Aaron Tiensivu's Blog

Read more here about the deal.

Basically, buy and use exam insurance, get a year subscription to TechNet Plus Direct, which retails for about $349. It is a steal if you are taking a Microsoft certification test soon.

I know this has made the rounds around the tubes of the internet, but this site has many more pictures of the huge In-and-Out 100x100 burger. I'm not a vegetarian, but this could convince some people to change over. Check out all the amazing pictures here.

Wow. You might as well sign up for the bypass after leaving the place.

A portion of the advertising money from Windows Live Messenger 8.1 will go to various charities if you put certain codes in your personal message. You can get a list of charities and how to "attach" them to your profile here.

A good cause, and easy to do, so I'm doing it.

Updated: I've gathered a list of codes from this blog entry.

American Red Cross - code = *red+u
AT's kids = *atskids
Boys & Girls Clubs of America - code = *bgca
National AIDS Fund - code = *naf
National MS Society - code = *mssoc
ninemillion.org - code = *9mil
Sierra Club - *sierra
StopGlobalWarming.org - *help
Susan G. Komen for the Cure - *komen
UNICEF - *unicef

OK, "AT's kids" isn't a real charity, but I could always use some extra income.
(*atskids won't actually DO anything)

If you read my post here about BDD blue screens with Windows XP, KB 931760 contains an updated XP kernel if you do not want to go through the hassle of the registry workaround. I'm going to keep it in my arsenal for any upcoming BDD engagements.

The unfortunate constraints of the 32-bit x86 architecture are (mostly) to blame for this one. If you want to get technical, blame the architecture and MMIO mapped devices hogging up the address space. If you want the official and much more technical answer, check out this KB article here.

Sadly, I hope issues like this push 64-bit driver writers to get busy, because I'd really like to see more 64-bit OS adoption. The #1 stumbling block I keep running into with 64-bit Windows is drivers or lack of.

I took the beta exam for Exchange 2007 (70-236) back in January in the middle of a very hectic schedule. I had to mainly rely on my experience of running the earlier builds at home and hoping for the best because my study time mainly consisted of small pockets of time to go over the RTM code and documentation.

I can now add this to my roster:
Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: TS: Exchange 2007, Configuring



I'm very excited about Exchange 2007, but not as excited as I am about the upcoming Office Communications Server.

Exchange server, then client machines, then mobile devices, then use the Outlook TZ Update tool. (See note below!)

By the way, Exchange-based Outlook TZ Update tool v2 is now available for download.

Update: It looks like I might have been incorrect on this one, as pointed out by Tim McCarty. Check out the official MS recommendations here.

I've been delaying my request for a VMWare Workstation license until I bumped into this web page.

Basically, it boils down to this: Customers must purchase a qualifying Workstation 5.5 product, listed in the table below, either from VMware or an authorized reseller, between January 1, 2007 and the general availability of Workstation 6.

USB 2.0 guest support, 'record and rewind' of the VM, and very nice Vista host/guest support are the big items I like about the 6.0 beta so far.

More Vista power management hot fixes, this time related to the AHCI (native SATA) driver.

Thankfully, as per the KB, "The increased power consumption is small and may not be noticeable to a typical user."

A non-scientific observation: My Thinkpad laptop hard drive does not Device-Initiated Link Power Management (DIPM) and I do notice a difference in battery life after the hotfix has been installed. This contradicts what I originally posted on 02-21-07.

Read more about it here.

Update: This is now available for public download off of Lenovo's website in the Driver section as of 03-05-07. I would link to it directly but that doesn't seem to work properly without a valid HTTP referrer field.

I've only seen this happen on a few virtual machines from time to time without a concrete cause why one VM would do this and another would not. I've also seen it on one laptop, but it looks like the problem is pretty widespread overall. It would typically happen when Windows Updates were applying or scanning.

You can download the XP hotfix here and the 2003 hotfix here.

Another release snuck past my radar this weekend - the final version of the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment tool. You can install this on a PC that is attached to your network and with the proper rights/access, you can scan all the PCs on your network and whether or not they are Vista capable or not.

You can download the tool here

Calculate licensing costs on the fly with this handy website located here.

*Bug #1:*

Windows 2003 and Windows XP do not like the new Virtual Disk Service cylinder-alignment algorithm in WinPE 2.0 / Vista. You will know you are running into this issue when the machines you have just imaged bluescreen on boot. MS is working on getting updated fixes out for Windows 2003 and Windows XP.

In the meantime, there are 3 workarounds, before creating disk partitions in WinPE 2.0 or Vista:

1. Disable the automatic disk translation in the BIOS of the affected machines

or

2. Force use of the pre-WinPE 2.0 cylinder-alignment policy (no alignment) by setting the following DWORD registry keys to 0:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Serivces\VDS\Alignment\LessThan4GB
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Serivces\VDS\Alignment\Between4_8GB
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Serivces\VDS\Alignment\Between8_32GB
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Serivces\VDS\Alignment\GreaterThan32GB

or

3. Use BDD/WIM to deploy Vista machines and get rid of the XP images.

*Bug #2 (thanks to Steve6375):*
Deleting 2 images within a WIM without an /append operation in between will corrupt the WIM image overall.

Update on bug #1: KB 931760 contains an updated kernel for Windows XP to avoid this issue!

Ever since the server moved to a different city and platform, I suspect external web links have been broken due to some database cleanups/fixes I had to do to the data from the old server.

Previously, the blog would track exit clicks and tally them up. I'm a bit of a statistics geek so I always found that information interesting, but I'd rather have a working website than pretty graphs. I've removed that broken module for now.

I doubt I'll re-enable it because I don't like obfuscated web links in general. It is the same reason that any link I post in a blog entry has the tooltip set to the address of the web site linked.

Roxio Creator Suite 9 is Vista compatible.
Roxio Creator Suite 7.5 is not (as far as I know).

If you install KB 929427, Roxio Creator Suite 9 will no longer work.
Solution, in the short term: Avoid KB 929427 for now if you have Roxio Creator Suite 9 installed.

I'd recommend using Nero Burning Rom anyway.