IT

Very handy scripts to uninstall:

Various antispyware products, eTrust AV, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro.
Also included are a few FCS specific installation scripts that can come in handy.

You can request evaluation keys here and download the Enterprise Edition ISO image from here.

Windows Server 2008 RC0 system requirements and installation documentation is available here.

Release notes for Windows Server Virtualization (WSv aka Viridian aka Hypervisor) are available here.

Other RC0 editions available:
Datacenter
Standard
Web Server

Windows 2008 technical overview guides are available here. These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library.

If you need Windows Media Services for RC0, you can download those here.

Not much more to say other than read about it here.

Wait, there is a lot to say actually - this has Viridian / virtualization bits included for the first time.

You can download RC0 here.

Unfortunately, the Vista SP1 is not public yet, but I suspect they will do a preview soon.
It seems to run very well so far. My Vista boxes now boot as fast or faster than my Server 2008 virtual machines.
That makes sense because Windows 2008 and Vista SP1 are "built" from the same tree.

I try to learn something new everyday, and this would fall under that category. I was not aware of any scripting or COM interfaces built into the Group Policy Management Console.

Wrong! There are even some sample scripts posted on Microsoft's download center.

The description of the sample scripts:
The Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) provides a comprehensive set of COM interfaces that you can use to script many of the operations supported by the console. Included in this download is a set of sample scripts that make use of these interfaces.

It looks like these are primarily for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer Tool is a diagnostic tool that gathers configuration information from a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 environment and determines whether the configuration is set according to Microsoft best practices.

With the proper network access, the tool can examine your Active Directory and Office Communications Server 2007 servers to do the following:

Proactively perform health checks, verifying that the configuration is set according to recommended best practices
Generate a list of issues, such as suboptimal configuration settings or unsupported or not recommended options
Judge the general health of a system
Help troubleshoot specific problems
Prompt you to download updates if they are available
Provide online and local documentation about reported issues, including troubleshooting tips
Generate configuration information that can be captured for later review


You can read more about it and download it from here.

As mentioned in the September 2007 MCP Flash newsletter, my profile and a small question and answer session has been posted here on Microsoft's website.

Check this registry setting:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\{92AC8981-AAD9-4391-8563-92E558EEF4C6}\Server
SE - Standard Edition
EE - Enterprise Edition

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\{92AC8981-AAD9-4391-8563-92E558EEF4C6}\Type
Volume - volume license edition
Eval - evaluation edition and/or beta
MSDN - MSDN edition

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Real-Time Communications\{92AC8981-AAD9-4391-8563-92E558EEF4C6}\Version
1.0.4949.0 - Live Communications Server 2003 RTM
2.0.5369.0 - Live Communications Server 2005 RTM
2.0.5470.0 - Live Communications Server 2005 SP1
3.0.6090.0 - Office Communications Server 2007 Beta 3
3.0.6362.0 - Office Communications Server 2007 RTM

Originally spotted here.

A very good blog post that points out potential pitfalls and a little bit of 'best practice' advice for deployments. Very handy to keep bookmarked for anyone just learning how to use BDD or for the seasoned veteran that is looking for some helpful tips.

You can read his post here.

Note: "Builds" are going away in the next version of BDD (Business Desktop Deployment), but that is not a bad thing.

VMWare Workstation 6.0.1 is out.

You can download it from here.

You can view the release notes here.

Noteworthy items:

Workstation 6.0.1 adds experimental support for the following operating systems:
32-bit and 64-bit Windows Server 2008 (code name Longhorn) as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit openSUSE Linux 10.3 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Turbolinux 10 Server as a guest operating system


Workstation 6.0.1 adds full support for the following operating systems:
32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 7.04 as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (formerly called 4.0 Update 5) as host and guest operating systems
32-bit and 64-bit FreeBSD 6.2 as a guest operating system


User Interface for Collecting Support Data — You can now click a button in the Workstation Help > About dialog box to gather troubleshooting data for VMware Technical Support. Previously, you had to run the script from the command line.

It also addresses 7 security issues.

Want to test your knowledge of Microsoft Office Groove? Take the (beta) certification exam (70-555) before October 4th, 2007, using the promo code MOG07! Free, except for your time.

You can read more about this here.

Note: Beta exams always start with 71, so during beta when you sign up, you will want to look for 71-555 as the exam code to register for on the Prometric site. When the exam is released, the exam code becomes 70-555.

Unified communication devices, such as Microsoft Office Communicator Phone Experience and Microsoft RoundTable, enable rich communication within an organization. Deploying these devices requires regular maintenance by the IT department, which includes providing available software updates to these unified communications devices. All UC devices rely on an automatic mechanism to obtain software updates required on a regular basis.

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Software Update Service provides an automated way to update all unified communications devices deployed in an organization.

Download here and grab the deployment guide here.

Go here to read what has changed overall.

Changes and fixes in Office 2003 Service Pack 3, broken down by product:
Excel
Excel Viewer
Office
Outlook
OneNote
Powerpoint
Project
Sharepoint Portal Services
Visio
Windows Sharepoint Services
Word
Word Viewer

Download links for Office 2003 Service Pack 3:
Excel Viewer
Office (complete package)
Office MUI Pack
Office Proofing Tools
OneNote
Outlook Live
Project
Project MUI Pack
Project Server
Project Server MUI Pack
Sharepoint Portal Server
Visio
Visio MUI Pack
Windows SharePoint Services
Windows SharePoint Services Language Template Pack
Word Viewer

I've written about BDD in the past and this is a noteworthy announcement too. "BDD Development 4" is now available on the Microsoft Connect site if you use an invitation code of: BDDP-QMYH-VWTH

What is new so far? A lot!

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 support
Support for multiple task sequence templates
New sample templates
Ability to invoke web service calls
Support for web service calls from rules
Support for side-by-side installation with Deployment 4 and BDD 2007 installed on the same machine

Lite Touch Installation (LTI) enhancements:
Support for Windows Server 2008, including multicast WDS
Enhanced disk and network interface cards (NICs) configuration options, including support for static TCP/IP configuration
Design changes to ease the migration from LTI to Configuration Manager 2007

Check here for more info.

There is an update available for Forefront Client Security that could, potentially, result in less help desk phone calls for existing and future deployments. You will want to look into KB 940060.

Why less support calls? Mainly due to a change in "end-user notification when allowing an application that is blocked by default" and the fact that the FCS icon will no longer turn red for the user when the program has been marked by the Administrator to be "ignored".

Real world example: Numerous places use VNC everyday to administer pre-XP machines. VNC by default, the last I checked, gets marked as a suspicious program by FCS and Windows Defender. Most IT admins that are using VNC do not want their FCS icon to be red all the time, even though they have specifically set VNC to 'ignore'.

In a nutshell, this update fixes that issue plus a few others!

You can read more in-depth analysis about the update from the FCS guys here and read the actual KB article here.

I'm that EHLO World guy in the September 2007 MCP Flash, with a full question and answer section in the Microsoft Learning Peers section here, once the cache propagates.

Thumbnail image of the newsletter:


To view the full size version, click here.

Sidenote:

Our oldest daughter, Sabrina, turned 6 today. I'll will always be able to remember the day the newsletter came out due to this.

I've also lost 15 to 20 pounds since that picture was taken in February 2007. During that time, unknown to me, four wisdom teeth were becoming impacted and very infected. They were taken out last month and my whole face feels 100% better. No more 'chipmunk' look.