Microsoft has previously insisted that the publicly posted exploit code only affects IE6 and as such recommended its users to upgrade. While the software giant says the attacks it sees in the wild are still only successful against IE6, Redmond has rated the flaw “Critical” for all versions of the browser.

“This is a standard cumulative update, accelerated from our regularly scheduled February release, for Internet Explorer with an aggregate severity rating of Critical,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. “It addresses the vulnerability related to recent attacks against Google and a small subset of corporations, as well as several other vulnerabilities. Once applied, customers are protected against the known attacks that have been widely publicized.”

The fact that the update is being released out-of-band (meaning that Microsoft is not going to wait until its next Patch Tuesday on February 9) shows how serious the company is taking this particular vulnerability. The company admitted that its own investigations into the highly organized hacking attack in late December against various companies (including Google) had concluded that a Remote Code Execution vulnerability in IE was used by the perpetrators. That vulnerability is triggered by an attacker using JavaScript to copy, release, and then later reference a specific Document Object Model element; attack code may be executed if it is successfully placed in a random location of freed memory.

We will update this post when Microsoft releases the patch for all supported versions of Windows. The company will also be hosting a webcast to address customer questions on the out-of-band bulletin tomorrow at 1:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada).

Via Arstechnica

Installing Windows 7 from a dvd is a simple task if your computer is equipped with a dvd drive to boot and install from. The problem comes up for example if your dvd drive is not working, or your drive is a cd drive which won’t read a dvd, or you own a Netbook which doesn’t have a drive for space reasons.

A simple search online yields many results that cover ways for you to go through the process but they take way to long, or are complicated for someone that is not technically inclined, and include Installing Windows 7 with some Linux help or this one that guides you to get a third party program to partition and make the usb stick bootable plus using the command prompt to install Windows 7.

The following method is by far the easiest and requires:

• Having an image of Windows 7 because you purchased it from Microsoft’s Online Store
• If you bought a disk at a retail store but still need a usb version  for your Netbook you can “extract” the image with a program called Imgburn
• A usb stick, usb drive, usb pen, usb flash drive, different names for the same thing.
• And the most important piece is the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool  from Microsoft

The steps to run the setup of Windows 7 on a bootable usb drive

First you need to download and install the tool from Microsoft following these steps:

Installation of the program

Step 1

Setup of Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 1

Step 2

Setup of Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 2

Step 3

Setup of Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 3

Step 4

Setup of Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 4

Step 5

Setup of Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 5

Using the program

Step 1

Using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 1

Step 2

Using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 2

Step 3

Using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 3

Step 4

Using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 4

Step 5

Using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 5

Step 6

Using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool step 6

Last but not least

Make sure that you go into your computer bios and set it to boot from USB

Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate

Now that Windows 7 is out for the masses, most likely you want to show the beautiful eye candy that it brings to your desktop. The base installation brings lots of choices to pick from, like different colors for the bars, wallpapers, etc.

But in case those are not enough, Microsoft created a site dedicated to creating your custom themes, or download pre-made ones with some sponsor partners like Ferrari, Coca-Cola and others, plus gadgets to go into your sidebar.

Microsoft Windows 7 personalization gallery

Via – Lifehacker