14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 7 Release Candidate, despite being the last step of the operating system to RTM, continues to be in development, and while users should not expect to see the same volume of problems as with the Beta build, issues will indeed impact the development milestone. Microsoft is already well aware of some of them and has put together a list of glitches, informing testers via the Release Notes for Windows 7. The Release Notes enumerate what the software giant referred to as critical late-breaking issues and information on the RC Build 7100 of Windows 7.
In Windows 7 RC, if Internet Explorer 8 becomes unresponsive it will trigger the same state for the SuperNova screen reader application, in the eventuality that it exists on a specific computer. “If this occurs, restart SuperNova and then restart Internet Explorer 8. There is no other workaround at this time. The Window-Eyes screen reader application incorrectly reports the state of all option buttons in the First Run Wizard. To work around this, set the focus on the option button and activate it with the space bar or the ENTER key—ignore the Window-Eyes report that the option button has not been activated,” Microsoft informed.
Upgrading from Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 to Build 7100 the High Contrast Aero themes will no longer be offered to users. The following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Appearance\New Schemes must be deleted in order for the functionality to be regained. Microsoft also warned that the AppLocker file hash rules built for the Beta of Windows 7 would no longer work with the Release Candidate Build of Windows 7 Ultimate and Windows 7 Enterprise. There is also an issue, this time affecting all Win 7 editions, in which the cancellation of the Windows Backup configuration wizard without navigating to the advanced backup configuration page will cause the wizard to become unresponsive.
“Drivers - This issue affects Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 7 Professional, and Windows 7 Ultimate. On some Hewlett-Packard (HP) computers, if you upgrade the preinstalled operating system to this release, the installation may fail with an error indicating that Iastor.sys is missing. The installation will roll back without loss of data,” Microsoft informed.
According to the Redmond company, the following HP machines are affected: HP 2140 Mini-Note PC, HP Compaq 2230s Notebook PC, HP Compaq 6530b Notebook PC, HP Compaq 6530s Notebook PC, HP Compaq 6531s Notebook PC, HP Compaq 6730b Notebook PC, HP Compaq 6730s Notebook PC, HP Compaq 6830s Notebook PC, HP EliteBook 2530p Notebook PC, HP EliteBook 2730p Notebook PC, HP EliteBook 6930p Notebook PC, HP EliteBook 8530p Notebook PC, HP EliteBook 8530w Mobile Workstation and HP EliteBook 8730w Mobile Workstation. Microsoft advised Windows 7 RC users coming across this problem to grab updated storage drivers from HP.
“If you use the developer tools in Internet Explorer 8 to debug JavaScript, you may receive a notification that the current Web site is not responding, along with a prompt to close or recover the Web page. You can safely ignore this dialog and continue debugging,” the company said. “Some Web sites may not display correctly, and may have misaligned text, missing images, or other rendering problems. To fix this, click the Compatibility View button on the address bar.”
The Redmond company warned testers of Windows 7 that the Release Candidate build was not yet compatible with all non-Microsoft virtual private network (VPN) client applications, and provided a list with the apps that would function with no issues. With Windows 7 RC, testers should stay away from international characters in usernames for Password Authentication Protocol (PAP), Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP), or Microsoft Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol Version 2 (MS-CHAPv2), Network Policy Server (NPS) as Windows Server 2008 R2 is yet unable to provide authentication for such credentials.
In addition, Windows 7 RC fails to play nice with software restriction policies. This because the software policy DLL checking is not included in build 7100. “This issue could affect you in any of the following scenarios: If you have previously enabled DLL checking for software restriction policies and then performed a supported upgrade from an earlier version of Windows to this release of Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7. If you have previously enabled DLL checking for software restriction policies in a Group Policy object and then installed Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 on a computer that receives the DLL checking setting through Group Policy. If you have enabled DLL checking for software restriction policies on a computer running Windows 7,” Microsoft stated.
In Windows 7 RC, the System Preparation Tool (Sysprep) will produce the following error code -2147024864 if the Windows Media sharing service is running. Windows Vista installations with the system locale configured to a double-byte character set cannot be upgraded to Windows 7, except if the end user sets user interface language to the original system locale language. Disabling, restarting and then enabling again Windows Media Player in Turn Windows features on or off under the control panel will resolve an issue where audio and video files do not start in WMP on machines with Windows Live Photo Gallery installed.
“If you have any Web Service on Devices (WSD)–based devices (such as a printer or scanner) that host their services at a URL that does not include a trailing slash (for example, http://hostname:3702), the device will not appear in the list of available devices on the network. There is no workaround at this time,” Microsoft explained. “If you resize the taskbar, some extra transparency may be visible on the screen. To fix this, move the taskbar to a different location. If you switch languages, the floating language bar may leave extra transparency in the frame. To avoid this, dock the language bar.”
Windows 7 RC does not feature a functional Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for Windows Communication Foundation applications run in Internet Information Services 7.5. The WCF service has to be executed under the NETWORKSERVICE account, the company states. There are also additional problems for Windows Media Center in Enterprise, Professional, and Ultimate SKUs of Windows 7 RC related to PlayReady, PlayTo, Media Center Extender Slide Show screensaver and MPEG format content with a high bit rate.
“If you use a computer that has Windows Search enabled (Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP with Windows Search installed) and have chosen a custom index location that has a path name longer than 128 characters, the indexer will not start after you have upgraded the computer to this release. Search functionality and some library views are affected. To avoid this, move the index to a different location that has a path name less than 128 characters long before you install this release as an upgrade,” the company stated.