I've been watching a lot of Lost on DVD lately, trying to catch up with seemingly the rest of the Western World before the final season of the TV show premieres tomorrow night. Right now I'm on Season 4, where the mysterious island's survivors find themselves unstuck in time; every few minutes, there's a bright flash of light and a really terrible sound and then--pop!--they find themselves mysteriously transported to 1974, or 2004, or 1988.
If you're still running Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC), then Microsoft is about to do the exact same thing to your computer. Not transport it back to the 1980's (although its sudden appearance in that era would instantly disprove Bill Gates's infamous "No one will need more than 637 kb of memory" quote), but initiate a sort of catastrophic reset every two hours.
Those of you still running the Release Candidate, you likely knew this was coming, but Microsoft will tell you anyway in a notification on Feb. 15: Starting on March 1, 2010, your computer will begin those bi-hourly shutdowns.
"To avoid any data loss, I suggest making plans to move to a released version of Windows 7 before the automatic shutdowns start," Brandon LeBlanc, a Microsoft spokesperson, wrote in a Feb. 1 posting on The Windows Blog. "During those shutdowns, your work will not be saved."
Those shutdowns will continue until June 1, when your PC's wallpaper will be snatched away and a "This copy of Windows is not genuine" message will be displayed in a corner of the taskbar. At that point, the computer will no longer be able to "obtain optional updates or downloads that require genuine Windows validation," according to LeBlanc. (Moving to a released version of Windows 7 will require a clean install.)
There is one silver lining for RC-users, however: unlike those characters in Lost, your shutdown/resets will not come with nosebleeds, or being chased by men with really antiquated hairstyles and rifles.
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