Windows OS

Microsoft is allowing Windows XP Service Pack 2 machines to be offered Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 via Windows Update. Windows XP Service Pack 3 will be offered on Windows Update when Service Pack 3 releases in the first half of 2008.

Grab it here.

I have talked about it in the past and it is one of the coolest additions to Windows Server 2008 - Network Access Protection (NAP). I know Cisco has NAC, but it is better to think of this as a framework than a competing product. NAC can interact with NAP with the right agents.

If you want to read up on this, make sure to check out these documents:
Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate NAP IPsec Enforcement in a Test Lab
Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate NAP DHCP Enforcement in a Test Lab
Step-by-Step Guide: Demonstrate NAP 802.1X Enforcement in a Test Lab

You can read more about NAP here too.

If you go to the Server 2008, SQL 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 launch event in your area, it looks like you will be getting some Not-For-Resale goodies.

1. Windows Server 2008 Enterprise RTM (64 and 32 bit) with a product key
2. Visual Studio 2008 Standard RTM
3. SQL Server 2008 CTP 5.0 with a voucher for a RTM copy when available

If you happen to go to the Grand Rapids, Michigan or Detroit, Michigan event, I should be in the "Ask the Experts" section with Microsoft, if everything goes as planned.

I have heard rumors of discounted TechNet Plus subscriptions too, so those are always nice too!

Details originally spotted here.

When a user encrypts a file stored on a Windows file server the actual encryption of the file occurs on the server. To accomplish this, a special profile is created on the server in order to create and store an EFS (Encrypting File System) encryption key on behalf of the user. Thereafter, each time the user accesses their encrypted files on the server, this special profile is loaded on behalf of the user, and the previously created encryption key is used.

Issue: These special user profiles are not migrated when a Windows file server is upgraded to Windows Server 2008. When a user attempts to access their encrypted files, the upgraded file server does not see a special profile for that user and subsequently invokes the creation of a new special profile, with new EFS encryption keys. These new keys are now different than the original keys for the user, and therefore the decryption of previously encrypted files fails.

Read more about it here and download the tool from here.

Basically, Windows Vista SP1 and Server 2008 were developed from the same codebase with just different build options used.

Ian explains it better than I could, so you might as well just read the explanation here.

I might be running into a specific issue with my system but I suspect it is something other than the stated error message. I have Windows 2008 Server RTM installed with Hyper-V, as an experiment to run it as a full-time Desktop OS. I know it is not intended as such but considering that Vista SP1 and Server 2008 come from the same codebase, it is fun to try. They even report the same version and build number.

I know there are much more different under the hood and other build options were used in each build. I do mostly server-centric work anyway, so it makes sense to run the OS this way.

Anyway, anytime I try to fire up my VMWare XP VM, I receive a blue screen about 30 seconds into the boot process of the VM. It will say an unexpected hardware error has occurred. I haven't debugged it yet but I will when I get a moment. The actual Windows 2008 x64 host blue screens.

If Hyper-V is not installed, VMWare works fine under Windows 2008. I know Hyper-V is a work in progress, so I wasn't expecting miracles. Before the trolls come out, I doubt this is on purpose.

Overall, Windows 2008 x64 is quite a nice desktop OS. I still believe x64 adoption has been crippled by forcing the use of signed drivers. I understand the reasoning behind it, but if you are going to do it for x64, you might as well do it for x86 too. If you thought people were formatting Vista and returning to XP in droves now, you would see many more doing so if they forced this issue on the x86 side too. x64

I know you can do 'test signing' of drivers and I know the technical reasons why signed drivers are good, but sometimes you just want to be able to use your devices without pressing [F8] every boot up. I have seen some crazy pre-boot keystroke injectors to work around the issue, but I don't want to go down that road.

I don't like self-signing the drivers because your desktop gets stamped with 'Testing'. I know, I know, ask your vendors for properly signed drivers and this is a non-issue but there are many free programs out there that can't afford a Verisign certificate.

In the past, in Vista RTM until a few security updates later, you could work around the issue with a bootcfg switch.

Anyway, there are a few things you need to enable to make Windows 2008 more Vista-like:
1. Enable the Windows Audio service.
2. Install the File Server Role of 'Windows Search', if you want enhanced search in Office 2007 and the desktop.
3. Install the Desktop Experience feature.
4. Install a 3rd party Bluetooth stack, such as Broadcom, if you are using x64 and want a full stack.

Things I miss when running Server 2008 instead of Vista:
1. Diskeeper - due to this OS being a server SKU, my verison of Diskeeper won't install. I expected this.
2. Dreamscene - I know it is eyecandy fluff but once you get used to it with a good collection of movies, you miss it.
3. Windows Live OneCare - Instead, I am using Forefront Client Security in an unmanaged mode. One of the 'home' benefits of the Forefront license, as a gold partner.

Overall, I would say about 99% of my applications I had in Vista x86 are working on Server 2008 x64. The ones that are not working I can live without.

Thankfully, I am dualbooting so if I find a true showstopper, I can just boot into my Vista x86 hard drive.

When it takes more than five seconds to generate a Network Access Protection (NAP) statement of health (SoH) message on a Windows Vista-based computer or on a Windows XP Service Pack 3-based computer, client connections do not authenticate successfully with a Cisco switch.

The default supplicant time-out is 5 seconds on Cisco switches. If a computer takes longer than 5 seconds, the computer will not authenticate successfully. Thankfully, just upping the time-out value on the Cisco switch fixes this problem.

Read more about it here - KB 947017.

This article contains information and resources to use when you plan to upgrade from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008.

Just an FYI more than anything - I think this will be fleshed out more as time goes on. Check out the KB article here.

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.

Some prerequisites to installing Vista SP1 are being pushed out on Patch Tuesday, which is today. This is actually a good thing because it brings the 'servicing' portion of the OS up to the Windows Server 2008 level. You can read more about it here.

So, instead of (potentially) 3 reboots to install Vista SP1, it will only require one reboot once the final "big RTM package" gets pushed out.

Vsp1cln.exe is an optional tool that you can run after you install SP1. This tool removes older versions of components that have been updated in SP1, which are stored during the installation in case you need to uninstall SP1 later. Saving these older components increases the amount of disk space used. Typically, you should run Vsp1cln.exe if you want to reclaim this disk space after applying SP1 and if you will not need to uninstall SP1. You can use this tool both online and offline, but you must have SP1 installed. You cannot uninstall SP1 after you run this tool on an image.

Originally spotted in here.

Please note that Vsp1cln.exe is included with Vista SP1 so there is nothing that needs to be downloaded.