Blogs

Having had James take up an offer to find out what is causing his BSODs, her has now asked me how I found out which driver appears to be having the problem. While there is no substite for lots of debug work, a very simple process is to run the crash dumps through our debugging tool (full dumps are best, followed by kernel dumps and then finally mini-dumps). The first thing is to find the dump files - it will either be c:\windows\memory.dmp or mini-dumps under c:\windows\minidump. Find the file you want and copy it somewhere so you can examine it. Then get the debugging tools - http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx and download the x86 (32-bit) version. Once the tools are extracted, open a cmd window and go to c:\Program Files\Debugging Tools for Windows and type kd -z c:\mydumpfile.dmp -v -y SRV*c:\websymbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols . Wait for it to load and do an analyze. The debugger will open and if it has not done it already, type !analyze -v and see what drivers...

Maybe it is just me, but I often want a huge clock on my PC when I am in a hotel, and I want there to be a wake up call. This web site gives me exactly what I want - http://onlineclock.net/ ttfn David

If any of this sounds really useful, then why not book on a local ignite tour - for the 1st time we are coming as the small business team to your location. The events have plenty of technical show how (i.e. we will show it, might even show a config screen or two, but not build and install it in front of you). Click http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/training/ignite/default.aspx to book on the event and click on a location close to you on the map and select the Small Business Ignite or, if you are into CRM, the CRM one. Overall the event lasts 2 - 2:30hrs and is very interactive. While you may say you know everything about these technologies (and thankfully, to date, everyone has learnt something about the technology at the events) The existing ignite tours have been very well received - I got a mail today saying - if you liked the event and have already been to one, drop a comment and say how much you did so: "I always come away from your presentations fuelled with new ideas which I can implement for customers...

[updated 16:42 9th May 2007 with url for MS Support of this] [updated 9:45 22nd July 2007 with url to fix for install dialog coming up with word] I was recently asked in Office 2003 and Office 2007 can co-exist on the same system. The answer is yes, except for Outlook which as in previous versions get a little precious if this is attempted (it will not let you do this, btw). You can choose to have them both installed to the same drive or one to an external hard drive, it does not matter. The key option is when installing Office 2007 is to customise the options and select to NOT uninstall the previous versions. When you install both copies of Office to be installed on 1 machine that switching between Word 2003 and Word 2007 will result in an install dialog box coming up. See How to get rid of the installer / configuration dialog when running Office 2007 and Office 2003 on the same system - for Vista and other versions of Windows to fix this. For more support information, look at http://support.microsoft.com/default...

[updated 9:50 22nd July to include link to stop install dialog coming up when installing both Office 2003 and 2007 on the same machine] Having written about application compatibility and repeatedly answered the question as to whether Vista can run Office 2003 (yes it can), I decided to do a set of pictures for every step of the way. In doing this I got to the bottom of a couple of problems - i.e. how to I get the service packs for Office and how do I stop the EULA from constantly appearing. Here is my picturesque walk through. Step 1 - Boot up Vista and insert the Office CD . Insert the CD with Office on it and it should automatically start with a dialog box askign you if you want to run setup. Step 2 - Accept the User Access Control (UAC) dialog . If the dialog does not look just like the one in the 2nd screenshot below then this is a worry! All untampered Office installs should have a "blue bar" at the top of the UAC prompt box Step 3 - Follow the normal Office install Process (Note if it is a corporate...

I've had a few people ask where they can buy my book so I thought I would lay out the options. You can always purchase both the book and / or the e-book from Packt Publishing at this address however for those who wish to buy elsewhere, you can. Book or eBook Free shipping! US, UK, Europe & selected Asian countries This is the RAW book (Read as Written). More Information here To buy or pre-order, click here Book and eBook. Pre-order now! Print only price £27.89 save 10% eBook only price £13.19 save 40% Amazon in UK Amazon in USA Anywhere in the world Anywhere in the world I hope you enjoy the book. For a brief summary of the chapters go here and you can preview a chapter from the book here -(Sample Chapter 4 Installing SBS 2008 and Connecting to the Internet [2.0 MB]) . If you wish to request a copy to review, look at the Request a Review Copy page. I have now embarked on my 2nd book project and you can find out more about it here - http://davidoverton.com/blogs/doverton/archive/2011/08/27/windows...

[updated 9th August 2007 to add read/write document registry change] A few people said this was a showstopper for them in recommneding Office 2007 to their customers so I figured it had to be fixed. I nixed a huge amount of work from the right stuff blog " Office 2007 File Icons for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 " and the script work from http://blogs.msdn.com/karstenj/archive/2006/01/03/508888.aspx . The problems were: 1) no icons for files 2) file types not recognised by companyweb 3) downloads could not be opened as the file type was said to be a compressed file 4) could not edit from companyweb OK, so here is the process. 1. Download the icons from here and put them into folder C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\IMAGES\ (read the item on the the right stuff to pick your files) 2. Update the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\TEMPLATE\XML\docicon.xml file with the information below...

I think it is credit where credit is due here. The community is slowly resolving the issues we are seeing with Office 2007. I have asked John to log a call with Microsoft so that we can track the issues internally, get bugs issued and get fixes out there. Because any fix we produce has to go through threat modeling and regression testing, we rarely release them with haste unless they are impacting a significant number of users or are a security threat. However, John has documented many of the problems and solutions, so it is worth a look Problem with Outlook 2007 - Email Receive is Broken! 19 February 2007 As people start to use Outlook 2007, there is an alarming pattern starting to emerge regarding performance issues when receiving POP3 email. Even the smallest and most trivial of emails can take ages to download and be available, ranging from 30 seconds to minutes. During this time, Outlook and Windows can become slow to respond or become completely unresponsive, usually returning to normal when the send/receive...

As most of you know I am working on my Windows Intune book and I've just finished the 6th chapter. This covers reporting and I was highly frustrated that there is no export or print function on all the hardware information screens, but you can export some of the hardware information. Here is how to do it: Open the Windows Intune Console by going to http://manage.microsoft.com . Select the Computers workspace and find the computer that whose hardware inventory we want to explore or store. Change the Filters setting from None to Hardware classification . We will now see the information about the hardware manufactures and model. If the machine is a non-OEM system then we will see the motherboard manufacturer and model number. We can export this data using the export logo in the top right of the tool bar next to the printer icon. We are prompted to choose between csv (comma separated values) and html files. Only csv files are useful for importing into custom reports. Select .csv File and then press Export . Once...

Should you have a SBS 2000 system that you wish to move to SBS 2008 there is now a documented process on how to do this. Migrating Microsoft Small Business Server 2000 to Windows Small Business Server 2008 Outlines the steps necessary to migrate settings and data from an existing server running Microsoft Small Business Server 2000 to a new computer running Windows SBS 2008. File Name: Migrating_SBS2000_to_SBS2008.doc Date Published: 5/1/2009 Download Size:96 KB Download details: Migrating SBS 2000 to Windows SBS 2008 Note that Exchange is not migrated in itself, so PST backups of all mail folders is required using the process documented in the KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196492 . Thanks David Technorati Tags: SBS 2008 , SBS 2000 , Migration , Microsoft

One of the settings I wanted to change in SBS 2008 was the spam filter settings – some mails that I was receiving were being deleted without any option for me to review them. Since I had to go and read the manual on this, I thought I would share the answer on this. Open the Exchange Management Console Select the Organization Configuration and then Hub Transport Select the Anti-spam and look at Content Filtering By default the “Reject messages” SCL rating is set to 7. I change this to 8, enable "Quarantining messages” for messages above a level of 6 Finally, you need to enter the e-mail of a mailbox to receive the quarantined e-mail You can see how this impacted the e-mails themselves in the daily report – notice the number of mails still rejected / quarantined: That is it. See all the other SBS 2008 items at http://davidoverton.com/blogs/doverton/archive/tags/SBS+2008/default.aspx ttfn David Technorati Tags: Microsoft , SBS , SBS 2008 , Small Business Server 2008 , Exchange 2007 , Tips , Spam , Content Filtering

So you may remember the call for help that led to the article How to add public folders to the list of contacts in Outlook : We currently have several public folders which contain email address and contact information for people outside of our company that we want to keep up with. I would like to put these in the All Contacts list on the server, so everyone can open it and reference it when sending email. The only thing I can find it to put them in Active Directory so they can be on the list. Surely there is another way to get this done, but how. I also am not opposed to manually typing them in (and weeding out old contacts), but don't feel very comfortable putting 800 outsiders in my AD. Having proposed the solution in the above link, I then got back the following reply: Thanks David for the reply. I have some address books in the public folder that I have done that to, but was trying to move away from the public folder and have the addresses included in the "All Contacts" under the "All Addresses" section for...