Thursday, June 12. 2008
Don’t leave home without it.
You’ll have to join Connect Site ID 216 before you can download it.
Changes since 3.1:
Process Tracking: Categorize network traffic based on the name and ID of the owning process.
Extensive Parser Set: Parsers for over 300 protocols, including SMB 2.0.
Network Monitor 3.2 API: Create your own applications that capture, parse and analyze network traffic.
Improved Capture Rate: Drop fewer frames on high speed networks.
ContainsBin plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings.
Find Conversations: Quickly isolate related frames.
Support for frame truncation.
Indication of the number of dropped frames.
Streamlined UI toolbar
For a complete list of new features and known issues read the Release Notes in the Help directory.
Tuesday, June 10. 2008
Most of the time when you encounter this error, it is too little, too late and you are using the recovery console to get rid of the bogus Intelppm.sys entry in the registry and/or filesystem on an AMD system, but this update here is the official fix for the problem.
This update is intended to be installed on XP SP2 systems before applying SP3, if they are running a Sysprep image that was originally created on an Intel machine that ends up getting deployed on an AMD machine. The worst offender seems to be HP OEM machines.
Monday, June 9. 2008
What used to be called "Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP" has been updated to version 2.5, and has support for XP and Vista, but unfortunately remains 32-bit only. 64-bit support seems to be absent.
New to version 2.5:
Installation has been simplified and the improved Windows Disk Protection feature in Windows SteadyState does not require repartitioning.
The Windows SteadyState UI has been redesigned to help make common tasks easier to manage from one location.
With simplified user restriction settings, you can choose a High, Medium, or Low restriction level for each user account.
Windows SteadyState enables you to import and export user accounts from one computer to another.
Ongoing support efforts include a fully-revised Windows SteadyState Handbook (included in both PDF and XPS formats), updated Help content included with the download, new online demos, and the new Windows SteadyState Community Web site.
Increased Protection for All Users – Windows SteadyState includes more Windows and program feature restrictions, as well as support for Windows Update. Windows SteadyState also enables you to restrict user access to local programs.
You can download version 2.5 from here and read the Technical FAQ here.
This will expire in 180 days, but will give you a feel for the upcoming version.
You can grab it from here.
The feature pack contains redistributable components, add-on providers, and backward compatibility components for SQL Server 2008.
You can read the release notes here and download the feature pack here.
The last bit of the Sybari-based pre-Stirling Forefront product line has finally hit beta status. This help protect your Office Communication Server 2007 clients and servers from malware. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information out on this release yet, but I will be downloading it shortly and checking it out on my lab VMs.
You can grab a copy of the beta here.
Why run this beta on your Home Server? It fixes the data corruption bug.
Please install this on your Home Server RTM boxes and hammer on them, to prove or disprove that the bug is finally gone.
There are a few other features and fixes that have snuck into the build, including:
1. Support for PCs running Windows Vista x64 editions
2. Backup of home server Shared Folders
3. Easier, enhanced remote access capabilities
4. Better energy efficiency
5. Improved performance
Read more about it here.
I've been running earlier versions of the Power Pack and I have been unable to corrupt data (un)fortunately.
Go to the Home Server Connect site here for the compiled bits - thankfully the update is small.
If you've followed this blog at all, you will have probably noticed many Broadcom specific entries dealing with the bugs in their drivers and firmware of their wired LAN adapters. Anyone that dealt with the Scalable Networking Pack issues with Windows Server 2003 SP2 usually had Broadcom NICs.
Now, their CEO has been charged with many crimes, which sounds straight out of a movie.
Despite what I might say about their wired LAN drivers, I do like their wireless products. Most wireless routers that are running DD-WRT, or Tomato, or OpenWRT are all based off of a Broadcom-reference OEM product, including the Linksys WRT54G/GS, etc.
If you are in search of real world performance numbers on Windows Server 2008, go here.
It is basically a report from the Microsoft.com sysadmins, that have been running W2K8 and W2K3 side by side, serving out Microsoft.com’s content.
Friday, June 6. 2008
An absolutely fascinating research paper on how a group of college students setup fake P2P clients that did not distribute any illegal content, and were able to "frame" innocent network devices on the University of Washington campus, such as a group of network printers and a wireless access point.
It is a very surprising look into how easy it is to spoof Bittorrent packets and potentially get someone else in trouble for a crime they never committed.
You can read all about it here.
Thursday, June 5. 2008
The old Vista and XP TechCenters have been retired and combined into a brand new site, which goes along with the other revamps that MSDN and TechNet have received in the past few days.
Highlights of the new site:
New “zones” for top tasks related to application compatibility, User Account Control (UAC), imaging, hardware compatibility and performance, desktop security and encryption, and networking.
Improved organization of resources by lifecycle phase and technical level (overview or advanced)
Advice from subject matter experts at Microsoft and in the community
New information on ways to advance and simplify desktop management
To check it out, go here.
Tuesday, June 3. 2008
The new version of Live Writer has a lot of new features and an improved SDK:
Video and Image Publishing Enhancements
Upload videos to Soapbox
Image cropping and tilting
Additional border styles
Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
Support for centering images
Editing Enhancements
Auto Linking
Smart quotes/typographic characters
Word count
UI Improvements
Revised main toolbar
Tabs for view switching
Improved category control with search/filtering
Although I am a bit 'old school' due to the fact that I tend to write my blog posts online through the native web interface or offline with the use of Notepad, I have always kept an eye on Live Writer's progress for posting articles. At some point I'd like to write up a Serendipity plug-in for it, but until I can, I will probably stick with my ways. I cannot select multiple categories yet, which is a deal breaker for consistent use. The SDK improvements might make this easier to accomplish soon!
The Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) is the application installation and configuration service for Windows. These download packages will update the version of Windows Installer on your system to version 4.5.
Version 4.5 of the Windows Installer has several new features, including:
Multiple Package Transaction: In a multiple package transaction, you can create a single transaction from multiple packages. In a multiple package transaction, a chainer is used to dynamically include packages in the transaction. If any of the packages do not install as expected, you can roll back the installation.
Embedded UI Handler: You can embed a custom user interface (UI) handler in the Windows Installer package. This makes a custom UI easier to integrate. You can also invoke an embedded UI handler from the Add or Remove item in Control Panel. Or, you can invoke an embedded UI handler during a Windows Installer repair process.
Embedded Chainer: You can use the embedded chainer to add packages to a multiple package transaction. You can use an embedded chainer to enable installation events across multiple packages. For example, you can enable the install-on-demand events, the repair events, and the uninstall events across multiple packages.
Update Supersedence Resiliency: This feature enables you to correct for changes in the FeatureComponent table during supersedence.
Shared Component Patching Resiliency During Uninstall: This feature makes sure that the most recent version of a component is available to all the products.
Custom Action Execution On Update Uninstall: This feature enables an update to add or change a custom action so that the custom action is called when an update is uninstalled.
You can download the updated installer here.
Taken from Trika's blog:
You are invited to take beta exam 71-652: TS: Windows Server Virtualization, Configuring.
Registration begins: June 2, 2008
Beta exam period runs: June 3, 2008– June 23, 2008
Use the following promotional code when registering for the exam: 652HV
Tired of Windows Search thrashing your hard drive in XP or Vista? Upgrade to Windows Search 4.0, the final version, today. You can download it for XP, Vista and 2008 here.
Previously, a preview release was available. If you are running Vista, this is basically an updated version of the engine with many optimizations and has remote indexes enabled.
If you use Search, which pretty much anyone running Vista or Office 2007 is, I highly recommend installing this update.
Case in point: In the past I would disable Windows Search on my laptop because it had a habit of running all the time and slowing down the system in general. Ever since the 4.0 Preview release, I leave it enabled and set the indexer to 'run immediately' through the group policy so that whatever it needs to index, it will index my hard drive contents and Outlook e-mail right away.
I would rather have a brief period of high hard drive I/O than a long drawn out session of throttled I/O, which could potentially keep me awake at night if my system was constantly indexing overnight, due to the system being idle.
I know that might sound fickle, but it has happened in the past.
If you want to read more about the technical aspects of the upgrade, go here and here.
The product team behind this release are a cool bunch of folks that I have been in contact with for the past few months and they have been really eager to make this is great release.
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