For businesses hoping to get by on Windows XP, the latest Gartner report doesn’t bring much good news. Then again, upgrading directly to Windows 7 has its downsides, too. The report, entitled “Prepare for Your Windows 7 Migration Crunch” examines the 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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In my last post, I discussed a problem that IT professionals are all-too-familiar with: migrating the OS and later finding Windows 7 driver compatibility problems after you’ve already pulled the trigger. This happens all the time and isn’t always a product of improper research. Nonetheless, it happens but you have options other than rolling back to the old OS.

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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For years, Microsoft has battled with unsigned Windows drivers. By requiring driver authors to sign their products, Microsoft reasoned, the products would be better and more secure. With Windows 7, an unsigned driver can be loaded, but it must be authorized manually each time the computer starts up – a major negative for most users.

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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Microsoft’s fourth quarter revenue reports show that the record company’s record revenues were due largely to Office 2010, Windows 7 and Windows Server sales. A growing number of Windows 7 drivers have made both consumer and corporate adoption more palatable.

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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