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David Overton's Blog
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  • OFF TOPIC - Raise money for NSPCC (UK Childrens charity) while searching the internet using clickscount.co.uk

    I know this is s a small one, but if you go to http://www.clickscount.co.uk to try your internet web searches, you will rasie money for the NSPCC each time you click. Underneath is the MSN Search engine, which has improved hand over fist over the last few months, but it has got to be worth a try, even if it is just for MS related information. ttfn David

  • Using companyweb or Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) with Surveys to get feedback or approval

    We now have documentation stored in the system, but often we want more than just documents, we need feedback and discussions. SharePoint has many facilities around this. The options are: Discussions Lists Surveys Discussion areas are a very simple way for people to either add comment to a document or in a forum . I don’t consider this anything special, difficult to understand or especially great as far the built in functionality goes. Also, from a business point of view, the only solution that solve is when an owner manager says “I need a solution that permanently records the views people express around a specific area and I do NOT want it to be based on e-mail” – why not e-mail, well a good old public folder will do this for e-mail. Discussions DO work if this is based around a document, but I do not find many businesses asking for this. Lists are special and will be covered in the next WSS posting. Surveys are a special form of list, so lets look at what the surveys will do for us. Whenever a customer asks ...

  • Office 2007 blog worth reading - information resources and what will change between now and the release

    Hello again, I have now been running Beta 2 of Office 2007 for a while and still love the product. It is still toooooo memory hungry - don't try running it on a 256MB machine, but it is still a product I constantly find myself missing when I have to go back to older versions. Search and the new UI are both godsends, as is the ability to make something more visually impactful. OK, so the blogs - there is this guy Jensen Harris - his blog is amazing. I would just like to point out two of his posts. The 1st includes a bunch of links for information - go get them if you want to know more about Office: http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/24/605678.aspx - snippet of most interest: Office User Interface Video Tour : This is a live action movie in which Julie Larson-Green and I give you a quick tour of the UI and some of the thinking that went into it. The build we were using for the video is a lot older than Beta 2, so you might notice some rough spots. Nonetheless, a number of people have said that they found...
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  • Interesting discussion from one of the developers in the Windows team on "Why Vista Slipped"

    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...

  • subject area shortcuts

    Hi, for those who are after a quick way to find my posts on a particular subject area, I have created 4 shortcuts - they are: http://uksbsguy.com/sbs http://uksbsguy.com/wss http://uksbsguy.com/vista http://uksbsguy.com/office Do I really need to explain what each sibject area is? These will auto expand to the appropriate doverton blog categories. ttfn David

  • Why Small Business Server 2003 is right for small businesses

    I have my 1 st Technet Article published in the news flash today. The article is below and it talks about why SBS is right for small businesses – for the “IT Pros” in the world – i.e. those who are technical by nature. To add a bit more to the article, I have included several links in this to pictures of the reports. Hello, My name is David Overton and I am the Head of Technology for Small Business in Microsoft UK. I spend a good deal of my time explaining the benefit of Microsoft Technology focused on the small business market. Windows Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) is a product that is perfect for those organisations who are looking for a single server that does everything in one box and meet the requirements of 75 users or less. In the one box you get Windows Server 2003 standard, Exchange 2003 standard and a host of SBS specific wizards and tools that ensure it is simple to install. What is more the price is less than that of Windows Server 2003. (Further wizard pictures for To Do List , Adding a User 1...
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  • Using Windows SharePoint Services (WSS and Companyweb) to keep everyone up to date

    Again I am taking content from the Small Business Ignite Tour which covers WSS is some detail – http://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/ignite . This continues in the series and now we are looking at how to keep everyone up to date. Many business owners talk about issues such as: “My sales people have access to an electronic price book, but they do not keep it up to date, so they sell at the wrong price” or “When I make an important policy document change, everyone must know about it and acknowledge the fact that they agree” While some of this is about teaching people some new skills, most of it is about using the functionality provided between Office 2003 and SBS 2003 using Windows SharePoint Services. If you have been reading the other WSS blog entries, then you should now be familiar with Document Workspaces. Open a document workspace and note the “Alert Me” option down the bottom. You can give certain users the capability to use e-mail addresses such as all employees or sales team. Create Windows users that can...

  • OFF TOPIC - Overton Family has another child - Lizzy May

    Hello everyone, just a quick note to say that today Lizzy May was born into this world at 2:24am GMT. She is happy and health, as is her mum and the rest of us. She weighs 6lbs 15 1/2 ounces and was 54cms long. If you want to see some lovely pictures, go to http://uksbsguy.com/photos/doverton/category1018.aspx obviously this will slow down some of the posts over the next few days or weeks. ttfn David

  • How Virtual Server enables SBS 2003 and Terminal Services on the same box

    Terminal Services (TS) was a feature people liked in SBS 2000, but the performance and security issues meant that many people broke their solutions by overuse of TS. The answer with SBS 2003 was no TS – which solved both the support issue, but also the fact that you could not run Outlook on the same machine as one with Exchange, thus meaning users of TS on an SBS system could not do e-mail except by browser. There is a very simple whitepaper on how to do TS on SBS located at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/deploy/adstrmsr.mspx . Now, using Virtual Server, which is a no charge add-on to Windows, you can have a single server with SBS and providing Terminal Services as you run a mini-machine inside your SBS box. The thing to be aware of is the need to buy the right OS licenses for the virtual machines, so while you can save money on the hardware, currently, you need to buy OS licenses. Once this is all done, using the power of Virtual Server you can be away – either for Terminal Services or...
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  • Using Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) to share documents and ensure everyone is up to date by using Outlook shared attachments

    So we have great documents, but as soon as often they are shares, they get out of date. Examples of this are price lists product information shared resources list To get over this we are going to look at Document Workspaces in CompanyWeb and Office 2003. Let’s start at the beginning, no matter what I tell people, they do not like going to a web site to load, upload a file etc. Also, setting user permissions is a nightmare and they might even just start passing round usernames and passwords. The most obvious answer for most people is to use e-mail. The very process of creating an e-mail with an attachment and marking it as a live attachment creates a document workspace. It is secured to only those people that the e-mail goes to and the document knows where it came from, so will try ot update the site or get updates from the site when saved and loaded. This ensures that any document sent this way, or using a document work group will auto-update. Documents stored on SharePoint sites like to auto update. Each time...

  • Windows Server 2003 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 - learn more with PTS-TV and Dave Sayers talking Virtualisation

    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

  • How to install Vista inside a Virtual PC

    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

  • The key to Vista's success is a great product and some amazing ISV applications

    I have been having a chat with Vlad ( http://www.vladville.com/2006/06/vista-advertising-machine-starts-its-engine.html ) and he has made a really good point that Vista looks good, that it is beta, so should not be deployed in a live environment and that he needs some compelling apps. I happen to agree with him - it is beta, and therefore more sluggish and buggy than a final product, but on the apps front, there is soooo much to come. The view of public apps can be seen on http://www.seewindowsvista.com , but Mary Jane Foley has raised the question in http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,2180,1972444,00.asp and also points out that a different bread of ISV is coming to town and they are bringing Vista only or enabled apps that will help. Obviously the Vista benefits for Security, reliablility, ease of use and user safety will all be a major factor for many customers. I can't wait for the information on ISVs to continue to materialize over the coming weeks. ttfn David

  • Using Windows SharePoint Services(WSS) to Answer - How do my staff improve information sharing?

    File Shares are a starter We are used to people using file shares – eg \\csa-srv-01\team documents , however finding files can get difficult using this form, so Microsoft suggest people use the intranet web site. Try going to your http://companyweb site and notice that you have a number if document stores. If you go to a store, you can upload a document to the store. This can now be searched if you are running SBS Premium edition, version control can be implemented as well as a limited flow control and check-in and check-out. Some say file shares are very easy, but you can use the companyweb a bit like a file share in 2 ways. One, when you get a file save box, try typing in http://companyweb in the filename box. You wll see your companyweb site, but through the file dialog. You can even make it that to save a file in these locations the users have to fill in special meta data (information about the file) before they can save, to make it easier to categorise or find files later. For some people, this is still...

  • .Net Framework is the new name for .NetFX (will ship with Vista and work on XP & SBS)

    Just a quick one to say that what was .NetFX, and some would say confusing as to where this went compared to .Net Framework V2 has been changed to .Net Framework V3. Have a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar for more information Should make for some great apps (yes, you will see them over the next few months) on Vista. ttfn David

  • Using Office 2007 and lost a command - here is how to find it.

    Hi, I love the new interface on Office 2007, but I occasionally can't find something that I knew exactly where it was in Office 2003. I then saw this excellent blog posting on how to find things from Word, Excel and PowerPoint- using a web based tool you click on a pseduo Office 2003 interface and find out where it has gone in 2007. http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/05/30/610907.aspx ttfn David
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  • SBS vs Linux - don't take my work for it, listen to Vlad

    Linux... what an emotive word around Microsoft that is! I used to be a Unix/Linux boy, but there again, I used to be a Mainframe boy, and then a security boy... I have worn too many hats. I can see the things people like about all of these, but too often the discussion is religious rather than customer centre'd or factual. Howvever one more factual and yet spoken from the heart can be found at http://www.vladville.com/2006/06/sbs-vs-linux-the-response-from-email-battles.html Vlad tells it how he sees it. Rock on. ttfn David
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  • Off-Topic - get the football results results live on your desktop

    Yes! The Soccer World Cup started yesterday! The Windows Client team contributes to this awesome event with the super cool Football Scoreboard. T his gadget enables you to track the teams and results in real-time. Don’t miss out on any important goal! The useful applet is part of the Value of Genuine initiative driving up compliance. It only runs if the user has a genuine Windows installed. Spread the word, let friends and family know about this great tool! Have a great World Cup experience with Windows Genuine Advantage! The applets can be found on: German download French download English download
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  • How to find out what is causing a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) by using the kernel debugger tools

    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...

  • Where to find sidebar add-ons (gadgets) for Windows Vista

    This is a very quick post - have a look at http://gallery.microsoft.com/ for a list of gadgets for Vista. More will be coming soon :-) Today we have a Sudoko assistant, 4 other games, two traffic (car) monitors and a scribble board. ttfn David

  • How do you get and fix the error - Microsoft Exchange System Attendant failed to add the local computer as a member of the DS group object 'cn=Exchange Domain Servers,cn=Users

    Another recent blunder when working on the "I Wonder what happens if...." type scenarios. What did I do, I moved the SBS machine in "Active Directory Users and Computers" from the "Domain Controllers" OU to the "SBS Servers" OU. The result was the following error in Exchange - move it back and all is happy :-) ttfn David Eventlog error for reference: Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeSA Event Category: General Event ID: 9187 Date: 09/06/2006 Time: 07:47:52 User: N/A Computer: SERVER Description: Microsoft Exchange System Attendant failed to add the local computer as a member of the DS group object 'cn=Exchange Domain Servers,cn=Users,dc=OvertonHome,dc=local'. Please stop all the Microsoft Exchange services, add the local computer into the group manually and restart all the services.
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  • SBS Security - workstation and caller both point to your server and the error is about logon/logoff failure

    I recently created a FTP site to enable uploading of pictures for my blog entries by Word 2007 and suddenly I started getting lots of errors on my system. They took the form of: Event Type: Failure Audit Event Source: Security Event Category: Logon/Logoff Event ID: 529 Date: 09/06/2006 Time: 08:01:31 User: NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM Computer: SERVER Description: Logon Failure: Reason: Unknown user name or bad password User Name: calvin Domain: XXXXXXXXXX Logon Type: 8 Logon Process: IIS Authentication Package: MICROSOFT_AUTHENTICATION_PACKAGE_V1_0 Workstation Name: SERVER Caller User Name: SERVER$ Caller Domain: OVERTONHOME Caller Logon ID: (0x0,0x3E7) Caller Process ID: 564 Transited Services: - Source Network Address: - The reason why this error log scared me so much was because the security login was coming from my server. This made me think that someone had put something nasty on my box. It turned out with very little digging that this was actually the FTP service trying to authenticate, failing and therefore failing...
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  • Where to start with Vista as a Small Business Partner (or in fact a partner of any size)

    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...

  • See what Vista can do in a short minute or spend longer looking at features

    Ok, so Vista is a HUGE thing to start to learn about, but where do you start. Well, to see the product I would start with http://microsoft.mrmpslc.com/WindowsVistaPartner/Secure/vistafeatures_demo.html . It has a great quick vista demo. If you want to see more of the product, go have a look at http://www.seewindowsvista.com/ where you can quite literally see the product in action along with a number of videos and scenarios. ttfn David

  • Do you want to see a great demo on how Windows SharePoint Services can work

    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/sharepoint/wss_overview.html It os a great 5 minute introduction to the lingo and out of the box simple capabilities of SharePoint Services. ttfn David
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(c)David Overton 2006-23