Portugese website Portavol reports that Jim Allchin, Group Vice President, Platforms Group announced this morning that Longhorn Beta 1 will be available at the PDC03, Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2003, October 26?30, 2003, Los Angeles, CA.

"Longhorn" is the codename of the next release of Microsoft Windows®?and the innovation runs deep. At PDC 2003, you can be the first to get information on how to build your applications to take advantage of "Longhorn," and be ready for the future.

PDC is a critical event for any developer who wants to see the debut of next-generation technology. Look into the future of Microsoft® Platform Software?Windows® "Longhorn," SQL Server "Yukon," Visual Studio® "Whidbey," and others?with the developers who wrote the code.

Two additional security updates are avalaible on Microsoft's TechNet. They were posted in conjunction with DirectX 9.0b.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-029: Flaw in Windows NT Function Could Allow Denial of Service (823803)

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS03-031: Cumulative Patch for Microsoft SQL Server (815495)

The Advanced Networking Pack for Windows XP is a recommended update for Window XP SP1. It includes a new version of the IPv6 stack, an IPv6 firewall, and a peer-to-peer infrastructure.

Today Microsoft has officially released DirectX 9.0b which was previously posted by Neowin as a rip from the DirectX 9 Beta 2 SDK Refresh. Read more for the details.

We were the first to report about the Windows XP SP1 USB 1.1 And 2.0 Update - Q822603 update that Microsoft had announced via their Knowledge Base on July 17th, 2003. We contacted Microsoft about the status of the update and the company representatives said that this patch should already be up on Windows Update. However the online update service still does not list it. Therefore Warp2Search now offers this as an exclusive download to all our readers. For details about the patch please refer to the article linked to above.

Microsoft has published a Knowledge Base article on July 17th, 2003 in which the Redmond based company claims to have released a Windows XP SP1 USB 1.1 and 2.0 update to the proprietary Windows Update service. Although the article explicitly declares the update as available, it is not. W2S editors have checked Windows Update with both german and english language versions of Windows XP. One could easily declare this update as an USB rollup package as it fixes the tiny amount of only 8 issues discovered with USB support in Windows XP.

This Internet Information Services (IIS 5.0) update corrects an issue that occurs when using Exchange Server 2003 on a clustered system. When Kerberos authentication is enabled an error occurs between IIS 5.0 and the Exchange Server 2003 virtual server's IIS resources. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

You can try out Microsoft Money 2004 Deluxe today. Download a free 60-day trial version of Money Deluxe and see if it's really that easy to manage your personal finances. Read more for the Windows XP Access Control White Paper.

Microsoft .NET Alerts is a message and notification routing service that can be used to deliver customer communication to computer desktops, cellular phones, wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs), or any e-mail address?all based on the customer's delivery preferences.

Voodoo at Neowin.net sends word that they've snagged Microsoft's DirectX 9.0bbBuild 4.09.0000.0902 for download and a screenshot of the package installed. For a working link check our comments.

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Thanks to MSFN.org for the heads up.

The Release Candidate of Windows Messenger 5.0 has just been released. Three different language versions are already available, including English, Japanese and German. The downloads are all around 8.3 MB. There is no word on changes, fixes or improvements.

Customer research shows a frequently requested feature that users want from their PCs is fast system startup, whether from cold boot or when resuming from standby or hibernation. The Windows development team at Microsoft has taken bold steps in making fast startup PCs a reality with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system.

A new DirectX 9.0 SDK Update - Summer 2003 (Beta 2) has been released to Beta Place. Stay tuned as we hunt down some download links and while waiting read more for details on the content.

Besonders Serverprodukte heizen das Geschäft an.

Gewinn und Umsatz sind im im vierten Geschäftsquartal auf 1,92 Milliarden US-Dollar netto angestiegen.

Fresh for the weekend we now bring you an exclusive download once more. We have also checked the links for the previous XP updates you could download from us and have redirected them to available sources. The update available today is titled: Compile on a Windows XP-Based Computer Takes Longer to Complete Than on a Windows NT-based Computer.

Microsoft yesterday released version 2 of the free and very useful powertoy TweakUI. We may see further updates to the Powertoy tools later. This powertoy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.

Thanks to Neowin.net for the heads up.

MSN have as expected released the final version for MSN Messenger 6, version 6.0.0602. Messenger Plus! still works in this version and ad-patches may follow. Work will now be on MSN 9 and MSN Messenger 6.1 which are due to debut in beta form near the end of august. MSN Messenger 6.1 is expected to have subscriber only games/launch site applications.

You installed Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000, and you can no longer use Autodesk VIZ 4, 3D Studio VIZ 3i, or 3D Studio VIZ 3.0 to open MAX files that were saved after the service pack was installed or VIZ Render to open DRF files that were saved after the service pack was installed.

Click here for the solution.

Als Preview wurde das Web Services Enhancements (WSE) von Microsoft freigegeben.

Microsoft has released a new update for Internet Explorer 6 SP1 running on Windows 98 up to Windows XP SP1. An error message may be displayed that IE cannot download a file when the content disposition header for the file stream is greater than approximately 150 bytes and the Latin character set is equal to 150 characters. This behavior may occur if the content disposition header is formatted with a non-Latin character set, such as Japanese or Russian.