The Winqual subdomain points to Microsoft’s Windows Quality Online Services site. The driver ID at the end of the URL is, presumably, a unique identifier tied to that driver. (I checked some other drivers, and they have different ID numbers.)

When I clicked this particular link, I expected to find information specific to the listed update: version number, a description of compatibility issues, a list of fixes, and so on.

Instead, I was redirected to a generic information page containing links to articles about how drivers work.

This is the exact behavior I saw during the beta cycle and after RTM. I expected the links to begin pointing to driver-specific information after Windows 7 was officially launched last month, but there’s still no live connection to the Winqual database.

A quick scan of Microsoft message boards reveals that I’m not alone in being confused and frustrated by these links that promise but don’t deliver.

Microsoft, what’s the story?

I’ve been running Office 2010 for several months for daily use and have been very impressed. If you’re comfortable with beta software and understand the risks, I recommend giving it a try. But please, please don’t try this on a mission-critical PC!

I’ll have an in-depth look at the beta the week after Thanksgiving. (For you folks outside the U.S., that means the first week of December.)

IT Expert Voice is a resource for IT professionals who are concerned primarily with making technology work in their organizations, and in particular with deploying Windows 7 in a sane and trouble-free manner. The site, which is sponsored by Dell, aims to provide credible and useful information that helps you make good decisions. Our underlying assumption is that you are seriously considering a migration to Windows 7; we’re here to help you learn what you need to know for it to happen flawlessly.

Editor in Chief Esther Schindler has assembled an excellent and diverse lineup of contributors, including yours truly, My first contribution to the site is a look at a new Windows 7 tool designed to make it easier for nontechnical users and help-desk staffers to communicate with one another: Using the Problem Steps Recorder to Diagnose Problems Remotely. Go read my post and take a look around. There’s lots of great stuff there for anyone interested in Windows 7 at the enterprise level.

Full disclosure: As noted above, IT Expert Voice is sponsored by Dell in partnership with Federated Media, which provides advertising support for this site.

I have two completely separate Windows 7 systems here that use ATI cable tuners. One system has a single tuner, the other has two tuners. In addition, each system has one or more over-the-air (OTA) and/or analog cable tuners. As of last night, I have done some testing and can report that everything works as promised. The biggest benefit is that many programs recorded on a CableCARD tuner can now be freely copied and shared.

Initially, I was puzzled that the Digital Cable Advisor wasn’t showing up in the Media Center Extras Gallery. The solution turned out to be pretty simple. The code arrives courtesy of Media Center’s download option, which also updates TV guide data. On one system, it appeared after a day and a half when the guide did its automatic update. On another system, which had never been set up for TV recording, there was no Extras Gallery at all. I fixed that by doing a manual download. From the main Media Center screen, choose Tasks, then Settings, General, and finally Automatic Download Options. You’ll find a Download Now button there. After the download was complete, the Extras Gallery appeared and the Digital Cable Advisor was available.

I ran this tool on the HP Slimline computer in the living room that I plan to use as our new main Media Center PC. It passed with flying colors. Meanwhile, back in my office, the other two PCs were busily recording programs from their attached cable tuners. Previously, anything recorded using the DCT was copy-protected, which meant that trying to use the Shared Libraries feature in Windows 7 would fail on content that was never intended to be copy-protected. Here, for example, is the listing for a copy of Late Night with David Letterman, recorded on a DCT before the updated firmware was made available:

If you try to play that program from a remote PC, you get a warning:

If you click Continue, the playback fails with this error:

But after applying the update, I was able to use the ATI CableCARD tuner in the office to record programs from sources such as high-definition broadcasts on local network affiliates and also from cable sources that don’t use copy protection, such as C-SPAN and MSNBC and play them back successfully over the network. Playback was smooth, glitch-free, and everything worked exactly as expected.

Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly), the new firmware and new rules have no effect on previously recorded programs. If you recorded a program last week or last month or last year on a cable tuner, it is copy-protected, and there is no way to remove that DRM. But going forward, sources that are marked Copy Freely will work as they should. Also, high-def premium channels such as HBO and Showtime are still copy-protected and cannot be played back except on the original PC where they were recorded, or on an extender device such as an Xbox 360 connected to that PC.

Still, this is a giant step forward for Media Center and a major cause for celebration. I’ll be discussing my Media Center systems in much more detail over the next few weeks and months and am especially looking forward to testing the new Ceton digital cable tuners when they are finally available.

On my system, the firmware update completed without incident. I’ll be recording some shows tonight and checking to see whether the DRM rules really have been relaxed.

Update: Strangely, when you finish installing the update you are not told to restart the computer. But as I discovered through trial and error, the actual firmware installation doesn’t take place until you restart. After you log in following the restart, you’ll see the firmware being downloaded and installed to each attached ATI tuner. Still no sign of the Microsoft update tool in the Extras Gallery, though.

There’s also a tool available from Microsoft that reportedly allows you to attach a CableCARD tuner to any PC with sufficient horsepower without having to hassle with a special BIOS or activation. According to Mike’s report, the tool should show up in the Media Center Extras Gallery. I’m not seeing it here yet, unfortunately.

Missing Remote has a nice set of screenshots showing the Microsoft Digital Cable Advisor Tool in action. I’ll be calling my friendly local Comcast rep and scheduling a truck roll at the earliest opportunity so I can move those tuners to the small-form-factor PC in the living room and get the full Media Center experience on a big-screen TV instead of using an extender.

Ironically, just yesterday I sent a note to Edelman, Microsoft’s PR agency, asking when we could expect these components to arrive, I still haven’t heard back from them. Harrumph.

More information in this announcement on the HP forums. The event will be repeated (presumably live, with all new questions and answers) on November 19 and December 1.

I get lots of questions from readers about support for HP all-in-one printers and scanners, so this event should be especially good for you.

I also love having the multiple clocks in Windows 7 (a feature that was in Vista too). If you want to add a second or third clock so you can see at a glance what’s in a different time zone, click the Change Date And Time Settings link at the bottom of that dialog box and fill in the settings here:

You can select a time zone and give it a name of your choosing. I find this feature especially helpful on a notebook when I’m traveling. It’s also good if I’m working with partners in different time zones and I want to know whether it’s appropriate to call them.

Oh, and I finally got rid of the stupid Timex clock that was hard-wired to the old DST rules and thus had to be manually reset four times a year. Good riddance!

Do you see the error? The packaging correctly notes that this is an upgrade from Windows 7 Starter to Windows 7 Home Premium. There is no such thing as a “Home Starter” edition, which is noted on the order page at the Microsoft Store.

I find this particularly amusing when some Microsoft bloggers are lecturing the Windows community about being “hacks” who don’t understand this stuff.

Glass houses. Stones. Etc.

In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t that big a deal, of course, and this post is mostly tongue-in-cheek. But given the constant complaints that Windows has too many versions, it really would be wise of the webmaster who hit the Publish button on this store to make sure that they don’t actually create a brand-new (nonexistent) edition and confuse customers even more.

Do you know of a list anywhere that spells out what hardware drivers ship with Win 7? One of the frustrations with PC makers is that they don’t upgrade the drivers for printers and other hardware when a new OS ships. I think my HP Deskjet 6620 is not supported in Win 7 so now I can’t take advantage of the new OS. Any help would be great.

The short answer is yes, there is such a resource. It’s called the Windows 7 Compatibility Center, and it allows you to search for both software and hardware to determine whether it is certified to work with Windows 7. Crucially, you can search to confirm support for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

But it’s a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that if you find a device that is reported as compatible, you can have a very high degree of confidence that it will work properly. The bad news, at least temporarily, is that the index is still incomplete. Here’s what I saw when I asked whether my trusty old Fujitsu ScanSnap fi-5110EO scanner from 2005 would run on Windows 7 x64 (it’s at the bottom of this list):

The 64-bit page should confirm Fujitsu’s definitive announcement that they have no intention of supporting this device under Vista or Windows 7. The 32-bit page appears to be more helpful, ostensibly confirming that the device is supported and even including links to pages where I could get more information and drivers. Except those links led me to a generic Fujitsu Windows 7 page intended for purchasers of new Fujitsu PCs. I had to stumble around blindly to finally discover the Windows Vista (not Windows 7) update from 2007 that enables this device.  (I’m actually using the scanner in Windows XP Mode on my desktop PC running Windows 7 Professional.)

For what it’s worth, printers and scanners are, in my experience, the worst offenders in this regard. The older they are, the more likely you will be unable to use them and the more cautious you should be when considering an upgrade.

I had not previously installed IntelliType Pro or IntelliPoint on either system, so this was a case of the right software being offered to me as an option. All four updates shown here were unselected, which is the way it should be.

It took two tries to get the software properly installed (I had to click the Try Again button in Windows Update). After finishing, the Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Detection Driver was still shown as available, with a mysterious error (Code 80070103) next to its installation status. That error means the driver being offered (or a newer one) is already installed. When I waited about 15 minutes and checked again, the redundant update was no longer listed as available.

The control software enables features for your input devices that aren’t available with a generic driver. Pretty cool, actually. With a clean install, this is one of those things it’s easy to forget.

If you have Media Center playing in full-screen mode, pressing the Print Screen key produces a black screen. Annoying, right? Fortunately, there’s an easy fix. (It was introduced ages ago in Windows Vista and still works in Windows 7.)

Open Registry Editor and navigate to the following key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Video

Create a new DWORD value called EnablePrintScreen and set its value to 1, like this:

Restart Media Center and try pressing the Print Screen key again. This time you’ll find that it captures the full image, even when protected content is playing.

(Thanks to Richard Miller, Randal Aguilar, and Jeff Griffin for the original discovery.)

She loved my iPhone and took several pictures with it. I asked her to tell Steve Ballmer that Microsoft needs to make one of these.

Windows 7 in action: a closer look at Windows XP Mode

You can also see the three previous screencasts I did:

• A smarter way to manage windows
• Do more with the taskbar and Jump Lists
• Smarter search

Together, they should give you a pretty good picture of Windows 7.

As an editor, I had knock-down screaming matches with writers. As a writer I’ve done my share of arguing, pleading, complaining, and rewriting.

So today’s Pearls Before Swine comic is perfect:

That’s why I was happy to spend a couple days in ZDNet’s San Francisco studios a couple weeks ago putting together four short screencasts that show some of the signature features of Windows 7 in action. It really helps to have some talented post-production help and a professional-grade recording studio to get the job done.

You can see the first two installments in my Windows 7 In Action series here:

A smarter way to manage windows

Get more done with the taskbar and Jump Lists