Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)

WEP is an older network security method that's still available to support older devices, but it's no longer recommended. When you enable WEP, you set up a network security key. This key encrypts the information that one computer sends to another computer across your network. However, WEP security is relatively easy to crack.

There are two kinds of WEP: open system authentication and shared key authentication. Neither is very secure, but shared key authentication is the least secure of the two. For most wireless computers and wireless access points, the shared key authentication key is the same as the static WEP encryption key—the key that you use to secure your network. A malicious user who captures the messages for a successful shared key authentication can use analysis tools to determine the shared key authentication key, and then determine the static WEP encryption key. After the WEP encryption key has been determined, the malicious user has full access to your network. For this reason, this version of Windows doesn’t support automatically setting up a network using WEP shared key authentication.

If, despite these warnings, you still want to use WEP shared key authentication, you can do so by following these steps:

Computerworld - Microsoft today declined to confirm whether users of Windows XP and Vista will be able to upgrade their PCs to Windows 8 when the latter launches later this year.

On Monday, Microsoft spelled out the editions it would offer customers working with 32- and 64-bit Intel and AMD processor-powered PCs and tablets.

In that blog post, the company also noted the upgrade paths to Windows 8 for existing machines, saying that people now running Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic or Home Premium could upgrade to the consumer-oriented Windows 8. Systems running Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate will be upgradable to Windows 8 Pro.

Although Microsoft did not specify the upgrade path for customers currently running Windows 7 Enterprise, the assumption is that they will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Enterprise, which, like its predecessor, will be distributed only to companies with Software Assurance upgrade agreements

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced the SKU versions of Windows 8; Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro and Windows 8 RT (for ARM processor-based hardware products). A few minutes after Microsoft made the announcement, it updated the blog post to also announce an Enterprise SKU for Windows 8.

Today on the official Windows Business blog, Microsoft's Erwin Visser went into more detail about what Windows 8 Enterprise would be like. Visser confirmed it will have all of the features that will be found in Windows 8 Pro plus some additional content that will be exclusive to the Enterprise edition.

Visser confirmed that the Enterprise SKU would include the new Windows To Go feature, which lets businesses allow its employees to take their desktop version of Windows 8 and store on a USB boot drive. That allows the employee to boot up his Windows 8 desktop from virtually any PC.

Other features include DirectAccess, which will allow Windows 8 Enterprise users to log in remotely to a local corporate network without having to log into a separate VPN. It will also have BranchCache that will cache files such as documents, websites and more from a business' server so that such content is not constantly being re-downloaded off a company's wide area network.

Windows 8 Enterprise will also have ways for businesses and IT customers to restrict access to apps or files via AppLocker, along with the ability to automatically side-load any internal Windows 8 Metro style apps. Devices such as tablets that are running on Windows RT will be able to get extended Virtual Desktop Access via Windows 8 Enterprise.

Allow side-by-side Metro style and desktop apps. You can launch or move a Metro style app to any monitor, side-by-side with desktop apps on another screen.
Show a different desktop background on each monitor.

Multi-monitor slide show.

Span desktop background across all monitors.

Show taskbar buttons on the taskbar where the window is open.

Show taskbar buttons on main taskbar and taskbar where window is open.

Show taskbar buttons on all taskbars (default).

You can launch Start on any monitor:

You can switch back to recently used apps from any monitor:

And you can bring up the charms on any monitor:

Launch and move Metro style apps to any monitor

Improved mouse targeting on the shared edge

Key design changes to help improve availability:

Online self-healing: The NTFS self-healing feature was introduced in Windows Vista (and in Windows Server 2008) to reduce the need to run chkdsk. Self-healing is a feature built into NTFS that fixes certain classes of corruptions encountered during normal operation, and can make these fixes while still online. If all issues that are detected are self-healed online, there is no need for an offline repair. In Windows 8 we increased the number of issues that can be handled online and hence reduced any further need for chkdsk.

Online verification: Some corruptions are intermittent due to memory issues and may not be a result of an actual corruption on the disk; so we added a new service to Windows 8, called the spot verification service. It is triggered by the file system driver and it verifies that there is actual corruption on the disk before moving the file system along in the health model. This new service runs in the background and does not affect the normal functioning of the system; it does nothing unless the file system driver triggers it to verify a corruption.

Online identification and logging: When an issue is verified, this triggers an online scan of the file system, which runs as a maintenance task in the file system. In Windows 8, scheduled tasks that are for the maintenance of the computer run only when appropriate (during idle time, etc.). This scan can run as a background task while other programs continue to run in the foreground. As the file system is scanned, all issues that are found are logged for later correction.

Precise and rapid correction – At the user or administrator’s convenience, the volume can be taken offline, and the corruptions logged in the previous step can be fixed. The downtime from this operation, called “Spotfix,” takes only seconds, and on Windows Server 8 systems with cluster shared volumes, we’ve eliminated this downtime completely. With this new model, chkdsk offline run time is now directly proportional to the number of corruptions, rather than being proportional to the number of files as in the old model.

We have been working closely with Microsoft to ensure a great Flash experience in Windows 8 and recently finalized an agreement that is the basis for today’s release. Our work together has to a large degree focused on integrating Flash Player into Metro style IE10 with special privileges that enable it to run while other plugins still cannot (consistent with Microsoft’s earlier announcements about plugin-free browsing). We did this work with their support and cooperation on integrating with IE and Windows. We will deliver future updates to the Flash Player (both security and feature upgrades) through Windows Update in much the same way that Microsoft updates IE itself.