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June 2006 - David Overton's Blog
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  • Tools I could not be without for using and managing Windows XP, Vista and SBS

    Following on from my previous post on crash dumps and the Tech-Ed presentation I thought it was worth quickly pointing out the tools I use on a daily basis: Process Explorer Taskmanager on steriods - see what services and threads are running - look at the real list of processes that take up cpu time rather than how Windows Task Manager does the trick FileMon Ever wonder what folder that temp file was put in, or what file is being looked for when something fails - this is hwo to find it RegMon Like Filemon, but for the registry - find out what si being read, written too, searched for etc. PendMoves Can't install something because the system has a number of pending "moves" - files it will rename on reboot - find out what they are and then you can do something about it if you want DiskMon See what activity is happening on your disk ttfn David

  • Find out just how much Malware Microsoft has seen and removed using our tools

    Malware and the like are nasty horrid beasties. You probably see the malware remover tools come down each month as part of your security updates, but never think about what it is actually doing? Well, some scary information is provided at http://virtualteched.com/archive/2006/06/12/74.aspx from Tech-Ed. What is quite frightening is the number of PCs infected, the number of rootkits and the fact that most still get there with the users consent. ttfn David

  • Links to Vista resources and a "new and improved reliability features" webcast

    Saw on an internal mail thread that a great webcast on new and improved reliability features of Vista can be found on Kevin's blog - http://blogs.technet.com/kevinremde/archive/2006/06/19/434332.aspx and the webcast itself at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032298849&Culture=en-US One of the nice thing on his page is a list of Vista Links on that link above. His vista specific content can be found by clicking on http://blogs.technet.com/kevinremde/archive/category/10069.aspx . In Kevin's own words " I had some technical problems mid-way through with a disconnected Virtual Server", but still very useful ttfn David

  • Some information on things like backup and deleted items bin in WSS V3

    I was browsing over at http://msmvps.com/blogs/thenakedmvp/archive/2006/06/07/100040.aspx and noticed the entry on WSS V3. Something you can do is fire up a Virtual Server on a test box and play with WSS V3 - it has some nice features. Another thing to blog on after I get off paternity ttfn David

  • Still want more leads from Microsoft - another pointer

    I am often asked this question. The answer of course is made up of many things, but the things I find help are: Be seen in the right places - get your SBSC qualification - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sbsc Ensure that when you click on your link on the " Find an IT Consultant " link and enter YOUR postcode, that your site tells small business what YOU can do for THEIR business, not just what IT you sell Profile yourself so others can find you through other Microsoft Tools - http://blogs.technet.com/msppuk/archive/2006/06/09/434457.aspx Use whatever Microsoft advertising is available to you - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sales_and_marketing/campaigncenter/default.aspx Go on a solution sales skills course - http://www.microsoft.co.uk/events/eventdetail.aspx?eventid=8400 Look at the other MS resources available to you - http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/sales_and_marketing/benefits_diagram/default.aspx Work with other local partners to make life easier for all IT vendors around you - http://www.sbsbpi...

  • Off Topic - How not to retain customers - Someone wants to cancel their AOL subscription

    I just had tto post this. Microsoft sometimes gets a bit of a kicking about support, but things like the Official SBS podcast , changes to search on our http://support.microsoft.com site, people like me and even the huge SBS community have changed most peoples experience with our support. When I say this, you just have to laugh in amazement as to what was going through this guys mind? http://video.msn.com/v/us/v.htm?g=5ff445af-bf5c-4c3c-9424-ff467ea97a87&f=rssimbot_us_default ttfn David

  • Security and some Myths debunked

    I used to spend my time dealing with security at a military scale for computer systems. I was not guarding anything in terms of weapons etc, just following process for protecting documents I was managing. If there was one thing that irked me was when people thought they were safe, but then did stupid things to completely undermine the security. For example, going in through the main enterence involved stringent security checks, but going through the side enterance the only check was on your car speed. My data was far less protected once physical security was compromised! Bring this into the world of computers and my role now, many people do things to enable them to feel safe - load A/V software, run multiple malware detectors, check the patch level on their firewalls, even if they are hardware filewalls, keep their systems patched, ensure the clients and servers are locked down with their own firewalls configured and managed by policy. I could go on, and of course you all do these things already, right? It was...

  • Link to my commonly viewed blogs

    Hi folks, I am sure I have missed a few people out, but I finally added the list of common blogs and sites I visit. To get to the information, click the "links" button in my blog, or go there directly by clicking here . ttfn David

  • 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...

  • Want to see Windows Mobile 5 working ala the SB Ignite Tour in your own demo environment

    The Funboy ala Chris has published this step by step guide to using the Windows Mobile 5 emulator with SBS to learn the WM5 funky functionality. Perhaps the most annoying thing is that the reason I fly to Boston for the World Wide Partner Conference is to demostrate part of the new People Ready Business Demo DVD mobility demos, including the stuff Chris has painstakingly documented . There is a huge amount of learning in Chris's page, so don't be thinking you can skip it. One further piece of software I would load onto this demo is to load Mobile Admin toolkit. When loading this on SBS, it will create a 2nd default web site which you will basically not be able to access. I then went to IIS admin, gave it a host header of MobileAdmin and made it available on the internal network. To access the admin tools I then access http://mobileadmin/mobileadmin . There might have been a security issue with the folder - can't remember, but I am sure you are all capable of ensuring the folders have the right permissions for...

  • Steve Marsh talks about Office 2007 and why you should care on PTS-TV

    PTS-TV has been very, very busy with several videos released over the last few days. I have just noticed that Steve Marsh has finally spoken about Office 2007. I have previously blogged about Office, and also added several blog sites to watch on my links page . Steve can be found on the normal PTS-TV page . You can also keep up to date with PTS-TV via the RSS feed . Having said that, watch Steve Marsh tell it how it is about Office 2007 and also see other posts on this site here . To watch Steve directly, either stream it or download it (46mb). Also, even though Steve has come through the Microsoft Graduate Scheme (as is post Uni, worked for me for a year and now is a fully fledged team member alongside myself) he has managed to catch my disease of saying "So" too many times. Finally, he called me a "Big person", something I need to have a chat to him about, although while on paternity leave I have been eating chocolate at all hours recently, so he might be very right. ttfn David

  • Chris Parkes talkes about BI which he says is "all employees within an organisation being able to access the right information in the right format in the the right time to better enable them to make sound decisions in order to do their job"

    Chris is a great guy at making difficult things sound simple. Besides getting his 5 year award at Microsoft, he talks about how he got into BI and then how he likes to help others through the use of BI. His blog is also very worth having a read at http://blogs.msdn.com/bidirectional/ . One of the things he gets very excited about is business scorecard manager too :-) ttfn David
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  • How to put your copyright information and usage into Office Documents with the Creative Commons add-in

    Just a quick note to say that Microsoft have been working with Creative Commons to enable the use of their Copyright licenses and tools within Office. More info at Creative Commons can be found at http://creativecommons.org/ and the plug-in for Office can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=113B53DD-1CC0-4FBE-9E1D-B91D07C76504&displaylang=en ttfn David
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  • Were you at Office DevCon - the UK's 2nd Office Developer Dev conference - want to know more?

    OK, so DevCon has been and gone, but hopefully some of you got to see the event. There is a quick little video with people talking about the highlights on a small video . This all links from Darren's blog . One thing that it highlights is that people really enjoy playing with the product after seeing things. Jo is on the video and are many others, but again, some blogs to follow are: Office Rocker! Office 12 Watch (Office 12 is Office 2007) UK Office Pioneer Jo Carpenter's Blog Adventure Girl ttfn David
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  • I Need you to comment on a blog - should the Technet guys run a seperate Small Business track?

    Hi folks, it is not often I put out an ask like this, but on Eileen Browns excellent blog she has the following around Exchange 2007 ( http://blogs.technet.com/eileen_brown/archive/2006/06/16/technet_events.aspx ): Exchange - going small or large? A lot of the questions I get when I'm out at the roadshow are about Exchange and what Exchange 2007 can do for organisations. <lots snipped> When I decided on the content this year, I went for topics that I thought would appeal to people wanting to know about up and coming technologies. An overview of the new features in 2007 Office System, Exchange 2007 and Vista, with the new features of Windows Server R2, and ISA Server too. But I reckon that 75% of the questions that I've had this week concern Small Business Server and various aspects of SBS architecture. So my question is...Should we include an SBS track in future events? and if so, what do you want us to cover on this potential SBS track? Should we deliver this event in conjunction with Partners at their...

  • Did you know that your small business customers want Windows Vista

    I know this has been discussed before and while I am on Paternity I am not authoring much in the way of content (not enough time), so simply adding things I am finding elsewhere, but this little gem was interesting. A recent web survey that I think, but am not 100% sure about, was NOT commissioned by Microsoft found the following: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=11414 Small shops (with fewer than 100 employees) who identified themselves as aggressive when it comes to platform upgrades were among the most avid projected Vista adopters, with 76 percent saying they would roll out within the first year of Vista release. Of respondents who said they plan on delaying a Vista rollout, 69 percent said they would rely on their PC refresh cycle to drive the transition . Overall, 46 percent of respondents said that new security features would be a factor in causing them to undertake a Vista rollout; the next most popular response was end of support for legacy Windows systems, at 28 percent. Only three survey respondents...

  • Do you want to run through a series of self paced scenarios for Windows Vista and then send us feedback?

    I have just found this site - it is really quite good and will only get better. Simple go to http://windowsbeta.microsoft.com/vista/setup.aspx , tell it which version of Vista you are running (most likely 5384 - Beta 2) and then home button. On the left hand side a list of categories will pop up, but there is a HUGE amount to choose from. As an example, when I clicked security, this is the list: Security Internet Options Determine the privacy level you are using within the current security zone User Account Control When prompted, give permission for a program to continue Windows Defender Scan your computer using Windows Defender View items quarantined by Windows Defender Run Software Explorer to view all software running on your computer Windows Firewall Confirm that Windows Firewall is active and running Check to see if Wireless Portable Devices are unblocked by Windows Firewall the list of categories is long: (Recently Added) Application Compatibility Communications & Networking Ease of Access Entertainment...

  • Loading Vista with SBS

    SBS is a great, stable product, so why go and throw in a bunch of broken software into the mix? Untested - yes, Vista and Office 2007 are beta, so known to have bugs that have not be resolved in them. OK, so the 1st rule is never run beta software in production, unless you are doing so for known explicit reasons. Vlad has posted on this a few times already. I also saw that the SBS team have made a couple of statements about Office and Vista and the bottom line is that there are some known issues and Microsoft is addressing them. Also, looking on one of the forums, there are a few questions people are asking , so be warned. If you don't use the connect computer wizard, then joining a Vista PC to a domain is doable. You might have a few Group Policy problems, so I would check things like "My Documents" redirection and firewall settings. You will also get a few UAC prompts, but as Susan suggests , lead UAC on for your testing - the prompts should get less once the PC is set up and the latest builds of Vista should...

  • Do You want to learn about developing using the latest MS Technology in small chunks (Windows WorkFlow / Presentation / Communication Foundation, ASP.Net, SQL 2005, WSE, Winforms, XML etc)

    I got sent this internally and thought I should share. 10 min 'how-to's' for developers to download on the hot topics. Check out the new 'easy to find' Nugget download page on the MSDN website. The 10-15 minute mini webcasts have proven themselves extremely popular with developers pushed for time. With the new Nugget page, developers can search on technology, content level and preferred presenter to get the Nugget they want, saving even more time. ttfn David

  • Longhorn review - calls it a Slam Dunk

    Working for Microsoft makes you a little used to seeing people slate your products whether they know what they are talking about or are just trying to make press. Someone associated with the press once told me that news rooms get a buzz when a negative Microsoft story comes in - oh joys! So, for all this, while all the noise has been about Office 2007 and Windows Vista recently, Windows codename Longhorn Beta 2 has quietly popped out. This is the server product, which will shop in 32-bit and 64-bit form, but only the x64 version will be used as the foundation for SBS Longhorn codename Cougar. While I can't tell you anything about Cougar - after all, we have not got SBS 2003 R2 out the door yet - you can start to see what the foundations will be. Longhorn Server, with more functionality, IPv6 based networking, huge security leaps and much more. To see the product, go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver/longhorn . Today, Longhorn is only available via TechNet or MSDN , but as I have mentioned before, buy Technet...
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  • Longhorn Forums

    For those of you who are interested in Windows Server Longhorn , we have 13 forums available for discussion with eachother and Microsoft at http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=161&SiteID=17 General General discussion on Windows Server “Longhorn” Directory Services Discussion on Windows Server “Longhorn” Active Directory services File Services and Storage Discussion on file systems and storage functionality within Windows Server "Longhorn" Migration Discussion on migrating to Windows Server “Longhorn” Management Discussion on managing Windows Server “Longhorn”, including management tools Network Access Protection Discuss on Network Access Protection Platform Networking Discussion on networking with Windows Server “Longhorn”, including networking technologies and solutions Print/Fax Discussion on printing and faxing with Windows Server “Longhorn" Setup & Deployment Discussion on setting up and deploying Windows Server “Longhorn” Terminal Services Discussion on all things Windows...
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  • New Microsoft Code sharing site (CodePlex) and Forums for WSS

    I see over at CNET that Microsoft has launched a new code sharing, shared sources initiative where people can work on joint code. This is called CodePlex . While browsing there, I saw a great looking Forum for WSS. To get to the forum, go to http://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=SPFORUMS . Picture below ttfn David

  • OFF TOPIC - Feel the force - See Star Wars Lego II - The Original Trilogy Game - AWESOME

    As some of you may know, I am a true Star Wars Geek. I love all 6 films - yes, even Jar Jar. I had heard about the 2nd game - me & Molly are loving the 1st game and then I saw this on MSN Video - amazing! Cool features - all the characters, the ability to go off piste with any vehicle and the ability to take characters apart and create new ones - just like you would with Lego Pieces :-) ttfn David

  • Videos about Vista or adverts for it

    There I was thinking I knew lots about Vista and then I started finding the Videos Product Demos http://geekindisguise.com/Documents/myVistaMC.wmv http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6018907.html http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6019862.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j-LwPM3L5Q http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/learning/training/conceptvid/default.aspx Adverts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ku2UbRyXg http://wms.meslchost.com/windowsvistapartner/seethedifference.wmv Other Devlopers - http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Windows+Vista as always, http://uksbsguy.com/vista or http://ukvistaguy.com will get you my Vista related content. ttfn David

  • If you want Vista - go get it today or mis out

    I have just read at Ian Moulster's blog that Vista beta code is on a time limit to sign up - and that time is soon to expire. If you want Vista, go to http://www.microsoft.com/betaexperience/engb and start the process now, like today. You have been warned! ttfn David
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(c)David Overton 2006-23