MS Portable Executable

Do you know if the PE approach Microsoft is looking at will affect all the program on the system?

No it will not affect older programs as they will try to maintain backward compatibility. It will require the DOT.NET Framework to be installed. You simply create a folder and copy the files into it. It is ready to run. To delete the application you delete the folder, thus the end of DLL Hell.

They are also work on application level security. This will be in Longhorn only. Today most applications have free reign of your computer and there is no authentication method for the OS to tell which is a good application and which is a bad one.

Once they get that built they will put an end to most of the evil that we have today or at least an end to script kiddy evil.