Core OS

KB 912945 and the upcoming April IE patches will change ActiveX behavior due to a software patent ruling and so far the biggest application that has trouble with it are the Siebel CRM applications. Siebel is working on getting their software updated to get it to work correctly but you will most likely want to install the 'compatibility patch' that will be available as a manual download from the MS Download Center.

I have a feeling as Patch Tuesday hits, we will see a lot more applications having this sort of problem.

Speaking of the compatibility patch, here is some more info on it:
http://windowsconnected.com/blogs/jeff/archive/2006/03/31/1524.aspx

A few years ago there used to be a freeware application from DABCC that would go through your event logs and make recommendations on printer driver mappings based on that. This new tool does the same type of thing and it's free too.

Printer drivers on TS are always a tricky combination so anything that can help map drivers is always a good thing.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9AD27BE9-40DB-484F-862E-38A094EEEAF7&displaylang=en

I've mentioned it in the past but the upcoming Internet Explorer update in April is going to surprise a lot of end users and unfortunately I am sure will end up with many help desk calls to various organizations. Thankfully, there is going to be a workaround available for the short term. My biggest concern is that instead of installing the (needed) updates, people are going to avoid them in order to keep their unsupported/unupgradable programs.

In an ideal world, this wouldn't be a problem but I know there are a lot of places that are required, for one reason or another, to keep older software working unpatched. If anything, I hope the end result is more software patent awareness.

You can read more about the changes and workarounds here:
http://blogs.technet.com/msrc/archive/2006/03/29/423560.aspx

As much 'bad press' as Internet Explorer gets, I think this is a step in the right direction to get known bugs and issues logged and tracked from the public. Great news for IE 7 and future versions.

File your bugs/etc here:
https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=136

One of the more interesting features discussed in a recent IIS chat was the addition of a command line tool that could sort of be thought as 'IISRESET on steroids'. It can do a lot more than IISRESET ever thought of.

Here are some examples for setting up sites and application pools (verbatim from the chat):

APPCMD list apppool “DefaultAppPool”
APPCMD list apppool /apppool.name:”DefaultAppPool”
APPCMD list apppools -autoStart:true
APPCMD list apppools -processModel.loadUserProfile:false
APPCMD add apppool /name:”MyAppPool”
APPCMD delete apppool ”MyAppPool”
APPCMD delete apppool /apppool.name:”MyAppPool”
APPCMD set apppool “DefaultAppPool” /autoStart:false
APPCMD set apppool “DefaultAppPool” -?
APPCMD recycle apppool “DefaultAppPool”
APPCMD delete site ”Default Web Site”
APPCMD set site “Default Web Site” /serverAutoStart:false
APPCMD start site “MySite”
APPCMD stop site “Default Web Site”

Nicest part, for me at least, is being able to restart a specific site without restarting the whole pool.

Also of note from the chat:

60% of IIS was rewritten to become IIS 7 and IIS Manager has been 'picked apart' and enhanced significantly over the version that is in IIS 6. The IIS and ASP.NET teams at MS have been merged so you will see a tighter integration with both components.

The IIS that shipped with XP was largely based off of the Windows 2000 IIS 5, and the IIS that you will see in Vista, even in the home edition, will be a lot better.

Eric Deily explains it better than I can so I'm quoting from him from the chat:

IIS7 is the next generation, maintaining the similar process model as IIS6, but shipping across both client (windows vista) & server (Longhorn server), and feature a merged IIS/ASP.net request processing pipeline and the ability to componitize functionality, such as determining exactly what you need (such as not needing Windows Integrated authentication, or static compression -> you don't have to install this) and only using those components, & a unified configuration system now that blends IIS & ASP.net configuration.

If you want to enable the multi-pane (new style) MMC UI under XP and 2003, create a key at HKLM\Software\Microsoft\MMC with a value of 'UseNewUI'

You may end up having weird quirks with older style MMC 2.0 snap-ins that haven't been adapted for the new UI style. I know some versions of Diskeeper will flag errors from time to time.

More information and a lot of download links are here:
907265

I ended up having to remove this new MIX build from a few machines because it seems to have too many problems under XP. So far, from what I've found, history doesn't work, a lot of websites don't render correctly (not necessarily an IE problem), any Google toolbar or Google Desktop component seems to conflict, and re-enabling the 'advanced features' pane doesn't seem to work, at least for me.

So, unless you are a web developer or a bleeding edge kind of person, I'd stick with the older build for now or just wait until the next refresh.

I'd still like to see IE more 'modular' and not so ingrained into the OS components but I think pretty much after IE4 and IE5, that's not really an option anymore.

The feature list that has always typically required Citrix is getting shorter once Longhorn hits the streets.

Two new options in the Remote Desktop client is "/span" and "/public".

I believe "/public" is for sharing your desktop with multiple people at once, but I could be wrong - I'm still digging into the documentation.

'/span' allows your "virtual desktop" to span multiple monitors as long as the height is identical.

The hot item for me at least with RDP 6.0 is published applications - finally!

The biggest news, for me, from tonight's hardware device chat at MS is the above mentioned subject line. Not unexpected but might prevent some people from upgrading their OS if they want to use older devices like Gravis gamepads and the like.

HDCP support is going to be required to play HD DVD content, in video cards and monitors, unfortunately too.

On a good note, the Bluetooth stack is supposed to be a lot better than the one in XP SP2. I'm happy to hear that because as time goes on, I seem to be getting more and more Bluetooth devices.

I don't know of any specific exploits so far but apparently the unpatched Flash players, for almost any OS, are pretty trivial to exploit, which makes it all that more dangerous.

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/security/security_zone/apsb06-03.html

Expect a lot of broken websites once KB 912945 goes live on Windows Update, April 11th.

The root cause for this: http://www.eolas.com/zmapress.htm

Bottom line: I really don't like software patents.

You can read more background information on it here:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/spywaresucks/archive/2006/03/04/85409.aspx

This one might seem a little far fetched but it does work. If you have 2 Windows DNS domain servers local to each other, set the primary DNS entry on each box to the other machine's IP. If server A is starting up, it will do DNS queries to server B which is probably already running unless they were both shut down at the same time. Server B will do the same to server A.

It is also a cheap workaround to the old Exchange problem of DNS/Active Directory shutting down before Exchange shuts down, if you are forced to run Exchange on a domain controller. Exchange 2003 SP2 fixed the slow shutdown problem but there are plenty of Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 SP1 servers still out there.

You might be thinking - but I'm not running Windows 2003 R2, so why so I care about this? Well, if you are running Windows Live Messenger 8.0, you're running DFS-R when you use Shared Folders.

http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2006/03/20/422544.aspx

Bottom line, if you want RDC (the compression algo) to work as best as possible, give the staging folder more than enough room to do the dirty work. You will get better compression because it can work on a larger dataset. My own experience has shown that if you have 1.5x the size of the folder you want to replicate, you're doing good. If your dataset is mostly images and largely uncompressible data, go for 2x.

A must-have KB if you use VSS, DPM, or Backup Exec on a regular basis on a Windows 2003 server - KB 891957

I like to prevent problems before they happen and this VSS 'bug' has affected enough servers I've seen that I'm just keeping this KB exe in my bag of tricks wherever I go, to go along with KB 898060.

I'm sure both of these will be rolled into Windows 2003 SP2, but until that time, on many servers, these are production-harming bugs if left unpatched.

898060 usually rears its ugly head when you have varying MTU values along a network path between the client and server. You will have cable modem users and dial up users able to VPN into your Windows 2003 SP1 machine but DSL users, which typically use PPPoE for service, will have trouble with fileshares over a VPN and other sporatic issues. I've seen it happen many places.

Open a command line and try to do filename completion with the [Tab] key. 9 times out of 10, if it doesn't work, the server used to run Windows 2000.

Windows XP/2k3 default to setting [Tab] as the filename completion key but Windows 2000 defaults to hex 0x40 unless someone specifically set the registry setting, which I always do on Windows 2000 boxes I have control of.

Another way to tell, is if %WINDIR% is \WINNT and not \WINDOWS.

True, these aren't 100%, but it is easier than digging thru registry keys and upgrade log files.

If you want system-wide file completion, set HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar to 0x09.
If you want system-wide directory completion, set HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\PathCompletionChar to 0x09.

If you want those set only for the current user, replace HKLM with HKCU.