Windows Blue Changes Archives

How to enable the new Bing Search panel in Windows 8.1 (aka ‘Blue’)

Update: This trick is no longer needed for Windows 8.1 RTM where the Bing-powered search pane is already on by default.

Windows Blue comes with a new Bing-powered search pane for the Start screen. Although it is disabled by default, it is easy to enable it.

Open registry editor and navigate to the following key:
```
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\SearchPane
```
Tip: See our Windows Registry Editor fundamentals
Create here a new DWORD value, name it NewSearchPane and set it to 1.
Sign out and sign in back, and you will get the following search pane:

Via h0x0d's twitter

Thanks to my friend Nick for pointing me to this.

New Shell Commands and Shell Locations in Windows 8.1 (aka ‘Blue’)

Just for note: Windows 8.1 (aka 'Blue') features new shell commands and shell locations:

shell:::{A8CDFF1C-4878-43be-B5FD-F8091C1C60D0} - Documents folder pinned in the Computer folder.
shell:::{1CF1260C-4DD0-4ebb-811F-33C572699FDE} - Music folder pinned in the Computer folder.
shell:::{3ADD1653-EB32-4cb0-BBD7-DFA0ABB5ACCA} - Pictures folder pinned in the Computer folder.
shell:::{A0953C92-50DC-43bf-BE83-3742FED03C9C} - Videos folder pinned in the Computer folder.

shell:Camera Roll - A new folder to store pictures taken by the Camera pp
shell:SkyDrive - The SkyDrive shell folder which is synchronized online with SkyDrive
shell:SkyDriveDocuments - The Documents folder inside the SkyDrive shell folder
shell:SkyDrivePictures - The Pictures folder inside the SkyDrive shell folder

Stay tuned for more tips.

Windows Blue version 6.3.9364 has leaked on the internet

It finally happened - today, on the 57th birthday of Steve Ballmer - the major update to Windows 8, "Windows Blue" has leaked on the internet. The leaked ISO is the installation image for 32-bit systems. The system includes numerous changes related primarily to Modern UI and Modern Apps in the OS.

The file name of the leaked image is 9364.0.FBL_PARTNER_OUT13.130315-2105_X86FRE_CLIENT. As is obvious from the build tag, it was compiled on March 15, 2013 and has been designed exclusively for Microsoft's partners. The size of the ISO image is 2.63 GB.

The main changes are as follows: