June 2006 - David Overton's Blog

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...

If you laughed at my exploits on PTS-TV - and even if you did not, go to PTS-TV and see DAve Sayers talk about Virtualisation. http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/blog/pts-tv ttfn David

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...

One of my partners was having problems installing vista inside a Virtual PC and I remembered the problem with Virtual PC not liking DVDs or ISOs > 2 odd GB, so my answer was to use Virtual Server. Having said all that, there is very good documentation at The Elder Geek on the process - http://www.theeldergeekvista.com/vista_00028.htm . I would add a couple of things – install using Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 beta – you will get a much better experience – and this is freely available too. Enjoy testing Vista and remember to let us know what you like / don’t like. Ttfn David P.S. for all vista downloads etc have a look at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista

Blogging as a Microsoft Employee is always a tricky decision as what to tell or not tell. I personally feel that it is very important that the true is always told and that information if not confidential should be disclosed as desired. A recent post has caused lots of controversy as it discussed from one managers point of view the reason why Vista slipped in the 1 st place. Some may find the contents of the posting quite damning, yet the reality is that in a complex project, some things are not perfect, or even fixable. The things that Philip has highlighted are often based on human characteristics, such as trust, friendship and self protection. Great in some circumstance and bad in others. Vista is still a great product, and when it does ship will significantly move the bar for quality operating systems, but this is not to say that it won’t have had a hurdle or two to jump or lost a few pounds during this marathon race. For now, enjoy Philip’s blog and perhaps reflect what you might do to protect yourself when...

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

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

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

I love Windows Vista. One thing that opele complain about is the security prompts that come up when you run an administrative task. There are two things to say here. Firstly, this peaks while you are setting up the machine - adding applications and drivers etc, so give it a week before you pass judgement on it. Second, this is being improved. We have a great team who take all the feedback on this and they are looking how to simplify this for the RC1 and final product. If you want to find out more, pop along to http://blogs.msdn.com/uac/archive/2006/06/01/613098.aspx to see what the UAC (User Account Control) team have to say. ttfn David

For Vista, I have registered the following sites: http://ukvistaguy.com and http://ukvistsguy.co.uk - these auto-redirect if you have nothing else on the address bar to http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/category/1003.aspx For Office, I have not registered any sites, but clicking the following link will take you to Office specific informaiton: http://uksbsguy.com/blogs/doverton/archive/category/1004.aspx If there are particular areas of Office 2007 or Vista you want to see more info on, just let me know. ttfn David

A Technet Plus subscription includes two free support calls to Microsoft - that makes the kit cheaper than the calls themselves - and then you get a bucket full of disks to try our software - including BETA software, which to date you have not seen in the action pack. OK, so Vista and Office betas will ship in the action pack, but if you want to see any others, or download them more frequently - get the Technet Plus pack. Info on the UK Technet Page can be found on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx . P.S. There are many ways to get a discount on the initial purchase too, so ask me to send you a piece of advertising and you can get 20% off (it sells for <£400) or talk to the people at www.sbsbpi.co.uk and they can help you get even more off. ttfn David

In my previous post I mentioned how you can see Vista in action on the web, but how else does a partner start to get skilled in Vista? There are numerious resources. See if Vista will run on your machine - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx Download or order the product and "play" with it - the best way to learn about the product is by using it yourself and then note things you do not like - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx Have a look at the product features page - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx Do the basic Vists 101 course - http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/partners/ Read the Vista for partner information - noting that there is a small business customer scenario - http://microsoft.mrmpslc.com/WindowsVistaPartner/secure/scenarios.aspx Download the long Product Guide for XPS or Word See what XPS (a sort of off-line XML web based document that has great printing capabilities) by looking at the product guide in XPS format - http...