DavidOverton.com
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Blogs

  • Using Certificates to secure Wireless Access

    The guys at Microsoft have released a paper for comment on how to use Certificates to secure wireless access on an SBS network. Read about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sbsdocsteam/archive/2006/05/16/599362.aspx They want your comments. I have already installed something similar in our office and at one clients. Having an Official Microsoft How-To will be very useful.
  • Do we know when Windows Vista will ship yet – answering the CTS arguments?

    I have just seen an article in which the conversations from CTS (16 shows on Vista and Office 2007 in 2 days) have been misrepresented. Since I was the Vista presenter, I feel the need to set the record straight, 1 st off, the site where this is all being so heavily debated: http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2006/5/15/3974 http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=75041 http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=5570 (article) To clarify Vista and Office 2007 are coming, as per the PR announcements at the same time – there is no new delay . At CTS we were speculating when in January the launch might happen. The only timeline shifts were those already mentioned in the MARCH press release - http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/mar06/03-21WindowsVistaDeliveryPR.mspx There were several interesting highlights from that article which were either not accurate or misunderstood. Whether that is the joy of journalism or my mistake we will never know. Vista will ship for Volume License customers...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 19 2006
  • Check if your machine is ready for Vista with the Get Ready tool – Vista Ready or capable PC specs

    You will be hearing more from me around Windows Vista and Office 2007 over the coming months. Until the beta ships, one of the first things you might want to do is to find out if yours and your customers systems are likely to have any problems running Vista. People often ask what the minimum specs are for running Vista and there are really three ways to think on this: What can run Vista, provide access to search and new UI features All of the above, plus the 3D and transparency graphics Take advantage of all of the features possible To take advantage of the nice graphics, you will need at least 64MB of speedy graphics memory (but my 2yr old laptop with a Radeon 7600 does this fine) and a graphics card that the manufacturer states will be available with both a WDDM graphics driver and will support “Glass” For the other features, you will need to have technology such as TPM 1.2 or above for the BitLocker technology or SideShow technology to enable applications that run on other hardware alongside your PC. This defines...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 18 2006
  • New Microsoft web site design tool – Expression Web Designer

    Microsoft is launching a number of products over the next two years, which means a number of products coming into beta. Many of these cans be used by skilled small business IT consultants to build better solutions for customers. One such tool is the Expression Web Designer. It is designed to be highly accurate to online standards, ensuring greater compliance with a variety of browsers. It also makes extensive use of CSS to ensure a greater standard across sites. Finally, providing access to data and enabling data manipulation tasks through the browser is a key capability. To see more and downloads the product, go to http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/default.mspx and watch the videos and start playing today. Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 18 2006
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  • Off-topic – Get a bit of Vista technology on Windows XP - Windows Media Player 11 (wmp11) beta

    I know this is off topic, but as a beta tester of Windows Vista, I have also been using the new media player to manage my music. The new ways of organising music and seeing what is in albums or podcasts has got easier. WMP also now handles pictures, which given the number of them I have, it is a nice change to see this functionality off of Media Center systems. So, to get the new UI, formats and ease of management, go have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/11/default.aspx Ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, May 17 2006
  • More feedback that Microsoft Support for SBS and Windows XP, no matter where in the world, is great

    Every so often I get a mail telling me how MS Support was poor in one way or another. Recently I have been getting the other type of e-mail - how GOOD Microsoft support is. Yesterday, Paul sent me this e-mail: David i found your email address on the sbsbpi.co.uk website, i thought it appropriate to drop you a mail asking you to pass on praise to the relevant people for the technical support i received from Microsoft today. the problem was quite complicated and both support representatives who dealt with it seemed knowledgeable, thorough and also easy to get on with on, all the essential requirements for a telephone support engineer, lots of bad things are said about the support available from Microsoft but today i experienced something very different, please pass on my thanks to the SBS support team. How nice it is to get these, but also in the forums, someone posted this: http://uksbsguy.com/forums/thread/401.aspx I have used Microsoft support a bunch of times over my entire career and a few times since I have...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, May 17 2006
  • Microsoft CRM V3 on SBS 2003 Livemeeting presentation from "An Hour with Dave" for SBSC members

    Hi, SBSC members get a special ability to request livemeetings on any topic they want. This months was on MS-CRM. I provided an overview and then details as to how to join the partner programme, get training and further information. Given the fact that as a MS partner you can get discount off the price of the software when you have passed your exams, this can be an important source of income or differentiation for you. The presentation can be found at http://uksbsguy.com/files/445/download.aspx and I will post the URL for the recording in a day or two. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Wed, May 17 2006
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  • Learn about Windows SharePoint Services easily using online courses and books (for a small few $s)

    People are always asking me about how to learn more about Windows SharePoint Services and now finally we have two selfpaced items of training that can help. Have a look at these - they do cost a bit of cash – less than $23, but worth a look from the agenda. Course 4115: Getting Started with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Plus Access to Online Book The self-paced e-learning course will help you become familiar with the basics of working with Microsoft Windows SharePoint sites via interactive simulations that provide hands-on practice to master specific tasks. It also includes skills assessment to help pinpoint the areas where training can have the most impact. In addition, this course can be downloaded for offline use for the length of your subscription so you can learn even when you’re not connected to the Internet. https://www.microsoftelearning.com/eLearning/offerDetail.aspx?offerPriceId=73964 Course 4114: Doing More with Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Plus Access to Online Book The self-paced...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, May 15 2006
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  • Patch Management on SBS and Windows XP machines - advice and best practises

    I was asked this in the forums, but I felt it was important enough to write about it both here and in the forum. Patch Management should be a key part of what you do. Patching is like car servicing - it can sometimes be put off a little bit, but failure to keep the oil and water up todate and without a regular service, things go horribly wrong. You MUST tell your customers this so they can choose how to pay you for this service. (they can always just call you in when things go wrong, but it will take longer and cost them more). Obviously patching is just one tool in yout kitbag for keeping systems secure - local and perimeter firewalls and anti-spyware and anti-virus software is also needed, as is good password and administrator policy. The best person to talk about patching is the now famous Susan Bradly, who is a SBS MVP and known as a Diva. Before I point you off to some of her blogs on it, I thought I would answer some questions often asked in this area: 1) How do you decide whether to patch or hold off? You...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Mon, May 15 2006
  • Installing Sophos Small Business Edition in a workgroup

    Sophos is a great anti-virus, anti-spam etc product but installing the Small Business Edition on a workgroup can be something of a challenge . The Sophos Knowledgebase is deafeningly quiet on the issue too. I had to install Sophos SBE on a client's network this week where they don't have a domain and I decided to write a batch file to do all the stuff that I believe is necessary to get it to work. For this batch file to give the Sophos Update user the correct rights on the local system you need the program NTRIGHTS from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. I copied this into the same folder as the batch file for ease. This is the batch file: rem Create Sophos User for workgroup computers c: cd\ md temp cd temp net use x: \\<servername>\data\admin\batch copy x:\ntrights.exe rem Change the bits in <> below to your choice of username and password net user <Sophos Update User> <password> /ADD /COMMENT:"Sophos update user" /EXPIRES:NEVER net localgroup administrators <Sophos Update User> /ADD...
  • Vista and Office at the CTS show for small businesses and System Builders

    Wow, what a packed agenda. Over the two days, myself and James Akrigg (of PTS TV Fame ) gave 16 whirlwind tours of Windows Desktop Search, Windows Vista and Office 2007 client applications. When I say it was whirlwind, I mean each presentation lasted just 35 mins and we then had just 10 mins to get the next audence in. Overall, more than 900 people came and saw the two products and the feedback was awesome. (and all without even a lunch break) We then had super stars on the stand outside our briefing area who answered more questions and demonstrated answers to specific questions. Vista and Office mania definately started in Birmingham over the last two days. I will be posting the slides on the site later, but the key messages can be found at the following Microsoft sites: www.microsoft.com/office/preview www.microsoft.com/windowsvista As soon as the products reach beta 2 I will post lots of info on why Vista and Office 2007 for small businesses ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 12 2006
  • Learn what Information Worker is when Microsoft talk about it (Office 2003 & servers) and what James Akrigg has to say - More PTS TV

    The PTS Team (the group I work for - Partner Technical Support) are recording regular small videos to explain what we do and what it means to partners. One of my hero's in the team is James AKrigg. You will know if you have ever seen him present - he is very passionate about technolog and getting the most out of it - very much like me - and he was also one of the original architects of the SBSC programme idea. So (being one of my favorite words), what has he done, well he has recorded a small piece on PTS-TV about Information Worker. My advice to you, go spend 7 minutes learning what he has to say - you will find it valuable, and possibly funny as we seem to be leaving in outtakes :-) Where can you get it? - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv/ let me know if you like it :-) ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 12 2006
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  • Latest Beta of Windows Live Messenger (replacement for MSN Messenger ships)

    Hi, this is a little off topic, but for those of you who like to play with betas, Windows Live Messenger is available, along with other products at http://ideas.live.com - worth a look in for sure. Lots of new features, but the ones I like the most are: Cheap calls to land lines from my PC send an IM to someone offline and they get it when the log back in IM while appearing offline :-) ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 12 2006
  • How to configure Mac’s with SBS 2003

    I was recently asked by a colleague about the ease of setting up Mac’s in the SBS 2003 world. We are all aware of the pitfalls of using a .local domain name (I hope) and that some of the wizards do not work (or perhaps none of them do), but I have never actually been through the detail. One question that stumped me was around certificates on the Mac. So, I posted the question internally and someone Mark Stanfill piped up asking if the customer / partner had looked at the Whitepaper on how to setup a Mac. For my sins, I was not even remotely aware of the whitepaper, so I downloaded it and had a look. Talk about an awesome document, so if you need to set up a Mac on a SBS network, get this document. The link is http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=46578 and this should take you to the download. Microsoft is not the only source for information like this, it is also worth looking at the below for some ISA and Mac info: http://simultaneouspancakes.com/Lessons/archives/2005/11/internet_access_1.shtml Ttfn David Just...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 5 2006
  • MS-CRM and Mappoint for your customer map needs, of course it works with SBS

    I promised it a while ago, but it is finally here. Jedi Master Simon Hutson has finally documented the quick process of getting Mappoint services and MS-CRM working together. All the details including a downlaod are located in his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/ukcrm/archive/2006/05/04/590006.aspx ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Fri, May 5 2006
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  • These guys rock.....

    Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra that is Went to see them at The Broadway Theatre in Peterborough last night. An incredible night out. If you get the chance to see these guys live, grab it with both hands - they are amazing.......
  • PTS-TV - meet Mark Deakin and hear about Exchange 12/2007, and Unified Messaging futures - also with Katie Ledger

    The team I work with come in different shapes and sizes, with some of us very technology focused and others a bit more broadly spread around solutions. To try and get a bit more of the information out about what is happening, the PTS team (Partner Technical Specialists) have started small streaming TV shows, lasting a few minutes, but giving you the chance to meet the team and understand a bit more about the technology landscape. To this end, we have teamed up with Katie Ledger to bring you installment number one - with Mark Deakin. It is worth having a quick look at the two videos on the site, remembering that we have a bit of "outtake" material at the end to show you that we are human too, sometimes many, many, many times over :-) So, to get there, go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv/ and watch the show. You can also find Mark's blog at http://blogs.technet.com/markdea/ Other members of the team have their blogs linked from http://blogs.technet.com/msppuk/ ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 4 2006
  • Windows Vista, Office 2007, Sharepoint, Community and others at the May Kent (SBS) Partner Group on 23rd May 2006

    Susanne has asked me to attend the Kent Partner Group and talk on a number of subjects. The best I can do is May 23rd, so this is when I will be there. As always I expect the discussions to be lively, but we will cover for sure the up & coming technologies as well as some tried and tested areas, such as SharePoint, licensing and anything else you need to chat about. For more information, have a look at http://www.sbsbpi.co.uk/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=22 See you there David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 4 2006
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  • David Overton at the East Anglia Partner Group (Sometimes known as the Cambridge SBS User Group)

    Hi folks, just a quick note to say that on the 9th May I will be in Cambridge talking on a number of subjects at the group. More info on how to sign up can be found on the group site at http://www.sbsbpi.co.uk/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=41 . The agenda will include a 1st sight of the Small Business Ignite content, then a Q&A session around anything Microsoft and the groups should discuss. I look forward to seeing you there. ttfn David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 4 2006
  • Windows XP, Desktop Search, Vista and Office 2007 - at the CTS (Computer Trade Show) with David Overton and James Akrigg

    On the 10th & 11th May I will be presenting every 40 minutes on Windows, Office and Vista - a quick introduction on what these great products can do for you today and in the future. To book into the session, go to http://www.microsoft.com/uk/cts - it is advised as it is expected to be busy. For general information about the CTS show, go have a look at http://www.ctshow.co.uk . It is a great opportunity to get to see a large amount of the IT industry in one place. Signing up to the my session at the CTS show (and turning up) will also enable us to send you a DVD of Vista when it betas (if you want to). Clicking on the link here will give you a very basic lead into our stand at the show: http://www.ctshow.co.uk/cgi-events/exview.pl?exhibition_id=91&exbtr_id=6439 As for what these products can do for you - they are due to beta later this month and since I have been running both of them for ages, I can tell you there is a long list of great features that I will share - ripe for small business partrners. Also...
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Thu, May 4 2006
  • London Small Business IT Pro Group meeting 8th May - CRM with Julian Sharp of Vigence

    The next meeting of the London Small Business IT Pro Group will take place this coming Monday 8th May. We have another special guest this month. Julian Sharp of Vigence will be talking about implementing and helping clients to use CRM 3.0. Vigence are one of the leading Microsoft CRM consultancies in the UK and I know that Julian has lots of tips and tricks up his sleeve that he's going to share with us. The meeting will be start at 5:30pm Monday 8th May at Microsoft House, 10 Great Pulteney Street, London, W1F 9NB. Drinks and pizza will be served and the meeting will finish around 8:30pm in time for those who travel any distance to get away and for the locals to retire to the pub If you could let me know you are coming that would be appreciated. Look forward to seeing all of you who can make it!
  • Installing CRM 3.0 on an SBS2003 PE Virtual Server image

    Fun and games I am still using CRM 1.2 in my business because all the horror stories of upgrades from 1.2 to 3.0 around and about. Reading Larry Lentz's blog at http://ts2community.com/blogs/larrylentz/default.aspx is enough to turn your hair grey So I decided to install CRM 3.0 on a VS image of SBS2003 PE SP1 that I have here. NB I don't have ISA2004 installed My standard way of setting an SBS box up is to have the domain name as domainname.local and then when I run the CEICW to give the machine name as server.domainname.co.uk. This means that it works when somone wants to use RWW and you can update the external DNS for your domain to point to the external IP address of your server. So what did I have to do to get CRM 3.0 installed on SBS2003? Setup a forward lookup zone for domainname.co.uk in the SBS server DNS and create an A record for server.domainame.co.uk pointing to the internal IP address of the SBS server. Fix the loopback problem as outlined in this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/default...
  • UK SBS GUY & Gals site (uksbsguy.com) up down and round and round

    Howdy, I have seen plenty of system failures over the last two weeks and while some nice new hardware is due to arrive soon, I will be moving the whole system to a virtual server environment on another box that has been a stalwart. If you see the site down, it will almost certainly be rebooting - I have identified it two a couple of drivers (either NTFS.sys or my AV provider) - once it is virtualised, it will remain so until new hardware arrives. One thing I will do is fully document the process I took to move from physical to virtual without the use of an Enterprise Server (which is required to use the MS provided tools). More blogs posts soon - once hardware issues are off my mind. thanks David
    Posted to David Overton's Blog by David Overton on Tue, May 2 2006
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  • You know those pesky Blue Screens?

    Dana Epp has written an excellent article on how to interpret them for fun and for profit http://silverstr.ufies.org/blog/archives/000761.html Next time you get a BSOD this should help you work out the root cause ASAP.
  • Installing SQL reporting Services and getting "SetDialogs" and "error 1603"?

    Just been trying to install SRS on my replacement desktop and was getting an error about SetDialogs and Error 1603. I've installed SRS on an XP SP2 box before with no problems, so a bit puzzled. A hunt around found me this thread: http://sqlforums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=92&threadid=34274&enterthread=y and running aspnet_regiis -i from the %windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v1.1.4322 folder seems to have done the trick. Good old Google The reason I think I had problems this time was because I had IIS installed on this machine so I can run Virtual Server. Previously IIS wasn't installed. Hope this helps someone else.......
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