Windows OS

Short of compiling new programs that take advantage of the new Vista SP1 SDK changes, I don't know if this new kernel has the new features or not.

I do know that it does fix more than just what is mentioned in this KB article, because my Vista system is running more like my Windows 2008 virtual machines. It seems like it is using less memory and booting faster, but that might just be wishful thinking. Considering that they are 4115 builds apart, it shouldn't be too surprising.

Check out the KB article here.

You can easily request hotfixes through e-mail by clicking on the 'Request MS hotfix' on the left side of my website. It will direct you to a web form on Microsoft's site that will send you the hotfix you request automagically within 8 business hours.

Please don't abuse the service though - in the past, it required a phone call to PSS.

You'll want to investigate KB 934797 and request the hotfix for your Vista clients to prevent excessive certificate refreshes.

Not sure what Credential Roaming is? Read about it here.

Unrelated to this hotfix, but worth noting, is that there is a hotfix available for Windows 2003 and Windows XP so that they do not strip the newer CNG data that can come from Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 operating systems.

This rollup has definitely been needed for many laptops and desktops running Vista.

"Microsoft has released a cumulative update rollup for Windows Vista. This rollup helps establish a quality baseline for the USB core components on the Windows Vista operating system. This rollup supersedes previously-released USB fixes and contains additional high-applicability USB fixes."

It combines 13+ previous hotfixes into one package, and also includes some previously undocumented fixes:

1. When the computer resumes from suspend state or hibernation state, the computer stops responding, and you receive a 0x9F stop message on a blue screen.

2. The computer takes a long time to resume from suspend state or hibernation state.

3. The computer takes a long time to resume from suspend state or hibernation state when you use a VIA controller.

4. The computer stops responding when you use an AuthenTec USB fingerprint reader. Also, you receive a 0xFE Stop error on a blue
screen or a 0x9F Stop error on a blue screen.

5. The computer stops responding when you use a USB Bluetooth audio device.

6. The computer takes a long time to resume from a suspend state or from a hibernation state when you use an Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) controller.

7. The computer stops responding when you remove a USB device, and you receive a 0xFE Stop error on a blue screen.

8. When a computer resumes from a suspend state or from a hibernation state multiple times, you receive a 0xFE Stop error on a blue screen.

Spotted this over at Steathpuppy.com:

I really do not like automated auto-installs from websites without an option to download a stand-alone executable. Adobe has joined this trend with the release of Acrobat Reader 8.1.

9 times out of 10, I am merely going to a website to download an install file so I can install deploy the package on a different or internet-crippled computer. I like direct firewall/proxy friendly HTTP links, not automated Active-X or Java applets, or better yet, a FTP site that has resume capability.

With that said, make sure to check out this page on Adobe's site for actual .EXE installs of Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1, or use an alternative PDF viewer, which has direct download links.

If you are merely looking for the link to the English version of Acrobat Reader 8.1, simply click here.

Before finding this on StealthPuppy, I had been downloading Acrobat on a client computer, and tracing the file activity with Process Monitor to find where the package uncompresses after download. IT admins really shouldn't be required to do silly things like this.

Also over at StealthPuppy are some nice MSI transforms for Acrobat 8.1.

Update: Leslie Smith pointed me to another good PDF alternative with multiple rendering engines: Sumatra PDF viewer, and a nice portable version located here. Thanks Leslie!

Update 2: Here is where I potentially put my foot in my mouth. Arian van der Pijl points out that Adobe has an FTP site with full MSI packages available for download here. I still stand behind the original intent of my post though because I looked for a good 15 to 20 minutes on Adobe's website to try to find a direct download link. Thanks Arian.

Anthony Bailey tipped me off to a nice offer going on from Microsoft Learning. There are a few chapters missing but it looks like they are putting up various chapters from time to time.

Information about the book:
Introducing Windows Server 2008 (ISBN: 9780735624214), by Mitch Tulloch with the Microsoft Windows Server Team.

Register with a Live ID and access the eBook here.

These are the updated Active Directory / Server Component PDF posters I posted about a few months ago – except they have been updated for Windows Server 2008.

Good to print out and hang on the wall to get the big picture, or try to.

Download them here.

I'm rebuilding my laptop with a brand new 7200 rpm Seagate Momentus 7200.2 and placing my original 5400 rpm Hitachi drive in the secondary SATA bay, so I have been 'away' for a few days. I'm also on the trailing edge of a two week vacation that ends today, essentially.

There is a lot of finger pointing going on as to who is to blame for this security problem, but I don't really care about that aspect of it. I am only interested in preventing the exploits from running. So far, the proof of concepts are a bit buggy, but it is only a matter of time until the spam writers and malware writers clean up the code.

You can do one of two things, or better yet, do both, to prevent this exploit:

1. Run these commands to unregister the URL handlers:
reg delete HKCR\FirefoxURL /f
reg delete HKCR\Firefox.URL /f
reg delete HKCR\FirefoxHTML /f

2. Install NoScript which has built in protections against this type of attack by default.

I already use #2, but I also performed #1 to be on the safe side.

You can read more about it here.

Essentially, in Windows 2003 RTM, SP1, and SP2, the session pool tags Ggls, Gpff, Gfnt, Gpfe, and Gtvp leak memory. This hotfix takes care of the problem and also puts KB 901150, 907242, 910362, 918673, 923035, and 924806 into retirement.

GDI32.DLL, WIN32K.SYS and WGDI32.DLL are all updated to versions dated in mid 2007.

A few coworkers ran into this issue today and I'm hoping this information will help some people out.

Unfortunately many VPN clients, including Cisco's VPN client, use the DNE adapter. If you install the Cisco VPN client and then install KB 935280, your network adapters will no longer work.

Solution to the problem if you have already installed KB 935280?

You can do one of the following:

1. Unbind DNE from your network adapters after installing KB 935280. DNE and any program that uses DNU will still be disabled.

or

2. Uninstall KB 935280 until a fixed version of DNE becomes available or the VACU receives another update.

It looks like the KB article mentions version 3.12.2 of the DNE.
I am not sure if there is a newer version available but I would love to know!

Thanks go out to Tom Dietz and Kevin Somers for initial problem report, the root cause and solution.

I had suspected this for a long time but didn't really have any proof, because I use sleep and ReadyBoost quite a bit. I had noticed that there seemed to be a hard drive frenzy when I would resume from sleep and that Vista was essentially rewriting all of my 4GB ReadyBoost cache file.

Well, it looks like I was right, but not for the reason I originally thought - it is due to the old ReadyBoost key becoming invalid and it does recreate the ReadyBoot.sfcache file.

You can read about it more here, and it looks like the behavior will be changed in Vista SP1 so that sleeping your computer will not cause major drive thrashing on resume.

On a good note, my Seagate Momentus 7200.2 drive should be here this week for my laptop and the current Hitachi drive will moved to the SATA drive bay as a dedicated virtual machine repository. I won't have to worry about thrashing as much at that point. The only bummer is that I will have to take out my secondary bay battery to use both hard drives at once. On the upside, I don't have to drag around a Firewire/USB external hard drive and power adapter anymore.

It looks like Carl also noticed the same problem earlier this year.

A fellow MVP has written a neat program that lets you pick and choose which programs should be blocked on startup. I know when I have UAC enabled, NHC (Notebook Hardware Control) always gets flagged as a blocked program. Thankfully the newer versions are Vista compatible so I don't need it to be blocked anymore.

You can download the English version here and the French version here.

I originally spotted this in the newsgroups and in the blog posting here.

I am also excited to announce that my postings are now mirrored at the MSMVPS website.

What's new in Network Monitor 3.1 (important, to me, items in bold)?

New look for the filter toolbar
New reassembly engine
New public parsers
Wireless capturing and monitor mode on Vista
RAS tracing support on Vista
Right click add to filter
Microsoft Update enabled
Faster Parser Loading
Numerous Bug Fixes

Grab it on Connect under 'Network Monitor'.