Windows OS

This update for Outlook 2007 adds support for the following Internet Calendar features:

Users can now respond to a meeting invitation that is received in iCalendar format with a proposal for a new meeting time.

Extended yearly recurrence patterns are now supported for appointments or meetings that recur every year or every several years.

This update also improves the compatibility between Outlook 2007 and some IMAP e-mail servers.

Download it here. Read more details about all the other fixes included in the rollup here.

If you check all the other fixes included, the combined total is pretty massive. I've been running this update for the past few days and Outlook seems to be a bit snappier overall.

Most of the time, Windows 2003 and XP behave correctly when communicating with a Windows 2008 Read Only Domain Controller. RODCs are extremely handy for branch offices, especially when combined with Bitlocker, for extra security for remote locations.

This update, KB 944043 helps work around some of the known issues that 2003 and XP do not know how to handle out of the box, because RODCs did not exist when they were originally programmed.

In general, you'll want to deploy this on your network before you deploy any RODCs to prevent any of these potential "gotchas". So far, it has been my experience that "everything just works" with RODCs without these updates, but I don't have some of the exotic setups that these known issues arise from.

Here is a very weird issue that has an ongoing PSS case at a client site, which seems to have them stumped so far.

We’re setting up a CCR cluster that passes every single step of the Cluster Validation tests, with the latest QLogic FC drivers and all the other goodies associated with a supported cluster build.

I’m just curious if anyone has run into this yet with Windows 2008. The failure results from Cluster.exe give a little more information than the GUI based version.

cluster /cluster:XXXMAIL100 /create /nodes:"XXXMAIL101 XXXMAIL102" /ipaddress:z.z.z.z/y.y.y.y

4% Initializing Cluster XXXMAIL100.
9% Validating cluster state on node XXXMAIL101.
13% Searching the domain for computer object XXXMAIL100
18% Creating a new computer object for XXXMAIL100 in the domain
22% Configuring computer object XXXMAIL100 as cluster name object
27% Validating installation of the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter on node XXXMAIL101.
31% Validating installation of the Cluster Disk Driver on node XXXMAIL101.
36% Configuring Cluster Service on node XXXMAIL101.
40% Validating installation of the Microsoft Failover Cluster Virtual Adapter on node XXXMAIL102.
45% Validating installation of the Cluster Disk Driver on node XXXMAIL102.
50% Configuring Cluster Service on node XXXMAIL102.
54% Starting Cluster Service on node XXXMAIL101.
54% Starting Cluster Service on node XXXMAIL102.
59% Forming cluster XXXMAIL100.
63% Adding cluster common properties to XXXMAIL100.
68% Creating resource types on cluster XXXMAIL100.
72% Creating group 'Cluster Group'.
72% Creating group 'Available Storage'.
77% Creating IP Address resource 'Cluster IP Address'.
81% Creating Network Name resource 'XXXMAIL100'.
86% Searching the domain for computer object XXXMAIL100
90% Verifying computer object XXXMAIL100 in the domain
95% Configuring computer object XXXMAIL100 as cluster name object
This phase has failed for Cluster object 'XXXMAIL100' with an error status of 87 (0x00000057).
This phase has failed for Cluster object 'XXXMAIL100' with an error status of 87 (0x00000057).
Cleaning up Cluster Group.
Cleaning up Cluster IP Address.
Cleaning up XXXMAIL101.
Cleaning up XXXMAIL102.
Cleaning up XXXMAIL100.
System error 87 has occurred (0x00000057).
The parameter is incorrect.

Manually creating the ‘XXXMAIL100’ object in AD doesn’t help the process.

The ‘parameter is incorrect’ is an oddball one because it is as if one of the subsystems is saying “You passed me an unsupported call”, even though absolutely everything passes in the cluster validation tool. I’m going to keep going on the PSS call on Monday.

We're not using disjointed namespaces, so KB 952247 does not apply here. We never even get past the point of cluster creation to begin with.

If anyone has seen this, or has any tips, please let me know.

Update: This has been resolved - read about the fix here.

Are you having printer server problems lately with HP drivers installed?

A Windows print server has multiple HPBPRO processes running simultaneously or the HPBPRO process contributes to crashing or hanging a print server.

Some examples of what the enterprise customer may see are as follows:

CPU utilization on Print Server will go to 100% or everything looks fine but blank pages are printing out on printers. During this time if the administrator goes to Task Manager they may see there are multiple instances of HPBPRO running on the server as a process.

A customer has multiple print servers running in their network environment. Various servers are seeing HPBPRO randomly become active for no apparent reason and causing performance problems on the server. Closing or killing the HPBPRO processes or rebooting the server solves the issue for the time being.

This problem occurs when following conditions are met:

The HP Toolbox is installed through a HP Printer CD on client machine.
The Print Server has one or more EAC based Printers shared to clients.
Client machine has one to more printer connections (Point and Print) through the Print Server.

Read more about it here and download updated HP drivers to prevent any further problems.

Mostly of interest for enterprises using a disjointed namespace (DNS suffix of the node's FQDN differs from the domain name) - this fixes an error in the Clustering code.

Read more about it and download it from here.

Go here for the fix if you are experiencing this issue.

I have experienced this problem on my little Thinkpad 240 laptop that I use as a poor man's EVDO router. Believe it or not, it makes for an extremely portable "Internet hot-spot on the go".

Sometimes when the Novatel NDIS adapter 'falls asleep' on the receive side, I have to reset the connection. This only happens rarely, but before this fix was installed, DNS resolution of the ICS clients would fail unless I hard-coded external DNS servers on the client systems.

Of course, the hard drive on the Thinkpad has an expired warranty and is an IBM DeathStar with bad sectors, so it is only a matter of time I have a massive hard drive failure. I have a system image backup for when that day comes. I've been saying that for the past 2 years.

Now that I've mentioned it on here, I am sure it will fail within a week.

When that day comes, I can roll out a beta of the Forefront Threat Management Gateway for our house.

Another handy hotfix to keep around for your System Center Operations Manager 2007 install if you are running Server 2008 or Vista. If your Health Explorer is crashing, you will want to install this OS update here.

It looks as though it isn't an error in SCOM, but an error in ComCtl32.dll.

Go here for an update for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows 2008's RDP (Terminal Services) technology. It plugs a non-paged pool memory leak (my favorite to plug). On a good note, Vista and Server 2008 allocate non-paged pool dynamically instead of statically at boot time, so it will take a lot longer (typically) for this type of memory leak to take down your system.

In the past, before Vista, non-paged pool was a fixed amount, which can cause all sorts of problems if you have a leaky driver or application, like Symantec's Corporate Anti-Virus v10.

It isn't here yet but with the amount of information coming out of Microsoft about it lately, I suspect it will be out soon. I've put the entries important to me in bold.

SP1 - New and improved features:

Configuration Change Tracking — logs all configuration changes applied to ISA Server configuration to help you backtrack through your change history. (aka - the 'Who broke it' tracker)

Web Publishing Rule Test Button — helps you verify that the rule configuration agrees with what is set at the published web server and provides specific suggestions when they disagree.

Traffic Simulator — simulates network traffic as it would be seen by the ISA rules engine and gives you specific information about traffic processing along the way.

Diagnostic Logging Query — an extension to the Diagnostic Logging feature provided in the Supportability Pack, this feature makes it much easier to see only the data that is relevant to the current troubleshooting effort.

Support for Network Load Balancing (NLB) multicast and multicast with IGMP operations (KB 938550)

Support for certificates with multiple Subject Alternative Name (SAN) entries in published web servers (Exchange 2007 and OCS 2007 admins will enjoy this)

Kerberos Constrained Delegation (KCD) authentication supports trusted-domain user accounts (KB 942637)

Read more information about it here.

SCCM 2007 SP1 is available for download here.

You can read about the announcement from the SCCM group here.

The biggest noteworthy items are: Full Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 Support, AMT Integration, and Asset Intelligence.

If you are curious what SP1 provides in detail, check out the release notes here.

Windows Script 5.7 comes with XP SP3, so if you are running XP SP3, Vista, or Server 2008, you already have WScript 5.7.

This is a relatively small upgrade compared to other releases but it does come with some performance improvements and bug fixes which are noted here.

If you want to download Windows Script 5.7 for these older operating systems, go here.

If you want more in depth information about this release, check out the KB article here.

Only do this as a last resort for a problematic application because it opens up security restrictions in a bad way on a computer system.

To disable UAC remote restrictions, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. If the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry does not exist, follow these steps:
a. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
b. Type LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then press ENTER.
4. Right-click LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy, and then click Modify.
5. In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.
6. Exit Registry Editor.

The LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy registry entry in the registry can have a value of 0 or of 1. These values change the behavior of the registry entry to the behavior that is described in the following table.

Value
0 This value builds a filtered token. This is the default value. The administrator credentials are removed.
1 This value builds an elevated token.

You can read more about this in detail, here.

If you are curious what fixes made it into XP SP3, take a look at KB article 946480.

FYI, this is a solid build. I have been running RC1 a few weeks and many of the annoying little quirks of the earlier versions are gone.

Grab a copy of Hyper-V RC1 for Windows 2008 x64 here.

To use the remote management on your Windows 2008 x64 Hyper-V RC1 server, install this update here.

Grab a copy of the management tools for Windows 2008 x86 here.

If you need the management console for non-Hyper-V systems, like Vista, you can grab those tools here.

Hopefully this isn't all too confusing - most people will only need the first update listed. The rest deal primarily with remote management.

I had the pleasure of testing this during the alpha stages and had a hard time finding bugs in the product, which is a good thing. If you are using Forefront Client Security and Server 2008, and want to integrate NAP functionality with FCS, look into the integration kit here.

Official description:
This Solution Accelerator is a collection of software components and guidance that you can use to configure a compliance health policy for computers that run Forefront Client Security. Network administrators can use this Accelerator to assess the health of these computers before they are granted network access. If a computer is not compliant with the health policy for Forefront Client Security, it can be isolated to a restricted network until it is properly remediated. These capabilities are enabled by the new NAP feature in Windows Server 2008.