CompTIA A+ 220-1002: Comparing Common Operating Systems
Explore the various client-side operating systems and their installation processes.

32-bit vs. 64-bit Processing
[Video description begins] Topic title: 32-bit vs. 64-bit Processing. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this lesson, we want to identify and define what an operating system is and then make the distinction between 32-bit and 64-bit architecture. And probably most of us are familiar with the fact that we can interface with the operating system. Either through a GUI component in Windows, for example, or through the command line, or through another text shell.

The operating system acts as manager and translator, [Video description begins] Operating system is also referred to as the OS. [Video description ends] and that is to say that the operating system is that layer of the architecture that lets applications talk to the hardware and lets the hardware talk to the applications. So the OS manages access to an availability of services and hardware and it's particularly important, I think, for anybody managing Windows operating systems to understand, and this is true across operating systems, but the description I'm going to give here is specific to the Windows environment.

There's user mode and kernel mode. And in all cases, the distinction here and the reality of an operating system that functions in these two modes, is that no malfunctioning user mode component can directly access the memory of any kernel mode component. And in the Windows world, the practical upshot of that is an application error doesn't blue screen your machine because the error is isolated to the application, and that application can't do any further damage. That's the idea. [Video description begins] There is a graphic of the CLI, which depicts a C:\ command prompt. There is a graphic of a GUI, which contains several icons. [Video description ends]

The OS translates user and application commands into instructions for hardware processing. Again, the operating system is that layer between the applications and the user, and the actual hardware.

All chipsets process binary data, right? And we know that. Everybody's heard that a million times. But what does it mean? What's a practical application? Well, a bit place is the basic unit of binary data. A bit has two possible values, 1 or 0. Binary values increase exponentially and so where I've got 1 bit that has 2 possible values, I can think of that as 2 to the power of 1, or 2. But as soon as I go to 4 bits, or rather to 2 bits, I've got 4 possible values, 2 to the power of 2. 3 bits, suddenly I've got 8 possible values, 2 to the power of 3, et cetera, right? [Video description begins] Four bits equal 16 possible values represented as two to the power four. 4 bits equal 32 possible values represented as two to the power five. Six bits equal 64 possible values represented as two to the power six. [Video description ends]

And so by the time that we get to 32 and 64-bit processing. We're talking about a huge differential in the possible values that are being processed at any given time. [Video description begins] 32 bits are represented as 2 to the power 32. 64 bits are represented as 2 to the power 64. [Video description ends] And so the move from 32-bit to 64-bit processing, it's a big deal because the first thing that happens is we overcome the limitations of memory.

In a 32-bit world, you've got an upper limit of usable memory of 4 gigs. So does it even make sense to buy a 32-bit operating system and then install 8 gigs of RAM? It doesn't. The operating system can't see it, it can't use it, it doesn't know it's there. And so immediately, moving to 64-bit processing means that things are going to be faster, it's a more powerful platform. There's no practical upper limit to RAM, and in a Windows world particularly, that 64-bit processing gives me new feature sets, including driver signing.

Now that is to say that every driver that gets installed by default, needs to be digitally signed by the manufacturer. So we know where it came from and that's a big deal in terms of securing the operating system, right? It means that third party drivers that have additional instruction sets layered into them, which may be malicious in nature, will not install here. Assuming that you enforce that, right? Because you have the option of not enforcing it. Which I strongly urge you not to do. It makes life a little bit harder but it makes life far more secure.

Then you got hardware-based data execution prevention. [Video description begins] Data Execution Prevention is abbreviated as DEP. [Video description ends] So, when I write data up into memory, and that data is static in its nature. It's not an executable, it doesn't need to process. There's nothing to run in there. It's just data. Well, I mark those areas of system memory as data only. So if you're familiar with, you've heard the expression a million times even if you don't know what it is, a buffer overflow attack. Somebody tries to write more data to the buffer than it can handle. Well, right off the bat, nothing's supposed to execute inside of these marks. These blocks that are marked for data only and so those kinds of attacks fail. And then of course, you get PatchGuard, which is going to secure updates, so that you don't get updates from invalid sources, what the operating system considers to be invalid.

[Video description begins] He displays a screenshot of the Windows Control Panel open to the System page. The Windows edition and system information such as Processor, Installed memory or RAM, System type, and Pen and Touch are listed. [Video description ends]

And so if you want to know what your current architecture is, say on a Windows machine, you can go into the Control Panel, open the System settings, and you'll see the System type is right there. 64-bit or 32-bit, as well as the installed memory. Now you go in there and you see 32-bit, and it says 4 gigs of RAM, but you know you put 16 gigs in there. Now you know why, right? 32-bit, more than 4 gigs is pointless operation.

Now, a machine like this cannot be upgraded from 32-bit to 64-bit. You have to do an reinstall with the 64-bit binaries and you have to flip that switch on the processor, in the BIOS, from 32-bit to 64-bit, and virtually any processor today, if it's currently running in 32-bit, it can be reconfigured to run a 64, generally speaking.

And this is an introduction to operating systems, and 32-bit versus 64-bit architecture.

Workstation Operating Systems
[Video description begins] Topic title: Workstation Operating Systems. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this lesson, we want to talk about workstation operating system architectures and some of the distinctions between the main competitors, the vendors for these operating systems.

So at its most basic level, and I want to assure you, this is the most basic look at the architecture, so that it applies generally across all of the vendors, though very specifically, it applies to Windows. [Video description begins] The basic structure of the workstation operating system architecture is a three-layer model. The top layer is the OS GUI (User Mode), the middle layer is the OS Kernel (Kernel Mode), and the bottom layer is the hardware. [Video description ends]

And so when we look here, what's critical for everybody to understand, the way in which these operating systems function that let us run multiple applications at a time and switch between running applications, is because there's a separation in the operating system architecture where there are core operating system components that we commonly refer to as the kernel components, that function in kernel mode, and these are your hardware drivers. These are the core processor components. In a Windows machine, these kernel mode components should consume less than 10% of the processor cycles.

These are the components that let the various applications that you're running communicate and manage those communications from those applications down to the hardware, write requests to the drive down the write controllers. Requests for memory in the RAM, requests for the printer, print jobs, direct a print job to the printer, right, et cetera. They're all handled by the kernel and then the user components are the applications that your users are running, commonly in a GUI mode, though not necessarily, right? I don't want anybody to think that there aren't user mode applications that can be run from the command line, because in point of fact, there are.

Now the practical upshot of this architecture is that no malfunctioning user mode component can directly access the memory of any kernel mode component. And for example in the Windows world, that means that a malfunctioning application doesn't blue screen your machine. When your machine blue screens it's because there was a failure or a hiccup within the kernel itself or some kernel mode component.

Now here's a chart that highlights some of the common points of interest, and I want to highlight, if you look here, there's - our major manufacturers are over on the left, and these are the names that you should be familiar with. Windows, the macOSes, Linux, and FreeBSD, which is newer out there, but it's gaining some traction in the marketplace.

[Video description begins] A table of operating system features displays. There are four rows and five columns. Each row relates to one operating system, namely Windows, macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD. The column headers are Supported architectures, Supported file systems, User friendly, Encrypted file systems, and Command line interface. [Video description ends]

Now when we think about these, what are the supported architectures? We've spent sometime talking about 32-bit versus 64-bit, and I noticed that Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, these all support a 64 and 32-bit, right, what we call the x86 family of architectures. Now macOS on the other hand has this 68K and PowerPC architecture. And guys, here's what's important to recognize, Mac is the last manufacturer that builds its own proprietary hardware to run its own proprietary software, and that's all there is.

[Video description begins] Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD supported architectures are x86 and x86-64. In addition, Linux supports PowerPC, Sparc, Alpha, and others. FreeBSD also supports PC98, SPARC, and others. [Video description ends]

Now they've moved away from that a little bit because you've got the Mactel Platform too, right? You can run Mac on Intel today, and so there you can choose 64-bit versus 32-bit, but natively on its own hardware, the hardware is proprietary.

Now that's the way it used to be, right, initially when computers first came out. The manufacturer of this hardware was also the software manufacturer. Microsoft became the first software company to just build software that ran on any of these compatible devices and that changed the world that we live in, right? That changed the whole ecosystem. And so today the last of these hardware and concurrent software manufacturers left in the market is Mac, and then everybody else, you can buy your components from any number of manufacturers and build your own machines, and then we think about the supported file systems.

[Video description begins] Windows supported file systems are NTFS, FAT, exFAT, ISO 9660 and UDF. Additional file systems are supported with a third party driver and include: ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, HFS+, FATX, and HFS. macOS supports HFS+, HFS, AFP, ISO 9660, and UDF. MFS is supported on earlier versions of Mac OS and FAT is supported from System 7 and later. Linux supports ext2, ext3, ext4, FAT, ReiserFS, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, and others. FreeBSD supports UFS2, ext2, ext3, FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, NFS, ReiserFS (read only), XFS (experimental), ZFS, and others. [Video description ends]

Is it user friendly or not? And in the case of the Linux distros, and for the most part these are very user friendly, right? Windows and Mac are built for the consumer market. They're built for the non-tech savvy person. The Linux distros vary in their usability. So if you were looking to do a Linux distro out to your average user base, you'd probably want to look at a supplier like Red Hat and license a distro from them because some of the others are going to be very unfriendly to the average non-tech person, and then FreeBSD is really for the tech savvy folks. [Video description begins] FreeBSD is not user friendly. [Video description ends]

They all support encrypting file systems, which is increasingly important today, and then the command line interface to Windows is the Microsoft CMD command line. And then everybody else uses Bash, Bash which is a Unix shell, and all of these others, right, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, these are all Unix derivations.

And so this is a look at the principal workstation operating systems competing in the market today.

Mobile Phone & Tablet Operating Systems
[Video description begins] Topic title: Mobile Phone & Tablet Operating Systems. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

Let's do a compare and contrast of the mobile operating systems out there and when we think of those we think of the Windows platform, Windows Mobile, iOS on your iPhone, or tablet, your iPad, and then the Android operating system, which is also available for smartphones and tablets, principally.

Now, when we think about these, these are not commonly operating systems that we'll be deploying rather than we'll be managing. We'll make a decision what the corporate smartphone looks like and then we'll purchase that with the operating system installed, and then the manageability, what kind of manageability we get out of it depends very much on the operating system that it comes from.

[Video description begins] A table displays features of mobile operating systems. There are five columns and three rows. The column headers are: OS family; Per-app Internet access; Common APIs - Smartphone, tablet, desktops; Local full backup; and Desktop sync. Each row is for one mobile operating system, namely Windows, iOS, and Android. [Video description ends]

And so you know, with Windows and with iOS, you're going to be fairly limited in what you can do. With Android, you can do all kinds of things that you would not be able to do in a Windows or iOS world. [Video description begins] The OS family of Windows is Microsoft Windows, iOS is Darwin, and Android is Linux. [Video description ends]

When we think about per app internet access, I'm not going to get it with Windows or iOS, unless I jailbreak those and then use a third party solution. [Video description begins] Windows doesn't allow per-app Internet access, iOS requires a jailbreak with third party solutions and Android requires a third party solution. [Video description ends] Now, of course, Apple does not support any jailbroken device, and so that's not going to be a corporate solution, generally. I know there's some renegades out there. Android has a third party solution for that.

Common APIs – will this support software that runs on both the smartphone, the tablet, and the desktops? Right, all of the above? Well, the Microsoft universal apps will. Now, this is a class of applications that are designed to run on tablets, phones, Xbox, and PCs, Microsoft universal apps. As long as it's a universal app it'll run there, and of course your software devs can write their applications to those APIs and standards so that they'll run everywhere. With iOS, it's smartphone and tablet only, because they make a distinction, right? There's a separate operating system for their class of desktops and laptop machines that's separate from the operating system that runs on their phones and their tablets, and then finally the Android is pretty universal. You can get those to run, or an emulator to run just about anywhere. For example, I run an Android emulator on top of Windows.

Local full backups were removed in Windows Phone 8. Right, so you can do cloud-based backups, not local backups. Right, what good is it to have it on the device, is the thinking there. You want it some place else where it's going to be accessible, because the device is likely to be lost or destroyed easily. iOS, yep, but I've got to have an external machine. Same goes for Android, [Video description begins] Local full backups on iOS and Android require an external computer. [Video description ends] and then everybody supports desktop sync, either natively or through a companion application.

And this is a comparison and contrast of the principal vendors for mobile operating systems today.

Vendor-specific Limitations
[Video description begins] Topic title: Vendor-specific Limitations. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

Let's talk in this section about vendor limitations and the distinction between open source and proprietary mobile OS manufacturers.

Now, for the most part, I really don't know of anybody that's going out and buying a bunch of smartphones with no operating system on them and then installing their own custom Android version. I don't know of anybody doing that. Not to say that it's not being done, but it's not common, I don't think. Most of us are going to go out, we're going to buy a device that's loaded with an operating system.

Now, what we can do depends on whether or not that operating system is open source or closed source. An open source will let anybody access the source binaries and customize them at will, and that's going to be the Android solution. If you're a tinkerer, if you want to be able to have that level of control, then that's the world you're going to want to live in.

Proprietary or closed source operating systems are distributed as a single unit and cannot be changed except with updates from the vendor, right? My Windows updates. Proprietary operating systems are licensed and installed by the device manufacturers. Common, right? That's what we see happening in the marketplace today.

[Video description begins] Android is open source, iOS is closed source and closed vendor, and Windows is closed source. [Video description ends]

Now the big concern that we've all had is malicious software and the solution that our mobile device manufacturers and smartphone manufacturers have come up with is that they only permit authorized applications from trusted sources to be installed. That's brilliant, simple. Very limiting, you might say, but it has certainly created a vibrant app dev competitive space and we see that on Google Play, which is my Android store. The App Store for iOS, for the Apple store, and finally, the Windows Store, where I can get my Windows.

Now, think about this. These applications have been vetted by the manufacturers. They come from a source that's trusted. They're signed digitally, we know where they come from. When they get published up to the store, we can have a high degree of confidence that there's no malicious software there, right? That when it comes from that source, we're going to be happy with what we get or at the very least, that it's not going to wipe my machine, right? And steal all my personal data. We don't see that happening today, at all, because of this simple, brilliant, solution that has created a very diverse and vibrant marketplace. From where I sit, that's what I see.

These devices come with some kind of virtual assistant and the virtual assistant or personal attendant does some things, right? Centralizes data, the apps on the device, and will automate cloud back ups. So that when my device gets lost, I know am going to be able to get my data back. Commonly today, we see support for voice recognition and so the assistant is voice activated and can do talk-to-text with varying degrees of efficiency. Query response. Hey Siri, I need the telephone number for my dentist. Siri found this, right? And Siri, of course, is my iOS assistant. And I can think of all of these of a native AI. These are a native artificial intelligence that's got learning capabilities. It can learn your voice, learn your idiosyncrasies, and respond to them in kind. And of course, in Windows, that's Cortana. Android as the Google Assistant, which is just a terrible name, and I don't know if they're ever going to fix that.

Common vendor concerns, end-of-life support. One of the things that we have to track with every piece of software, every device that we buy, is how long the manufacturer says they're going to support it because when end-of-life support comes, there will be no further updates for that software or that device. Which means any exploits that are discovered after that, I'm going to be susceptible to and so when end-of-life support comes, we want to make sure that we deprecate and retire those devices or those softwares.

Update limitations. Where do I get my updates from? How often are those updates published? Are they published on a regular basis so that I can forecast the impact of those updates on my users? These are some of the considerations that we have when we think about updating our devices.

And then the last thing is compatibility concerns. Compatibility concerns between operating systems, applications, and devices. Look, these different softwares and hardwares, and OS's from these competing manufacturers have interactivity limitations. My iPhone does not sync with my Windows device the way that it does with my iPad. I don't get the ease of use that I'd like to have on the Windows platform with my iPhone that I have if I use it on an Apple platform, and that's just a reality of the distinctions between the vendors.

And so when I'm investigating for the purposes of the business what it is that we need, well, I'm going to take a look at what our actual corporate needs are and then validate that a compatibility concern between the device we're thinking of buying and what we already have isn't going to put the kibosh on the whole thing, right? Can I make it work? If I can't make it work, then I need a different solution and so as part of the evaluation process, when I'm deciding what devices and software I'm going to buy, I'm going to address, first, what are the compatibility concerns with what we already have?

And this is a look at common vendor limitations.

Microsoft Windows Versions
[Video description begins] Topic title: Microsoft Windows version. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

Let's take a look at the versions of Windows and it's not unfair to ask the question, why Windows? Why do we always have to get Windows? Why is it always Windows?

Well, the reasons why are pretty apparent I think, right? It's because it's everywhere. Everybody uses it. It's what everybody knows. The largest number of supported devices, largest number of supported applications, including Microsoft Office, true multitasking, business class security features, and support for both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Although today to be going 32-bit, I don't know why you'd want to do that. If you've got some proprietary software that's 32-bit, you ought to think about getting rid of it, right? That's not the world we're living in today.

The versions of Windows that are out today, and that have not yet reached end of life, include Windows 7, Windows 8, and 8.1, and Windows 10, and the reality is these are all just Vista. I know nobody wants to hear it, everybody hated Vista, but this is the Vista generation, and Windows 7 is no different from Vista, except that the hardware manufacturers had time to catch up. The application developers had time to catch up.

Now what you see here listed are the editions of each of these that are available. Not all the editions, but the principle ones. 7 had a Home and Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Windows 8 and 8.1 were available as Windows, the Professional edition, the Enterprise edition, the OEM edition. Now everybody ought to know that OEM is Original Equipment Manufacturer. So if I buy from Dell, it's going to come with their licensed copy of Windows on it, unless I order a white box, no operating system, I'm going to install it myself.

The Enterprise license, right, the volume license customer for Microsoft, and that's going to have all of the features that Microsoft touts, embedded in it. Professional will have some of those features. So today, for example, in Windows 8 and 8.1 and 10, the Professional edition includes BitLocker so I can bitlock my drives, full drive encryption technology. With Windows 7 that was not available in the Professional edition, I had to buy the Ultimate edition but the Ultimate edition has been deprecated, it's no longer supported. Or rather, that is to say, it's not available in Windows 8 and 10. It's not available in the successive generations, and so, instead, those feature sets have been incorporated into the Professional edition, not entirely, but for the most part, and then Windows 10 has this Education edition which includes most of those feature sets.

With Windows 7 we had some productivity improvements, with the Aero interface, right? The new Windows look and feel, and so you had Snap and Shake which lets you manage multiple open windows more easily. Improved SSD support, BitLocker to Go, so I could bitlock my USB drives, assuming I had the Enterprise or Ultimate edition. If that feature was not available in Home and Professional. Neither were BranchCache nor DirectAccess. BranchCache, which is a file caching technology for remote offices, and DirectAccess, which is Microsoft's solution to VPN access, for Windows 7, were not available in the Home or Professional edition, you had to have Enterprise or Ultimate.

With Windows 8, there was a re-imagining of the interface for the touchscreen world, which made it an immediate hit among tablet users. Anybody in the touchscreen world loved Windows 8 and 8.1 right out of the box. The problem was PC users hated it, right? It was terrible, absolutely terrible at first, the Windows 8, if you didn't have a touchscreen. Now the touch-first experiences, like Live Tiles and the Start Screen were great on tablets, awful on the desktop.

Additional features, this is when we first see the Windows Store as a secure source for trusted applications, brilliant. Windows-To-Go, so I could have an entire desktop on a USB. Integration with my Microsoft account. So I have a Hotmail account, I can use that to access the Windows Store, to access OneDrive, so that my business documents are now up in the cloud and if this tablet or laptop goes missing, I'm going to be able to get all my work back real easy.

Windows 10 offers a single version of the Windows kernel regardless of device. Cloud synchronization, productivity improvements, right, like Cortana and virtual desktops, as well as integrated gaming and multimedia experiences.

[Video description begins] Another productivity improvement is the Task view. A table of hardware requirements displays. Each version of Windows has the same requirements listed for processor, memory, disk space, and graphics. [Video description ends]

When we think about the hardware requirements, they haven't really changed for these successive versions in this generation. 1-GHz or better processor, 1 gig or better of RAM. 16 gigs of disk space for the 32-bit version, 20 gigs for the 64-bit version and Direct X9 with WDDM, the Windows driver model. And these standards are minimums, right? If you're running 64-bit, you're going to up that in RAM, right? Give it 16 gigs, give it 32 gigs, give it all the memory you can.

This is a look at the versions of Windows that are currently out and supported and some of the distinctions between them and the editions of those versions.

Corporate vs. Personal Needs
[Video description begins] Topic title: Corporate vs. Personal Needs. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this lesson, we want to take a look at the corporate versus the personal needs.

Now when you think about your computer for the house, there's a different standard that we would apply there and one of the big features that the CompTIA folks want you to know about was introduced in Windows 7, and that's the Windows Media Center. Now, unfortunately, it was also removed after Windows 7, and so there is no longer a Media Center and it's too bad because when I saw it first I thought wow, here it is, finally the computer and the TV are one thing and I can stream video anywhere in the house to any device in the house from this central location, thing of beauty, right, real nice.

You may be interested in it, you may have used it yourself. It is worth pointing out, I think, that if we look out on the public internet, the guys have put together something that works. [Video description begins] The presenter opens a page in the Web browser that lists the steps to install the unofficial Windows Media Center on a computer. [Video description ends]

Now be aware, this is not the kind of thing you would ever do at the office because this will void your service contract. This will void your license, this is not a supported solution, but if you liked the Media Center in the past, you can get it for yourself. This is never going to be the right answer on an A+ certification exam, guys, I want to assure you that, I just mention this for you. For those of you that don't know Windows Media Center or Windows 7, I'd encourage you to take a look at it prior to taking the A+ certification exam.

Now one of the things that's going to concern all of us these days is the security of our data. Whether we are home or whether we are in the office, we want to know that that data's encrypted. For any drive, and this is commonly the distinction between file encryption at home and full volume disk encryption in the office. The two solutions for these are EFS, the Encrypting File System, which is native to the NTFS file system, and then there's the full-drive encryption, the power of BitLocker. And the Microsoft recommendation is that all your drives today are BitLocked.

Now in the Control Panel, there is a BitLocker management choice, or if I launch an instance of the Windows Explorer [Video description begins] He switches to an instance of Windows Explorer. There are several drives listed. [Video description ends] and I take a look in the left-hand navigation pane, I can see the drives that are on this machine. There's an internal Local C, and then everything else is an external USB or a share out on the network. I know that these drives are BitLocked or are capable of being BitLocked, because when I click on them, if I take a look closely here, I can see that there's a little lock on there, [Video description begins] He points to the icon that represents the Local Disk C. [Video description ends] and that lock indicates that this drive is BitLocked.

I can also right-click any of these drives and there's a choice, Manage BitLocker, and I'm going to launch the BitLocker management app then, [Video description begins] The BitLocker Drive Encryption page opens in Control Panel. [Video description ends] and here we can see BitLocker Drive Encryption help protect the files and folders from unauthorized access.

Now this feature is not in every version of Windows, guys. And this is the tricky bit for anybody who hasn't been in this business very long. The test is going to want you to know the feature set differentials between 7, 8, 8.1, and 10, and so today, if I were looking for BitLocker, minimally I would have to buy Windows Professional Edition today, Windows 10 Professional Edition. In the past, say certainly in Vista and in 7, BitLocker was not included in the Professional Edition, and so knowing which edition support which technologies are going to be important.

Now BitLocker is a home or office utility, in my mind, right? I want this at home, I want this in the office, I want to know that if my machines fall out of my scope of management, the data on them is secure. I want to be able to turn to management with confidence and say, there will be no data breach, ladies and gentlemen, and I can do that if I'm living in this BitLocker world.

Now the two principal feature sets for the office that are edition and version dependent are branch cache and domain access. Now all versions of Windows can be joined to a domain and if I minimize, using the minimize button in the upper left-hand corner of the Control Panel window, if I minimize these windows to take them out of the way, I have the System applet open in the background here. [Video description begins] He switches to the System page of the Control Panel. [Video description ends] And if I look under Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings I can see that this computer is joined to a domain.

If I wanted to change that, on the far right-hand side there's a Change settings choice, and if I click that the traditional system applet opens. [Video description begins] He clicks the Change settings link and the System Properties dialog box opens. [Video description ends] The first tab in that applet is the Computer Name tab, and if I look down to the last choice that says, to rename the computer or change the domain or workgroup, hit Change.

Now it's important to recognize that without even being an admin on the network, your average user has the right to join as many as ten machines to the domain. [Video description begins] He clicks Change. The Computer Name/Domain Changes dialog box opens. [Video description ends] And you may think that that seems odd, why is a non-administrator granted these permissions? Well, you've got 500 machines to roll out on Monday morning. It's going to be great if those guys could just say yes, join the domain and hit that Enter key when that comes up, and so to facilitate the addition of machines to the domain, users have the rights to add those machines.

Branch cache is supported in Windows 10 Enterprise edition, it's always been supported in Enterprise edition, and it's an Enterprise feature set for remote office support, that's what branch cache is. If you're completely unfamiliar with it, I'd encourage you to study up on it a little bit, take a look at something called group policy. Now, guys, that is beyond the scope of this course, I want to make that clear, but moving forward in your career, having a sense of how group policy works is going to be important because you'll use it to configure things like branch cache.

Guys, this is a look at some of the distinctions, some of the considerations and concerns that we have as we choose the version of the operating system and the edition of the operating system to support either our business or personal needs.

Version-specific Desktop Styles and User Interface
[Video description begins] Topic title: Version-specific Desktop Styles and User Interface. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this lesson, we'd like to take a look at customizing the desktop environment and the interface and so traditionally in the Windows world, we had a utility called the Display applet, and prior to Windows 8, that could be found right in the Control Panel.

Now it's changed a little bit. [Video description begins] The Windows 10 desktop displays. [Video description ends] If I come down here into the Start menu, and I just type control, I get the Control Panel and if I open up the Control Panel, now, yours may not look like this, if you're following along on your own machine. [Video description begins] The All Control Panel Items page of the Control Panel displays. [Video description ends]

If I look over on the upper right-hand corner, it says View by and so I could change to Category and this might be what yours looks like when you first get in here [Video description begins] The View by drop-down list options are Category, Large icons, and Small icons. [Video description ends] and there's a choice here for Appearance and Personalization, but you'll notice there's no Display. All right so the Display applet, it's just not there the way that it once was. Even if I break this out to the individual choices, [Video description begins] He returns to the Large icons view. [Video description ends] there's Date and Time, Default Programs, Device Manager, Devices and Printers, no Display applet, all right? But prior to Windows 8, the Display applet was where I went to do everything.

Now, I'm going to go ahead, and from the upper right-hand corner, I'm going to choose Category again, and then immediately, there's Appearance and Personalization, and I can come into Appearance and Personalization. [Video description begins] He opens the Appearance and Personalization settings page. [Video description ends]

And here I have settings for the Taskbar and Navigation, the Ease of Access Center, now this is particularly important for those of us that manage a population that has physical challenges, and so when I think about things like sticky keys, right? I have a user that's slow to take their weight off a key. Well, I want to inform the system that that's what's going to happen, right? The key isn't stuck, he's not pressing it multiple times, just give him a second, and his finger is going to come off that key. That's a sticky key, all right?

Now, what I'm going to do is, I'm actually going to minimize this window for a second and then I'm going to right-click on the desktop, [Video description begins] He returns to the desktop and right-clicks. [Video description ends] and when I do that, there's a choice for Display settings. Well now wait, maybe that's the old Display applet. All right, if I open that up, nope. Some of the settings are in there, that we used to go into the Display applet for but not everything and it doesn't look like it used to, right? That's the Windows 10 Display. [Video description begins] The Display page opens in the Settings app. [Video description ends] So not exactly what I want, I'm going to close out of that and then again I'm going to right-click the desktop and I'm going to say Personalize.

Now, this is where everything really is, I'll maximize that window big so we can see it, [Video description begins] He selects Personalize in the shortcut menu. The Personalization page opens in the Settings app. Some of the settings that can be configured include Background, Colors, and Themes. [Video description ends] and if you look with me, there's your Background, if I wanted to put a picture on my desktop or do a Slideshow, all right, I could make those choices from this menu.

If I'm doing a solid color for the back drop, or for the desktop rather, [Video description begins] He expands the Background drop-down list. He points to the Choose your background color palette. [Video description ends] maybe I don't want it to be black, right? Maybe I'm a summer, I go ahead and change it to red. Probably not. All right let's try that again, go back into Personalize and I'm going to go back to my original color, mute that down a little bit.

Now of course, the Microsoft corporation has provided you with themes. For years and years they've done this and they still do, [Video description begins] He clicks Themes in the Navigation pane. The Themes page opens. [Video description ends] and so here are some of the default themes, the traditional Windows theme, the Windows 10 theme and then a Flowers theme [Video description begins] He points to the standard themes in the Apply a theme section. [Video description ends] and I can go out to the Store, the Microsoft Store to get more themes, should I wish to do so. [Video description begins] He clicks the Get more themes in Microsoft store link. The Windows Themes page opens in the store. He returns to the Themes page in the Settings app. [Video description ends]

I can apply any of these themes, literally just by hitting the theme, and it is applied. [Video description begins] He clicks the different themes listed. The text and highlight colors change as a visual indicator of the changing theme. [Video description ends] Now further, these can be customized, and so, when I look up here there's this use the custom theme choice and you’ll note if I do something like open the Start menu, it's quite different than it was before, right, or at least visually, and this may be more appealing to you.

Now, as an administrator, if there's a particular set of settings that you want to enforce out there, you can do that through something called group policy in Windows and depending on the version of the Red Hat distro or the Linux distro or the Macintosh solution you might also do a centralized configuration management or you might deploy scripts to the machines to enforce your changes. But all of the solutions, all of the operating system manufacturers out there have a solution for broad based configuration.

I don't think I want to spend too much time in here, but I could certainly go into Background there. I could go into Colors [Video description begins] He clicks Colors in the Navigation pane of the Settings app. [Video description ends] and so if I wanted to change the colors, maybe I'm not happy with that bright coral pink, right? Maybe if I went with a light mint green, that would be a lot cooler, easier on the eye, right? [Video description begins] He changes the theme color, then clicks Start to preview the changes. [Video description ends] Green they say is the easiest, most relaxing color to our eyes, because we were surrounded by it for so long, probably, probably.

Now, let's see. There's the Recent colors, the color palette that we're currently using. [Video description begins] He returns to the Colors page in the Settings app. [Video description ends] The Lock screen choice, over here if I wanted to set a lock screen. Themes, again, you can always get more from the Store.

If I wanted to set the fonts or if I wanted to import fonts, now this used to be a big problem in Windows, remember you used to have to have administrative rights to do this. That's no longer the case. So today Windows 10 uses a security feature called User Account Control and elevation of privilege. So that when the average or standard user account who wouldn't normally have the rights to install fonts attempts to do so, the service account elevates the privileges and your users can install fonts today, which is awfully handy I think. [Video description begins] He points to the Navigation pane options. Some other options are Start and taskbar. [Video description ends]

So this is a look at the display settings, at customizing the Windows interface to your own personal choices.

Boot Methods
[Video description begins] Topic title: Boot Methods. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this lesson, we want to talk about the Windows upgrade paths and the boot methods.

[Video description begins] A table displays upgrade paths from different versions of Windows Vista to Windows 7. The row headers are the different Windows Vista versions, namely: Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Windows Vista Enterprise. The Column headers are the target editions of Windows 7. [Video description ends]

Now, let's start with a look at the upgrade paths, and the upgrade paths fall into three principal categories. An In-place upgrade where I can bring the operating system from the current level to the new level, right in place, preserving all of the user's documents and data. A migration scenario, in which users' data must be migrated to the new platform. So I need a separate methodology for migrating the user data. Or a Clean install, which is a wipe and reload, in which case if there's user data that needs to be preserved there, I'm going to have to figure that out as well. [Video description begins] Windows Vista Home Basic to Home Basic 7 can use an In-place install. All other versions of Vista to Home Basic 7 require a Clean install. [Video description ends]

So the long and the short of this is that for the most part, with very few exceptions, you can upgrade from any lower level edition of the software to any higher level edition. So for example I can upgrade in place a Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Now there's an exception to that rule with 7, I require a Clean install. The only In-place Vista to 7 upgrade, Professional Edition, is the Business Edition. Right, that's kind of the one exception to the rule here. Other than that, we can see in-place upgrades are supported as long as you're moving to a higher level of the operating system.

[Video description begins] Vista Home Basic and Premium can use an In-place install to Home Premium 7. Other Vista versions require a Clean install. Vista Business can upgrade In-place to Professional 7. All other Vista versions require a Clean install to Professional 7. Vista Enterprise requires a Clean install to Ultimate 7. All other Vista versions can use an In-place upgrade to Ultimate 7. Vista Business and Enterprise can upgrade In-place to Enterprise 7. Other Vista versions require a Clean install to Enterprise 7. [Video description ends]

Now, it's worth pointing out too that you can't go from 32-bit to 64-bit, right? That's always going to be a clean install.

Now, again, with Windows 8 and 8.1, it's just about the same, right?

[Video description begins] A table displays the upgrade path for Windows 7 and 8 to other versions of Windows 8 and 8.1. The row headers are Windows 7 Starter, Home; Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate; Windows 7 Enterprise; Windows 8; Windows 8 Professional; and Windows 8 Enterprise. The column headers are Windows 8, Windows 8 Professional, Windows 8 Enterprise, Windows 8.1, Windows 8.1 Professional, and Windows 8.1 Enterprise. [Video description ends]

For the Windows 8.1 versions, that I'm coming from Windows 7, I'm going to be looking to migrate those.

[Video description begins] Windows 7 Starter and Home have an In-place upgrade to Windows 8. Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise require a Clean install to Windows 8. Windows 7 Starter, Home, Professional, and Ultimate have an In-place upgrade to Windows 8 Professional. Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 98 require a Clean install to Windows 8 Professional. Windows 7 Enterprise to Windows 8 Enterprise can be done In-place. All other upgrades have to be a Clean install. Windows 7 Starter, Home, Professional, and Ultimate have to Migrate to Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Professional. Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8 Enterprise, and Windows 8 Professional have a Clean install to Windows 8.1. Windows 8 to 8.1 can be done In-place. Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 8 Enterprise have a Clean install to Windows 8.1. Windows 8 and Windows 8 Professional to 8.1 can be done In-place. To upgrade to Windows 8.1 Enterprise, all versions require a Clean install, except for Windows 8 Professional and Windows 8 Enterprise, which can be done In-place. [Video description ends]

And then finally, the one that's probably of most interest to folks because this is what you're going to be wrestling with today, right, is Windows 10 updates.

[Video description begins] A table displays the upgrade path for Windows 7 and 8 versions to Windows 10 versions. The row headers are Windows 7 Starter, Home; Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate; Windows 7 Enterprise; Windows 8/8.1; Windows 8/8.1 Professional; and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise. The column headers are Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Professional, and Windows 10 Enterprise. [Video description ends]

So if I'm running Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, and I want to move to Windows 10. Well, the Professional or Enterprise editions will let me upgrade those in place, preserving all the user settings. Windows 7 Enterprise can only be upgraded in place to Windows 10 Enterprise, right, that's your software assurance component of your volume license agreement. And then I can see the rest of these, whether they're In-place or Clean install.

[Video description begins] Windows 7 Starter and Home and Windows 8/8.1 have an In-place upgrade to Windows 10 Home. Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, Enterprise, Windows 8/8.1 Professional, and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise require a Clean install to Windows 10 Home. The Enterprise versions also require a Clean install to Windows 10 Professional. All other versions have an In-place upgrade to Windows 10 Professional. Windows 7 Starter and Home and Windows 8/8.1 have a Clean install to upgrade to Windows 10 Enterprise. All the other versions can be upgraded In-place. [Video description ends]

Now, what's absolutely critical to understand, if I'm going to upgrade the operating system, or I'm going to do a clean install of the operating system, that setup utility has to have exclusive access to the drive that it's installing to. Now, if there's already an operating system there, that operating system can't be started or it's going to have exclusive access to the drive that the setup utility needs access to, dig it?

So what do we do? Well, we boot to another operating system. Typically a Windows PE, that's the Windows pre-execution environment, on a USB drive or on the CD-ROM, or a PXE boot, a network application that's going to do the distribution like Windows Deployment Services. Solid state or flash drive, a NetBoot, external/hot-swappable drive or an internal hard drive partition that is not the target partition, dig it?

So again, when you're doing these installs, the install application, the setup utility, must have exclusive access to the drive it's going to install on. So I need to boot the hardware from another location, whether it's a USB or the network or a CD, doesn't matter. It just can't be the drive that is the target drive for the installation.

Types of Installations
[Video description begins] Topic title: Types of Installations. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this lesson, we want to talk about the types of installations and some of the concerns and details regarding them.

Now, of course, we can always do manual installs, right? I can sit down at the physical device, I can put a CD in the CD drive and I can walk through the installation manually but that's a lot of overhead if you've got 500 machines that need to be deployed, right? And so we think instead about light touch and zero touch deployments.

Now, right off the bat, these automated deployments are going to require answer files. You know how, when you're sitting there and you're doing a manual install, and it asks you for the region, the locale, the time zone. Well, you can provide those answers in a file that the setup utility can read from and then you don't have to sit there and go through the steps manually, right? It just reads from the file, and commonly, when I think about something like Windows Deployment Services, that's a light touch deployment. I can go around, turn on all the machines, they boot to the network. They find the deployment server, they read the answers from the answer file, and they get installed.

Now, I still have to go around and turn them on and there might be some level of interaction that I have. For full zero touch deployments, you need third party utilities. So with Microsoft we think about System Center Configuration Manager and then there's a double-dozen other third party utilities out there that can give you true zero touch deployment, so that you don't even have to walk around and turn the 500 machines on, they use a Wake-on-LAN or a NetBoot solution, and the machines turn on quite automatically. Get their operating system, the details of the installation are read from the answer files, and you go to town. Now, all of those solutions, the light touch and zero touch, take a lot of setup, and a third party or native solution like Windows Deployment Services to be installed.

Where do they get installed to? Well, they could be installed to a new device, could be an upgrade of an existing device. Maybe you're doing multi-boot, although today, mostly we don't do multi-boot, why? Maybe in the lab, in the test lab where you want to do actual testing of hardware, you might have multi-boot systems. But for the most part, why has multi-boot gone away? Well, it's gone away because we support virtualization today.

So rather than having a single device that can run either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 and I can boot it to either, right, that's a multi-boot, I have a Windows 10 machine and it's got a Windows 8 virtual machine running on top of it, and so I've got the Windows 8 and Windows 10 machine running concurrently, talking to each other, acting as a virtual node on the network as if it were a physical machine. And that's a preferable world to live in, I would argue, right, where I can have both operating systems running simultaneously.

Where do the files come from? Where are my installation sources? Well, they can be on a DVD or in an ISO file. They can be posted out to a distribution share, a network share. They can be on a USB, in a VHD, right, in a Virtual Hard Drive location, or they can come from a deployment service, like Windows Deployment Services was the example we gave before.

The installation targets, where do these get installed to? Well, they install to an internal hard drive, right? Either a traditional hard drive or a solid state. Can be installed into a VHD, that's a virtual machine running on top of a virtualization solution, or a native boot VHD, where instead of having the operating system installed traditionally, I have the hypervisor installed and then I apply a native boot VHD, so that when the machine boots up, it actually boots to this virtual machine, this virtual instance but it appears that it's booting to an installed operating system. I'm a big fan of those. Or to a USB device for Windows To Go, so I want to be able to take my desktop with me on a USB.

These are the types of installations that are available, where we get the installation source files from, and what those installation targets might look like.

Perform Remote Installations
[Video description begins] Topic title: Perform Remote Installations. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

For remote installations or network-based deployments, the details of the deployment are going to vary depending upon the software solution that you employ. So for example, if I'm using Windows Deployment Services, there's a number of setup steps that I want to go through. If I'm using Windows Deployment Services with System Center Configuration Manager, those steps are different and the supporting technologies are different. However, there are a couple of things that no matter what solution you're using, that are going to be in common, and so that's what we want to talk about here.

In the case of a Windows deployment, I'm going to need Windows PE, and so there's the full-blown version of Windows that we think about when we think about a GUI interface, particularly for users on our work stations, and then there's Windows PE, the pre-execution environment, and that's a microkernel operating system. It's a tiny, little OS that's small enough to fit into memory, and so when I'm doing an installation, the setup utility needs exclusive access to the target drive, and so the only way to do that is to load up an operating system in memory that can manage the setup utility application's requests to the hardware, and leave the setup utility in exclusive control of the target drive to which the operating system will be installed. And the solution that we have for that in the Windows world is WinPE. Again, it's a tiny, little microkernel operating system that will run in RAM, giving the setup utility exclusive access to the target drive.

I'm going to need the credentials to do this. So I'm going to have to be an administrator that can log in to the system and that can kick off these installs. I'm going to need a distribution share. That's a location for the binary files, for the Windows image file, for the driver packages, for the software setup and executables that I want to have installed as part of this installation; and other can be just about anything. All of the standard operating system procedure manuals that an employee in a particular department should have. You can write those copy commands in to the setup, and so at a certain point, all of those files are copied to the target install, and the user gets everything that they should have right out of the box, local on their machine.

Now it is worth mentioning here that since Windows Vista, Windows deployments have been image-based using something called wim files, Windows image files, and if I look in the Sources directory of any Windows installation media since Vista - so 7, 8,10, and Server, there's a Sources directory, and in that Sources directory, there are two wim files, the install.wim and the boot.wim.

Now the boot.wim is a wim file for Windows PE for that tiny, little microkernel operating system that fits up in memory, while the install.wim is the full-blown installation of Windows, including the graphical components, the user interface. And so commonly, a network deployment will call first a boot.wim so that we get Windows PE running locally on the machine to act as an intermediary operating system to direct requests to the hardware from the setup utility that's installing the install.wim.

One of the things when we think about securing these deployments is ensuring that we're using clean source principles, that the install.wim and the boot.wim that we're using come from the manufacturer, come directly off the CD, the installation media provided by Microsoft, and were copied directly from that clean source to the distribution share from whence they will then be installed.

This is a look, the nature of Windows installs today, that they are image-based and have been since Vista, and some of the details of remote installations, regardless of the software being used to deploy those remote installs.

Recover an Installation
[Video description begins] Topic title: Recover an Installation. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this demonstration, we want to take a look at recovering a failed installation.

Now, there's a couple different ways that we can do that, but today in Windows 10 they're all built in, right in to the GUI. So, as long as Windows is working, you can use this operation, otherwise you would fail back to the classic version, right? You reboot the machine, you go into the advanced startup settings, and then you choose a recovery option. [Video description begins] The Windows 10 desktop displays. [Video description ends]

That's traditionally how this was done, but today I can go right to the Start menu which I've launched from the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and then I'll just type settings, because that will get me in to the Settings applet, [Video description begins] He clicks Settings in the Search results. The Windows Settings app opens. [Video description ends] and if we take a look in here, there's an Update and Security choice and I'll click that Update and Security choice. [Video description begins] The Windows Update page of the Update & Security settings displays. [Video description ends]

Now, from this applet I can trigger a Windows Update, as I see in the left-hand navigation bar. I can review the security settings, I can enforce those security settings, I can run a backup, right? All built into the console here, Troubleshoot, or I can go into Recovery. [Video description begins] He clicks Recovery in the Navigation pane. [Video description ends]

Now, when we go into the Recovery option, what we see are essentially two choices, Reset this PC, or Advanced startup. Now, you'll note that Advanced startup, start up from a device or disc, such as a USB drive, or DVD. If you needed to flash the firmware, your disk controllers that had on board processors and that firmware needed to be flashed, that would be an example of PC firmware settings. Essentially turn the machine off for.

Now, why is it that I need to reboot the machine from a USB or a DVD? Well, because I'm going to restore Windows from a system image. Any time that we're doing an installation of an operating system, the setup utility has to have exclusive access to that drive that it's being installed on, agreed?

Now given that, then what we need is a little micro kernel operating system running up in RAM, that gives my setup utility unlimited access to the drive, or exclusive access to the drive, and that's what Windows PE is, right? The Windows Pre-execution Environment is a tiny little microkernel operating system, it's small, so it runs in RAM, and it acts as a bootstrapping mechanism, right? You've heard the expression pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Well, there is a piece of hardware here, I want to install an operating system, but the operating system executable needs exclusive access to the drive. So I need a temporary operating system that runs in memory to communicate between the setup application and the hardware. Does that make sense to everybody, and that's Windows PE. [Video description begins] The Advanced startup section has a Restart now button. [Video description ends]

Now up top here, there's a choice to Reset the PC, maybe I've had degradation in performance, and that can happen for a number of reasons, right? Or maybe I've discovered corrupt system binaries, I went to install a feature, and all the binaries are right there on the machine, it should be able to install it just fine, but it fails every time, why? Well, commonly, not commonly, but one of the things that goes wrong with those is the files get corrupt on the disk. [Video description begins] He points to the Reset this PC section. The description indicates that if the PC isn't running well, resetting might help. Personal files can be kept or removed. There is a get started button. [Video description ends]

And so what we can do here, is we can choose to refresh this PC, which is a really tricky term guys, because it sounds so innocuous doesn't it? Just refresh like it's hot out, and we're just going to have a little spritz, it'll be cooling, it'll be refreshing. No, you want to be aware that a refresh is a destructive install, it's going to wipe and format the hard drive before it installs the operating system, that's a refresh, okay?

Now, the reset preserves all of my files, and my configuration settings, while replacing, and/or repairing the underlying system binaries. So it's not a full reinstall the way that a refresh would be.

Now, one of the things that I'd commonly do before any of this, would be to back everything up, right? Back everything up, get it off the machine, make sure I've got that, so that if this never recovers, at least I have the user's data.

This is a look at the native recovery tools in Windows 10 today.

Exercise: Common Operating Systems
[Video description begins] Topic title: Exercise: Common Operating Systems. Your presenter for this session is Michael Murphy. [Video description ends]

In this exercise, you will please state the 32-bit RAM limitation, right? This is one of the principal things that's motivating our movement to 64-bit processing. So what is that limitation? Then please list the advantages of 64-bit in general, and then specifically in Windows, I had mentioned three features that we get when we make the move to 64-bit processor. If you could remind me of those, please? Then describe the Windows layered architecture. Why is it that I can switch between applications, run so many applications simultaneously without hanging the machine up? Finally, I'd like you to please list the potential installation targets, as well as the potential sources for the source binaries that will perform the installation.

Go ahead take a few minutes, sketch out your answers. You can go ahead and pause the video at this juncture, and when you've got your answers ready and you're ready to review those, we'll do that together. Go ahead and start the video back up.

Let's review these together. First, very simple, the upper limit of RAM is 4 gigs in a 32-bit processing environment. As soon as I make the move to 64-bit, I can put 16 gigs on my laptop, 32 gigs, whatever, right? There's no practical upper limitation of RAM in 64-bit processing and that, of course, is one of the first advantages of going to 64-bit, no practical upper limit to RAM, more powerful, faster.

In Windows, we get PatchGuard, data execution prevention, and driver signing. All of which create a world that is far safer to live in than we've ever had before and defends our systems at the lowest possible level from the most direct threats. That's a thing of beauty.

When we think about the workstation operating system architecture, particularly in Windows, we can start exploring that architecture with this simple modular approach. We know that there's the physical hardware, and then on top of that hardware is the operating system, and the operating system functions in two modes, kernel mode and user mode.

[Video description begins] The architecture consists of three layers. The bottom layer is the Hardware. The middle layer is the OS Kernel (Kernel Mode). The top layer is the OS GUI (User Mode). [Video description ends]

Kernel mode is where all the communication and translation between the hardware and the higher level user mode applications, those applications, Microsoft Office, that the user interacts with directly. Kernel mode is that protected, privileged space, where the communication from the higher level applications gets translated down through the stacks and directly to the hardware, and the practical upshot of this architecture is that no malfunctioning user mode application can directly access the memory of any kernel mode component. Which means that when Excel hangs up, you can open Task Manager and kill it without turning off the machine, right, or losing information in other applications.

Where do we install our work station operating systems to? Well, we can install them to an internal drive, right, which is the most common, of course, installation. Though this is quickly becoming the most common, I think. I don't know how it is at your place. For me, a number of my machines now are VHDs in native boot and so I don't do a traditional installation. Instead I layer in the hypervisor on top of the hardware, and then go ahead and drop a VM in there. Which boots up as if it were the first parent primary partition, but in fact it's just a VHD, right? It's a file on the file system of the hypervisor, which is really cool. There's a lot of things that that enables me to do. But, the biggest thing, of course, is just the flexibility of recovery, and then finally, Windows To Go is my desktop on a USB stick.

Where do we get the bits from? Well, you might have installation media, DVD that's got an ISO on it from the Microsoft corporation directly or from your third-party vendor, your disty. You might have taken the installation media and rather than run the installation locally manually, you've copied everything out to a network share, you've set permissions on that share and now the setup application can be called from across the network, and we perform a remote installation.

I might have to do an installation off-site, where there is no internet access, and so I stick everything on a USB and I take it with me. I might have everything in a VHD, which is newer, right, this is a newer way to perform installations from a VHD. And it's only in the last generation of, say, Windows Deployment Services, for example, that we even had support for performing installations from VHD. So if that seems odd to you or new to you, it's because it is.

And then finally, you might use a deployment service. Now, of course, the Microsoft Solution is Windows Deployment Services today. Other common deployment services might be Xen, Citrix has a good one, VMware does as well for automating the deployments of virtual VM machines, as well as VM hosts. And then there's a double-dozen third-party ones out there on the market.

So folks, this is a look at common operating systems and the things that I think about when I'm making the decisions as to the architecture, the installation methods, the sources for those installation binaries, and of course, we explored the nature of the layered or modular architecture of Windows, that gives us true multitasking, as well as a highly resilient, highly reliable operating system platform.

This is a look at common operating systems, and a comparison of the feature sets and options for installation.