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VirnetX won the initial round in its patent-infringement case against Microsoft over VPN technology.

A Texas jury on March 16 recommended Microsoft pay VirnetX $105.75 million for willfully infringing on two VirnetX networking patents which VirnetX claims Microsoft used without licensing. VirnetX said Microsoft has used the VPN technologies in question in Windows Server 2003, XP, Vista, Live Communications Server, Windows Messenger, Office Communicator and various versions of Office.

Microsoft is appealing the verdict.

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• Verdict expected Tuesday in VirnetX v. Microsoft trial (seattlepi.com)
• Jury sides with VirnetX in Microsoft patent-infringement case (seattlepi.com)

If you’re thinking about running the IE9 Platform Preview, don’t try installing it on any nearly-decade-old operating systems (I’m looking at you, XP): If you do, you’ll get to a dialog stating “Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview does not support any operating system earlier than Windows Vista SP2.” And of course, don’t even think about versions for non-Windows operating systems. IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch told me that Mac and Linux versions weren’t currently in the company’s plans.

The reason IE9 doesn’t work in XP is that the browser uses the Direct2D feature of DirectX when accessing the graphics hardware to accelerate image creation and drawing. Direct2D was introduced in Windows 7 and then added

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• Microsoft confirms IE9 will shun Windows XP (go.theregister.com)
• Unsurprisingly, IE9 won’t be supported on an obsolete OS (arstechnica.com)

A new survey shows that businesses are increasingly planning their move to Windows 7, with more than half of those questioned planning to have some machines running the operating system in their corporations by the end of the year.

The survey, conducted of 923 businesses in January, found that 16 percent are already running some Windows 7, with a further 42 percent planning to start their deployment by the end of 2010.

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• Study: Businesses start to embrace Windows 7 (news.cnet.com)
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Microsoft will issue two bulletins fixing eight vulnerabilities rated “important” in Windows and Microsoft Office products on Tuesday, the company announced on Thursday.

This represents a light Patch Tuesday, a contrast to last month when the company patched 26 holes with 13 bulletins, including critical vulnerabilities for Windows.

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• Microsoft Patch Tuesday for February 2010: 13 bulletins (arstechnica.com)

Intel has been busily migrating to Windows 7, and embracing 64-bit computing as an internal standard, but with those changes have come some issues with application compatibility and administrative access. Intel and Microsoft have been working closely to solve these issues, with an Intel engineer insisting in a blog posting that the migration is on schedule. Intel could save as much as $11 million over the next three years by using Windows 7 in place of the aging Windows XP, formerly the operating system of choice after Intel shunned Windows Vista.

Intel’s long-planned internal move to Windows 7 and 64-bit computing involves a lot of “heavy lifting,” according to an Intel engineer in a lengthy Feb. 24 posting on the tech company’s Open Port IT Community blog.

Intel and Microsoft have been partnered through the latter’s TAP (Technology Adopter Program) to bring the operating system, which was released in October 2009, into Intel’s enterprise in a security-robust and bug-limited way. Both companies partnered in the months ramping up to Windows 7’s release to promote the operating system as offering better processor performance and battery life than its predecessor, Windows Vista, which Intel infamously refused to deploy internally in 2008.

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• Intel faces challenges in Windows 7 migration (computerworld.com)

Some Windows users reported on Thursday that they were getting the blue screen of death on their computers when they installed Microsoft’s latest security updates released two days earlier.

Most of the people complaining on a Windows forum said they had the problem on Windows XP, but one person also reported problems on Windows 7.

Users posted a fix on the site that they said seemed to work, but that didn’t necessarily quell the anger.

“Where at Microsoft do I send my invoice for hours spent fixing this BS?” one person wrote on Thursday.

The problem appears to be with one specific update, which addresses a vulnerability in the 32-bit Windows kernel that could allow elevation of privilege that was disclosed last month.

The fix requires users to have an install CD, but not all computer manufacturers ship systems with a disk for re-installing the operating system, according to the Krebs on Security blog, which first reported the problems on Wednesday.

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• Windows security update causes blue screen of death for some (news.cnet.com)

Microsoft is planning to fix 26 vulnerabilities for February’s Patch Tuesday. Most of the vulnerabilities are related to Windows.

Microsoft is planning to release 13 security bulletins Feb. 9 as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday.

Five of the 13 bulletins are rated critical, seven are rated important and one is rated moderate. All but two of the bulletins address security issues in Windows, with the other two dealing with issues in Microsoft Office. All told, the updates address 26 vulnerabilities.

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• Microsoft to patch 26 holes in Windows, Office (news.cnet.com)
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Though Windows 7 fever hasn’t yet overwhelmed the PC community, Steam users seem to be getting on board with the latest Bill Gates-approved operating system. A recent Steam survey has revealed that a little over 23 percent of the platform’s regular users have upgraded to Windows 7 — a stark difference from the 6 percent of the total operating system market which Windows 7 currently represents.

What we found more interesting about this survey is that so many people are still using Windows XP. Then again, considering the only alternative these people have had over the past four years was the most nightmarish, user-unfriendly operating system known to man, we don’t blame them for being a little gunshy when it comes to technological progress.

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• Steam shows massive adoption of Windows 7 by gamers (downloadsquad.com)

Microsoft’s update, expected later today, will patch a “critical” vulnerability in Windows 2000, according to Microsoft’s Advance Notification for January 2010.

This flaw also affects Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, Windows 7, and Server 2008 R2 – but Microsoft considers the flaw a low-risk in those operating systems.

Security managers who have been paying attention may had of been expecting a fix for the potential denial-of-service condition in Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) that was announced publicly by a security researcher about two months ago. From Thomas Claburn’s story, Microsoft Investigating Zero-Day Windows 7 Flaw on the impact:

“The operating system actually freezes,” he said [Simon Price, writing for the Praetorian Perfect blog]. “There is no error message, no blue screen of death, no indication that anything has gone wrong. Even after power cycling, the event logs show no sign of a mishap, aside from the typical events generated from booting up again.”

A fix for this flaw wasn’t in the Advanced Notification Bulletin, so we’ll probably have to wait until at least next month for a fix, unless Microsoft releases something in the meantime.

While today is what has become known as “Patch Tuesday” for Microsoft customers, the most important patches today may come from Adobe and Oracle.

Adobe is set to publish a fix for a Zero Day vulnerability in its PDF format that has been the target of attacks recently.

For its part, according to this pre-patch announcement, Oracle plans to publish two dozen security patches today. More than one-third of the patches are for Oracle’s Database Server, with others for Application Server, Applications Suite, among others.

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• Microsoft readies singular fix for first Patch Tuesday of 2010 (theregister.co.uk)
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Microsoft officials are well aware that its biggest Windows 7 and Office 2010 competitors are its own previous product iterations (Windows XP and Office XP/2003). To try and wean users away from older, “good-enough” releases, Microsoft is introducing a new licensing promotion.

The revamped “Up to Date Discount” program is targeted at small/mid-size business (SMB) customers running older versions of Windows and Office. Between January 1 and June 30 of this year, Microsoft is enabling users running Windows XP or Vista (on the operating system side) and Office XP, Office 2003 or Office 2007 (on the productivity suite side) to receive a discount of 50 percent on the cost of their licenses for Windows 7 and Office 2007 (or Office 2010, once it is released by June 2010).

The 50% discount calculations “are based on estimated retail prices and reseller prices may vary,” Microsoft officials acknowledge. But the Softies say U.S. customers who sign up for the program “would be paying $35.00 for a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade and/or $91.00 for Office 2007 Professional Plus in year 1, plus receiving all of the Software Assurance benefits (such as an automatic upgrade to Office 2010 when it launches, Office Home Use Rights, and much more) for that price.”

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• Microsoft Extends 50% Windows 7 Discount (technologizer.com)