Server

The Windows Server 2003 Certificate Services Web enrollment functionality relies on an ActiveX control that is named Xenroll. This ActiveX control is available in Microsoft Windows 2000 and in later versions of Windows. However, Xenroll has been deprecated in Windows Vista and in Windows Server 2008. The sample certificate enrollment Web pages that are included with the original release version of Microsoft Windows Server 2003, with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and with Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) are not designed to handle the change in how Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 perform Web-based certificate enrollment operations.

Read more about this at KB 922706.

You can download the updated web pages for 2003 x86 here and 2003 x64 here.

Suppose you receive the dreaded This update does not apply to this system. message when attempting to install a .MSU package, but you know for a fact that it really does apply.

You can, to a certain extent, short circuit the update process by doing the following:

Suppose you are trying to install a patch from KB article 667668 (currently not a valid KB) for a 32-bit install:
expand -F:* Windows6.0-KB667668-x86.msu %temp%\kb667668\

start /w %SystemRoot%\system32\pkgmgr.exe /ip /m:%temp%\kb667668\Windows6.0-KB667668-x86.cab

Thanks go to Ottó Horváth for the tip, slightly modified.

You can also uninstall updates this way too, by changing the /ip to /up.

Update: One thing I forgot to mention, is that if you need to install multiple updates this way, you will need to use a different directory for each update, which is sort of hinted at by my use of \kb667668\. It is documented why here in KB 932224.

There are 2 products I know of that can encapsulate USB traffic and stuff it across Ethernet frames. Very cool concept.

There is this product by KernelPro and this product by FabulaTech.

Both are prohibitively expensive for what I want to use it for.

Call me crazy, or call me creative, this is one way of getting USB support into Virtual Server / Virtual PC / Hyper-V virtual machines.

I haven’t tested my theory with a trial version of one of the above but it sure seems like it should work. If anyone has real world experience with either of those above products, please leave a comment!

Why do I want USB support in a VM?
So I can run a 32-bit instance of XP under Hyper-V, that uses the Cisco VPN client to connect into my work network using PDANet connected to my Motorola Q as a client inside the XP VM. Right now I can do that with VMWare just fine, but not with Hyper-V natively due to the lack of USB support for guests.

Countdown until MS buys one of the above and puts USB support into Hyper-V R2.

Bottom line: After upgrading your server to SCOM 2007 SP1, upgrade your agents from RTM to SP1 or they will leak 4MB of memory a day.

Read more about it here. Originally posted here.

Read more about it here and download it from here.

Lots of products work out of the box without change, while others will need updates, and some will probably never run on Server 2008.

To stay up to date on what works and what doesn't, check out KB 948680.

Current list of incompatible products:
BizTalk 2004 and earlier versions of BizTalk
Commerce Server 2002 and earlier versions of Commerce Server
Compute Cluster Server 2003
Dynamics CRM 3.0 and earlier versions of Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Exchange Server 2003
Host Integration Server 2004 and earlier versions of Host Integration Server
Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006 and earlier versions of ISA Server
Office Communications Server 2007
Speech Server 2004 R2
SQL Server 2000 and earlier versions of SQL Server
System Center Reporting Manager 2006
Systems Management Server 2003

I'm doing a lot with Server 2008 lately so expect many Server 2008-centric posts for a while.

This website provides information on SPS and Windows 2008.

Their description describes the site better than I can, which is:
This page provides IT pros with resources to help deploy Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to Windows Server 2008.

As of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with SP1, you can install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008. You cannot install Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Office SharePoint Server 2007 without service packs on Windows Server 2008.

Windows SBS 2000/2003 enforce a limitation that permits only one Windows SBS domain controller in the domain. This software update extends the allowable grace period for the supported scenarios from 7 days to 21 days.

I suspect "Cougar", aka SBS 2008, will have the same 21 day limitation.

If you want your Windows 2003 VHDs to migrate back and forth between Virtual PC, Virtual Server, and Hyper-V as easy as possible, make sure they are running the ACPI multi-cpu HAL.

Hyper-V installs this HAL into any VHD image you put the Integration Services (IS) on. IS is vastly different than Virtual PC addition – think of them as native synthetic drivers and not emulations. You have to uninstall Virtual PC additions before you can install the Integration Services.

Breakdown by OS (so far that I have discovered):

Windows 2000 – do the same as 2003, but it seems more resilient to going back and forth due to a lack of native Integration Services (so far).

Windows XP – do the same as 2003.

Windows 2008 – it has Hyper-V support natively.

Windows Vista SP1 – I think you can hijack it and get the Windows 2008 IS pieces to work – haven’t tried yet.

For Linux, go to Microsoft's Connect site and download the Integration Services for Linux – so far, only Novell/Suse is supported but I am sure if you roll your own kernel, you can hack the patches in yourself (haven’t tried yet).

Some of this information I originally stumbled upon here.

The image below is a non-doctored screenshot of a Hyper-V Server 2008 VM instance copying a 4.22GB .WIM file from the host Server 2008. The file copy went from my laptop's 7200 rpm hard drive to my laptop's 5400 rpm drive bay hard drive, using Windows File Shares between the host and guest. The file copy eventually slowed down because Hyper-V had to auto-extend the VM's VHD to hold all of the contents.

Interesting sidenote: Hyper-V network interfaces report themselves as 10GB interfaces, and the Hyper-V remote control seems to be a wrapper around an RDP session secured by a self-signed SSL certificate. How can you tell? Put a Hyper-V session to full screen - notice the drop down that looks exactly like a full-screen RDP session? That's because it is. Notice the padlock? That's the SSL certificate.