There are two distinct “new” display control panels developed prior to the Longhorn reset. The first appeared in Milestone 3, and was removed in early Milestone 4. The second was present only in build 4093. Though both are created in the Avalon UI framework, it seems almost certain that the two efforts were not connected beyond their functionality and underlying technology.
Milestone 3 In build 3683, it is accessible out-of-the-box by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Properties from the right click menu, as one would with any previous version of Windows.
In many Longhorn builds, there are issues with partitioning and formatting disks within the installer. Microsoft DiskPart is a utility included within the Windows Pre-installation Environment that allows you to partition disks from a command line interface.
Within the Windows Installer, press Shift + F10. This will bring up a command prompt window. In this window, type diskpart to open the tool and begin re-partioning and formatting.
To partition a disk execute the following commands line by line.
One common problem faced by people installing Longhorn on modern hardware is the apparent inability to boot from USB drives. As optical media grows rarer, and more and more form factors ship without optical media drives, booting from a disc is not always an option. Fortunately, booting Longhorn through USB is a deceptively easy affair once you know what you’re doing.
There are two different ways to install Longhorn from USB, depending on which build you are using.
The Longhorn Start page is a feature present in Milestone 3 builds. The start page appears to be an early attempt at replacing the OOBE (Out-Of-Box Experience) that these builds carry over from Windows XP.
Already in build 3683 we can catch a glimpse of the start page, be it in a very early stage. The code for the startpage can be found in the assemblies Microsoft.Windows.Client.dll and ShellInterop.dll It’s interesting to note that one assembly holds both the CAML and XAML for the start page (which differ a tiny bit from each other), and the other assembly holds the code back-end of the whole thing.