Beyond the warning pages, the actual malware looks like the real deal: it allows you to scan files, tells you when you’re behind on your updates, and enables you to change your security and privacy settings. Performing a scan results in the product finding malicious files, but of course it cannot delete them unless you update, which requires paying for the full version. Attempting to buy the product will open an HTML window that provides a useless “Safe Browsing Mode” with high-strength encryption. To top it all off, the rogue antivirus webpage looks awfully similar to the Microsoft Security Essentials webpage; even the awards received by MSE and a link to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center have been copied.

While the malware is a pretty good attempt, it’s not perfect. The goal is to get the user to download and install something, shelling out some cash in the process, which neither of the three browser vendors would ever recommend.”

ARS Technica: New malware detects browser, shows fake malware warning page

In addition to sharing these details with you, I’m pleased to let you know that we’ll be offering a beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America this June. This will give you a chance to test drive SP1 and prepare for its official release.

Archiving and Discovery Enhancements

With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, we introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, we’ve enhanced this archiving functionality based on the great feedback you’ve given us since our launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user’s Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organization can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. And, we didn’t just stop there! We’ve also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user’s Personal Archive.

To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy.

Lastly, we’ve made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.

For those of you that have been holding your breath for this one, we’re also happy to let you know that in SP1 timeframe, there will be an update which will enable us to support access to a user’s Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.”

The Microsoft Exchange Team Blog – Yes Virginia, there is an Exchange Server 2010 SP1

Windows 7 penetrated the consciousness of the market by the end of 2009, with a strong majority of US consumers aware of the product. Forrester also noticed that the operating system started to break a well-known trend: historically most consumers acquire new operating systems when they purchase their new PC. With Windows 7, however, upgrade behavior was much stronger…”

ARS Technica – Early adopters very satisfied with Windows 7

Download Change Hover time Registry Key here

By default, the registry key file is set to decrease the delay to 30ms. If you want to change this, you can right click the registry key, and click on Edit. In Notepad, you can change the number 30 to anything between 0 and 4000. I don’t recommend choosing 0 for the delay. Once you’re done, save the file and double-click it to add the key to the registry. Changes don’t take effect until you restart your computer.

Manual Method:

You can also edit the registry key manually yourself.

1) Open the Start menu and type regedit in the search bar

2) Proceed to the following directory: HKEY_Current_USER\Control Panel\Mouse

3) Right click the MouseHoverTime key and choose Modify

4) Change it to a value between 0 and 4000. The number you input will be the millisecond delay before thumbnail previews activate when you hover your mouse over an application.I don’t recommend selecting a value of 0 for this option.

Changes don’t take place until you restart your computer.

Now before we begin if you want to use this feature you will need have Windows 7 Ultimate (or Enterprise) edition installed.

How do I encrypt a USB device?

Step 1. Insert your USB device you want to encrypt into your computer.

Step 2. Right click on the USB device in Windows Explorer and click on the “Turn on BitLocker…”

Step 3. Tick the “Use a password to unlock the drive” and then type the same password in the two password field’s and then click “Next”.

Note: As it says, you should try an make this password as complicated as possible with a combination of lower and upper case letter, numbers, spaces, and/or symbols.

Step 4. You are now FORCED to either save a file or print the recovery key for the device. This ensures that you have a copy of the 48 digit recovery in case you ever forget the password.

Note: You cannot save the recovery key to the device that you want to encrypt as this would be obviously be useless if you were to ever forget the unlock key.

Step 5. Once you have saved or printed the recovery key you will be able to continue by pressing “Next”.

Step 6. You are ready to encrypt the drive and all you have to do is click “Start Encrypting”.

Warning: This can take a LONG time especialy if you are encrypting a very large drive via a USB connection (My Western Digital 1tb USB external hard drive this process took about 12 hours).

First thing the encryption process does is install the BitLocker to Go reader application that will let you read the the device on down-level OS’s such as Windows XP and Vista.

Now the drive will start to encrypt.

Note: You can pause this encryption of this device and remove if it is taking longer than you thought but from this point you will need to enter the encryption key to access the data on the drive even though it is not fully encrypted. The other thing to note is that the drive will be read only until the encryption process has been completed.

Once completed click “Close” and the drive is now encrypted and ready to use.

The way to tell if a drive is encrypted in Windows Explorer is by the padlock symbol you can see on the drive icon (see belwo against “Nano (E:)”). An open grey padlock represents an unlocked drive and and closed gold padlock represents a locked drive.

How do I unlock and encrypt a USB device?

Step 1. Insert the USB device into a Windows 7 computer and you should be automatically prompted for a password to decrypt the device. Then just type the password in the password field and tick “Unlock”.

Note: If you tick the “Automatically unlock on this computer from now on” then the unlock password for this device will be stored on the registry of the computer so be very sure you trust this computer before using this option.

Step 2. Your DONE! the drive will now behave exactly as per normal.

Alternatively if the device is already connected and you need to unlock it, just right click on the drive in Windows Explorer and click the “Unlock Drive…” option. You will then be prompted with the same unlock drive dialogue box as seen above.

By Alan Burchill

Twitter at @alanburchill

Blog http://abskb.spaces.live.com

”In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

This documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing. We are engaging directly with industry experts and interested customers to gather feedback on the quality of the technical documentation to ensure that it is clear and useful. When it is complete, it will be released under our Open Specification Promise, which will allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.”

I think this is going to turn out to be big news for folks in both the IT and e-Discovery fields.

Interoperability @ Microsoft – Roadmap for Outlook Personal Folders (.pst) Documentation