Aaron Tiensivu's Blog

This will be much easier to deploy once Windows 2008 is more widespread, and don't confuse Windows Deployment Services (WDS) with Windows Desktop Search (WDS), because they are not the same thing. Unfortunately the buzzword bingo namespace has a collision with these two technologies.

Windows Desktop Search is famous the past few days for the unfortunate WSUS incident.

WDS, in deployment terms, is the updated/revamped/retooled RIS of Windows 2000. Wait, don't run away screaming yet, because WDS actually scales well and is an image based deployment technology. If you have installed Vista, you have used WDS without even knowing it.

With Server 2008 around the corner, WDS gains multicast support, which is very handy for blasting out images across a network to any properly configured client that is listening. I know, Ghost and other programs have had this for a long time, but it is nice to see this as a built-in feature. I am hoping that this catches on in a big way and finally retires most of the network switches and routers out there that fall over once multicast packets hit the wire. I've seen way too many no-name/OEM network infrastructure components lock up in the past with multicast traffic.

You can use WDS today with Windows 2003 SP1/SP2 and start migrating off your RIS infrastructure, if you have one. There is a very nice step-by-step guide from the Server Core team here that shows you how to get it up and running today.

Want to get a head start on Microsoft Deployment (the renamed BDD), Windows 2008, and the chosen deployment method for Compute Cluster 2003 SP1? Learn WDS inside and out. It seems to be getting used in more and more products as time goes on.

Anyone that has worked with voice over IP knows that you can put pretty much anything in as the Caller ID for outgoing calls. Credit card companies typically require you to activate credit cards from the home phone listed with them.

In the 'good ole days' of POTS lines that had caller ID handled typically by the phone company, this was a pretty OK security measure. Today, not so much. I am surprised it is still used honestly.
I have only activated a few cards and I'm disturbed how automated the process is overall.

It would be very easy for someone doing identity theft to get the person's home phone number, hijack a VOIP installation or create one themselves, and spoof the credit card system's security by claiming to be calling from the house in question.

Maybe I am being over paranoid, but it just doesn't sit well with me.

Check to see if there is one coming to a city near you. The closest one to me is in Detroit on November 13th but I doubt I'll be able to make it. My home/work life is beyond crazy these days.

Free stuff? Sure.

When you attend the event, you will receive a complimentary Microsoft Unified Communications Starter Kit*, which includes Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Evaluation, and Office Live Meeting 2007 60-Day Trial.

It is worth checking out. It is very cool technology and I don't say that about many things.

I've been absent for a bit for various reasons, some good, some bad, but in the meantime, BDD Development 4 became Microsoft Deployment. It is at RC1 level now. You can read more about it here.

Multicast WDS support - sounds very Windows 2008-esque.

To purchase online, visit the TechNet Subscription Site.
Use promo code:TMSAM04 to get $100 off! That's almost 33% off.

Only lasts until 5/31/08 and only valid in the US.

Originally spotted here.

I suspect that this will be one of the last updates for Exchange 2007 before SP1 ships.
It looks like only two issues were fixed, but they are noteworthy if you are experiencing these issues. This download replaces all previous update rollups. Originally spotted by Elan.

Just in case anyone runs into this out in the field, because it can be a bit puzzling until you read KB article 923218.

Previously, if you had SNMP Status enabled for the printer in question, with 2000/2003 RTM/SP1, and the printer never responded to the SNMP request, it still listed the printer as Online.

If the printer is not listening for SNMP traffic *or* a firewall is in the way, the printer will get marked as Offline even though it will happily take requests from any other non-SP2 print spooler.

It isn’t terribly well documented, but it has bitten some people with their remote printers. Most people end up rolling back to SP1, but you don’t need to if you configure your servers and printers correctly!

Simple fix: Either enable SNMP on the printer and make sure you can snmpwalk the printer from the print server, or uncheck the SNMP Status for the printer on the SP2 print server.

Related links: here and here.

You can sum it up as:
PDANet (any version) plus Motorola Q plus Vista SP1 beta = failure after 10 seconds.

Very interesting problem that I have been fighting for a week or two.

I suspect there is something in SP1 (maybe related to SSTP or NAP?) that the PPP servers at Verizon do not like. I've even changed around all the normal PDANet PPP settings to not use LCP extensions and other settings but this always remains the same:

I can get a connection and browse with PDANet 1.80 and Vista SP1 for about 10 seconds and then the connection drops and disconnects rather harshly.

Rollback to RTM Vista and it works fine.

I've even disabled the SSTP IP Helper in Device Manager, no go.

For now when I am on the road and without a net connection, I've been booting up an XP SP3 virtual machine in VMWare using the USB-passthru and connecting that way. I use a loopback adapter on Vista that makes the host machine a client of the XP VM's ICS. It is a very esoteric setup I will admit, but I at least can get some network connectivity to my Vista host machine this way.

XP SP3 should be noted - it makes me think the SSTP/NAP stuff might not be the overall issue causing the connection failures.

Has anyone else seen this or have a work around?

If you've downloaded KB 941649 previously and did not experience any issues, you don't need v2.
If you had Serial ATA/AHCI issues, typically in combination with optical drives, with the original KB 941649, grab v2 and give it a try.

Technical differences between the two
This package has been updated to version 2. An issue was identified in which certain computers that have specific combinations of older AHCI USB chipsets and CD or DVD drives that use the SerialATA interconnection bus may not start after the installation of the original version of this package. Version 2 of this package has removed the fix that caused this problem. If you are using a computer that experienced this issue, you can restart the computer by using a bootable Windows Vista DVD and by selecting the Repair/System Recovery options. If your computer has already installed the original version of this update and has successfully restarted, you do not have to install version 2 of this update.

By the way, unrelated to this, Service Pack 1 for Vista will include all of these fixes, and boot time, at least for my test boxes with early versions of SP1, is dramatically sped up. Ditto for the duration between entering your user credentials and getting a usable desktop.

The best part of using custom presence states is the fact that your message will display on phones just like the normal presence states of "Busy", "Be Right Back", etc.

Not sure what I am talking about? Sometimes a picture helps, so check this out:

Those bottom 4 ‘states’ were added by me.

How to make your own
Download this and unzip into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Communicator, assuming you used OC 2007 defaults.

Once extracted, edit C:\Program Files\Microsoft Communicator\OCSPresence.xml with Notepad or XMLNotepad and change the descriptions to your liking.
Import the registry file C:\Program Files\Microsoft Communicator\OCSPresence.reg and restart Communicator.

Universal limitations
You can only define up to 4 custom entries.
Maximum length of the custom presence description is 64 characters.
XML customState availability can be set to “online”, “busy” and “do-not-disturb”.

My implementation's limitations
You must extract the files into C:\Program Files\Microsoft Communicator\ unless you want to change the .REG file to use a different location (can be file://, http://, https://)

You will want to change the “GRR” entry unless you are from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

If you want the custom states set for everyone on the computer system instead of the current user, you need to change the .REG file from HKCU to HKLM. (Mostly only useful for TS servers)

Update: Looks like I'm not the only one that has been playing around with custom states - check out this post here.

Update: There is now a VERY cool utility to do the hard work for you. Thanks to the author for leaving a comment about it on this post. You can check out the program here.

Very interesting free download from Microsoft came out today - a Works v6, v7, v8, and v9 Word Processor file format utility.
I know many small offices migrating from Works to the full blown Office suite will find this very handy.

The following languages shipped out this week:
Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Serbian (Latin), Slovak, Slovenian, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

You can read more about the announcement here.

Translating program code for various countries can be very tricky. You always have to worry about slang terms and other potentially embarrassing mix ups, so it doesn't surprise me that it took this long.

I am hoping, and have been promised, more Windows Ultimate Extras in the future. It is a sore spot with many users that MS is very aware of.

Just a quick note - passed another TS exam while it was in beta, this time for Office Communications Server 2007.

Best advice for taking the exam: install the server and some demo clients and go over the setup documentation, a lot.

I spotted this over at NeoWin and will be giving it a whirl sometime soon. Very cool concept, I am just not sure how efficient it is. The homepage is located here.

Now Microsoft just needs to do something like this for Live SkyDrive and I will be a happy camper.

I'm back in Michigan for a week so hopefully I'll be posting more again. I have a lot to catch up on.

2007 seems to be the year of the Best Practice Analyzer. Exchange was the first that I am aware of, and ever since then, they have released more BPAs for other products.

This one has been needed for a long time because I've been called into fix many improperly configured SBS boxes in my day, dating back to SBS 2000. SBS servers only used for file and print services, but everything is installed and running? Yep, I've seen it.

Anyway, here is the description of the new SBS tool:
The Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Best Practices Analyzer examines a server that is running Windows Small Business Server 2003 (Windows SBS) and presents a list of information and errors that administrators should review.

A great tool for any SBS'r.