With nearly 1,000 settings available in Windows Server 2003 Group Policy, troubleshooting is a burdensome and often frustrating experience for administrators. The most frequent problem—by far—for group policy application is failure of the policy to work as expected.
So Many Policies, So Little Time. Microsoft gave us some rudimentary tools in Windows 2000 Server to help, including:
- Gpotool
- Userenv.log
- Gpresult
As good as these tools are, there are some serious deficiencies. For instance, debugging a GPO failure involves getting the user to log on to the computer with his account; running Gpresult.exe; saving it to a file; then passing the file to the administrator for analysis. Multiplying that process several times during testing quickly becomes frustrating for everyone concerned. (continue at source)
Not Microsoft, but a Russion security company has released a patch for Windows XP SP2. The leak is in the so-called DEP-mechanism (data execution protection). DEP checks the memory to prevent hazardous programs from executing. Security experts from the russian Positive Technologies discovered the leak in SP2 just before christmas. They reported it with Microsoft, but the software maker asked to wait on further notice. Because Positive Technologies still hasn't received a notice after one month of waiting, the company decided to release a patch of their own, named PTmsHORP.
(russian) (english)
When you normally log in to your Windows NT, 2000 or XP computer after having provided your user name and password (aka the "credentials"), a so-called "desktop" is created for you by a system component (the winlogon.exe process) that acts as the surface for your user shell, the taskbar, and all windows you create by starting programs. For every logged in user, Windows creates this single desktop, that has the name "default" and is therefore often called the "default desktop". SUperior SU and its desktop switcher can create additional desktops for you and on each desktop that is created, a new taskbar and desktop background with links on it, etc. is created. The real cool thing is, that every desktop runs in the context of a user whose user name and password you provide prior to creation of the desktop.
This white paper discusses deploying Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003 on HP BladeSystem servers. Subjects covered include:
the business cases for employing blade technology
how blades fit within the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 architecture
deployment strategy and implementation for HP BladeSystem solutions
performance characterization results
local vs. SAN storage
practical RDP deployment example procedures and scripts
example hardware configurations and logical volume design
Conclusions of the paper are that the tested SharePoint Portal Server 2003 deployments capitalize on both the HP BladeSystem architecture, on SAN storage technologies, and provide excellent, scalable performance. Guidance includes recommended deployment configurations and practical examples of automated deployment procedures and scripts using Rapid Deployment Pack. The document also addresses different storage technologies (e.g. local disks vs. SAN) and how to automate deployment to both types of storage for various SharePoint Portal Server 2003 server roles.
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If you're sitting at a computer, chances are you have a least one program from Jeff Raikes up and running—and it's probably more like two or three. That's because Raikes runs the Information Worker business unit at Microsoft, where he is not only responsible for Office, but a growing portfolio of related applications such as SharePoint and Live Meeting. A group vice president reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer, Raikes is also responsible for Microsoft Worldwide Licensing and Pricing. He must be doing something right—his group brought in $10.9 billion in fiscal 2004.
Bowing to objections from European antitrust officials, Microsoft Corp. yesterday scrapped plans to use the name "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition" for the stripped-down version of the operating system that it was ordered to sell in Europe. The name had raised eyebrows among industry analysts who predicted that it would discourage sales of the alternate Windows version.
But the company said the name was merely designed to distinguish clearly between the full-fledged operating system and the additional version that the European antitrust ruling requires it to offer. The alternate version comes without Windows Media Player and related functions. The European Commission asked the company to change the name, Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said yesterday.
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Gates said Microsoft was 'certainly working hard' to release a new computer operating system, dubbed Longhorn, in 2006. 'It won't be a radical shift, but it will be clearly an improvement on Windows,' the ubiquitous operating system, Gates said," Loftus and Manzaroli report.
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With the Install from Media (IFM) feature in the Active Directory Installation Wizard, you can use a restored system state backup as the data source when you promote a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based domain controller in an existing domain. When you use IFM to promote a domain controller, you gain important advantages over network-based promotions.
These advantages include:
• Reduced use of network resources when new domain controllers are promoted in an existing domain.
• Faster sourcing of Active Directory directory service and global catalog data to a new domain controller.
• Improved recovery of Windows Server 2003-based domain controllers after a hardware or a software failure.
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Some two years after its introduction, Microsoft is seeking to drive its Tablet PC technology into the mainstream with lower prices. But some analysts say that alone won't do the trick -- and not many PC vendors are helping Microsoft's effort.
Microsoft and vendors including Toshiba and Acer want to move beyond niche markets, so they will no longer target Tablet PCs chiefly at mobile professionals and specific industries such as health care and insurance. This year both Acer and Toshiba (Profile, Products, Articles) will start selling tablets that are not as thin, light or powerful as their predecessors, but are up to 25 percent cheaper. "We're right on the verge of seeing a lot more competitively priced tablets on the market," said Robert Williams, director of business development and partner engineering in Microsoft's Mobile Platforms Division. "This spring you will see tablets go into retail in the $1,500 to $1,600 price range."
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The Free Software Foundation is lobbying the European government to reject the server licence that Microsoft has proposed following the European Commission's antitrust ruling. Microsoft's terms, says the FSF, will mean that open source software such as the widely-used Samba file and print server software, will not be included in the interoperability measures intended by the EU.
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When you need to perform tasks that require elevated privileges, you use RunAs to start a program with the local Administrator account. You quickly realize two things:
1. The program running as local Administrator cannot access network resources, since your local account is recognized only on your own computer; and
2. Any per-user settings apply to the local Administrator’s profile, not to the profile you normally work with.
MakeMeAdmin.cmd addresses these issues. When you run it, you get a Command Prompt running under your normal user account, but in a new logon session in which it is a member of the Administrators group. This Command Prompt and any programs started from it use your regular profile, authenticate as you on the network, but have full local admin privileges. All other programs continue to run with your regular, unprivileged account.(continue at source)
Microsoft has revealed some of the changes in the forthcoming release of its SQL 2005 database, scheduled for later in the year.
The offering will include code checking tools dubbed Prefix and Prefast, which were developed by Microsoft laboratories to check automatically for common flaws like buffer overruns. Prefix examines code before the database is built and Prefast after compilation.
"This is all part of a strategy to educate platform developers about security," Detlef Echert, chief security advisor for Microsoft in Europe, told vnunet.com. "While it will be possible to design systems without features like password protection built in, the default options will be more security conscious. A developer would have to go through several steps and make a conscious decision to write insecure code."
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Microsoft Beta co-ordinator, Roger Holland, has just informed current testers of Windows Update v5 that version 6 of the update service is due to hit beta soon.
The Windows Update v5 beta ended late last year and Windows Update v5 is the current release that millions of users across the world are using. In an email to testers, Holland, thanks v5 testers and reminds testers that "the WU v6 beta is for testing only; you should not rely on this site to maintain security updates on any operational, non-test system."
The new release of Microsoft Update will aim to keep Microsoft products secure and up to date with the latest patches, beginning with Windows, Office, SQL, and Exchange. Microsoft are currently developing Windows Update Services for enterprise customers wishing to update Microsoft Windows 2000/XP, Microsoft Office XP/2003, Exchange and SQL.(continue at source)
Microsoft Corp. is planning to make its currently voluntary Windows anti-piracy program mandatory some time in the second half of 2005, company officials said on Wednesday. So far, however, Microsoft has no timetable for broadening the program to other Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Office, server software or games, company officials said. But they did not rule out such an expansion at some point. And Microsoft representatives hinted that the company might also allow Microsoft partners to employ the Genuine Advantage methodology and techniques in the future.
The "
Windows Genuine Advantage" initiative, which Microsoft launched in September 2004, is designed to check whether consumer and small-business customers are running legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP. Since September, about five million users have participated in the voluntary validation process, according to Microsoft officials.
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Microsoft's plans to clamp down on the way illegal copies of its flagship Windows operating system receive updates—including security patches—could have a major impact on the SOHO (small office, home office) market and increase the risk of malicious hacker attacks, experts warned Wednesday.
The warning follows an announcement out of Redmond, Wash., that the "Windows Genuine Advantage" anti-piracy initiative, hitherto voluntary, will be mandatory by midyear. The program calls for Windows users to validate product keys, PC manufacturers and OS versions to allow Microsoft to crack down on cracked versions of the operating system. "This shouldn't surprise anyone. We all know this was coming once Microsoft went to an activation model for Windows XP," said Rick Fleming, chief technical officer at Texas-based security outfit Digital Defense Inc. "From a pure business standpoint, I understand it. Software vendors are losing the war against piracy, and they have to make some tough decisions."
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The security patch Microsoft recently released against a flaw in the HTML Help ActiveX part of Windows does not address a newly discovered hole in the system.
Users of Windows XP are vulnerable, even if they are using fully patched versions of Service Pack 1. Windows 2000 running a fully patched Service Pack 4 are also at risk from the vulnerability which could allow a hacker to place malicious code, including spyware, on a system.
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Microsoft will meet with representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) next month for the first of several briefings intended to ensure that its upcoming Longhorn operating system complies with the terms of the final judgment in the government's antitrust case against the software maker.
In court papers filed Tuesday, the government also said that its technical committee raised concerns about whether Windows XP and Service Pack 2 are in compliance with the judgment. Microsoft replied to those concerns recently and the government is reviewing its responses, it says.
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Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Note: The Windows XP Professional x64 Edition - CD will not be available until approximately late February. If you prefer to not wait for the CD version, you are welcome to continue to process your order for the download version.
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is designed to address the most demanding business needs of technical workstation users who require large amounts of memory and floating point performance in areas such as mechanical design and analysis, digital content creation, and scientific and high-performance computing applications.
Download Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server have been designed to fit into existing enterprise directory services. Apple’s extensible Open Directory architecture integrates with standards-based LDAP directory services, including Sun JAVA Enterprise Directory Server and IBM Directory Server, as well as with proprietary ones such as Microsoft’s Active Directory.
Mac Computers on Windows Networks
Apple has gone well beyond generic standards-based support. Mac OS X builds in support for all of Microsoft’s proprietary Active Directory services: Microsoft Kerberos authentication; Active Directory authentication policies, such as password changes, expiration, and forced password changes; and Active Directory replication and failover.(
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Our mission is to organize the world's information, and that includes the thousands of programs that play on our TVs every day.
Google Video enables you to search a growing archive of televised content – everything from sports to dinosaur documentaries to news shows.
Just type in your search term (for instance, ipod or Napa Valley) or do a more advanced search (for instance, title:nightline) and Google Video will search the closed captioning text of all the programs in our archive for relevant results. Click on a program title on your results page and you can look through short snippets of the text along with still images from the show. Visit the "About this show" side panel to learn when this show will air next.(
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Jan. 26, 2005 -- In 2005, Microsoft Corp. plans to enhance its anti-piracy engineering, education and enforcement efforts by expanding the Windows® Genuine Advantage program. Windows Genuine Advantage checks the authenticity of a user's software and provides access to popular software and other benefits, helping consumers and businesses ensure that they are receiving the greater reliability, faster access to updates, and richer user experiences offered by genuine Windows XP software.
Every year, millions of consumers and businesses worldwide are hurt by counterfeit software that they have purchased unwittingly, and many companies that sell legitimate software have difficulty competing with the artificially low prices offered by software counterfeiters. Counterfeit software puts users at risk of receiving an inferior product that may present security risks, be missing code or contain malicious code.(
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Brian Madden posted an artikel with a link to a paper of Dr. Bernhard Tritsch, the Chief Systems Architect for visionapp GbmH, a German server-based computing consulting company. The paper, called “The Big Iron Test” presents the methodologies and results of a study of Terminal Server on big (8 processor, 8GB of RAM) servers.
Here’s the best part of the visionapp paper: While there are many papers floating around the Internet that show the results of such a test, this paper shows the detailed methods they used to conduct the test. It details everything and includes the scripts for how they created the 150 user accounts, how they threw all the user sessions at the server (with the full source of the scripts they used) and how they handled user profiles (again, with scripts).
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It's been almost two years since Tarantella acquired New Moon. Soon after the acquisition, Tarantella released Secure Global Desktop Terminal Server Edition which was just New Moon's Canaveral iQ product with a new name. A few weeks ago, Tarantella released version 4 of their Secure Global Desktop product. SDG adds several features to the "base" Terminal Server product, including application publishing, seamless windows, a web interface, load balancing, a DMZ relay server, desktop lockdown control, and client printer sharing (with a Unidriver). All this for a price of $60 per concurrent user!(continue at source)
In this article, MsExchange.org will show you how to administer the Full-Text index with a new command line tool – called MSSEARCH_ADMIN.VBS. This tool greatly expands the administration capabilities with a lot of missing features in the GUI administration (Exchange System Manager). You can use MSSEARCH_ADMIN.VBS with Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003.(continue at source)
The clock says 8 a.m. CEO Steve Ballmer has been up since 4:45, has worked out and been in the office for a while. Tall coffee in hand, he's already his famous self: revved up, voluble, funny, charming and launching into a root-root-root for the home team.In an interview, Ballmer talks a lot about how, five years after Chairman Bill Gates made him CEO, he is redefining Microsoft for its next phase, making it more disciplined and decentralized. Though Microsoft (MSFT) has a reputation as a bully in the technology industry, Ballmer is trying to make it a better corporate citizen. As the company enters its 30th year, Ballmer, 48, is nudging Microsoft to make a transition to an enduring corporation — a General Electric or an IBM — that can long outlive its founders. To get there, Ballmer has driven structural and cultural change through the software giant.
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The
Microsoft Password Change Notification Service Management Pack for MOM 2000 and MOM 2005 collects events placed into the event log by the Password Change Notification Service. Key events are highlighted to indicate possible service outages, configuration problems, and degraded performance so that corrective or preventive actions can be taken in a timely manner.
The Microsoft Information Technology organization (known as Microsoft IT) is introducing Domain Isolation to the Microsoft global enterprise network as part of Microsoft’s Embody Trustworthy Computing efforts. The purpose of Domain Isolation is to prevent unauthorized access (external and internal) to trusted assets. The technology chosen for isolation is Internet Protocol Security (IPsec). The result of these efforts is a secure, segmented network of trusted computers, which Microsoft calls “SecureNet.”
This white paper focuses on Microsoft IT's experiences with planning and deployment of IPsec to create SecureNet—their secure network.
The vast majority of modern messaging environments have a challenge of establishing and maintaining reliable and secure Internet e-mail connectivity. While the task of enabling Internet e-mail routing is relatively straight forward and usually well documented for most messaging platforms (most people view it as narrow as creating a DNS MX record for inbound e-mail and designing an equivalent of an SMTP connector for outbound e-mail), making a robust Internet e-mail system can be quite challenging. In this blog, I wanted to share some of the issues and challenges that Microsoft IT faced in the Internet e-mail area as well as demonstrate some solutions that were implemented in Microsoft’s own messaging environment to make Internet e-mail flow. This solution is based on Exchange 2003 technologies, so it may be relevant to other environments that have Exchange 2003 performing gateway functions to send and receive mail from the Internet.(continue at source)
Microsoft said today that it won't pursue any more appeals against an interim EU competition ruling to ship a version of Windows without Windows Media Player. In December Microsoft lost an appeal to the European Court of the First Instance and promised to ship WMP-less Windows in the EU "in January". Now we learn that OEMs will be able to receive WMP-less Windows "within the next few weeks".
At behind-closed-doors hearings in 2003 Microsoft argued, as it had before, that producing a version of Windows without Media Player was impossible. However this was undermined when Real Networks sensationally demonstrated Real Player running quite happily on an embedded version of Windows.
The full investigation into allegations of anticompetitive practices by Microsoft is expected to take five years. Last spring an interim ruling imposed a fine and some conditions on the company. Novell and long-standing Microsoft foe, trade group CCIA withdrew from the proceedings last November. CCIA realized the folly of its campaign after Microsoft paid it almost $10 million.
"Life is a constant reordering of priorities," said CCIA chief Ed Black. So true.
Sources claimed Microsoft is planning to introduce its 64 bit operating system for Intel and AMD processors (iAMD64) on the 29th of April. The sources are close to Microsoft. It appears there will be a release to manufacturing version of WinXP 64 in March. That's the stage before the CDs get stamped out and the boxes get printed.
Quite coincidentally, Intel will finally be ready with its full line of 64 bit capable CPUs, including Celeron 64s, close to that date. This, of course, is entirely coincidental and is just the way things can spookily happen at the same time in our industry.
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Convincing businesses to upgrade to new versions of Office is a perennial challenge for Microsoft, but the company hopes a new Elixir might speed things up. An effort, code-named Project Elixir, will take shape later this year as a way to promote Microsoft's Outlook e-mail and contact program, with some additional fields, as a tool for viewing customer relationship data. Eventually, the plan could help the software giant elbow its way further into the customer relationship management market, where Siebel Systems, Oracle and SAP dominate. Microsoft started doing this internally last year, using Outlook as a means for its sales force to access a data warehouse linked to the company's Siebel CRM software.
Microsoft is currently in the process of trying to take that internal effort and transform it into a set of software tools that other companies can use. Although the company used Outlook internally with Siebel products, it could be linked to a variety of other customer relationship management programs. Interest from outside customers has been high, Charles Fitzgerald, Microsoft's general manager of platform strategies, told CNET News.com.
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Microsoft Corp. said on Monday it had decided
not to appeal a December ruling by a European Union court ordering it to immmediately implement EU antitrust sanctions imposed last March.
"Microsoft has decided to forego its right to appeal the Court of First Instance's ... ruling of December 22, 2004," Microsoft said in a statement.
John Howard posted 13 links related to Group Policy, some are very interesting to read so here they are:
1
Redirecting the Users and Computers Containers in Windows Server 2003 (KB324949)
2
Group Policy Common Scenarios Using GPMC
3
Scriptomatic Tool
4
Staging Group Policy Deployments (Chapter 3, Windows Server 2003 Deployment Kit - Designing a Managed Environment Book) (more)
Intel’s virtualization technology, codenamed Vanderpool, is part of a collection of premier Intel designed and manufactured silicon technologies that deliver new and improved computing benefits for home and business users, and IT managers. Others in the market today include Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology, with plans for Intel® Active Management technology and LaGrande technology that focus on management and greater security underway.
Virtualization enhanced by Vanderpool will allow a platform to run multiple operating systems and applications in independent partitions. With virtualization, one compute system can function as multiple “virtual” systems. With enhancements to Intel’s various platforms, Vanderpool technology can improve the robustness and performance of today’s software-only solutions.(
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Microsoft Corp. is expected to roll out the much-anticipated second beta release of its Visual Studio 2005 development platform at the end of March or early April, sources close to the company said.
According to sources, Microsoft is scheduled to release Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005, code-named Whidbey, on March 31. Sources also said Microsoft is expected to release the release candidate version of Visual Studio 2005 around the time of the Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference) in Los Angeles in mid-September. Microsoft officials had said to expect the final Whidbey release to ship in late summer 2005. Microsoft would not comment on the release dates specifically, but a company spokesman said the company has maintained that it would have the second beta of Whidbey in the first quarter of 2005.
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Winternals is the commercial software firm run by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. It's sister www.sysinternals site, is (or sure should be) well know by Windows power users around the globe as the source of outstanding free utilities. I've lost count of the number of times I've used their tools to really do useful things (e.g. regmon, filemon, bginfo, just to name a few!). Sysinternals takes those free tools to the next level and produce some really great commercial systems management tools.
One of Winternals' tools is the Administrator Pak. The current version 4.2 edition is a great set of tools enabling you to revive unbootable or damaged systems, diagnose problems with Windows, etc. The pack includes ERD Commander 2003, Disk Commander, NTFSDOS Professional, Remote Recover, Monitoring Tools, and TCPView Pro. Winternals is due to ship Version 5.0 later this month. The new version features improved versions of both ERD Commander and Remote Recover, a centralised navigator, and some new tools including Insight for Active Directory, AD Explorer, and Crash Analyzer Wizard. This later tool uses the standard crash dump tools you can download from MS to help you to diagnose the source of blue screens!
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Microsoft's share of the browser market has continued to slide, according to a new study, indicating a continued momentum for users switching to Internet Explorer alternatives.
Between the beginning of December and mid-January, IE's market share dropped 1.5 percent to 90.3 percent, while the Mozilla Project's Firefox browser rose 0.9 percent to a total of 5.0 percent, according to market researcher WebSideStory.
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A new Internet worm is squirming through Microsoft Corp.'s popular MSN Messenger chat network, anti-virus vendors warned on Thursday. The latest threat comes follows October's Funner worm attack and signals a growing trend to use instant messaging as a delivery mechanism for malicious activity.
According to an advisory from F-Secure, the new W32/Bropia-A worm users MSN Messenger to lure users into downloading one of the following files: "Drunk_lol.pif"; "Webcam_004.pif"; "sexy_bedroom.pif"; "naked_party.pif"; or "love_me.pif." Once executed, Bropia-A also drops a variant of the Rbot backdoor Trojan. Rbot represents the large family of backdoors fitted with the ability to control a victim's machine remotely by sending specific commands via IRC channels.
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Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates recently answered a number of questions from a gadget’s weblog Gizmodo concerning the future of Microsoft, competition with Apple, plans for Longhorn, Xbox 2 and others.
“Well, the PC is our superset device in terms of media integration. You’ll see a ton of that stuff you see on the PC, like the ability to listen to your tunes... we did some of this on Xbox 1, where you could move music over and have tracks – it wasn’t a required feature for the games. We did build in the music mixer-type stuff, but we’ll build a lot of that stuff into the base thing. We’re evolving the photo and music stuff that’s in Windows and Xbox will get some of that extra capability. So you’ll see more synergy between Windows and Xbox. And we think these portable media devices, whether they are music only or with video, will take off. So we’ll make sure that we connect up as much as we can,” Mr. Gates said.
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In this article we will cover how to optimize network connections on your Windows XP system. The optimizing of such connections lead to enhanced performance and security and are often overlooked. This article quickly shows you how to optimize and harden your network connections efficiently and effectively.(continue at source)
For those that might have not noticed or been aware of this tool, there is a
Web based utility from Microsoft that allows you to manage a SQL Databases. It provides both Integrated Authentication and SQL Authentication for logon and enables you to create, manage, and delete databases.
It also includes support for
Tables - Create, Edit, Delete, and Manage Properties
Stored Procedures - Create, Update, Delete, and Manage Properties
Queries - Adhoc Queries
Users - Assign rights to database objects
Rolese - Manage Roles
BTW, this component is also in the Microsoft Solution for
Windows based Hosting 3.0, but it includes some "Tweaks" and documentation to make it more hostable.
Microsoft has developed an almost ideal tool to help you configure security on computers in your organization. The tool is the Security Configuration Wizard, which is available in Windows Server 2003 service pack 1. The tool can help you configure services, network security, auditing, registry settings, and more. The wizard accomplishes these goals by producing security policies, which can be used in conjunction with security templates and specific server roles.(continue at source)
Microsoft outlined on Wednesday a new future for its Exchange server, effectively turning the software into what it hopes will be a one-stop shop for e-mail, voice mail and faxes. The software maker said the next version, code-named Exchange 12, will let workers access their voice mail from their PC and allow them to dial in to the server via telephone and get voice mail, as well as calendar and e-mail data.
"Your Exchange Server is, in essence, your voice mail server," Corporate Vice President Dave Thompson said in an interview. So-called unified messaging has long been talked about but has typically been cumbersome, often requiring compromises or the bolting together of several pieces of software.
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This document offers a guided approach for Microsoft® Windows® XP Embedded developers who are installing Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the first time, or are updating their Service Pack 1 development environment to Service Pack 2.
If you are installing Windows XP Embedded for the first time: Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 2 is a kit containing nine CDs. This document helps you to navigate the content of these CDs, and offers you a comprehensive step-by-step installation procedure.
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Novell has thrown its weight behind a fledgling effort to develop a Windows version of the Evolution groupware client, a move that the Waltham, Massachusetts, software company hopes will give Windows desktop users an open-source alternative to Microsoft Outlook.
Evolution, like Outlook, is a suite including e-mail, calendaring, and address book software. A version for Linux desktops is already available, and work is now under way on porting it to Windows.
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One of the most exciting features demo'ed at the 2004 PDC was the new ClickOnce deployment technology. With an impressive feature set, ClickOnce is certain to be a popular technique for deploying applications, but what about Windows Installer? In this article, we'll delve into the features of ClickOnce and highlight the key differences between the two technologies along the way. Finally, we'll provide some guidance on when each of these deployment technologies should be used.
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The Honeypot Project has added fuel to the debate over which is more secure—Linux or Windows—with findings that unpatched Linux systems can be on the Internet for months before being successfully attacked while Windows systems have been compromised in as little as hours. The international non-profit security organization—with members from security companies like Foundstone Inc., Counterpane Internet Security Inc. and SecurityFocus—did not set out to show that Linux is more secure than Windows. Instead, the group set out to ask the question: "Why is no one hacking Linux anymore?"
To explore this question, Honeypot Project members set up 12 "honeynets" deployed in eight countries (the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Greece, Portugal, Brazil and Germany). Data was collected during 2004, with most collected in the past six months. Each honeynet deployed a variety of Linux systems accessible from anywhere on the Internet.
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Full text of a letter from Microsoft, in response to coverage of companies moving from IE to Firefox and other alternative browsers.
Editor's note: the following is the full text of Microsoft's response to an InformationWeek.com poll and related story regarding Internet Explorer, and whether companies are switching to the Mozilla browser. It came from Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's public-relations agency.
It's always interesting to review the collection of Cease and Desist Notices sent to Google (and others) via the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. Today, a few new C&D letters were made available including several from Microsoft that request Google remove several posts on Blogger weblogs that are hosted by Blogspot.
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It was one of those unscripted moments that Microsoft's public-relations handlers probably wish they could have back. Speaking at a January 2004 conference in Switzerland, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates boldly predicted that "spam will be solved" by 2006.
But with 346 days remaining on that prognostication, spam still comprises over 60 percent of e-mail traffic. Microsoft is now back-pedaling on Gates' vision of a spam-free near future. A spokesperson said this week that the company's goal is to help "contain" the spam problem by 2006. Yet, according to many experts, Microsoft remains as much the root of the spam problem as the key to solving it.
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The Honeypot Project has added fuel to the debate over which is more secure—Linux or Windows—with findings that unpatched Linux systems can be on the Internet for months before being successfully attacked while Windows systems have been compromised in as little as hours. The international non-profit security organization—with members from security companies like Foundstone Inc., Counterpane Internet Security Inc. and SecurityFocus—did not set out to show that Linux is more secure than Windows. Instead, the group set out to ask the question: "Why is no one hacking Linux anymore?"
To explore this question, Honeypot Project members set up 12 "honeynets" deployed in eight countries (the United States, India, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Greece, Portugal, Brazil and Germany). Data was collected during 2004, with most collected in the past six months. Each honeynet deployed a variety of Linux systems accessible from anywhere on the Internet.
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You probably already know that Virtual Server provides a complete set of COM interfaces for programmatic management (see Start > All Programs > Microsoft Virtual Server > Virtual Server Programmer's Guide). But did you know about the Virtual Server script repository on TechNet? It contains sample scripts for tasks such as managing virtual hard disks, configuring Virtual Server and virtual machines, configuring security, and managing virtual networks.You can find the repository
here
Activewin reports:
News is leaking out that Microsoft may be considering integrating media center functionality into the standard release of the next Windows operating system, codenamed Longhorn. Currently XPMCE is sold as a separate product to XP Home and XP professional, but this new development would mean that a PC could be multifunction e.g. a laptop would be a media center when docked, but a tablet PC when undocked. This would go some way towards placing Microsoft at the center of the digital home as users would be more likely to use functionality built into their existing OS, than switch to another, however similar.
There are some good reasons why Microsoft recommends that you do not enable NLB on a load balanced array of Standard Edition ISA firewalls:
- The Windows NLB service is not aware of the ISA firewall services. So, if the ISA Firewall service, or if the RRAS service becomes unavailable, the machine is not removed from the array and connections are still balanced to the unavailable ISA firewall
- Full support for bidirectional affinity doesn’t seem to be supported. Lex Penrose has reported that while he has been able to get bidirectional affinity to work when there is an internal and external interface on the ISA firewall NLB array, if you add a third NIC and try to make BDI work on the third interface, BDI fails.
PSS will not be able to help you if you run into ISA firewall problems, since its not a supported configuration
Here are the general instructions for those of you motivated to try this configuration.(continue at source)
Eileen Brown consolidated some links about RPC over HTTP documentation, here they are:
Its good to have these documents all in one place, so thanks go to Scott Schnoll for collating them...
Graham Tyler writes:
The File Transfer feature of Windows Messenger allows users to transfer files between desktops. Wait, bear with me, there's more...
To help ensure that the file being transferred is safe for use, Windows Messenger 5.1 performs a check each time a file is transferred from one client to another. This check is conducted even before the recipient accepts the file transfer, thereby helping to eliminate any chance of downloading a poteantially unsafe file. If the file is determined to be of an unsafe file type, the file transfer is not performed. (continue at source)
Update: Steven Bink reports that this rumour is not true, seen his connections we assume he is right about this.
Microsoft aims to launch its own tablet PC. The company wants to work with a computer manufacturer to produce the unit, which will be sold for less than 1200 euros, Armin Cremerius-Günther, Division Head for Windows at Microsoft Deutschland, announced on Tuesday. A special Tablet PC Edition of Windows XP runs on tablet PCs; inside such Microsoft units, classic PC components are used, the main difference being a touch-sensitive display with fine temporal resolution that allows for control using a special pen that can also be used to enter hand written data.
Microsoft wants to use this low price to give a boost to the technology, which was first presented in 2002. According to Cremerius-Günther, many customers find the tablet PCs currently available too expensive. Microsoft estimates that they usually cost between 1800 and 2500 euros.
(more)
Microsoft is
reliving old times by claiming that problems with its software aren't problems but legitimate features. Twice in the past few days, the software giant has disputed claims by security experts that they have found security holes. Instead, it says, the experts have mistaken perfectly normal processes for vulnerabilities.
An advistory on an unpatched hole in Explorer - found on Friday by security consultant Rafel Ivgi - was "inaccurate and misleading" according to Microsoft. Ivgi said the browser fails to warn a user about the installation of malicious code on their system. Microsoft says it does.
All you need is a blank disk and a little patience
A 3.5" MS-DOS 6.22 boot disk that lets you boot a computer and access shared files across a TCP/IP network is a useful administrative tool. A TCP/IP boot disk is handy when you're using imaging software to roll out a standard client image across the network, running an unattended installation of Windows NT 4.0, or troubleshooting a machine that has a FAT partition. The main problem with a TCP/IP boot disk is fitting onto one disk all the files that you need to access a share across a TCP/IP-based network.
Few administrators have access to a machine that they can use to directly format an MS-DOS TCP/IP boot disk. However, you can use the following procedure to make such a disk. You need only a blank 1.44MB 3.5" disk, an NT Server 4.0 CD-ROM, MS-DOS network adapter drivers, and a Windows workstation. You need to create a separate boot disk for every different type of network adapter you use.(continue at source)
Microsoft has quietly ignored its 31 December deadline for the end of free security updates for users of its NT4 operating system. Microsoft this week made available two patches for "critical" security flaws in its Windows operating system, and NT4 was among the systems patched. In a statement Microsoft said this was unlikely not occur again.
"Windows NT 4.0 Server Service Pack 6a and Windows NT 4.0 Server Terminal Server Edition Service Pack 6 reached the end of their life cycles on 31 December 2004," the company stated.
(more)
In May 2003, I followed up this original Longhorn preview with The Road to Windows "Longhorn" 2003, which featured concrete Longhorn information culled from that year's WinHEC trade show. It also included Microsoft's first public Longhorn release schedule (RTM in 2005, ahem), a detailed look at the product's componentization, and an overview of the Desktop Compositing Engine (DCE). However, in an August 2003 update, I revealed Longhorn's Aero user interface for the first time.
Then, in August 2004, I wrote the third installment, logically dubbed The Road to Windows "Longhorn" 2004, after Microsoft publicly revealed that it would delay WinFS and ship Windows XP/2003 versions of key Longhorn technologies, such as Avalon and Indigo. Microsoft also committed to a final release schedule for Longhorn, noting that the software would be delivered in 2006. Not late 2006, mind you, but mid-year. In November 2004, I updated that article with detailed Longhorn and Office 12 beta schedules which highlighted many of the milestones those releases would experience en route to their May 2006 final releases.
(more)
On the website of Daniel Petri i found a nice utility which makes it possible to temporarily remove policy restrictions for the current user.
The only requirement is that the current user is member of the local-administrators group of the machine on which you are applying the tool.
Download Killpol from MCSEWorld
As details begin to circulate about Microsoft's next-generation operating system, one question that's coming up is how many different editions of the OS will end up on the Redmond, Wash.-based developer's price list.
Microsoft insider Paul Thurrott, who publishes the SuperSite for Windows Web site, claims that Longhorn will ship in seven, count 'em, seven different versions when the operating system wraps.
(more)
A completely new version of the famous Scriptomatic, the utility that writes WMI scripts for you. (And, in the process, teaches you the fundamental concepts behind writing WMI scripts for yourself.)
Unlike its predecessor, Scriptomatic 2.0 isn’t limited to writing just VBScript scripts; instead, Scriptomatic 2.0 can write scripts in Perl, Python, or JScript as well. In addition, Scriptomatic 2.0 gives you a host of new output formats to use when running scripts, including saving data as plain-text, as a stand-alone Web page, or even as XML.
Scriptomatic 2.0 handles arrays, it converts dates to a more readable format, and it works with all the WMI classes on your computer; on top of all that, it also writes scripts that can be run against multiple machines.(Continue at source)
Microsoft quietly rolled out on Tuesday a new "
Security Update Validation Program." Under the new program, a small number of external evaluation teams will get private access to Microsoft patches before the company releases them to the public. The test team will include key customers, software vendors and Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs).
The introduction of new operating systems, new applications and even patches or fixes on your production network can pose its own kind of threat, if you don't know what the "unintended consequences" will be. Best practice is to first set up a test environment that emulates your production environment and run the new software there.
Buying a lot of machines to do this can be prohibitively expensive, so many network administrators have turned to virtual machine software. In this article, WindowSecurity.com takes a look at what's different in VPC and how to install and use it.(continue at source)
Coming from WindowsNetworking.com:
Quorums are one of the most often misunderstood topics in clustering. In this article, I will explain what a quorum is, what it does, and what some of your quorum options are.
Although the quorum is just a configuration database, it has two very important jobs. First of all, it tells the cluster which node should be active. Think about it for a minute. In order for a cluster to work, all of the nodes have to function in a way that allows the virtual server to function in the desired manner. In order for this to happen, each node must have a crystal clear understanding of its role within the cluster. This is where the quorum comes into play. The quorum tells the cluster which node is currently active and which node or nodes are in stand by. (continue at source)
Coming from Neowin:
In the third look at the future of current Microsoft technologies we take a look at where Windows Media Center Edition is heading.
This year will see the release of a small update for Windows Media Center Edition 2005. Bringing the Media Center Edition version up to v4.0. The update is due to beta in March and last approximately 4 months until it RTMs. There will be a Beta 1, Beta 2, RC0, RC1 before Release to Manufacturing.
(more)
There are many scenarios where you will want Universal Naming Convention (UNC) paths to remain unchanged when the underlying files are moved to other servers or to other paths. For example, you may want to preserve the UNC paths that users are accustomed to if you migrate or consolidate your existing file servers to new Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computers. The paths may be embedded in links, in line-of-business applications, and in other places where the names are difficult to change.
This article describes a software update that provides the functionality to keep UNC paths the same when you move the path's underlying files. The software update modifies the Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) server to permit the DFS server to return referrals for servers that no longer exist. The DFS server that permits this functionality is referred to as the DFS root server.
The Mobile Application Development Toolkit provides all the resources you need to start building mobile applications for Smartphone and Pocket PC devices.
The kit includes:
* Windows Mobile Development Guided Tour
* QuickStarts
* Hands-on Labs
* Technical Articles
* Business Success Stories
* Information about Developer Tools and SDKs
* Software and Special Offers
(continue at source)
Coming from Chris Lanier's Blog:
I'm still amazed by some of the plug-in's being developed for Media Center, and this is one of the most interesting. From Danee who has brought us, among other things, Web Media! This plug-in will grab the most recent Garfield comics and allow you to display them directly on your TV and control it with only your remote!
Download Garfield for Media Center
Megan Davis posted on his
blog cool news about the upcoming VS2005 SP1:
Here's what Kurt Schmucker, the program manager for Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 says about the release:
"As with typical service packs from Microsoft, Virtual Server 2005 Service Pack 1 will be primarily a rollup of fixes we have seen since the product was released to improve performance and increase scalability. In addition, with Service Pack 1, Virtual Server 2005 will have host support for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 x64 Edition (note that this does not include IA64), provide PXE support, qualify Windows XP SP2 as a host and as a guest, and include the Virtual Disk Precompactor, a utility that is designed to "zero out" — that is, overwrite with zeros — any available blank space on a virtual hard disk.
A public beta is slated for the end of first quarter 2005, with product release planned for the second half of calendar year 2005."
Like
Google desktop search tool and in a way the
MSN toolbar, now there is the Yahoo Desktop Search. Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta is a free, downloadable desktop search application that enables you to instantly find any file, email or attachment on your computer. Yahoo! Desktop Search puts the power of Yahoo! Search on your computer, ensuring that you can always find what you're looking for - instantaneously. (continue at source)
The Siemens Communications Group and Microsoft Corp. today announced a new global sales and marketing alliance, a multi-year agreement that will deliver a comprehensive family of enterprise-grade, presence-enhanced calling, video and Web conferencing, and collaboration solutions to customers throughout the world.
The alliance leverages a successful strategic product relationship the companies have built over the last two years. Siemens and Microsoft share a common vision of presence-enabled communication that integrates voice, video, instant messaging and Web conferencing into a comprehensive tool suite to improve worker productivity and team collaboration. (continue at source)
On the weblog of the Windows auditing team there is an interesting article about reducing the messages in the security log.
Erik from the Windows auditing team gives a few tips on reducing the noise in the security log:
1. Turn off the security option "Audit the access of global system objects".
2. Turn off the security option "Audit the use of the backup and restore privilege".
3. Remove the SACL on the Active Directory object "CN=Server,CN=System,DC=contoso,DC=com"
4. Don't enable "Privilege Use" auditing.
5. Don't enable "failure" auditing, unless you have a plan on what to do when you see one
6. Tune your SACLs.
Continue at source
You Can Use MOM 2005 Without Active Directory
Coming from Jimbo's weblog:
Unfortunately, it was not made clear in the MOM 2005 documentation, but you can deploy and successfully use MOM 2005 without Active Directory. Although MOM 2005 installs and functions (for the most part anyway), there are a few features that are not available without AD. I will concentrate upon the security features right now, but there are other features, such as Discovery, that are either not available or are affected in some way without AD.(continue at source)
On the MCSEWorld website of Daniel Petri there is an article which answers the following question:
How can I configure my computer to use a DHCP obtained IP address along with a static IP address at the same time ?
This guide can come in handy when you have a machine which needs to switched often between different networks, with different ip-ranges,subnetmasks and gateways. (continue at source)
It seems Microsoft have been using MSN Search as a stick with which to beat users of Mozilla Firefox. Firefox users who try to submit web sites to MSN Search receive a message telling them, "Please
Upgrade Your Browser".
This message is not sent to users of other alternative browsers, including current versions of regular Mozilla, Konqueror and Opera, whose users fell foul of similar tactics in the past. The implication is that Microsoft are more concerned about the success of Firefox than they have been letting on.
It hasn’t been easy, trying to do our part to introduce ISA firewalls to the IT security community. Once we get past the basic questions "Is ISA Server really a firewall?" and "How do I run the ISA box with a single NIC", the next thing potential users want to know is inevitably, "How does the ISA firewall compare to other firewalls?" That's a good question and this article kicks off a series where we compare the ISA firewall to the other major players in the firewall market.
(more)
This article and the one following describe how to use Group Policy to manage printers in an Active Directory environment. Topics covered include controlling how printers are published in Active Directory, how printers can be tracked by location, how to disable Internet printing, how to prevent users from adding or deleting printers, and more.
(more)
With e-mail still providing the backbone of most corporate communications, the lack of Microsoft Corp. Exchange Server clients on Mac OS and Linux platforms was, until recently, a problem for companies that wanted to share folders and calendars with users of those systems. Updates to
Microsoft's Office 2004 for Mac and Novell Inc.'s Evolution and
Exchange Connector greatly improved support for shared calendars and folders last year.
Even with broad client and Web server support for the iCal and WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning) standards, mixed Windows, Mac OS and Linux-based environments will still find robust clients such as Microsoft Entourage and Novell Evolution to be the best bets for connecting Mac OS and Linux users to Exchange. Both Entourage and Evolution differ from Outlook in that they don't offer the full MAPI (Messaging API) performance that Windows users see with Outlook XP or Office 2004. Actually, system performance is the biggest downside to Entourage and Evolution because both take considerable time to download and synchronize message header data for users' in-boxes.
(more)
As
Steven Bink reported yesterday.
The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool checks Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Server 2003 computers for and helps remove infections by specific, prevalent malicious software—including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom. When the detection and removal process is complete, the tool displays a report describing the outcome, including which, if any, malicious software was detected and removed.
Microsoft will release an updated version of this tool on the second Tuesday of each month. New versions will be made available through this Web page, Windows Update, and the Microsoft Download Center. There is also a
online version of the Malicious Software Removal tool available
Download the
Malicious Software Removal Tool
Many organizations still use a classic boot floppy to initiate an unattended setup of a server or workstation.
As we see more servers and workstations being delivered without a floppy drive, the problem arises that boot floppy no longer can be used.
Most of the newly made machine support the feature to boot from USB drive though, the only thing we have to do is transfer our boot floppy to that USB device. This guide gives an example how.
(more)
Microsoft Systems Architecture (MSA) Enterprise Data Center (EDC) version 1.5 provides a recommended, standardized, and tested blueprint for building a secure, scalable, highly-available, and manageable information technology infrastructure. The MSA EDC is a comprehensive solution, covering all aspects of planning, building, deploying, operating, and supporting such an infrastructure.
Download the
Microsoft Systems Architecture (MSA) Enterprise Data Center (EDC) version 1.5
When a network infrastructure includes router-based firewalls, the function of the firewall, which is to silently discard traffic that the firewall has not been configured to forward, can impair specific networking functions. For example, if a firewall between two Microsoft® Windows® Active Directory® directory service domain controllers has not been configured to allow all of the different types of traffic that domain controllers use to synchronize the Active Directory database, replication can fail.
This article describes a set of tools that you can use to test network paths for specific types of traffic and how to use the tools to determine the most common types of traffic that are dropped by firewalls installed in a Windows networking infrastructure.(continue at source)
The Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) architecture requires there to be a single quorum resource in the cluster that is used as the tie-breaker to avoid split-brain scenarios. When you use the majority node set feature however, the quorum data is actually stored on multiple disks across the cluster. The majority node set cluster resource takes care to ensure that the cluster configuration data stored on the majority node set is kept consistent across the different disks.
The disks that make up the majority node set could, in principle, be local disks physically attached to the nodes themselves or disks on a shared storage fabric. In the majority node set implementation that is provided as part of MSCS in Windows Server 2003, every node in the cluster uses a directory on its own local system disk to store the quorum data.
(more)
Despite Bill Gates’ announcement of new partnerships with LG, Discovery Channel and many others, his dream, of a Media Center where all media can be controlled with one remote and shared among all possible devices, will come true but not for Microsoft.
(more)
As you know we have been testing the beta of our new search service on an opt-in basis for several months now. From time to time we also route some of the customers from our live search service at
search.msn.com through the
Beta web site in order to do scalability testing. Next week we intend to begin turning up the dial and direct more of our users to the Beta. You’ll continue to see us doing this on occasion for the forseeable future. As before, the service remains in beta status and we will officially launch it when it’s ready.
Oshoma Momoh,
General Manager, MSN Search Program Management
Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition still provides a X.400 connector. With Exchange Server 5.5 this was the default protocol and connectivity standard. With the release of Exchange 2000 Server Microsoft implemented SMTP as the default protocol for connectivity. Due to backward compatibility there is still a X.400 based MTA stack available. But it is only a stack and not a protocol implementation. The following
article is a drill-down through the basics of X.400 and how to configure the X.400 connector. Afterwards we will then talk about in what cases we still need it.
Sign up now for the Sysinternals Newsletter! The newsletter, which uses free mailing list services provided by Yahoo Groups, provides you updates on what's new at Sysinternals, plus miscellaneous Windows internals tips and information you won't find anywhere else. Topics covered in the newsletter have included:
- Using Microsoft's undocumented DiskEdit tool
- Undocumented Win2K kernel APIs
- Extending application memory management with the Address Windowing Extensions API
- Details on new Sysinternals tools and tool updates
Sign up at source
Coming from RoudyBob:
Ben has a great post on using the “Shared Network” functionality of Virtual PC to allow virtual machines to access the host’s physical network. As he points out, this is good if you want to somewhat isolate your virtual machines from your host’s network (they sit behind a NAT) – but can cause problems with server-based applications running in virtual machines.
When I’m building a series of virtual machines, I go one step further. I tend to be *very* paranoid that software I’m installing in the virtual machines will adversely affect my host or other machines and services on the network. I suppose I’m also paranoid that the opposite might happen! My solution is to completely isolate the virtual machines from the “real” network using a loopback adapter and “proxy” their access through the host machine.(continue at source)
Microsoft is extending its offer of custom support on Windows NT4.0 Server until the end of 2006. The company has also outlined the end of support for e-mail system Exchange Server 5.5.
Microsoft originally said that support for NT 4.0 would end this month. Businesses could either upgrade to Windows Server 2003 or pay for a custom support contract up to December 2005.
After calls from larger firms for more time to upgrade, Microsoft agreed to extend custom support until December 2006. Peter Houston, Microsoft's Windows serviceability senior director, said, "To ease migration, we have decided to run the custom support program until 31 December 2006 and charge the same amount as we will in 2005."
Microsoft also announced that support for Exchange Server 5.5 will finish at the end of 2005, but that there will be two years of custom support. It will end support completely in December 2007.
In Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Microsoft is introducing a set of security technologies that will help to improve the ability of computers running Windows Server 2003 to withstand malicious attacks from viruses and worms.
Together, these security technologies will help to make it more difficult to attack Windows Server 2003, even if the latest updates are not applied. These security technologies together are particularly useful in mitigation against worms and viruses.
This document specifically focuses on the changes between earlier versions of Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 and reflects Microsoft’s early thinking about Service Pack 1 and its implications for developers. Examples and details are provided for several of the technologies that are experiencing the biggest changes. Future versions of this document will cover all new and changed technologies.
Download:
Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP 1
John Howard posted some webcast on migrating a Windows NT 4 server to Microsoft Virtual Server using the Microsoft Virtual Server Migration Toolkit.
You can find the webcasts here:
Windows AntiSpyware (Beta) is a security technology that helps protect Windows users from spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Known spyware on your PC can be detected and removed. This helps reduce negative effects caused by spyware including slow PC performance, annoying pop-up ads, unwanted changes to Internet settings, and unauthorized use of your private information. Continuous protection improves Internet browsing safety by guarding over 50 ways spyware can enter your PC.
The worldwide SpyNet™ community plays a key role in determining which suspicious programs are classified as spyware. Microsoft researchers quickly develop methods to counteract these threats, which are automatically downloaded to your PC, so you stay up-to-date. The user must be an administrator to install this application. Current Giant AntiSpyware users with active subscriptions are advised to continue to use their existing software.
Download:
Windows Antispyware
In his keynote address tonight at the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates outlined his vision for the digital lifestyle, and demonstrated a broad range of innovations that will enhance the lives of millions of people worldwide, according to a Microsoft statement. Underscoring the importance of choice and flexibility in bringing the digital lifestyle into the mainstream, Gates showcased innovations in digital music, photos, television and movies, gaming, and communications, and showed how Microsoft and its partners are leading the industry in bringing to life the experiences consumers want, the statement said.
"We are at the forefront in making broad technology investments and delivering breakthroughs that bring the digital lifestyle into the mainstream," Gates said. "Our strategy is to deliver great software and a platform for partner innovation, so consumers can choose from a vast array of devices and services that work together seamlessly and suit the way they live." (more)
Without DNS, the Internet would be an ugly place. DNS is one of the services responsible for directing network traffic based on name and numerical IP addresses. Specifically, it's the service that allows users to type in names instead of numbers to locate a Web site or Internet resource. To provide this service, DNS creates a mapping between the numeric IP addresses and the human-readable domain names that Internet users are accustomed to using and can remember more easily.
As you know, hosts connected to the Internet are each assigned a unique 32-bit IP address, usually expressed in a dotted decimal notation of four 8-bit numbers, such as 127.0.1.25. DNS is distributed and hierarchical; its information is spread among thousands of servers all over the world. Any one of these servers may be considered authoritative for some specified section of the DNS database, but it may need to get information about other parts of the database from other servers.
What this means in practice is that your local name server doesn't have all the information for, say, www.technetmagazine.com, but it can figure out who to ask about it and find out for you when you make a request.(continue at source)
Amit Zinman has released a new article over at msexchange.org titled
Preparing Exchange 5.5 Directory for Migration to Exchange 2003. Summary:
How to make sure your Exchange 5.5 directory database is ready for the upgrade to Active Directory and Exchange 2000/3 based messaging. This article will evaluate the ways of making changes in the Exchange 5.5 directory before installing the Active Directory Connector (ADC) tool that synchronizes Exchange 5.5 with Active Directory to ease matching of users and mailboxes.
John Howard writes about this article. Summary from KB Article:
When you open the Virtual Server Administration Website in Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, you receive the following error message:
Could not connect to Virtual Server. Access was denied.
You can specify an alternate virtual server below.
I
blogged about this problem when I first started running Virtual Server under Windows Server 2003 SP1 Release Candidate, and there have been many instances on the Microsoft internal discussion lists about people having similar problems. There is now a new
KB article on support.microsoft.com providing the latest information on how to resolve this problem.
Publicly, Microsoft continues to be cagey about packaging and pricing plans for its anti-spyware and anti-virus solutions. But privately, Microsoft has begun informing partners of its plans for a
security subscription service code-named "A1," according to developers who requested anonymity.
Has Microsoft's money been a
significant resource for the financially ailing SCO? Without a doubt. In early 2003, Microsoft started paying SCO what eventually grew to $16.6m for a Unix licence, according to regulatory filings. Only longtime Unix fan Sun Microsystems previously paid close to that, with a $9.3m licence deal.
Microsoft provided a second, though indirect, boost in August or September of 2003, when it referred SCO to BayStar Capital, a fund that arranged a $50m investment.
With mobile phones becoming ever more capable, they will soon start to threaten the PC paradigm, says Martin Brampton. This will pit software giant Microsoft against handset giant Nokia, a battle whose outcome will have significant ramifications for all of IT. The struggle for domination of the software powering mobile phones has barely started. 2005 could well be the year in which it gets hot. Constant evolution of the technology is enabling changes that are likely to be far reaching.
For several reasons, the mobile phone is set to become the most influential portable electronic device. Technology is one. While the constant improvement of every part of the modern computer seems now to have relatively little impact on the desktop, it is making a huge difference for the phone. You can now fit substantial processing power and a good deal of memory into your pocket, along with decent battery life.
(more)
Citrix Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. late last month agreed to extend their long-standing partnership to include Longhorn server software. Under the latest contract, Citrix agreed to support the next version of the Windows Server -- code-named Longhorn -- in its access products. The five-year agreement also gives Citrix continued access to Microsoft Windows Server source code while providing for patent cross-licensing. In addition, the agreement calls for new technical collaboration to enhance the extensibility of Windows Terminal Server. The Citrix MetaFrame Access Suite runs on Microsoft's Terminal Server, which is designed to deliver Windows-based applications or the Windows desktop itself to any computing device, including those that can't run Windows.
The
sample scripts provided are likely to appear in the upcoming System Administration Scripting Guide, which will ship as part of the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. The sample scripts are not supported under any Microsoft standard support program or service.
Neowin reports:
Tomorrow at
CES it's likely that Bill Gates will further unveil parts of Microsoft's plans for the next generation of Windows Mobile. Currently in beta testing, Magneto is the code-name for what is expected to be finally named as Windows Mobile 2005.
Microsoft is progressing well with Magneto and is currently running a Beta 2 (v5.0.1512 Build 14207) dogfood test internally. The first release candidate of Magneto is expected on the 16th February with an RTM following on the 13th April. Currently Microsoft are only testing Magneto on the Motorola MPx220 Smartphone. This indicates that the device will be able to be upgraded sometime this year. It's unclear what others devices will be supported for upgrade. (continue at source)
Opinion: Microsoft got a lot of things right with Windows 2000, but security wasn't one of them. The changes made for Windows Server 2003 indicate just how wrong Microsoft was.
I remember roughly when Windows 2000 "went gold"—when Microsoft finalized the shipping code for the product. It was mid-December 1999, and the product officially "shipped" in February 2000. I was writing part of a Windows 2000 book so I had early access. Five years ago is a long, long time in this day and age, especially when it comes to security. A lot has happened since then, and things are far worse now than they were. Can we forgive Microsoft for being naďve about security in Windows 2000? I might have thought so at one point, but not anymore.
Yes, the real work on Windows 2000 was done as the Internet boom was at its most stupid, with people selling groceries online and Fedexing bags of dog food, but Microsoft wasn't that kind of company. It was run by experienced people who should have known better.
(more)
One of the most common pieces of advice I give regarding ISA firewall access rules and firewall policy is "setup a split DNS and configure those sites for Direct Access". In the first part of a two-part series on Direct Access, I'll discuss what Direct Access is and how to Configure Direct Access for Web Proxy clients.
One of the best things I can hear from a new ISA firewall administrator who’s having problems accessing a Web site from behind an ISA firewall is "it worked when we were using a PIX". You have to ask yourself why they site worked when using a PIX. Was the PIX providing real security? Is "easy access" to all sites using all protocols your definition of security? If the ISA firewall blocks access to sites that you were previously able to reach without thinking about firewall configuration, then you need to take a long, hard look at the security and outbound access control your previous security solution provided.
(more)
More users than ever use broadband connections at home these days. Though it will take time, these connections will do nothing but get faster. With companies figuring out seemingly every day how to cram more information down the same pipes, and new options like fixed wireless and fiber to the door becoming available, connectivity options for the average consumer are ever-expanding, and with them, the speeds available. This spells the doom of the modern computer, and the modern operating system as we know it – and this is not a bad thing.
Broad statements, I know, but this isn’t an article about the flaming doom of Microsoft, for I believe they will have a place in the market for many years to come. However, it does spell the end of bloated, leviathan operating systems like Windows XP in its present form, and unless Microsoft is very nimble, it could spell the end of the Microsoft monopoly.
(more)
When Microsoft released Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, the ability to join domains was left out. The domain feature was eliminated because of pricing reasons as well as technical reasons. MCE 2005 relies on fast user switching to allow it's extender devices to connect to the central MCE workstation. If the MCE workstation is on a domain, fast user switching will not work, and any extender devices will not work.
If you do not use any extender devices, such as the set top boxes that allow you to watch Media Center content on your TV in your family room from your PC in your office, and you have a need to join a domain, it is now possible to make MCE 2005 join a domain.
(more)
In mid-2004, reports surfaced that Microsoft would soon ship an entry-level version of Windows XP, dubbed Windows XP Starter Edition, to customers in emerging markets such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia and India. Those markets, Microsoft said, needed locale-specific PCs that were easy to use, support, and sell.
The response from tech press and analysts was immediate and damning. Reports referred to XP Starter Edition as "cut-rate," "cheap," "crippled," and even "futile." All of those reports, however, are completely wrong. And it's a sad statement on the state of modern tech reporting and analysis that so many people could be so cynical about a product they have never seen and don't know a thing about.
(more)
Diego González Gómez produced this interesting
paper on the first day of the year. It really worths the reading since seems the first 2005 virtualization news:
The Honeywall CDROM is a bootable CD with a set of open source tools configured by the Honeynet Project to make the implementation of a GenII Honeynet Gateway easier. Using this document as an installation guide, we are going to implement the Honeywall using the commercial software, VMware . This document makes a few assumptions, one of them is that you have read and understood the papers Know Your Enemy: Virtual Honeynets, Know Your Enemy: Learning with VMware, Know Your Enemy: Honeywall CDROM.
For the fifth consecutive year, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates will present the main keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The talk will be webcast live at 6:30pm Pacific Time on Wednesday, January 5.
As always, the Bill Gates keynote is certain to be a high point of CES. Information on how to watch the live webcast is available
here.
Microsoft have just finished distributing an internal Beta 1 escrow build to internal beta testers. "Atlanta" is the code-name for Microsoft's rehashed GIANT Software Anti-Spyware. In a memo internally, the company looks clear to distribute the software this coming Thursday calling it "new, it's fresh, and it's all good". (continue at source)
Exchange 2003 has a new switch that can be used during installation called "/ChooseDC". By using the switch the installer can specify the GC to be used for the installation.
The syntax is:
setup.exe /choosedc NameOfDomainControllerToUse
If multiple Exchange servers have to be installed in a short time frame at different sites problems may arise if AD replication does not occur.
To avoid such problems the aforementioned switch can be used to point all Exchange servers ,while being installed,to one GC.
Description of the /ChooseDC Switch in Exchange Server 2003
The Outlook Web Access (OWA)
administration tool provides web-based UI for all administrator tunable OWA settings. It provides a list of all servers in the domain and allows administration of OWA settings on all Front-end and Back-end servers. The tool ensures that settings are correctly written to the server’s registry and provides inline documentation for all configurable features.
For years, Windows has offered two basic types of scripting. The officially supported, built-in scripting is available through the same command-line shell, CMD, present in Windows since NT 3.1 was released. It's where we write batch files, launch command-line utilities and so forth. WSH is the other option, relying on languages like VBScript and Perl variants. Windows Longhorn will introduce a third new scripting environment, the Microsoft Shell, or MSH, code-named "Monad."
In this article Don Jones gives some examples on what can be done with Monad. (continue at source)
Unix links the Windows way...
For those of us who have worked with some Unix version, probably know about the wonderfull file system feature called symbolic linking. It allows you to setup symbolic (or virtual) links to directories, files, but also to other (even remote) file systems. In Windows this is not common practice, but deep inside Windows there are APIs that allow some of this functionality. Some of you might already know the feature available in Disk Management called 'Mount volume in NTFS folder'. That is a start, but it does even come close to what can be done with Unix.
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On the
Virtual Pc website of Jonathan Maltz a listing is given about which OS is, and isn't working under Virtual PC 2004 and Virtual Server 2005. You can find a long list of operating systems including extra notes to help you to install the OS under virtual pc 2004 or Virtual Server 2005. You can also see if it's supported by Microsoft or not.
In this article MsExchange.org will show you some of the caveats you run into when deploying Windows XP SP2 in an organization where your users rely on the Outlook Web Access (OWA) 2003 client, and because many of the security enhancements included in Windows XP SP2 have been made to Internet Explorer (IE) there are plenty.(continue at source)
Brian Madden has written 2 excelent articles about troubleshooting network performance on Terminal Server and Citrix MetaFrame.
This is part one of an article that's turning out to be a lot longer than I expected. I wanted to put it out here to get your feedback so far. Today's section discusses the various networking characteristics and how they affect Citrix and Terminal Server, and how you can figure out if they're affecting your environment. In part two of this article we'll look at what you can do to tune your servers to deal with these issues.
An accurate analysis of the performance and sizing of the hardware systems that support Microsoft® Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 is critical to the successful implementation of MOM 2005.
This technical paper shares some of the knowledge gained from the performance and sizing testing for MOM 2005, and is presented in various scenarios.
Even as Microsoft works to avoid product delays for its Software Assurance customers in 2005, more planned features in future products may end up on cutting floor, some worry.
As it preps two Windows server updates for 2005, Microsoft is struggling to find the right balance between making--and delivering on--promises made to customers during their Software Assurance contract periods.
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Microsoft is not planning an upgrade to Internet Explorer until at least 2006, when the next version of Windows is released. The company is busy building and testing a faster (and more secure) version, and Jim Allchin, head of the Windows platform division, says, "We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version."
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| 24 Jan '05 - 21:51 | kenneth van surksum | 
no comments | news source ~ Microsoft Exchange Team Blog 
