Windows 7 Transfers Your Wireless Settings Easily

 

After discovering how easily WEP can be cracked and creating a long, secure WPA2 key, you’ve probably noticed it’s a pain to get friends connected to your Wi-Fi network when they stop by. Windows 7 makes this process easy.

the quick and easy process of transferring your wireless network settings from your Windows 7 PC to any other machine running XP, Vista, or Windows 7. To transfer the settings for yourself, head into the Network and Sharing Center, click on Manage Wireless Networks, and then in the properties for your wireless network you’ll find the link to open the wizard that will copy all your settings onto a flash drive.

Once you’ve got the settings backed up, you can use the bundled setupSNK.exe file on the flash drive to restore the settings onto another computer. Sure, you can always save the key to a text file, but having this feature built into the OS is very useful, especially since you don’t have to mess around with wireless settings.

Windows 7: What about the Gamers?

With all of the excitement surrounding the testing and launch of Windows 7, it seems that one demographic of PC users have been left out…the gamers. While I have read a few articles on gaming in the new OS, very little has been said as to how Windows 7 will improve this experience. This is also one of the few areas that pertains to users of both PC and Mac users, because whether Mac users like to admit it or not, they probably use Windows for PC gaming. Many will contest that the PC gaming market is dying, but that’s perception of the few. There are a few popular titles that will probably never be written for a console, not to mention, a PC is able to constantly push the threshold of graphics because graphics cards are developed and upgraded more often than gaming consoles. So, what are the advantages of gaming in Windows 7 versus Vista or XP?

DirectX 11 – DirectX 11 is perhaps the largest improvement in Windows 7 gaming. PC game developers have already begun taking advantage of the improvements that DirectX 11 will allow. Stage Select claims that, “The power of DirectX 11 also claims to improve in-game details without sacrificing gameplay”.

Per Microsoft, DirectX 11 features include:

• Tessellation – Tessellation is implemented on the GPU to calculate a smoother curved surface resulting in more graphically detailed images, including more lifelike characters in the gaming worlds that you explore.
• Multi-Threading – The ability to scale across multi-core CPUs will enable developers to take greater advantage of the power within multi-core CPUs. This results in faster framerates for games, while still supporting the increased visual detailing.
• DirectCompute – Developers can utilize the power of discrete graphics cards to accelerate both gaming and non-gaming applications. This improves graphics, while also enabling players to accelerate everyday tasks, like video editing, on their Windows 7 PC.

Games for Windows- This didn’t quite take off in previous Windows, but a growing catalogue and more support should help turn the corner for Games for Windows. Microsoft touts that Games for Windows guarentees: Quality, Compatibility, Saftey Features and games are Easy to Play.

Games in Windows 7- While this feature was not always consistent in Windows Vista, I have found that every game I have installed in Windows 7 has found its way to the Games folder where it has been catalogued properly. This gives the user one place to store and keep track of all their games. Another feature that has made its way from Vista is the ability for Parents to control their kids gaming experiences using the Parental Control feature.

The Drawback to Windows 7 Gaming- Some games which are not designed to run on Windows 7 may have difficulty installing on the new OS. Compatibility Mode and patches may fix these hiccups, but it may be time to trash some old favorite titles. I haven’t had any major problems with games installing and running under Windows 7, except for Need For Speed: Undercover. Some users have been able to get this game to work, but I have visited every forum and tried pretty much everything and it’s a no go.

While this is certainly not a benchmark test to compare across the board, my own personal experience on Windows 7 has been great. Crysis, the quintessential measuring stick for graphics-intensive games has produced a higher frame rate and seems to run smoother on my installation of Windows 7 than Vista or XP (all on the same hardware). So, there you have it gamers, Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about you. In fact, with the promise of DirectX 11 and some impressive game titles in the pipeline…the best may be yet to come.

Sound off in the comments about your experiences with Windows 7 gaming. Also, if anybody has a sure-fire way to get NFS: Undercover to work for me, I’d appreciate any suggestions.

Windows 7 Compatibility Centre

Microsoft have launched the compatibility centre for Windows 7.  A website simply containing a database of software and hardware that is known to work fine with their new operating system.

The database is by no means exhaustive.  The first software package I searched for, Microsoft’s own Photodraw v2.0 failed to appear in the database even though I know it works fine in Windows 7.  The website does give you the opportunity though to add additional hardware and software yourself if you know it to work, which is a nice touch.

With hardware you’re always better first visiting the manufacturer’s website and downloading any Windows 7 drivers, at the same time checking whether those drivers will support both 64 bit and 32 bit versions of Windows 7.

For seeing if some of your older software will work though, this is a useful tool when you’re considering upgrading.

Extend the AD Delegation Control Wizard

I often see questions in the newsgroups about wanting to delegate control of AD. An example of this would be to delegate control of an OU for example.

Delegation is important because you don't want to just give any "admin" user domain admin rights. They key is to try and limit domain admin and other elevated rights.
There is a delegation of control wizard that is started by right clicking on the OU (I'll be using an OU for this entire blog entry example)and selecting Delegate Control



When you run the wizard you get 11 choices by default at the OU level:

Where does this list of tasks come from and can it be extended?
That list is built from a file called delegwiz.inf That file is located in the \Inf folder. In my case it is in c:\windows\inf.

That file can be modified and Microsoft has a great article that gives you a new file to use and outlines the steps required to make the modifications. That is part of their Best Practices for Active Directory Administration: Appendices

For this blog entry we will specifically use:
Appendix O: Active Directory Delegation Wizard File
As you can see in Appendix O, you copy the contents to notepad and you will replace the current delegwiz.inf file with your new file. As they point out make sure to backup your current file.
After you make the changes you will now notice that you have many more choices compared to the original 11 you got by default.



There are also more advanced ways to delegate control in AD and there are some good third party tools that are also good. Some of those methods will be covered in future blog posts.