless they have Enterprise Agreements or Software Assurance that allow them to upgrade for free. However, he says, for Windows XP shops, “While formal end of life (for XP) is April 2014, by 2012 they will run into situations where they can’t find drivers or application updates. They have to think about migrating to Windows 7.” READ MORE