Vista

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.

I must admit the Princeton paper on cold boot attacks on encryption keys is very clever.

There is now a great resource on making Bitlocker a bit more secure. Pretty much anyone with a system capable of running Bitlocker should be using TPM and a PIN, along with AES 256 bit with Diffuser.

Read in much more detail 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.

KMS servers hand out licenses for Windows Vista and Server 2008 on corporate networks.

One aspect that was not addressed very well, in my opinion, was the situation when an "outsider" plugs into your network. If their copy of Vista needs to be re-authorized, they could potentially pull down your enterprise's license key. Does it happen very often? I doubt it. Is it possible? Very much so.

A clever solution I overheard this week from someone at Microsoft was the following:

Problem: Anyone that plugs into a KMS-enabled network can grab an enterprise license for their Vista/Windows 2008 computer by default with KMS services.

Solution: IPSec-ize the KMS server ports – only domain joined computers can “see” the KMS server due to IPsec rules. "Outsiders" can't see the KMS server.

This could also be a handy thing for NAP to take care of, now that I think about it.

Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is an important update for Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains many security, reliability, and feature updates for Windows Vista. A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1.

Currently, 6 applications are blocked from running, and 3 do not run, and 3 do not run properly.

You can read more about it here.

Primarily performance increases for the newer ATI/AMD GPUs, but more interesting to me is the amount of issues/bugs fixed compared to previous releases.

You can download the new drivers from here. You can read the release notes here.

ATI/AMD has really come around in the driver department in the past few years. In the past, NVidia used to be the king for stable drivers, but the opposite is true these days for Vista drivers and to a certain extent, even the newer XP drivers.

Just a few years ago, after being an ATI fanboy since the VGAWonder days, I swore off ever buying another ATI product due to their non-support of older graphics cards and horrible driver bugs. They were always excellent for image quality, normally on par with Matrox, but I had too many problems with the old drivers.

Now, Nvidia and ATI are about 'equal' in my opinion on image quality and Matrox is now a niche-market player only. I used to have systems with multiple Matrox Millennium PCI cards for insane multi-monitor setups. I still have a pile of those cards around somewhere.

If you don't want to install Lenovo System Update and want (typically) newer drivers than what is offered from Lenovo, check out these links.

If you want the absolute bleeding edge drivers, go to Station Drivers - it is in French but they typically track OEM drivers better than the OEMs.

For the more sane/normal, I am trying to use Intel's site as much as possible so that when new releases come out, these will still be valid links.

Intel Chipset INF drivers

Official Intel
Station Drivers

Intel AHCI/SATA - enable AHCI support in the BIOS first

Official Intel
Station Drivers

Intel wired LAN

Official Intel
Station-Drivers

Intel wireless LAN (especially important for Vista SP1 - old versions like to blue screen – known SP1 blocker!)

Official Intel
Station-Drivers

Atheros wireless LAN

Official Atheros (on Lenovo site)
Station-Drivers

Video (ATI)

Official AMD/ATI
Station-Drivers
Mobility Modder (make newer AMD/ATI reference drivers work on Mobile chipsets)

Video (Nvidia)

Official Nvidia
Station-Drivers
“Generic” INFs for Mobile chipsets

HD Audio

Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture “generic” driver
Built-in with Vista

Official Lenovo
Station-Drivers

Bluetooth

Microsoft Stack
Built-in with Vista

Broadcom/WIDCOMM Stack
Last Broadcom/WIDCOMM Stack with working ActiveSync (WMDC) over BT

Fingerprint reader

Official Lenovo software package (with memory leaking driver)
Official UPEK driver (earlier versions leak memory – update the driver after installing the above!)

CPU tuning utility (undervolt/underclock for extra cooling)
Thinkpad Fan tuning utility (power users only – good for overheating laptops!)

Despite what you might think, I actually have a life outside of searching for drivers. Really.

This package is designed to fix issues with Rescue and Recovery 4.2 and Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

This package is intended for use with systems running Microsoft Windows Vista RTM or Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 and configured with Rescue and Recovery 4.2.

If you want your Windows 2003 WSUS servers to be able to download and deploy Vista SP1 when it comes out, you will want to install this update.

I suspect part of the delay with the release of Vista SP1 RTM is due to this issue with Windows 2003, but also the known driver reinstall problem.