Today Microsoft announced the availability of Microsoft Windows PowerShell RC2, the command line shell and scripting language that helps IT Professionals achieve greater productivity and control of system administration. Using a new admin-focused scripting language and consistent syntax and utilities, Windows PowerShell accelerates automation. Windows PowerShell is easy to adopt, learn, and use, because it works with existing IT infrastructure and scripting tools.
This Release Candidate 2 of Windows PowerShell addresses numerous customer requests based on their evaluation of Beta3 and RC1 including:
· Direct ADSI support to allow IT Pros to more easily administer Active Directory
· Improved support for Windows Management Instrumentation through ability to change WMI properties via methods
· Additional logical operators (XOR and binary XOR) that make it easier to write sophisticated scripts
· Improved help content and help functionality including new views that make it easier to find the right information.
· Windows PowerShell 1.0 will release-to-web in Q4 CY06
· Windows PowerShell will be leveraged by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and System Center Operations Manager 2007.
Customers can download Windows PowerShell RC2 at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925228
I found a usefull tip on the website of Casey S. Potenzone:
I read a few links online today that exposed a hidden password generator built into Windows. If you need a strong password, and are too lazy to be creative, Microsoft is here to help. Open a CMD prompt (Start --> Run --> CMD) and type: net user administrator /random.
Microsoft Word is notorious for inserting a massive amount of non-standard, useless HTML markup in pages when you "Save as a Webpage..." Not only does this extra markup violate all validation and kill page load times, but it also makes editing pages by hand nearly impossible.
Thankfully, Microsoft added a little know feature into Word XP or later that allows you to omit much of the bloated code when you save as a webpage. Simply click File | Save As..., then click the Save As Type drop-down box and choose Web Page, Filtered.
WMDC (Windows Mobile Device Centre), is the new software in Vista that replaces ActiveSync and you cannot even install ActiveSync on Vista.
If you installed Vista RC1 and plugged in your Windows Mobile Phone (either Pocket PC or Smart Phone) and expected Outlook to start syncing you would be in for a rude shock. All Vista does is open the device in Explorer so you can browse it and get to explore files - but nothing to sync up. This is because the WMDC bits are not publicly released yet but are being dogfood'ed internally.
If you are like me and cannot wait then below are the steps you need to do to get your mobile sync between the device and Outlook / Exchange using WMDC (make sure you also read warning before you do anything):
1. Add a new key called "WHOS" (without the quotes of course) in HKLM\Software\Microsoft. (See the image below on how this should look like with the blue circle around the key)
2. Plug in your mobile to the machine (either via USB or your Cradle).
3. Run Windows Update.
Windows Update should detect that you have a new update and download and install the WMDC bits. After which you can setup a new partnership to get this running with Outlook.
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Ever since 2005, Windows Vista’s network team has been confidently promoting the new network stack in Windows Vista. For those who don’t know, a network stack or any stack for that matter is the foundation of an operating system which implements the various protocols. This is the software that will have the direct interface to your network hardware, and all other network applications such as Internet Explorer and Bittorent will utilize this network stack to send and receive data across a network. Their claim in 2005 was that the new network stack will deliver higher thoroughput and increase network performance for most users around the world. That’s a pretty bold claim.
When anyone claims they can make your internet go faster, you should be skeptical of it. But the Microsoft people seemed rather confident, and didn’t want to sell me any homeloans, replica watches or pills. So I took up the challenge.(
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Microsoft has quietly released a build of Windows Vista that is more recent than Release Candidate 1 (build 5600), which debuted at the beginning of this month. The new build is numbered 5728, and comes with a number of caveats. The big caveat is this: the build is only available for a limited time, and will not be available via CD. Get it now if you want it, for it could be gone at any moment.
While this build is more recent than RC1, Microsoft says that it has not been thoroughly tested, and may in fact be less stable on some systems. Furthermore, the new build will not necessarily be upgradeable to the final release of Windows Vista, and may not fully integrate with Windows Update in the interim. Full details, including the download link, can be found here. Microsoft has made available both the x64 and x86 versions of Build 5728. Note: it is possible to upgrade RC1 with this release, but the full DVD image is needed.
Microsoft also said that they are releasing the newer build to get feedback on a number of improvements that have been made since RC1. According to Microsoft's Sven Hallauer, any release that begins with "57" is a member of the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code base. As the first 57xx release, this looks to be the first step towards wrapping up Vista. Does this mean we won't see RC2? Time will tell.
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article at Microsoft
direct download link at Microsoft
Displays are getting bigger and resolution is going up, and on Windows XP that's a problem: a high-res desktop leaves the icons tiny and hard to read. No such problem in Vista: just hold down CTRL and scroll the mouse wheel to blow them up. They'll be visible even at monster resolutions, as their size on my paltry 1,280 x 1,024 shows:
There's another benefit - you can see what's inside each document, as the zoomed-in screenshots above show. The same shortcut works when you're in Windows Explorer, so you can quickly zoom in to look at photos and documents without having to go to the bother and expense of actually opening them in Photo Gallery.
You can open any icon in the Quick Launch bar (just to the right of the Start button) by holding down the Windows key and pressing what I'll call the "rank number" of the icon - the number that corresponds to its position in the list. So, in the desktop here, Windows + 1 opens Outlook, Windows + 2 opens Internet Explorer, Windows + 5 opens the Snipping Tool and so on.
There is a law of computing that states that the larger the footprint of code that’s running on a server, the better the chance that the code will contain an exploitable security hole. In spite of this law, both operating systems and applications tend to become more bloated with every new release. Longhorn Server puts this law into practice by offering a new minimal installation model called a core server. The core server is secure, but very restrictive. In this article, I will explain what a core server is and show you how to deploy one.
Sometime shortly after Windows Server 2003 was released, Microsoft seemed to finally acknowledge this philosophy. They produced several different documents that explained which services can (and often should) be disabled in order to reduce the footprint size of the code that’s executing on the server, thereby making that server more secure.
It seems like that this time Microsoft has learned from their past mistakes though. Longhorn Server will support what is known as a core installation. A core installation is a bare minimal installation that includes only a tiny subset of the code that is normally installed on a Longhorn Server.(
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Noah Horton has an interesting post about Internet Computer Names:
Have you ever wanted to be able to find and connect to your computer across the Internet, but did not want the complexity and cost of buying a domain name and using Dynamic DNS? With Windows Vista, you can using Internet Computer Naming.
Internet Computer Names is a service that's built in Vista that will publish a name for the machine any time the machine is running. Coupled with the way PNRP is integrated into GetAddrInfo, this makes for some awesome experiences like being able to Remote Desktop to your machine from anywhere using a PeerName.
Adi Oltean's has an excellent article on his weblog about mounting a drive letter to a shadow copy device.
He reports that on Windows Server 2003 there is an API(Called ExposeSnapshots()) which you can use to assign a drive letter to a shadow copy device. The ExposeSnapshots Api in not implemented in Windows XP though. But by using the program DOSDEV.exe you can also assign drive letters to a shadow copy device in Windows XP. Read his blog post for more information.(
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The laboratoire-microsoft.org website provides a link which provides you with a product key which you can use to install Vista RC1.
Select
The next version of Windows Server may still be using its code name, but this episode helps explain some of the ways it will help you run your systems and services better.
The .NET Show: Windows Server
These step-by-step guides will assist IT Professionals in deploying or migrating to Windows Vista. These guides will also provide step-by-step information on how to control device installation using Device Management and Installation (DMI) and manage ADMX files. There are also step-by-step guides to help you protect data using BitLocker Drive Encryption, to administer the TPM Security Hardware in a computer using Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Services, and to help deploy better-managed desktops and mitigate the impact of malware using User Account Control (UAC).
- Deploying Vista Step by Step Guide
- Managing Group Policy ADMX Files Step by Step Guide
- Managing Roaming User Data Deployment Guide
- Performance Monitoring and Tuning Step by Step Guide
- Print Management Step by Step Guide
- Step by Step Guide to Controlling Device Installation and Usage with Group Policy
- Step by Step Guide to Device Driver Signing and Staging
- Step by Step Guide to Managing Multiple Local Group Policy
- User Account Control Step by Step Guide
- Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption Step-by-Step Guide
- Windows Vista Beta 2 Migration Step by Step Guide
- Windows Vista Beta 2 Trusted Platform Module Services Step by Step Guide (May 2006)
- Windows Vista Mobile Device Center Step by Step
- Windows Vista Multilingual User Interface Step by Step Guide
- Windows Vista Speech Recognition Step by Step Guide
- Windows Vista Windows Meeting Space Step by Step Guide
Download the Windows Vista Step-by-Step Guides for IT Professionals
Aurora is a key element of the AERO experience and could be seen in various places in Windows Vista such as the Log On screen, Preview Pane, WinSAT Assessments, screensavers and other.
Long Zheng has some news about the Aurora Desktop on his website.
Recently I’ve acquired a copy of early 2003 XAML code used to generate a fairly preliminary and bland version of the Aurora effect we have witnessed on and off in the past. Note this version of the Aurora is different to the one we witness today in the Vista installation and login screens. But this not only proves that you could generate a purely vector and animated version of Aurora using XAML, but you can run it at an acceptable level of performance.
I gave it a test run in Windows XP, but I suspect the performance in Vista (which could well ship with RTM) will be vastly improved. The performance of the Aurora in this video does not accurately represent the actual performance in XP due to the screen recording software.
Sooner or later, every administrator finds himself wanting to run applications from multiple operating systems on the same physical machine simultaneously, and then struggles to figure out a solution that works somewhat seamlessly.
Maybe you're married to Microsoft Exchange, but you secretly pine for open-source email tools like SpamAssassin or fetchmail. Or maybe you're using UNIX-based applications for some network services, but you really want to run them under Windows so you can integrate them into your overall network security model. Whatever the case, wishing that you could run best-of-breed applications from different operating systems simultaneously is pretty common, and often unavoidable.
In my case, I ran into this situation when upgrading an aging utility server, and I made the mistake of buying a brand-new Intel motherboard that does not yet have adequate Linux driver support. If I was going to use this system at all, it had to run Windows, but most of the software that this particular system is meant to run was designed for UNIX. (
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Arlindo Alves, an IT Pro Evangelist for Microsoft, writes: "What I really like in Vista and particularly in this build is that you define different sound settings for your applications. So if you are listening to a podcast or viewing a Webcast you don't want to have your Messenger sounds interfering with that. Here's a screenshot of my settings I usually use:"
However what I somehow miss is the is in the Mobile center where we can define presentation settings that we are not able to select the applications you don't want to have sound enabled for. The workaround for that is to set the settings onto the volume mixer for those items that you certainly do not want the sound to be enabled. Anyway it's a real improvement if you compare it with Windows XP.
Whitepaper: Audio Innovations in Windows Vista
Steve Riley's posted a nice explaination of how Windows Vista's Mandatory Integrity Control works. This important technology is a core part of the way Windows Vista is architected to use low privilege wherever possible. It's one of those significant security changes that's hidden "under the covers" which will reduce your system's attack surface.
Internet Explorer 7 is denoted as "Internet Explorer 7+" on Windows Vista to signify it's adoption of benefits that are only available on the new platform. Under Windows XP Internet Explorer runs in the same context as the logged in user and therefore is able write to all areas of the file system as the user. If the user has administrative rights then Internet Explorer and potentially scripts and exectutables downloaded and exectuted by it are potentially able to reconfigure the system and introduce malware such as spyware, worms, viruses and cloaking technology such as root kits.
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How Windows Vista's Mandatory Integrity Control works (Steve Riley)
The Windows Sidebar Team has launched their very own blog called
"Gadget Corner". Here, team members take turns writing blog posts addressing topics relevant to Windows Sidebar and desktop Gadgets. Windows Sidebar Program Manager Brian Teutsch
has recently made a post outlining security within the Sidebar.
Windows Sidebar actually interacts with User Access Control (UAC) and other security features in Windows Vista to ensure that desktop Gadgets used with Windows Sidebar do not compromise a user's PC (would you believe it even works with Parental Controls?). Brian discusses in great detail the measures involved in keeping Windows Sidebar and its Gadgets safe for the Windows Vista user. For system administrators, Brian's post also discusses the use of Group Policies to keep Windows Sidebar secure in a corporate environment in which these are implemented. Keep your eyes peeled for upcoming posts from the Sidebar Team on their new blog!
As Jenny Lam of Microsoft Design described,
It’s not so much a new theme as a new brand element for Windows. We were feeling a little creatively trapped when it came to the Windows identity especially with branding the user experience (in UI). We know we didn’t want to slap the Windows flag logo everywhere (disparaging to the flag!), so we created this new little sweet, light gesture animation in the UI. I have to admit, there’s still some little treatment-like work I’d like to do to it.
Few people know it, but when you boot off the Vista install DVD, you’re booting into a different version of Windows altogether: Windows PE 2.0.
It’s based on the Vista kernel, but it’s extremely compact. It provides read/write access to NTFS filesystems, a wide range of 32- and 64-bit hardware drivers, network connectivity and the ability to run both 32- and 64-bit applications.
However, stripped away from the Vista installer, it’s also a very versatile tool for administrators. It allows troubleshooting, installation and system recovery, and its small size means it can be run from CD, USB key or even via network boot.(
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