It feels as if the Windows Client product team is happy to finally be able to freely talk about about the feature set of Windows 7. Today I attended a number of sessions revealing a shipload of information about the upcoming successor of Windows Vista. Here is my (short) overview.

Compatibility

Windows 7 will not run the following software from Vista:

• AV
• Firewall
• Imaging
• Other low level software

Windows 7 will run on hardware that runs Windows Vista now.

Application compatibility shims created for Windows Vista will run with no issues on Windows 7.

Deployment

Inplace upgrade to Windows 7 will only be supported for Windows Vista with SP1 or higher.

Windows 7 will be natively support WIM and VHD files for management and mounting. In Windows 7 it is also possible to boot from a VHD or WIM file.

Unfortunately there still is no support for ISO files

Dynamic Driver Provisioning provides an early PnP detection mechanism to only get the needed drivers from a network share and not put all the drivers in the image.

Hardlink migration -

Multicast deployment with WDS is enhanced with Multiple Stream Transfer

This features is very usefull in case you have slow clients receiving the multicast streams. With the current implementation the slowest client will throttle down the speed of the stream and may so decrease the install speed for all systems that are installed from that stream.

Client Auto Removal automatically removes slow clients from a multicast deployment

USMT 4

Hardlink Migration

Hardlink Migration creates a snapshot of current data files before reinstall. Keeps data in the same spot while upgrading the system and rebuilds the links after reinstall. This is much faster than copying the user data to another disk before reinstall.

USMT now utilizes Shadow Copy to preserve files that are in use.

Offline User State Capture

The presenter is not sure about timing of SCCM integration. This will be probably sometime after the release of Windows 7.

Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM)

Dism.exe is a new tool that replaces Package Manager and ImageX for offline management of VHD and WIM files. DISM enhances the functionality by enabling you to list, add and remove features and drivers in offline images.

Connectivity

DirectAccess

BranchCache

I went over these two features in my latest post.

WoWLAN or Wake On Wireless LAN will enable wireless clients to be woken up remotely over Wireless LAN. My guess is that this feature is not yet supported on current hardware.

Security

BitLocker to Go is the mobile version of BitLocker meant for mobile storage devices. When enabled, BitLocker to Go will ask the user to enter a passphrase when a removable storage device is connected to the system. BitLocker to Go allows you to save a key file on the local drive for a device. BitLocker to Go will be compatible for reading on Windows XP or Vista when this is enabled by the policy.

AppLocker

AppLocker is the new enhanced version of Software Restriction Policies. It allows you to easily create a very flexible white list of allowed applications in Group Policy. Rules in AppLocker make me think of firewall rules in which you define queries containing information about the application. In this way you can create a rule that allows users to run Adobe Reader 9 and higher only, or that allows all programs that are part of the Office Suite to run.

Management

PowerShell is now part of the operating system. I will post more about PowerShell 2.0 later. The killer feature of PowerShell is that is enables you to script Administrative Template settings in Group Policy Objects.

Enhanced Power Management

PowerCfg is enhanced and can now create HTML reports that help the administrator to find issues concerning Power Management. One really cool feature was that the tool showed how much the battery of a laptop was charged compared to its maximum capacity.

System Restore will now show you what changes will be rolled back when chosing a restore point

Reliability Monitor among other tools will now also work remotely

Resource Monitor gets Sysinternals Process Explorer features integrated for enhanced process troubleshooting.

Problem Report Recorder allows a user to create a report showing what the user is actually doing in an MHT report that can be mailed for support.

The list is longer than this, but this is all I could reproduce without missing too much of my sleep for tonight.

Send via e-mail | Submit to Digg | Add to Live Favorites