Sunday, January 03, 2010

Windows Things…

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cc attribution: "4 Windows" on Flickr by gmahender

Odds-n-ends for Windows things.

The Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher is a set of small binary patches (and a tool to apply these patches) that will convert an official Windows 7 ISO disc image into an official Windows 7 ISO disc image of another edition. The resulting ISO images are bit-for-bit identical with those posted on MSDN or TechNet, and their SHA-1 hashes should match the official hashes posted by Microsoft.

The ei.cfg Removal Utility is a simple tool that will remove the ei.cfg from any Windows 7 ISO disc image, thereby converting the image into a "universal disc" that will prompt the user to select an edition during setup. This tool works by toggling the deletion bit in the UDF file table, eliminating the need for unpacking and rebuilding the ISO, which means that this is extremely fast (the process of patching the ISO to remove ei.cfg takes only a fraction of a second), and the process is easily reversible (running the utility on a disc image patched by this utility will restore the disc image to its original state).

Please note that these won’t allow your Windows Home Premium key to suddenly activate a Windows Ultimate install that you converted your install disk to offer…  Right key for right product version is still required….

Similar to previous external beta service pack rollouts, Microsoft has enabled – via updates you already installed – a beta ‘candidacy check’ within its Windows Update software. Just like Windows Vista, a registry key and value pair need to be added prior to being authorized to download the new software.

Lots of coolness here.  Just be careful how you apply the power!

--Claus V.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In regards to "The (Near) Final Word on Multi-Monitor Taskbars for Windows 7 - Ultramon vs. DisplayFusion" ... we use Ultramon at work for the many dual-monitor workstations. I am trying to recall what I had tried out last spring when I attempted to do dual monitors at home, I don't think it was DisplayFusion. Never did determine if it was the monitor drive, the software or the video card that kept giving BSOD in Vista. Never, ever again am I going to buy a computer 'off the shelf' I've had more hardware conflicts with this HP than I have ever had with my 'Frankenstein' machines. I did come up with a work-around for not being able to get dual-monitors, got me a 24-inch monitor.