New Gartner Report Explains Cost Drivers For Windows 7 Migration

Report Examines Migration Scenarios

Microsoft has already declared that it will pull the plug on Windows XP in 2014, at which the OS will be considered dead. For companies that have a five-year desktop life cycle, that means the clock is ticking now. Microsoft has already dropped support for XP SP2 and Windows 2000, so those users are already on a precarious limb.
For XP users who are considering an upgrade path, Gartner says that the cost of migrating software only can be upwards of $2,000 per machine. This includes the cost of any new components and the staff time it will take to upgrade the computer. The balance here is that while upgrading will get a computer to Windows 7, the hardware itself may need to be replaced in 2-3 years, increasing the overall cost of migrating.

For those hoping that the “forklift replacement” approach – where user machines are simply retired and replaced with one that’s already running Windows 7 – will be better, Gartner estimates that the cost of this route could be as much as $2,000 per machine, which mostly represents the cost of new hardware and the staff time needed to prep the new computers.

For those hoping to take the virtualization route, Gartner says “not so fast!” The organization cautions that while virtualization does save money on hardware, virtualization savings may be fully consumed by improvements needed for virtualization support at the desktop, and by the network and data center.

Regardless of how an upgrade will take place, the migration to Microsoft Windows 7 is likely to put an expensive bite on corporate IT budgets in the coming years. Conservatively, Gartner recommends increasing IT budgets by 20% to offset the increased migration costs until the move to Windows 7 is complete. In the worst case, the organization says a 60% bump in the IT budget may be more in line with what it will take to meet the 2014 drop-dead date for XP. Corporations that have migrated at least in part to Windows Vista may experience lower costs because they’re less likely to encounter hardware expenses associated with the move to Windows 7.

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Handling Windows 7 Driver Compatibility Problems

Minimize The Surprise!

Back up the old system; there is no direct migration path from Windows XP to Windows 7. This bears repeating. There is no direct migration path from Windows XP to Windows 7, which means you have to do a clean installation. Clean installations clean everything so back up user files before you start. The migration process isn’t quite as clean for systems migrating from Windows Vista to Windows 7, but that really depends upon the version of Vista you’re starting out with and the version of Windows 7 you expect to end up with. Regardless, backing up your data is never inappropriate.

Before you migrate to a new OS, check the Microsoft site to see if your critical devices have been deemed Windows 7-compatible. If you’re working in a corporate IT setting, you may find it helpful to create a checklist that accounts for each device attached to each computer. Also note special software and functions that the user must perform using the migration target.

If no Windows 7 driver is available, that’s not necessarily a show-stopper but it does mean that you’ll need to do more careful research to make sure all of your user environments survive the migration process. Knowing what’s compatible ahead of time may also help you determine whether a peripheral upgrade is in order.

Always check with the manufacturer to see if the appropriate device driver has been published. If a Windows 7 driver isn’t on the A-list, check for a Windows Vista driver for the same device. If you come up empty-handed, check for a Windows 7 or Windows Vista driver for another device made by the same manufacturer. Sometimes drivers for related products work with great results. In other cases, the results may be less than stellar but the device still works to a large extent.

As a fallback, look for a generic driver or a third-party driver that can make your device live to die another day. Also, contact the device manufacturer to see if they have a device driver release in the works. If you have no working drivers, no hope of getting one and the device is critical to your operations, you may need to bite the bullet and buy a newer supported model, but good research and field work may both lessen the surprise of device failure and help make your case for replacement.

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Windows 7 Upgrades Sometimes Bring Driver Compatibility Problems

Windows 7 Home Experiences Don’t Always Translate

Home users may not understand what the big deal is when IT professionals talk about migrating to Windows 7. After all, how hard can it be, right? You’ve been on Windows 7 since it came out and everything works fine. Sadly, in the corporate IT environment, there are a striking number of variables that come into play during OS migration. Migrations are always well thought out and never rushed. (Or at least that’s the way it should be…)

Two of the major issues with corporate IT environments are the shared nature of certain peripheral devices (like printers) and the special work needs of some staff members. One staff member may be using Windows XP while another may be using Vista. One staff member may be using a 32-bit OS while another is using a 64-bit version. Most staff members print to one printer, while a few members need to print to a different device. In a corporate environment, the possibilities are nearly endless, so the migration process is often slow and frustrating. What works for one user simply WILL NOT work for another.

Finding the right drivers for each variation is critical. Ideally, the vendor of each peripheral device would have developed an appropriate Windows 7 driver but that often turns out not to be the case. So what happens when the manufacturer has not provided a Windows 7 driver for a specific critical device? Sometimes, good old-fashioned detective work and a little bit of luck can mean the difference between business-as-usual and throwing out a perfectly good widget.

Your relative “luckiness” increases if you’re migrating from Vista to Windows 7, and tends to decrease a bit if you’re moving from Windows XP to Windows 7. Your fortune is of course tempered by whether or not the manufacturer made a Vista driver. If so, your Vista driver might work just fine under Windows 7, but there are no guarantees!

In my next post, I’ll go through the processes of finding the right drivers, finding acceptable drivers and migrating to the new operating system.

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Windows Signed Drivers Take On New Value

Hijacked Windows Drivers Pose New Headache

Examine my last statement carefully; if an unsigned driver will hang up the boot process, then conversely, the Windows 7 OS will swallow a signed driver whole. And therein lies an entirely new problem for Microsoft. Signed drivers are being stolen, hijacked, and commandeered by malware like Zeus Trojan and Stuxnet. A compromised (yet duly signed) driver can be used to deliver a nasty malware payload, and malware authors are doing just that.

Stuxnet is using stolen drivers from RealTek and JMicron. Zeus Trojan is using an expired driver –originally used to kill Zeus – from Kaspersky Labs to launch itself. What’s the difference? The stolen Stuxnet driver was actually generated using stolen information from RealTek and JMicron. Essentially, it’s a form of identity theft. In the Zeus Trojan case, expired information was copied and pasted into the malware code. Windows does question the user about the expired driver, but gives the ability for the user to authorize its use anyway.

Security experts say that using expired certificates as malware cover affects not just operating systems like Windows, but also browser security. Who hasn’t encountered an expired certificate when accessing a secure Web site?

What’s the solution? Experts disagree, but some of the proposed workarounds include the refusal to accept expired certificates rather than leaving that up to the user. Most users, experts reason, don’t have the tools and/or experience to differentiate an expired certificate from a legitimate company from an expired certificate that’s been hijacked to deliver malware to an unsuspecting target.

Are we likely to see a movement away from certificates? Probably not, but we will likely see a tougher approach to the issuance of certificates, meaning more security when certificates are issued and more care being taken to protect digital signatures for authors that issue them. Standards organizations may also revisit the way expired certificates are identified, and perhaps we’ll see some tools designed to help verify the authenticity of a certificate that has expired, but may otherwise still be valid for use.

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Office 2010, Windows 7 Drivers of Record Revenues

Windows 7 Surpasses Windows Vista

In addition, a new survey by Netmarketshare shows that Windows 7 installations now surpass Windows Vista installations by a narrow margin. The number of Windows Vista installations has dropped consistently since October 2009, just after Windows 7 hit the market. Windows Vista market share has dropped from a high of 18.83% in October 2009 to its current level, estimated at 14.34%. While some Windows 7 installations represent upgrades from Vista, the majority of Windows 7 adoptions appear to be new.

Windows XP market share has dropped from 65.89% to 61.87% in the same timeframe, indicating that a small percentage of XP users have adopted Windows 7. The decline in Windows XP use has been gradual but steady since Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 were introduced last September.

Assisting growth in the adoption rate of Windows 7 is the fact that third-party hardware manufacturers have committed to making more Windows 7 drivers than Vista drivers when that operating system was released. Finding compatible drivers for Windows 7 is arguably easier because those manufacturers that did make Windows Vista drivers for their devices had less work to do to provide Windows 7 drivers. In some cases, no driver modifications were required, meaning that hardware vendors got “two for the price of one” in terms of driver development.

Microsoft has worked hard with third-party manufacturers to help them ensure that their hardware drivers are Windows 7 ready. Nonetheless, many hardware manufacturers have yet to produce Windows 7 drivers for their older hardware devices. Without compatible drivers, these devices are either crippled or useless, a situation that Microsoft had hoped to avoid.

For Windows users, the issue of driver management has always been difficult. Microsoft has attempted to automate the process of finding and downloading drivers in its later OS releases, but many users still do not understand how to configure the updater to download driver revisions. Further, Windows sometimes selects the incorrect driver for the user’s PC.

Despite the improvements in driver detection, driver management software is still the order of the day for many PC users. Users rely on software like Driver Detective to help them keep their PC drivers up-to-date and available, if a corruption of some type should occur.

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Trojan Targets Microsoft Shortcut Files, Installs Windows Drivers

Attack Uses Previously Unknown Exploit

The viral Windows drivers belong to rootkits, which install themselves undetected with the assistance of a legitimately signed driver that belongs to RealTek Semiconductors. The particular attack targets Siemens SCADA WinCC control systems. This niche software is used by power plants, leading security experts to conclude that this particular attack was designed to effect industrial espionage.

VirusBlokAda, a cybersecurity firm located in Belarus, first discovered the attack. The virus poses a serious security risk because it doesn’t rely on an autorun exploit, as most USB-borne attacks do. At the moment, there is no credible way to detect the attack as it is happening, and all Windows computer, even fully patched systems running Windows 7 are vulnerable to the attack.

The attacks are significant for another reason: until now, it was thought that .lnk files had no ability to do anything until the user clicked on the file. In this particular attack, the mere presence of the .lnk file is enough to trigger the infection. Apparently, no user action – other than connecting an infected USB drive to a system that runs Microsoft Explorer – is required to trigger the viral transfer. The malicious files are undetectable on the USB drives, leaving users completely vulnerable to the attack.

Security experts are warning users not to get complacent about the fact that this particular attack is directed toward a niche product. The major danger with this attack is that other hackers can use the same approach that the Trojan uses to target other systems. The likelihood of success is high because there is no inherent protection against this type of attack within Windows OS products at the moment.

This particular attack installs two apparently-legitimate Windows drivers called mrxnet.sys and mrxcls.sys, which in turn install two rootkits, Rootkit.TMPHider and SScope.Rootkit.TmpHider.2. Cybersecurity firms report that infections of these two rootkits have risen since the attacks began, leading them to speculate that the incidence of undetected infections is rising.

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64-Bit Drivers In Demand By Users Moving To Windows 7

What Makes The 64-Bit Version Of Windows Different?

Is there a substantial difference between the performance of a 32-bit system and a 64-bit system? The short answer is yes. The big advantage of the 64-bit system is that it can address more RAM. The more RAM you have available, the faster your computer can work (to a point) and the more simultaneous tasks it can manage (to a point). You may also benefit from having a 64-bit system if you use very computation-intense software, like engineering design software, graphic software, or gaming software.

The downside of running a 64-bit system is that you need to have 64-bit drivers for your hardware. If the manufacturer of a piece of hardware makes a 64-bit version of the driver you need, you’re in luck. Carry on!

On the other hand, if the manufacturer of a piece of hardware has made only a 32-bit driver, you’re pretty much out of luck. 32-bit and 64-bit drivers aren’t interchangeable. They’re not even a little bit compatible, either. 32-bit is 32-bit and 64-bit is 64-bit, and “never the twain shall meet,” so to speak. Microsoft does maintain a compatibility list, which has a comprehensive (though probably not exhaustive) list of 64-bit compatible devices. You can find this list at The Windows 7 Compatibility Center.

The site is divided into two tabs: Software and Hardware. The Software tab contains major functions (e.g., gaming, communications, graphics and printing, etc), so you may have to do a bit of guesswork to figure out how Microsoft views the software you’re looking for. Each major group also has a dropdown menu that activates when you “mouse over” the category heading.
The hardware tab, which is where you’d be looking for device drivers, is divided into major device types. You can also search the site using keywords, and limiting your text searches to hardware or software. You can also filter your search results by system type (64-bit or32-bit), and manufacturer. Microsoft even has some information on devices that are not currently 64-bit compatible, but will have a 64-bit driver in the near future. If your device isn’t on the list and Microsoft has no information about the device’s future 64-bit status, check with the manufacturer to see if they have a 64-bit driver, or if a 64-bit driver is in the works.

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Microsoft Cuts Support Options For Windows XP Users

Unsupported OS Can Be Tricky

Running an unsupported OS can be tricky, since users won’t be able to get patches and revisions. Although development on the XP OS ended long ago, Microsoft was still providing maintenance releases that closed holes and kept the system as up-to-date as possible.

According to Microsoft, Service Pack 3 can be applied only to computers running the 32-bit version of Windows XP. Prior to installing Service Pack 3, the computer must also have Service Pack 2 and Service Pack 1(a) installed. These service packs are still available from the Microsoft Web site.

If you’re not sure whether your computer is a 32-bit or 64-bit system, you can find out by taking the following steps.
Go to Start > Run
Enter sysdm.cpl and click OK.
This will open a dialog box that will provide additional information about your system. Within the dialog box, select the General tab. If your system is a 32- bit system, you’ll see the words “Windows XP Professional Version XXXX under System. XXXX will be a date, expressed as a year.
If your system is a 64-bit system, you’ll see a slightly different set of words under System: “Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Version XXXX.” Again XXXX represents a year.

Service Pack 3 isn’t used with 64-bit systems, so it’s important to know whether you need the service pack or not. Do not install Service Pack 3 if you have a 64-bit system. Microsoft has provided a different method for patching and updating 64-bit versions of the XP operating system.
The installed user base for Windows XP is still quite large, however more users are adopting Windows 7. Importantly, many of the new adopters are Microsoft’s corporate customers, most of whom have been working with XP for nearly 10 years. In the coming year, Microsoft will likely examine its plan to drop support for Windows XP altogether.

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TEKLYNX Rolls Out Windows 7 Drivers

New Drivers Are A Good Sign Of Windows 7 Adoption

As with regular printers, it’s generally a good sign when a manufacturer releases new drivers to extend the function of a device to a new operating system. Barcode printers are specialized pieces of equipment, and the availability of Windows 7 drivers is not likely to make a major splash among users who don’t have a barcode printer.

The availability of new Windows 7 drivers for a niche product, however, is a strong positive indication that more users (especially commercial users) are lining up to add Windows 7 to their list of supported operating systems. Unlike Windows Vista, which was a commercial dud, Windows users across the board are moving toward Windows 7 adoption.

With the advent of the new fiscal year, we should begin to see the many organizations that time their upgrades to budget cycles start moving toward Windows 7. The fact that Windows 7 doesn’t make major hardware demands on PCs, plus the added benefit of the Windows XP emulation mode, should make migration an easy decision.

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, however, the question of driver availability, especially for older hardware and niche products is still open. If manufacturers and software publishers create a broad range of drivers for older and uncommon hardware, and if Microsoft can deliver on its promise of stability – so far it has – Windows 7 is likely to experience the wide adoption that Windows XP did.

For the remainder of 2010, users should expect to see additional driver rollouts for older hardware and niche hardware. Until the Great Driver Migration is complete, however, some users will be engaged in a “chicken and egg” conundrum: “I’ll upgrade if the drivers are available” will do battle with “We’ll write drivers only if we see a lot of people upgrading to Windows 7.”

Once Windows 7 has been on the shelf for a year, it’s unlikely that a large number of new drivers will enter the market. Instead, manufacturers will carry Windows 7 support forward in their product line, but won’t likely look backward, even for some of their more popular legacy products.

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Driver Hack Enables JooJoo Users To Run Windows 7

Third Party Drivers May Someday Be “Supported”

The JooJoo tablet is a touchscreen device with iPad-esque styling, size and shape. It retails for about USD$500 and has just a single accessory… a stand that enables the pad to stand on a desktop. The JooJoo site is shockingly sparse on details, and contains only the barest information about the company, the product and the product’s capabilities.

Nonetheless, at least one enterprising user has posted a driver that enables the JooJoo to run Windows 7. The hacked Windows 7 driver doesn’t engage all of the JooJoo’s functions but gets most of them and in surprisingly good fashion. One of the big features that’s left wanting is the JooJoo’s accelerometer. The accelerometer is the component that enables these devices to reposition the screen when its orientation is changed, and to incorporate device motion as a command or data input. In other words, if you shake this device, it won’t do anything, and probably can’t calculate your carbon footprint if you take it for a ride in your Prius.

The origin of the driver presents an interesting alternative, however, for Windows users whose hardware isn’t supported by the hardware manufacturer. Some hardware is simply worth having, even when the manufacturer of the device doesn’t think so.

I suspect that, in at least some cases, we’ll see consumer demand for Windows device drivers for abandoned or orphaned products. That also opens the question of whether or not manufacturers that no longer want to support a particular device will support volunteer programmers (a la open source) who are willing to invest their time and talents to create a guerilla driver for an orphaned device. The support might include device information that the manufacturer has, work that it started and abandoned and/or code for the existing drivers.

Even if the original manufacturer isn’t willing to create a driver update, consumer demand may be steady enough to warrant the creation of a driver by a third-party. Sometimes (as demonstrated by the JooJoo hack), third parties will develop the driver anyway.

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