DavidOverton.com
This site is my way to share my views and general business and IT information with you about Microsoft, IT solutions for ISVs, technologists and businesses, large and small.  

Blogs

  • E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva" : Now remind me again why it's a bad thing to exclude other vendors from the Kernel?

    There was me ranting on security yesterday and then I spot this post by Susan that says it all Link to E-Bitz - SBS MVP the Official Blog of the SBS "Diva" : Now remind me again why it's a bad thing to exclude other vendors from the Kernel? enjoy David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Oct 10 2006
  • One word for the 2007 Office System

    This is a really simple exercise - If you have used Office, please summarise it in one word. The word from me is "Stylish"
  • A comprehensive list of Microsoft Blogs and Web Resources about Security

    Ed Gibson pointed this out today - a "to be continually updated" list of Microsoft security blogs that relate to various products from Microsoft - Security Blog di Feliciano Intini : Microsoft Blogs and Web Resources about Security 1.0 Network Security 1.1 ISA Server ISA Server Product Team Blog 1.1.1 ISA 2000 1.1.2 ISA 2004 1.1.3 ISA 2006 1.2 Remote Access & Quarantine Services Routing and Remote Access Blog 1.2.1 ISA 2006 QS 1.2.2 Win2003 QS 1.2.3 Win2003 RAS/IAS 1.3 NAP Solution Network Access Protection Blog 1.4 VPN Solutions ISA Server Product Team Blog Routing and Remote Access Blog 1.4.1 Win2003 RRAS VPN 1.4.2 ISA 2006 VPN 1.4.3 Internet Application Gateway 2007 1.5 Wireless Security Windows Core Networking Blog 1.6 IPSEC Windows Core Networking Blog 1.6.1 Win2003 IPSEC 1.6.2 Server & Domain Isolation Solution 2.0 Host Security 2.1 Client OS Security 2.1.1 Windows 2000 client security 2.1.2 Windows XP security 2.1.3 Windows Vista security Windows Vista Security Blog Windows Genuine Advantage...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Oct 31 2007
  • Moving CompanyWeb

    Our internal SBS2003 box and one at a clients were starting to get a bit short of space on the C: drive. One of the culprits were the Sharepoint database files which were well over a gig on our system and .5 gig at our clients. I read up various documents on the MS site and a few NG and blog posts before trying this and I have now successfully moved both sets of Sharepoint databases. I would strongly recommend you read the document at http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/1/6/11671e4d-fb21-489c-870f-db36fd21a7d2/SBS_MoveDataFolders.DOC before doing this. Because I'm basically lazy by nature and prefer to do things the easy way and I really don't like typing in obscure OSQL commands I decided to write a batch file that would do it all for me. Here it is: -------------------------------- @echo off rem Move CompanyWeb rem Based on MS document and posts on newsgroups rem YOU MUST CHANGE THESE SOURCE AND TARGET FOLDERS TO MATCH YOUR OWN rem DON'T FORGET THE TRAILING "\" EITHER OTHERWISE NASTY...
  • Winning with Windows Mobile tour

    Jason Language has just noted that the "Winning with Windows Mobile" tour is about to take off at http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonlan/archive/2007/01/18/windows-mobile-briefing-winning-with-windows-mobile.aspx . These include developer, enterprise (yuck) and partner sessions. The only problem I have is while it is cross-emea, it does not include the UK. If you want to see this come to the UK - add a comment on Jason's or mine blog saying so :) Event Agenda Developer Track: Keynote – Develop and Win with Windows Mobile Windows Mobile Today Extending Windows Mobile Applications Fun with Windows Mobile Networking Reception for Partners, Hosters and Developers. Enterprise Track: Windows Mobile Enterprise Session Mobile Operator Presentation Partner Readiness Track: Partner Session – Windows Mobile Strategy Partner Session – Go to Market Messages WM applications session – Pull through extra revenue by selling WM Networking Reception for Partners, Hosters and Developers To check the dates they are in each country and if...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Feb 13 2007
  • Managing Windows Systems using System Center Essentials 2007

    We already have suggested that this will be coming in the next version of SBS, so you might want to start playing around with this now. If you are an Action Pack subscriber you should be able to do this anyway. I thought these might be useful to you Download the 90-day Evaluation Software, read White Papers and more here... http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/sce/default.mspx Configuration management is becoming more important and while I don't expect the majority of the small business partner community to adopt this, some might be interested in how this can help them and make up their own mind. System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Beta 2 Product Feature Quizzes The System Center Configuration Manager 2007 User Assistance team has created a set of 7 quizzes to help you assess your understanding of the dependencies and requirements for key features of Configuration Manager. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b9fb478a-ec98-47f2-b31e-57443a8ae88f&DisplayLang=en Configuration Manager...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jun 8 2007
  • 5 Popfly invites to hand out - let me know why you want it

    OK, So I now have 5 Popfly invites to hand out. It you want one, e-mail me via this link ( send request ). I'll look at the invites on Monday and send out some invites. thanks David Technorati Tags: Silverlight , popfly , invites
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Aug 28 2007
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  • Get the Application Compatibility Toolkit to ensure applications will work with Vista

    So you have Vista, not how do you make sure you applications will run? Use this toolkit (which will also sort out things for Windows XP SP2 too: Are Your Existing Applications Compatible with Your New Windows Operating System? Use the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit and additional application compatibility resources to find out if your applications are compatible with Windows Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2. ttfn David Technorati tags: vista , microsoft , small business
  • Do you need to edit XML files

    If you need to edit XML files, this is the tool for you: XML Notepad 2006 that is it, enjoy ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sun, Sep 10 2006
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  • Internet Explorer (IE8) beta 1 now available ... Wow

    We all new that the super standards mode was coming, but look at all the announcements today, including the downloads : IE8 and CSS 2.1 Testing Since I joined the IE team at the beginning of 2007, it has become clear to me how important it is for web developers to predict how a given browser will work. I’ve certainly heard and read how very important it is to web developers to minimize the cost IE8 and JScript As Dean mentioned yesterday in his post announcing the availability of the Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for developers , better script performance is of particular interest to the developer community. In conjunction with Dean’s announcement, the JScript Activities and WebSlices in Internet Explorer 8 If you’re like me, you’ve found that it’s pretty hard to keep track of all the new services and sites out there, let alone the ones we use every day. I bookmark my favorite sites and services, but still spend a lot of time trying to find them. A couple IE8 and IP Licensing Some of the first things users may notice...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Mar 6 2008
  • UK SMB Girl » First Victory for Microsoft against hard-loading reseller

    Technorati Tags: Licensing , Anti-Piracy You asked for us to get tougher and now we are telling you more about it - here is one of the cases. “Microsoft’s tactics to use the small claims courts to penalise resellers found selling counterfeit product has resulted in its first victory, with further cases waiting to be resolved. Michala Alexander, head of anti-piracy at Microsoft, said it had settled out of court for £1,800 with its first small claims target, Bargain Computers of Stoke-on-Trent, but had another eight to ten cases in the pipeline. UK SMB Girl » First Victory for Microsoft against hard-loading reseller ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sun, Jun 10 2007
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  • Robbie and Susanne's Marathon - come join in

    Think of this as a 1st mover notification. I am always in awe of those who can motivate themselves to do physical exercise and even more so if it is also raising money for charity. Well Robbie and Susanne have decided to take up the challenge. They have a joint site that will feature blogs, training details, events and other useful information as well as guest speakers/ bloggers. The site is just beginning, but pop along to Robbie and Susanne's Marathon and support a good cause and then sponsor them both - I have - by clicking the two charity logos at the top. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Aug 28 2006
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  • SQL SP2 updates to support Vista and Office 2007

    With support for Vista and Office 2007 being key for people inside and outside of Microsoft we have had two updates recently to support this. This entry relates to SQL 2005 SP2 and another will relate to Virtual PC 2007. Microsoft announced the release the web of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. SP2 is an important deliverable for SQL Server, providing support for Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System in addition to delivering important enhancements for customers. It can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/sql/sp2.mspx . For me, the performance of my reports on my reporting server went up significantly. Ttfn David Technorati tags: SQL Server 2005 , SQL 2005 , SQL SP2 , Vista Published with BlogMailr
  • James Akrigg points out some good old Windows SharePoint Services v3 (Office 2007) on/offline training available

    I was perusing James' blog and noticed this on part of a site about sharepoint, so thought I would forward. To compliment the above resource we also have 'Clinic 5045: Inside Look at Developing with Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0' . This covers everything you are going to need to get started creating solutions on SharePoint Services. The clinic will enable you to: Describe Site and Workspace management and Document storage. Describe Integration with ASP.NET and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 . Describe Sites, Lists, Content Types and Collaborative features. Describe Programming with WSS and using the WSS Event model. Describe the Property Bag and Change Log. Describe SharePoint Pages, Master Pages and Content Pages. Describe Custom Views and Templates. SharePoint Designer Describe Web parts and Workflow support. Describe the Administrative object model. Describe how to create deployable Windows SharePoint Services-based solutions. Describe the Feature framework. Describe the Solution deployment...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Sep 27 2006
  • Watching Pink at in Atlanta

    Just thought I had to add a quick post to explain why I have a bunch of Pink photos on the blog site. While at an internal Microsoft event the final day treat was time at Six flags with Pink. I’m a great Pink fan, although not all Microsoft employees were, which meant that when Pink tried for audience participation she didn’t quite get the reaction she was hoping for. Anyway, some of the thumbnails are below and more on the link above. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, Sep 1 2008
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  • 4 painful days while davidoverton.com transfers ownership and gets powered up again

    Well, this is one of those “I should have called support earlier mails”. I’ve been trying for about 3 months to get my davidoverton.com domain transferred from one vendor to the vendor I use for all the others. All attempts failed, so last night I phoned Australia to try and get it fixed and now the transfer is underway. However, the transfer has a 4 day “cooling off” period, so the domain is in limbo. Most people still access via uksbsguy.com, so most traffic will get through, but expect a few problems!! ttfn David Technorati Tags: personal , uksbsguy.com , davidoverton.com
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Jul 31 2008
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  • CRM V3.0 Demo tools (inc VPC)

    I have posted details in the forums, but there are a great set of tools to help you learn, use and sell MS CRM V3.0. This information was provided by Dan Best at the Bristol Partner Group ... good on ya Dan . About the only bad thing is that I was not aware of it until Dan told me. Anyway, go to the forum posting for more information, but the basic link is http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a8edfc7b-01d8-4500-845b-01370d4eed21&DisplayLang=en and the forum to discuss these can be found at http://uksbsguy.com/forums/thread/140.aspx ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Sun, Mar 19 2006
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  • Review of SBS vs 3 Linux Solutions - do these people really know what a business needs

    http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/breakingnews.jhtml;jsessionid=DL55IXWI4XNX4QSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleId=190900821 As always, it is interesting to have to see your own product being compared to others. Having read this article, it is balanced in many ways, but a few things annoyed me. They compared the Premium version of SBS to the Linux versions, even though no Premium functionality was used - and then said it did not compare price favourably. Well, call me a bit cynical, but if the SBS product were to have been compared at the Standard pricing, I think any price difference would have disappeared Having an AJAX enabled web based browser is no-where near as useful to most businesses as the ability to use mobile enabled e-mail on a phone or pda, web based browsing AND full blown Outlook in Cached mode which offer better mobile usage and functionality when remote from the office Application compatibility is often a key reason for choosing a server - the SBS server provides a platform for core LOB applications...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, Jul 25 2006
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  • Susan B has a system that keeps crashing - my take on why - crash dump analysis on SBS

    http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2006/06/22/102538.aspx I started writting this as a simple comment on the site, but it got so long, I have blogged the entry here. Susan, Since your crash dumps show 2-3 different error codes - a different one each time, my 1st suspicion would be hardware - have you run the MS memory diagnostic tool on the system otherwise, check for recent driver updates. If you need a 1hr course in debugging, have a look at http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2006/06/21/627.aspx . However we have not had a single instance of your large crash appear through our crash database - I checked, and the crash appears to be in a very well used and known piece of code, the classpnp.sys driver, which hales to NT4 for classic PNP support. Failing that, time to call PSS. If you were to do nothing but run kd -v -y SRV*d:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols -z memfile.dmp on each dump you will see the different crash locations. Lots of different locations normally points to h...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Jun 23 2006
  • BBC NEWS | TV rivals (BBC, ITV, C4) form on-demand service

    I saw this and had to share. I signed up to the BBC iPlayer service and it is very good. Now all 3 major TV channel providers are looking to put make everything available under one hood ... fantastic. From the BBC news site - BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV rivals form on-demand service TV rivals form on-demand service Channel 4's Ugly Betty is one of the shows likely to be on the service The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together thousands of hours of television programmes in one place. The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material. Plans will have to be approved by the BBC Trust and the other broadcasters' boards, and a name for the service will be unveiled ahead of its launch. The three broadcasters currently offer their own separate on-demand services. The BBC's iPlayer and ITV's catch-up service will continue to exist along the new online "aggregator", which will provide a...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Nov 28 2007
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  • Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework - not going Open Source

    Another step in the direction of openness of the .Net code, this is how Visual Studio 2008 will enable developers to step into the code for .Net while debugging their products. Scott is a fantastic man to follow if you want to develop for the MS platform. Some people are mis-quoting this access to information as .Net going open, which is not true at all. If you read Microsoft did not open source .NET. They just released the source code to public from Krish you will see the correction of this perception. However, openness and transparency is a good thing, so I don't see this as bad. Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries One of the things my team has been working to enable has been the ability for .NET developers to download and browse the source code of the .NET Framework libraries, and to easily enable debugging support in them. Today I'm excited to announce that we'll be providing this with the .NET 3.5 and VS 2008 release later this year. We'll begin by offering the source...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, Oct 31 2007
  • Did you know how the world is changing - where the business is and what the future holds - have a look to find out

    I saw this posted internally http://www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.wmv and it reminded me of a talk Ray Kurzweil he once gave giving timelines for many things. It is worth having a poke around his site - http://www.kurzweilai.net/index.html?flash=1 and also at some of his predictions - http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/business/features/future_perfect/trans6.shtml . By 2009, we won't be carrying around notebook computers or even palmtops you won't see the computers. The visual display's will be written directly onto our retinas from eye glasses and contact lenses so we'll either see a virtual display hovering in air or, even more compellingly, the visual display can overtake our whole visual field of view and create, basically, visual virtual reality. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, Feb 15 2007
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  • The SBS Diva spots why your workstations (and sometimes your SBS servers) are spiking at 100% CPU this month after the patches (yes, it is the Update services)

    Updated 08:07am 12th January - the blog title used to suggest this was a server issue - Susan pointed out that this is a client / workstation issue much more I had to blog this one - if you are seeing CPU spiking when patches are being installed, go look at http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2007/01/10/on-patch-tuesday-if-you-are-seeing-a-spike-in-cpu.aspx ttfn David
  • Partner Training - Introduction to Microsoft Partner Program & Windows and Office Genuine Advantage

    This course will help the partner look at this year’s Microsoft Partner Program and how it’s more focused than ever on embracing more of your success, making it easier to differentiate your business and simplifying how you do business with Microsoft. We will also be looking at how Piracy interferes with this great opportunity for new sales and services with Windows Vista and Office 2007. https://training.partner.microsoft.com/plc/register.aspx?publisher=3&courseid=1876 Ttfn David
  • This months' SharePoint downloads, webcasts

    Mon, 02 Oct 2006 : Momentum Webcast: A Sneak Peek at Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the Cornerstone of the 2007 Office System (Level 100) In this webcast, we explore some key features IT professionals are anticipating in the upcoming release of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server applications that promotes effective organization by giving you comprehensive control over electronic content, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating better-informed decision making and information sharing. We discuss portal and search functionality and features like collaboration, business intelligence, business forms, and content management—including documents, records, and Web content. See how SharePoint Server 2007 enables you to support intranets, extranets, and Web applications across your enterprise within one integrated platform. Join this session to discover how these innovations provide you with...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, Sep 29 2006
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