XP

In a comment on my previous blog entry about Windows Script 5.7, Paul Dempsey provided a link to the official release notes to Windows Script 5.7.

Highlights of that document:

We’ve switched from IExpress to Windows Package Installer technology. This provides for more flexible install, uninstall, and easier deployment. For example, this package may be uninstalled through Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel.

What’s New

In addition to the general improvements noted above, the following are some of the notable changes in this release.

JScript

- This package includes the improved garbage collector (GC) shipped with Internet Explorer 7 and Vista. The new GC can dramatically improve the performance of applications that create large numbers of objects, such as Ajax-style web applications. These performance improvements are now available to users of earlier browsers.
This work replaces and improves upon KB 919237. If you have implemented KB 919237, we recommend removing the registry keys.

- New progid JScript.Compact implements the JScript Compact Profile (ECMA 327). This is a profile of the ECMAScript language standard with a subset of features. See the ECMA 327 standard for more information.

- Update for new Daylight Savings Time rules.

VBScript

- VBScript defines a new global function GetUILanguage that returns the current default user interface language. This is the same value returned by the Windows API GetUserDefaultUILanguage. Script authors can now write code that is aware of the current user’s language preference.

- Fix crash when calling VBScript class objects from JScript.

- Fix problems with comparisons to NaN in some versions (KB 901104).

VBScript and JScript

- Support for large address space on machines with > 2GB RAM (KB 890048)

- Improved stack checking makes script more robust in the face of stack overflows.

- Fix miscellaneous TLS leaks and memory leaks, including using the RegEx object with more than 10 sub-matches.

Windows Scripting Host

- Fixed rare deadlocks in remote scripting. Prevents occasional hangs in remote scripts.

- Fixed propagation of error return codes in remote scripting. Error codes produced by remote scripts are more reliably returned to the client.

- Fixed attempting to load nonexistent wshenu.dll which created performance problem in login scripts.

Included KB’s

This release also contains fixes described in the following knowledgebase articles:

KB 831191, 834742, 836863, 890048, 892296, 901104, 903648, 906092, 917344, 919237, 925753, 933811, 933812, 933873, and 940284.

This application is going into my bag of tricks for debugging temperamental servers or workstations. You can take a snapshot of the system state, sort of like what Windows does for the actual System State data, and compare it to another system state from another point in time. Note that it does not use or require actual System State snapshots created by Windows, so you can create these dynamically on the fly very easily.

Perfect for finding out what applications put in your registry and file system.
Perfect for debugging esoteric Softgrid or Terminal Server problems.
Perfect for debugging cluster servers that are supposed to be setup practically identical, but could potentially be setup differently.

Plus, I'm sold on the price - Free.





I first read about it here and have been playing with the application for the past few hours.

You can download the program here.

Anthony Bailey tipped me off to this earlier today.

Changelog for "Codename Moviestar" from previous Flash 9 versions

Support for H.264 video and HE-AAC audio codecs (new Aug. 21).

Enhancements to full-screen mode to use hardware scaling for improved video performance and quality on systems running Windows 2000 and newer or Mac OS X 10.2 and newer.

Faster rendering of vector graphics on multi-core CPUs.

Higher quality and performance for downscaling large bitmaps (SWF 9 only).

Support for caching common platform components, such as the Flex framework, to reduce average application sizes.

Support for full-screen mode on Linux.

Recursive calling to and from JavaScript via the ExternalInterface API is now permitted (not available in Opera or Netscape).

Runtime errors can now be thrown from JavaScript to ActionScript via the External Interface API.

HTTP requests from the Flash Player ActiveX Control in some versions of Internet Explorer did not include the Accept-Language header. The ActiveX Control now always inserts this header.

Support for Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) in the Windows plug-in.

As always, you will want to uninstall the previous version of the player before installing the new release.

If you are looking for a downloadable version of the Internet Explorer ActiveX Flash component, you can download it from here.

As time goes on, you will see more references to WinRM, especially with Windows Server 2008. Windows 2003 R2 had a form of WinRM that has now been updated to support the WS-Management industry standard.

Who should be interested in this? People that manage servers remotely and need a firewall friendly protocol to use. People that are looking into deploying Windows Server 2008 and especially Windows Server 2008 Core. People that need to interface with the BMC adapters on servers from remote.

Anyway, KB 936059 updates Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 WinRM components to bring them more in line with what Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are using.

If you've downloaded the Windows Script 5.7 for 2000, 2003, or XP, you are probably wondering what has changed.
I know I was, other than the fact that it brings the version in line with what ships with Vista.

The comments in the posting here is the best we have for now for release notes.

Based on the comments so far:
1. All the security fixes/updates made in Windows Scripting from Windows Script 5.6.
2. The adaptive GC fix which was done in Jscript that ships with IE7. This is now available publicly on down level OS and for all hosts.
3. Partial fix for the circular reference issue mentioned here.

Ideally, a real release notes will show up at some point. I've had customers ask me what has changed and I don't have a good reference guide for them other than this.

I noticed this post over at the Forefront Client Security blog asking for feedback from customers that use the same management group name for multiple deployments within the same environment.

As a best practice they recommend using different management group names for each deployment. There are many other interesting issues documented within the FCS release notes too.

I am curious why this is a best practice because they don't really explain the reason behind it.
I suspect due to avoiding 'reporting stampedes' from FCS clients to only one management group, but I'm not sure overall.

Due to a bug in many versions of the Adobe Acrobat PDFWriter driver, you can experience a blue screen which will effectively crash your terminal server. Read more about it here - KB 939442.

I suspect it isn't limited to just Windows 2003, but also Windows 2000 terminal servers.

Just a heads up based on chatter I have seen on various forums on the internet - people with video cards that use the PCIE-to-AGP converter and some older native AGP ATI cards are having problems with the new drivers. I suspect (but can't confirm) that if you 'mix-and-match' the newer drivers DLLs with the older SMARTGART DLLs, you will have a more stable system, but the easiest route is just to revert to the older version until the issues are taken care of.

If you are having issues, make sure to let AMD/ATI know.

There is a good ongoing message thread about this driver release here.

Sort of like Autopatcher, but not really.

Check out the new Update Catalog website, and read more about it here.

Noteworthy (to me) Feature list

1. Search for updates - Download them to your machine, regardless of whether the update is applicable to your machine.
2. Import updates - WSUS 3.0, System Center Essentials 2007, or System Center Configuration Manager 2007 supported.
3. RSS feeds - Save your searches in RSS and get notified when new updates match your criteria.
4. “Shopping basket” feature - Select multiple updates and download them together.

Catalyst 7.8 has been released. Along with the usual performance updates and bug fixes, they also fix the famed 'Purple Pill' exploit.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, just take my word for it and upgrade today. It will prevent a potential security issue on your system.

If your OEM is lagging behind with video driver updates (ahem - Lenovo - ahem), you can always use the Mobility Modder from Driver Heaven to add support for ATI mobile graphics chipset.

KB 939796 details a good way of sequencing Office 2007 in a SoftGrid environment. If this all sounds like a foreign langauge to you, it really isn't. SoftGrid is now part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack.

The best way to think of it? Let's say for some reason you want to run Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 on the same desktop. Softgrid helps make that happen.

I am, however, curious why they force the Office 2007 applications to use the 'classic' search and not use the integrated indexing software of Office 2007. I suspect it is due to the way the indexing service is implemented. If any Softgrid experts out there know why, please let me know!

Based on the website name (http://blogs.technet.com/askds/), it looks like they are looking for questions from people about Active Directory.

The day after I post about the VSS packages available, a new one gets released.

This one is pretty important though if you seem to be experiencing memory leaks with the VSS services.

Read more about it here.

If you're curious, I've been bug hunting lately and it has involved these particular DLLs and the applications that use them.

Run the command "netstat -t" from a command prompt. If you receive an error message, which is expected for any OS without the SNP, you do not have it installed.

If you receive output that looks like normal netstat output, with an extra field called "Offload State", you have SNP installed.

It is also a round-about way of telling if you have the offloading features of your network card enabled and/or working.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, you can read more about SNP at the KB article here or the main SNP site here.

Sidenote: Despite the "bad rap" SNP has received during the Windows 2003 SP2 rollout, with properly written and up to date network drivers, it does enhance the network stack quite a bit! It is also, by default, included with Vista and Windows Server 2008.