IT

I'm not sure how you would abbreviate that one properly, but it is a TS certification. I'd almost call it the "MCTS: BDD/SMS" test.
Never had a perfect score on a MS test before so that is a new one to me. I'm just happy I passed.

There are a lot of people, including Microsoft, making pre-built virtual machines for use for evaluation purposes. 99% of the time, they use an obscure username and password combination.

I realize most people who build these images want you to read their README files, but a lot of times I will keep these images around for demo purposes and never remember what username and password a particular VM uses.

If it is Windows based, it is very easy to set the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon\LegalNoticeText registry value. I have found myself manually editing each VM so that they include the username and password combination right inside the login screen.

On one hand, it is a security concern, but on the other hand, these are typically isolated single instance VMs that get launched from time to time. You will be the only one logging into the "console", assuming you have RDP disabled, so your risk of a breach is pretty low.

Obviously you are not going to want to do this with a production VM, but most of my virtual machines are for learning and demos.

My favorite anti-spam/filter software has a new version coming out soon, with version 4.1 that supports Exchange 2007 soon after. The cost of the software is per server instead of per mailbox, which makes it very attractive for smaller offices.

Planned features for 4.0:
1. Combined Actions: Tag and redirect email.

2. Test Exceptions: This feature allows some tests to take precedence over blacklists (Attachment Blacklist, External Agents, AD Test and the Recipient Blacklist)—filtering for viruses even when the email would be whitelisted.

3. New database model: Support for storing Greylisting and Auto Sender Whitelist data on Microsoft SQL Server. More reliable local database support.

4. Subject logging: The name tells it all, email subjects at the On Arrival filtering point are now logged.

5. Improved log filtering: Rule-based filtering in the ORF Log Viewer that provides much greater flexibility than the current filter.

6. 64-bit support: Support for 64-bit editions of Windows Server.

7. More types of supported IP range formats: no more subnet mask mess (except if you want).

8. Greylisting improvement: Now Greylisting can be configured to accept delivery re-attempts from the same Class C (/24) block. This means lower number of false positives.

9. Auto Sender Whitelist Automatic Response Detection: Namely, automatic recognition of Out of Office autoresponses. These are not added to the Auto Sender Whitelist, thus the database does not become polluted.

10. Update notifications: the ORF Administration Tool, Log Viewer and Reporting Tool now tells you if there is a new ORF version available.

11. Significantly improved PowerLog preprocessing speed: about 75 times faster now.

12. All known bugs fixed.

Read more about it here.

Don’t let this one bite your SMS installs – it is much like the SVCHOST.EXE problem, except it affects WMI.
I suspect if you install the WMI updates that were backported from Vista, it might help but that is unconfirmed so far.

Read about the problem and eventual hotfix here.

I like it so far. Looks very promising. I used to use the old Cygwin ports but this looks better.
The website is located here.

Many people have noticed that their signal strength seems drastically lower under Vista compared to the signal strength they were used to under XP.

Case #1:
Linksys WRT54GS in the same room as laptop
Signal strength under XP: 99%
Signal strength under Vista: 60%

While it is true that the signal strength values have changed between OS revisions, the Vista values seem unusually low.

If you install these official 32-bit WHQL Intel drivers for Vista, the signal strength problem goes away!

If you need 64-bit, here they are.

Update thanks to Kevin: There are newer drivers dated 5-27-2007 - Version 11.1.1.0

I may have a special CPU in my Thinkpad. It operates just fine at the 12x multiplier with a voltage of 1.0750V. The default for this Core Duo core is 1.2625V. I can go lower, in fact, very close to 1.0V, but at that point, one of the two cores fail.

Why bother with this? Less fan noise, less power consumption, and lower temperatures. I have a bad habit of really giving my workstations and laptops a real workout when I have a lot of things going on. I have in the past triggered thermal events which caused the system to shutdown.

I can now run as many VMs, Dreamscenes, and applications I want and not worry about the temperature going over 80C.

Check out the list here.

As of right now, there is only one 2003 post-SP2 hotfixes for DFS. Best bet is to install 2003 SP2 and request hotfix 931685 to get the latest DFSR.EXE.

You might be thinking, "I haven't used Web Folders since Windows 98" but if you have used Sharepoint or anything with WebDAV, you are using Web Folders!

You can download and read about the May 2007 update here.

Fixes in this update

#1: A document that is opened from a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 site may be downloaded two times when you click Edit in Microsoft Office program.

#2: The download progress indicator does not work for some documents on the SharePoint site.

#3: You cannot rename or copy files that have a display name in a non-Internet Information Services (IIS) Web folder.

#4: Security Enhancements.

This update replaces the January 2005 Web Folders update.

Anyone that has installed Windows XP SP2 and tried to get it up to date with patches will agree with me - we need SP3 sooner than later. I know there has been talk of SP3 coming out later this year, which would be nice, but it will most likely come out in 2008 after Vista SP1 ships.

You can browse, and download, over 200 hotfixes from one location here. I am hoping Autopatcher for May 2007 comes out this weekend like promised, which will make this process much easier until SP3 really comes out.

Sidenote: If anyone from Microsoft is reading this, I'd love to be in the SP3 beta program if it is ever created or already exists.

Subject line says it all for the most part.

If you are experiencing missing data inside your WMI or corrupt data, you'll probably want to investigate these hotfixes.

You can read about the XP backport here.
You can read about and download the 2003 backport here.