Microsoft Surface 2.0 Announced

Photo credit: Long Zheng – www.istartedsomething.com) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/longzheng/5328368222)

Some details:

Impressively thin table surface for Surface

- Surface 2.0 is mountable.

- No cameras included. Each pixel is a camera. Yup,pixelsense technology.

- Surface has the biggest piece of Gorilla Glass ever produced.

No word and pricing and availability. Steve Ballmer will reveal that at CES keynote I guess.

Created in partnership with Samsung, the Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface incorporates all the key features of the original Surface product – a massive multi-touch experience, the ability to recognize fingers, hands, and objects – as well as a new technology that has enabled a more flexible form factor.

The Next Generation of Microsoft Surface - LCDs That Can ‘See’

Also during Ballmer’s keynote speech, Microsoft unveiled the next generation of Microsoft Surface, built upon a new technology that enables thin LCD screens to “see” without the use of cameras.

Created in partnership with Samsung, the Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface is a major step forward in the surface computing category. It incorporates all the key features of the original Surface product – a massive multi-touch experience, the ability to recognize fingers, hands, and objects – as well as a new technology that has enabled a more flexible form factor.

Just Scratching the Surface

Looking at the year ahead, Ballmer noted that it is an exciting time for Microsoft, partners and customers across the board. Even with all the amazing experiences talked about at CES, from what’s next in Windows to the latest capabilities with Kinect, “the best is yet to come,” he said.

Change Your Windows Blue Screen To Other Colors

Now you no longer need to look at your Blue Screen when your system crashes. Choose your fav.color,its cool isnt't? Mark Russinovich is the guy behind this work. Who is he? Mark E. Russinovich (1966) is a Technical Fellow in the Platform and Services Division at Microsoft. He was a cofounder of software producers Sysinternals before it was acquired by Microsoft.

Preparing the System

Because you’re going to modify kernel code, the first step is to enable the ability to edit kernel code in memory if it’s not already enabled. Windows systems with less than 2 GB of RAM uses 4KB pages to store kernel code, so can protect pages with the protection most suitable for the contents they contain. For instance, kernel data pages should allow both read and write access while kernel code should only allow read and execute access. As an optimization that helps improve the speed of virtual address translations, Windows uses large pages (4 MB on x86 and x64) on larger systems. That means that if there’s both code and data stored in a page, the page must allow read, write and execute accesses, so to ensure that you can edit a page, you have to encourage Windows to use large pages. If your system is Windows XP or Server 2003 and has less than 256 MB, or is Windows Vista or higher and has 2 GB or less of RAM, create a REG_DWORD value called LargePageMinimum that’s set to 1 under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management:

So that you don’t have to rush to show off your handiwork before Windows automatically reboots after the crash, change the auto-reboot setting. On Windows XP and Server 2003, right-click on My Computer, select the Advanced Tab, and press the Settings button in the “Startup and Recovery” section. On Windows Vista and higher, right-click on Computer in the Start Menu, select properties to open the Properties dialog, click Advanced System Settings, select the Advanced tab and press the Settings button in the “Startup and Recovery” section. Finally, uncheck the “Automatically restart” checkbox:

If you’re running 64-bit Windows Vista or higher, you need to boot the system in Debug mode so that you can run the kernel debugger in “local” mode. You can do that either by selecting F8 during the system boot and choosing the Debug boot or by checking the Debug checkbox in the System Configuration (Msconfig) utility:

Next, reboot the system and start the debugger with administrator rights (if UAC is on, run it as administrator). Point the debugger at the Microsoft symbol server by opening the Symbol Search Path dialog under the File menu and enter this string: srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols (replace c:\symbols with whatever local directory in which you want the debugger to store cached symbols). Next, open the Kernel Debugging dialog from the File menu, click the Local page, and press OK:

The subsequent steps vary depending on whether you’re running 32-bit or 64-bit Windows and whether it’s Windows Vista or newer.

32-bit Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

The function that displays the bluescreen on these operating systems is KeBugCheck2. You’re looking for the place where the function passes the color value to the function that fills the screen background, InbvSolidColorFill. Enter the command “u kebugcheck2” to list the start of the function, then enter the “u” command to dump additional pages of the function’s code until you see the reference to InbvSolidColorFill (after entering “u” once, you can just press enter to repeat the command). You’ll need to dump 30-40 pages before you come across the one with the call:

Preceding the call, you’ll see an instruction that has the number 4 as its argument (“push 4”), as you can see above. Copy the code address of that instruction by selecting it from the address column on the left and typing Ctrl+C. Then in the debugger command window, type “eb “, then Ctrl+V to paste the address, then “+1”, then enter. The debugger will go into memory editing mode, starting with the address of the color value. Now you can choose the color you want. 1 is red, 2 is green, and you can experiment if you want a different color. Simply enter the number and press enter twice to commit it and exit editing mode. Here’s what the screen should look like after you’re done:

64-bit Versions of Windows and 32-bit Windows Vista and Higher

On these versions of Windows, the core bluescreen drawing function is KiDisplayBlueScreen. Type “u kidisplaybluescreen” and then continue entering “u” commands to dump pages of the function until you see the call to InbvSolidColorFill. On 32-bit versions of Windows, continue by following the instructions given in the Windows XP/Server 2003 section to find and edit the color value. On 64-bit versions of these operating systems, the instruction preceding the call to InvbSolidColorFill is the one that passes the color, so copy its address (the number in the left column) and enter this command to edit it: “eb <address>+4”. The debugger will go into memory editing mode and you can change the value (e.g. 1 for red, 2 for green):

Viewing the Result

You’re now ready to crash the system. If you’re running 64-bit Windows, you might get a crash without doing anything additionally. That’s because Kernel Patch Protection will notice the modification and crash the system as a deterrent to ISVs that might consider modifying the kernel’s code to change its behavior. There might be a delay of up to several minutes before that happens, though. To generate a crash on demand, run the Notmyfault tool (you can download it from the Windows Internals book page) and press the “Do Bug” button (to avoid data loss, make sure you’ve saved any work and closed all other applications):

You’ll now get a bluescreen in the color you picked, in this case the red screen of death:

The Holiday Bluescreen

In the spirit of the holiday season, I took things one step further to generate a holiday-themed bluescreen: not only did I modify the background color, but the text color as well. To do this on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or higher, note the call to InvbSetTextColor immediately following the one to InvbSolidColorFill and the address of the instruction that passes the text color to the function, “move ecx, 0Fh”:

The 0Fh parameter represents white, but you can change it using the same editing technique. Use the “eb” command, passing the address of the instruction plus 1. Here I set the color to red (which is a value of 1):

And here’s the festive bluescreen I produced:

Happy holidays! And remember, if you have any troubleshooting cases you want to share, please send me screenshots (.PNG preferred) and log files.

Source: Mark's Technet blog

Microsoft Windows Product Scout

Here is the Microsoft’s temporary answer to Apple’s Mac App Store.This is what mentioned in the blog about Microsoft Windows Product Scout

Windows Product Scout is a new destination on Windows.com that showcases a selection of products scouted by our team for Windows 7. When I say scouted, I’m quite serious, the products featured on the site are limited to an intentionally selected catalog. Every week, we will feature a new set of products on the home page and will be updating the site every month with more selected products.

Windows Product Scout focuses on products that have earned the “Compatible with Windows 7 Logo”. These products have passed Microsoft designed tests for compatibility and reliability with Windows 7 including testing for common issues to minimize the number of crashes, hangs and reboots. The team also vetted products based on their experience and focused on products that support key features and technologies in Windows 7 – products that make it easy for you to get the very most out of Windows 7 (features like Windows Touch, Play To, Device Stage). We are also working with software developers and device manufacturers to build a pipeline of the new and exciting products coming in the near future.

Definitely take the time to explore the site. Click around to learn more about technologies, discover the great products that our partners have created, watch videos, get downloads, and more. I wanted to quickl7 highlight 3 things about the experience:

• A great experience: Windows Product Scout features an engaging user experience that groups products into “clusters”. It is simple to navigate with a mouse and is also touch-friendly. We have also implemented IE9 support so the site can be a pinned app with jumplist support.

• Access to the products: Windows Product Scout gives you easy access to information about the products and how to get them. For every app, we offer a direct download link from the 3^rd party publisher. In one click, you are ready to start your free trial or access a free version of the application. For devices, we offer a link to purchase the product either directly from the manufacturer or the Microsoft Store. The site also features editorial content from the Windows Blog & CNET about the products.

• Discovering what you can do with Windows: The site gives you an easy way to discover a sample of products that support Windows 7 features. You can also click on the category cubes to learn more about specific technologies like Windows Touch, Play To, and others.

I love the silverlight site design more than the content.