Windows XP Professional

Microsoft originally said that new owners of Windows 7 who wanted to downgrade to XP would only have until 2011 to do so, but now the company has changed its mind and extended support for the old operating system until 2020.

That’s right. Windows XP, an operating system that is already almost 10 years old, will apparently still be relevant for another 10 years.

“We have decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1,” wrote Microsoft in an official blog post. “Going forward, businesses can continue to purchase new PCs and utilize end user downgrade rights to Windows XP or Windows Vista until they are ready to use Windows 7.”

Because users did not seem to be overly outraged about Windows 7 the way everyone was about Vista, it seemed perfectly fine to cut off the remaining life of Windows XP without too much haste. And for the majority of individual computer owners, that probably wouldn’t have been a problem.

However, what is a problem is that 74% of businesses still use Windows XP, and for a lot of them, the cost of upgrading all of their machines to Windows 7 is not financially tenable. Thus, companies risk having old computers with Windows XP and new computers with Windows 7 which would fragment their network and make it impossible to streamline systems.

It is as a result of that statistic that Microsoft will now continue to allow downgrades to Windows XP for people who purchase Windows 7 Professional through 2015, and through 2020 for people who purchase Windows 7 Ultimate, according to a report from Computerworld.

However, as of yesterday, Microsoft ended all support for Windows XP SP2, so anyone who still wants to be covered by Microsoft support will at least have to move to XP’s Service Pack 3.

The major features in this release (officially labeled 4.0.249.78—uh, we’ll just call it 4.0):

• Extensions
• Bookmark sync
• Enhanced developer tools
• HTML5: Notifications, Web Database, Local Storage, WebSockets, Ruby support
• v8 performance improvements
• Skia performance improvements
• Full ACID3 pass, due to re-enabled remote font support (with added defense against bugs in operating system font libraries)
• HTTP byte range support
• New security feature: “Strict Transport Security” support
• Experimental new anti-reflected-XSS feature called “XSS Auditor”

They’ve also pushed out a handful of security fixes, listed on the Chrome Releases blog post. Google’s spinning this release as adding “over 1,500 new features” to Chrome by virtue of the number of extensions already available to the Chrome community. This update isn’t the final blow to Firefox or anything along those lines, but we can’t help but think the folks at Mozilla would be a little worried.

Extensions are a large part of what’s set Firefox apart from Chrome, while Chrome has often out-paced Firefox in arenas like performance. As Chrome extensions hit the mainstream stable release, we could see a lot of people considering the switch.

Chrome 4.0.etc. is a free, stable release for Windows only but you can only expect the other OS’s versions to be caught up fairly quickly.

MusicDNA has been developed by Dagfinn Bach, part of the team that developed the current de facto standard at the Fraunhofer Institute 20 years ago. Bach’s firm, Bach technologies, launched the new format at the music industry annual Midem conference in Cannes.

However, so far MusicDNA has signed up only a handful of independent labels and minority retailers, suggesting it could be yet another failed attempt to overthrow basic MP3.

MusicDNA files will be backwards compatible with existing MP3 players, so will offer no improvement in sound quality. Bach is instead pinning the format’s hopes on metadata such as “lyrics, artwork and tour dates to blog posts, videos and Twitter feeds”.

In what is claimed as MusicDNA’s main advantage over illegally downloaded MP3s, the metadata of licensed files can be automatically updated whenever a player is connected to the internet. Labels will also have the option of providing user-customisable content.

Despite launching without crucial major label support, Bach Technologies said it expects to make more announcements soon, and is in the “midst of talks with potential partners from across all sectors of the business, including the major labels and leading digital service providers”.

The MusicDNA player will launch in beta around Easter, with a commercial rollout in summer. So it seems we shall see how this pans out soon enough!

AV-Test.org reports that MSE found and killed all 25 rootkits tossed its way during a test it conducted on the new software, which Microsoft rolled out on Tuesday. MSE basically replaces Microsoft’s subscription-based OneCare product, but focuses solely on anti-malware — detecting and removing viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans. It doesn’t come with security “suite” functions, like a firewall, computer maintenance tasks, or backup.

AV-Test.org tested the new version 1.0.1611.0 with virus and spyware definitions 1.67.178.0 on Windows XP SP3, Vista SP2, and Windows 7. Rootkits traditionally have been the nemesis of many AV products. But Andreas Marx, CEO of AV-Test.org, says MSE’s 100 percent rootkit detection rate was “very impressive.”

MSE also detected all 3,700 samples of static malware, but the software was unable to detect new, unknown malware using dynamic, behavior-based detection. “None of the samples were detected based on their suspicious behavior,” Marx says. But, he says, other AV-only packages don’t include this dynamic detection feature, either. It’s usually only available in Internet security “suite” versions of the products, he says.

On XP, MSE found 98.44 percent of current samples of viruses, worms, Trojans, and bots, and 90.95 percent of adware and spyware. AV-Test.org found that MSE was able to remove all active malware components during the repair and cleanup phase, but in some cases residual pieces from the infections remained, such as inactive executable files and a disabled Windows firewall.

“The scan speed is quite OK when compared with other AV products. The scanner is not the fastest one, but also not the slowest available,” Marx says. He notes the test was a quick summary of some of the product’s features, and that the lab plans to conduct more in-depth testing and reviews of MSE. So this is early good news for Microsoft’s brand new product that is being put to the test. Only time will tell if it is able to keep up with the new threats that will target it and try to break through its defenses.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), which Microsoft had code-named “Morro,” basically replaces Microsoft’s subscription-based OneCare product, but focuses solely on anti-malware — detecting and removing viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans. It doesn’t come with security “suite” functions, like a firewall, computer maintenance tasks, or backup.

Interestingly, Microsoft is neither pushing the product via Windows updates nor bundling it with the operating system. “You have to proactively go to the Microsoft site to download it,” says Alex Eckelberry, CEO of Sunbelt Technologies, which sells enterprise AV, email, and other security tools for Windows. Eckelberry says Microsoft’s freebie software is ultimately “good for the consumer.”

What about commercial AV vendors? Eckelberry says he doesn’t expect the software to hurt them as much as AV vendors, like AVG, that also offer free anti-malware software. While it’s mainly a consumer product, he says it will also attract small mom-and-pop shops. “It won’t affect enterprise SMBs because it’s not manageable, so they won’t touch it,” he says.

Overall, Eckelberry says, MSE is good for consumer security.

Siobhan MacDermott, head of public policy, corporate communications, and investor relations for AVG Technologies, says while free AV sounds good at first glance, it could actually hurt consumers in the end.

“On the surface, a free offering from the company with a dominant market share would appear be a good thing. We believe, however, broad adoption could, in fact, put consumers at greater risk,” MacDermott says. “The strength of the security community rests in its diversity of products and the innovation delivered by companies like AVG, whose entire focus is keeping our users’ personal data and computers safe. It is our core business and one in which we simply cannot fail.”

Because Microsoft’s OS base is so large, a large community of MSE users will attract more attackers, according to MacDermott. “It is a law of numbers; large communities create large pools of opportunities for thieves,” she says. “If Microsoft leverages the power of its OS market to rapidly create a large community of MSE users, we believe those customers will be doubly vulnerable.”

Microsoft provided a peek at Security Essentials in June when it released a public beta version of the software.

The company says the software alerts users only when they need to take action due to a threat that’s detected, for instance, and it limits CPU and memory usage.

“Consumers have told us that they want the protection of real-time security software, but we know that too many are either unwilling or unable to pay for it, and so end up unprotected,” says Amy Barzdukas, general manager for consumer security at Microsoft. “With Microsoft Security Essentials, consumers can get high-quality protection that is easy to get and easy to use — and it won’t get in their way.”

MSE doesn’t require any registration or renewals, and is available for download here. For those interested, check out the review that is already up from arstechnica.com!

April 1 came and went, and… nothing happened. Several days later, another variant appeared, but without the Internet ending (as some of the worst reporting would have led readers believe) most people believed that DOWNAD, as a major threat, was gone.

While it may no longer be as in the news at it was at its height, DOWNAD didn’t suddenly go away. Recent estimates from the Conficker Working Group place the number of unique IP addresses affected by the top 3 DOWNAD variants at well over 5 million. Even considering the group’s disclaimer of putting the number of actually infected systems at only 25-75% of that number, a minimum of 1.25 million infected systems is nothing to laugh at.

The Trend Micro World Virus Tracking Center (WTC) numbers bear this out as well. Almost 790,000 systems were found to be infected with DOWNAD variants in the first three months of the year. In the three succeeding months, that number was almost 1.9 million. Clearly, DOWNAD did not decide to quietly go away.

In addition, out of the public eye, DOWNAD went off and did something with all those infected systems: it went off and formed its own botnet. This was documentedin mid-April by Advanced Threat Researchers Paul Ferguson and Ivan Macalintal. The short version, however, is simpler: DOWNAD was used to create a botnet. These can be used for the usual range of threats: spam, Denial of Service attacks, spreading FAKEAV malware, and so on.

Like it or not, malware threats are part of what users have to deal with day in, day out. Like anything people deal with regularly, people become used to malware threats. What was once noteworthy and unusual becomes dull and ordinary. However, this in fact doesnotmake the threat any less dangerous. If anything, it can be argued that it makes the threat more dangerous, as users are more likely to be caught unaware of a threat that may not be something they’re looking out for.

In a very real way, threats like DOWNAD become part of the background noise that is a part of life on the Internet. While it may be unrealistic to expect individual users to keep in mind all threats, but good computing practices will help immensely. The most important one may be: keep your software up to date. This is particularly true for your operating system–a properly patched system would have been proof against most DOWNAD variants. Trend Micro users would have been protected via the Smart Protection Network, of course, but closing the underlying vulnerability would still have been essential.

The price of using your computer freely in today’s Internet may well be constant and unceasing vigilance.

It’s a sinking feeling because there’re so many confidential documents on the computer and since most of your trusted colleagues have also left for the day, there’s no point calling them for help.

So what do you do? Drive back to Office? Well that’s not required – just take out your cell phone or switch on the laptop at home, send an email (or an SMS or a tweet) and that will instantly lock your Office workstation. And if you share the same computer with multiple people, you can use another email command to remotely log off or even shut down the computer from anywhere in the world.

There’s no magic here, it’s the power of TweetMyPC utility that lets you remote control your computer from a mobile phone or any other Internet connected computer.

It works like this. You first install the free TweetMyPC utility on any Windows PC and associate your Twitter account. The app will silently monitor your Twitter stream every minute for any desktop commands and if it finds one, will act upon it immediately. The initial version of TweetMyPC was limited to basic shutdown and restart commands, however the current v2 has a far more robust set of commands, enabling a far more useful way of getting your PC to carry out certain tasks especially when you’re AFK (Away From Keyboard).

Before we get started, it may be a good thing if you can set up a new twitter account for remote controlling your desktop and also protect the status updates of this account to ensure better security. Protecting the account means that you prevent other users from reading your tweets which in this case are email commands that you sending to the computer. To protect your Twitter profile, log in to Twitter with the credentials you want to use, click Settings and check the box next to “Protect my Updates”.

Let’s get started. Install the TweetMyPC utility of your computer and associate your Twitter and Gmail account with the application. It will use Twitter to receive remote commands (like shutdown, log-off, lock workstation, etc) from while the email account will be used for send your information (e.g., what process are currently running on your computer).

Now that your basic configuration is done, it’s time to set up a posting method. You can use email, SMS, IM, web or any of the Twitter clients to send commands to the remote computer.

By Email: Associate you Twitter account with Posterous (auto-post) and all email messages sent to twitter@posterous.com will therefore become commands for the remote computer.

By SMS: If you live in US, UK, Canada, India, Germany, Sweden or New Zeleand, you can send associate Twitter with your mobile phone (see list of numbers) and then control your remote computer via SMS Text Messages.

By IM: Add the Twitter bot – twitter@twitter.com – to your list of Google Talk buddies and you can then send commands via instant message.

By Web: If you are on vacation but have access to an internet connected laptop, just log into the Twitter website and issue commands (e.g., shutdown or logoff) just as another tweet.

Now we will look at how to download Files, capture remote screenshots & more… While the TweetMyPC is pretty good for shutting down a remote computer, it lets you do some more awesome stuff as well. For instance, you need to download an unfinished presentation from the office computer so that you can work on it at home. Or you want to download a trial copy of Windows 7 on the Office computer while you are at home. Here’s a partial list of commands that you can use to remote control the PC – they’re case-insensitive and, as discussed above, you can send them to Twitter via email, SMS, IM or the web.

Screenshot : This is one of the most useful command I’ve come across after the shutdown command. Want to know what’s happening within the confines of your PC when you’re not around? Just tweet screenshot and TweetMyPC will take a screenshot of your desktop and post it to the web (see example).

ShutDown, LogOff, Reboot, Lock : The function of these useful commands is pretty obvious from their names.

Standby, Hibernate : Don’t want to shutdown the remote PC? Save power by entering standby mode with this command. Or hibernate your PC with a tweet, thereby saving even more power.

Download <url> : You can download any file from the Internet on to the remote computer using the download command. For instance, a command like download http://bit.ly/tCJ9Y will download the CIA Handbook so you have the document ready when you resume work the next day.

GetFile <filepath> : The Download command was for downloading files from the Internet onto the remote computer. However, if you like to transfer a file from the remote computer to your current computer, use the GetFile command. It takes the full page of the file that you want to download and will send that you as an email attachment. If you don’t know the file page, use the command GetFileList <drivename> to get a list of file folders on that drive.

GetProcessList : This is like a remote task manager. You’ll get a list of programs that are currently running on the remote computer along with their process IDs. Send another command kill <process id> to terminate any program that you think is suspicious or not required.

Conclusion:

TweetMyPC is a must-have utility and you never know when you may need it. And if you have been trying to stay away from Twitter all this time, the app gives you a big reason to at least create one protected account on Twitter.

That said, there’s scope for improvement. For instance, the app will wait for a minute to check for new messages in your Twitter stream so it’s not “instant”. The developers can actually increase that limit because the Twitter API now allows upto 100 checks per hour. And since the app is dependent on Twitter and Gmail, it will not work during those rare fail-whale moments.

On non-Home versions of Windows (for example, Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate): 

1. Click Start, click Run, enter gpedit.msc (launch Group Policy Editor); 
2. XP users: Open Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | System, 
Vista users: Open Computer Configuration | Windows Components | AutoPlay Policies; 
3. Find Turn Off AutoPlay in the right-hand pane and double-click it; 
4. Choose Enabled and set it for All drives.

Or, in any Windows version:

1. Launch the Registry editor (Start | Run | regedit); 
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ 
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer; 
3. Double-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun in the right-hand pane and set its value to hexadecimal FF.

Good Luck and be sure to try this out if you browse the internet a good bit and also use your flash drive with your computer and others! If you have any questions or comments on how to do this feel free to leave a comment and I will be glad to help any way I can in getting you all setup!

Microsoft has been preparing users for IE8 for a good year now, stressing performance improvements, better support for Internet technology standards, the addition of new features to help people keep track of most visited sites and favorite sources of information, and of course, security, as highlights of the new browser. According to the report Microsoft released Thursday, based on research conducted by NSS Labs, IE8′s Release Candidate 1 was 69 percent effective at catching malware before it did damage to a user’s system. Mozilla Firefox 3.07 came in second with a 30 percent effectiveness rate, with Apple Safari’s 3 in third place with a 24-percent rate and Google’s Chrome 1.0.154 in fourth place with 16 percent effectiveness rate

NSS Labs said in the report that the data was collected from tests conducted in just over 12 days from Feb. 26 through March 10 in its labs in Austin, Texas. During the course of the test, the company said it monitored connectivity to ensure the browsers could access the live malware sites being tested, and performed 141 discrete tests. The margin of error of the tests was 3.76 percent, according to NSS Labs. Amy Barzdukas, a senior director at Microsoft, acknowledged that it might be a conflict of interest for Microsoft to sponsor a report in which IE8 came out on top in terms of security. However, she encouraged people to “look closely at the results” before making a judgment call on the validity of the report.

IE8 will be included as part of the Windows 7 OS. However, for the first time since adding browser technology to its operating system, Microsoft will give users the ability to turn off IE8 as a feature in the system. This decision was outlined in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Microsoft is under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union to give users more browser choice in Windows.

The next major update to Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system could arrive as late as May or June 2009, months later than originally expected. News site TechArp is reporting an unnamed but reliable source has revealed the final release candidate of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is scheduled for release in March, 2009. The finalized code will then be made available to hardware manufacturers and OEMs sometime during Q2 2009.

Users will be able to get their hands on the software update shortly thereafter, the website estimates, putting the service pack on track for a May or June release. Vista has proved something of a disaster for Microsoft, but the company is slowly fixing many of the issues that users have reported. The first beta of SP2 was made available in December of last year. Right now, Microsoft is undoubtedly rushing to get Vista SP2 out well ahead of the release of Windows 7, its next major operating system.

It’s an interesting change by Microsoft, which, in the past, has doggedly clung to the hope that Windows Media Video will end up as the prevailing video format for the internet. It appears to have finally conceded that the vast majority of people are watching downloaded stuff in DivX or Xvid — possibly a realisation driven by the enormous amount of telemetry data it has collected from users of Vista that it never had access to through XP. It has stopped short of bundling Adobe Flash support into Windows, though, as it develops its own Silverlight technology.

Windows 7 will also support H.264 video and AAC audio. The support for AAC will be welcome news for people with music and video that has been encoded in Apple iTunes, as Windows 7 will be able to play all iTunes media through Windows Media Player.Unfortunately, this won’t apply to media that has been purchased from Apple’s iTunes store, because Windows 7 can’t decode the Apple FairPlay DRM, which Apple refuses to license to anyone else. 

The ability to play back these additional formats has implications for new Windows 7 services like libraries and networked media player support, as Windows 7 users can index and search across their iTunes media without needing to use iTunes as the default player, and can send a wider variety of media content to a centralized location.

A more subtle user benefit is that by not having to download third-party codec bundles (which is convenient in itself), users can minimise the inevitable build-up of unverified software running on their systems. Most major codecs are freely available, but you often need to install multiple disparate packages to get the widest possible support for digital media — or run an ‘all in one’ CODEC installer which may also come bundled with hidden malware inside. Additionally, these CODEC packages can interfere with other, and the codecs are not necessarily optimised to run efficiently.

By bundling a wide variety of media formats into Windows 7, Microsoft has created an operating environment which negates the need for third-party codecs and should therefore run more stably and reliably. It also brings blanket support for the most popular online media formats, providing an environment in which users can start playing their favourite content immediately.

So this is some good news… as it has me and a lot of others actually looking forward to Windows 7 since it hopes to bring back some of the people who disliked Vista so much!

The end of January remains the cut-off date for PC vendors to purchase licenses, but they can take delivery of those licenses through May 30, 2009. So customers may purchase Windows XP machines right up through June. That would coincide with the rumored release date of Windows 7, the successor to Windows Vista. While Microsoft has publicly said Windows 7 will ship in early 2010, other indicators have pointed to Windows 7 shipping in early June of 2009.

For its part, Microsoft insists this is not an extension. “Microsoft is making accommodation through a flexible inventory program that will allow distributors to place their final orders by January 31, 2009; and take delivery against those orders through May 30, 2009. This is not an extension of sales,” the company said in a statement e-mailed to InternetNews.com.

Windows XP seems to die and come back more often than rumors about Steve Jobs. Microsoft has changed the final release date for XP no less than four times since Vista shipped. All told, Windows XP will have been on the market 90 months by the time Microsoft halts shipments in May. Its predecessors have averaged around 60 months.

The problem isn’t that customers love creaky old Windows XP, introduced in 2001. It’s just that Windows Vista has been so poorly received. Despite numerous updates and a service pack, not to mention the Project Mojave campaign to build awareness and use of Vista, it’s not all that welcome. A recent survey found 46 percent of IT shops will simply tough it out and wait for Windows 7.

Which is a shame, said analyst Mike Cherry of Directions on Microsoft, who thinks Vista today is not the one that shipped two years ago. “I don’t think people understand how good Vista SP1 is,” he told InternetNews.com. “A lot of problems went away with Vista SP1, as long as you pay attention to their hardware limits.”

However, whether Vista deserves its reputation or not, the fact is, people are really negative toward it and Microsoft can’t seem to change it, he noted. “I don’t think Microsoft wants to create a situation where they force people to take something they don’t want. I’m not sure a company can ever do that,” he said. So this is good news for all those XP users out there as we now have a bit longer that we can expect updates and patches to help keep the OS we love around a bit longer!

What Microsoft can do is make it easier for components in the system to go into low power mode when the system is idle. Some of that is ‘managing’ components: Windows 7 ‘parks’ CPU cores that aren’t needed, finally implements the ‘slumber’ feature on SATA drives, powers down USB ports and controllers more aggressively and even puts your Wi-Fi card to sleep if it’s turned on but not connected to a network.

Reducing the power draw

Microsoft has also changed its thinking about the system timer; in Vista this is set to 1ms, in Windows 7 it will be 15ms, which reduces the power draw by 15 per cent. General performance improvements like reducing the amount of disk activity involved in reading from the registry and starting services on demand rather than running them in the background will also improve battery life.

That applies to all software: a Vista system running ten services that come with installed applications uses 6 per cent of the CPU even when the PC is idle, compared to 1 per cent for a clean Vista installation. An extra 5 per cent of CPU utilization translates into around 4 per cent less battery life, so Microsoft is encouraging software developers to use on-demand services.

Windows 7 notebooks won’t wake up from sleep for applications that use ‘wake timers’ (except for the timer that wakes the system when the battery is so low the PC needs to hibernate). Open files from a network and CPU utilization won’t stop the screen turning off, the hard drive spinning down and the system going to sleep when you haven’t used the PC in a while; Windows 7 will only check for user input and applications like Media Center recording a long TV show. The screen will also dim to save power before turning off.

One of the things Mircosoft has started doing is making claims about how they are not going to be supporting XP after a certain date, or you won’t be able to buy copies of XP anymore at all. Which is partly true now because it is really hard to get copies of XP still without having to buy a copy of Vista and use the downgrade rights. Now it seems that Microsoft has announced that after the month of January of 2009, you won’t even be able to use the downgrade rights of Vista to install XP on your machine and activate it. At the computer store I work at now, we get tons of requests for XP still and now basically all we can do is tell the customers that they need to get a copy of Vista to use the downgrade rights. Which just goes to prove that there is still a high demand for XP out there. Plus even though you won’t be able to buy it much longer, the updates will still be out there for some time so its not gonna just die off as quickly as they are hoping it seems still.

One thing I have noticed which is sort of a flaw in the Vista downgrade rights is the fact that when you are downgrading from Vista to install XP you can use any serial to install XP with. And once you call for customer support at Mircosoft to activate it for you, once you tell them you are “using your Vista downgrade rights” they never ask you about which serial you are using or if it is installed on any other computers. Basically they think you already have bought a copy of Vista and just needed a serial to get through the install of XP with. So this means, you need a fresh activated copy of XP… just find a serial from anywhere of XP Pro and call to activate it with “Vista downgrade rights” and you will be good to go it seems. While this isn’t really the honest way to go about it… I am sure it is being exploited and will be a problem until they can figure out a better way to handle those “downgrades” from Vista to XP.

So, today at work since my co-worker was at the store re-installing his XP install on his personal machine, who found out just as I did about the themes and as not too happy, we both decided to hunt around and find a hack for this little problem to let us do what we wanted and use some cool custom themes for XP.

After much searching we finally did find a fix! Which I am going to share with everyone reading this because I know how annoying it can be stuck with the 1 or 2 themes that Microsoft provides you by default. This fix works only if you have Service Pack 3 installed so if you don’t have it yet… you need to get it (not only for this fix) and update your Windows so it is up-to-date. You can download that here! Ok, so lets get started!

1. Download the xp_theme_fix.
2. Extract the contents of the .zip to your desktop and open the “Replacer” folder.
3. Run the file named “Replacer” in that folder and follow the instructions. It is going to ask for the original uxtheme.dll file which can be found in your “C:\Windows\system32\” folder.
4. Do what it tells you to replace the original with the one provided in the “Replacer” folder. (don’t worry it makes a backup of your original for you.)
5. Reboot when asked to do so by the program.
6. You may now use your custom themes that may not have worked before! Theme’s folders are placed in the “C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes” directory!

I also included in this .zip file another .rar file of the Zune Theme which has 8 different colors for you to pick from and use! This method worked like a charm for me so if you have any problems or questions feel free to leave a comment and I will help anyway I can! Enjoy!