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Vol. 13, #19 - May 12, 2008 - Issue #673
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More Important XP SP3 Gotchas
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| This issue of WServerNews is sponsored by |
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- Editor's Corner
- Virtualization Wars Are Not In Your Interest
- Quote of the Week
- Admin Toolbox
- Admin Tools We Think You Shouldn't Be Without
- Tech Briefing
- WinXP SP3 Means You Are Locked Into IE7
- More Important XP SP3 Gotchas
- COFEE - "Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor"
- Tip: Establishing Multiple Hardware Profiles In Windows XP
- How To Use Exchange Management Shell's Filter Command
- Podcast: How To Manage User Rights, Patches And Group Policy
- Windows Server News
- Windows Server 2008 vs. Linux Ubuntu In Power Test
- Does Upgrading To SharePoint Server 2007 Mean Rebuilding?
- WServer Third Party News
- Also Available From Double-Take: TimeData
- Save XP: Make Your Voice Heard!
- WServerNews FAVE Links
- This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
- WServerNews - Product of the Week
- What Makes myPassword The Best?
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Editor's Corner |
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Virtualization Wars Are Not In Your Interest
You may have heard the news that Hyper-V will likely ship earlier than
the 180 days Redmond promised after the W2K8 ship date. That's both good
and bad. Normally you would say competition is good. But with hypervisors
the deal is a bit different. Ultimately it would be better for all of us
System Admins that there would be just one (commoditized) virtualization
platform, and a rich choice of different management environments built
on top of that. Example; TCP/IP is used by everyone, but you can choose
between many sniffer product to look the traffic. But with virtualization
it's going to look like the old HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray wars again.
The problem is that the Hyper-V and VMware layers are not compatible and
thus the management environments aren't either. Both players are trying
to lock you into their architecture. This is not going to be beneficial
and will give us management headaches. The hypervisor code itself is
just a very thin slice of code that sits directly on top of the hardware
and is the abstraction layer that makes all the virtual servers above
think they own all the hardware exclusively.
Microsoft knows perfectly well that managing dozens of virtual servers
quickly becomes a nightmare. And so they are making their play "By taking
our knowledge of the Windows environment and expanding it to address
heterogeneous management needs across platforms, applications, hardware
and virtualization, we are opening up a new level of opportunity for
companies to drive greater efficiency, responsiveness and value for
their business." as per Bob Muglia, MS Senior Veep Server and Tools.
Microsoft is looking at VMware as the market leader and wants to get a
foot in the door. Multi-platform management tools are that Trojan Horse.
And then MS will try to replace the VMware layer. Kind of ironic and a
sign of the new times we live in that Microsoft wants to win the coming
Virtualization Wars with a heterogeneous approach.
Quote of the Week
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go"
-- Oscar Wilde.
Thank you for being a WServerNews subscriber. Please
tell your friends about us. They can subscribe here:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Subscribe
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Your CEO to your CIO: "Do They Have A Case"?
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Next, your CIO will be calling you a few minutes later and tells you
to scan ALL EMAIL for the last 3 years for a bunch of keywords related to
this company that just sued your organization. Now it's up to you. Are
you ready? Or are you in for weeks and weeks of 16 hour days and weekends
gathering all PST files from all over the place and desperately manually
scanning all email? It's happened more times than you think. Recent changes
to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FCRP) demand routine, good-faith
efforts to search, preserve, collect and produce all relevant email.
With MVP Sunbelt Exchange Archiver you can have that report on your CIO's
and CEO's desk that same day! Set aside an hour for a product walk-through
with an SE. Check the specs and fill out the Request Evaluation form:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Sunbelt-Exchange-Archiver
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Tech Briefing |
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WinXP SP3 Means You Are Locked Into IE7
This week, Redmond notified the world that updating to WinXP SP3 means they
won't be able to downgrade from IE7 to the older IE6 without uninstalling
SP3 itself.
This juicy bit of technical news appeared in a blog written by the IE dev
team. It states: "If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will
remain on your system after the install is complete,... Your preferences
will be retained. However, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE7.
If you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, the Remove option will
be grayed out." Here is the blog posting:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-IE-and-XP-SP3
More Important XP SP3 Gotchas
Late last Friday afternoon Redmond announced that it had posted what it
called "slipstream builds" of SP3 for download by subscribers of its IT
professional and developer services. These slipstream builds integrate
SP3 with WinXP itself into one single file that can be used to install
the now upgraded OS on multiple machines without hooking up to a WSUS
server.
Redmond also seems to have found a workaround for the Dynamics RMS bug.
And so after about a week, they re-released SP3 to the general public.
XP users trying manually on Windows Update on Tuesday were able to get
SP3, approximately 67MB in size. Oh, and it seems that the SP3 FAQ is
an identical copy of the SP2 FAQ, some one in the UK tells me.
The first major problem also seems to have surfaced. Some machines with
AMD CPUs seem to go into endless reboots. Blogger Johansson said there
are two separate issues. One is AMD-equipped PCs sold by HP. "The problem
is that HP, apparently along with other OEMs, deploys the same image to
Intel-based computers that they do to AMD-based computers," said Johansson.
"Because the image for both Intel and AMD is the same, all have the
intelppm.sys driver installed and running. That driver provides power
management on Intel-based computers. On an AMD-based computer, amdk8.sys
provides the same functionality." The other problem, according to Johansson,
also seems to affect only AMD machines, and involves an error message
indicating trouble with the PC's BIOS. I'm not going to copy his whole
blog though, here is a link to the details:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-AMD-CPU
The other thing you might want to check is this FAQ: What you should
know before installing Windows XP SP3:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-XP-SP3-FAQ
COFEE - "Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor"
Microsoft is now talking about COFEE, a tool they have released to some law
enforcement agencies to let them take a look at Windows computer in a faster,
less intrusive way that's easy to use. COFEE stands for "Computer Online
Forensic Evidence Extractor" and details about what it can do are thin on
the ground. That's understandable from a law enforcement perspective but
when you combine a lack of hard facts to a distrust of Microsoft and some
government agencies you get plenty of rumor, guesswork and outright paranoia
all across the Internet. Office Watch has the whole story:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-COFEE
Tip: Establishing Multiple Hardware Profiles In Windows XP
Administrators can use hardware profiles in Windows XP to enable or disable
hardware devices. Microsoft MVP Brien Posey explains how to create and
configure hardware profiles in a Windows environment in this tip.
(registration required)
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Hardware-Profiles
How To Use Exchange Management Shell's Filter Command
Understanding how to use the basic syntax of Exchange Management Shell
commands in Exchange 2007 will allow administrators to perform tasks
that may not be possible through the Exchange Management Console. The
problem is that Exchange Management Shell commands can return thousands
of search results. In this crash course, get expert advice on how to
use the Filter command to obtain more granular search results.
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Filter-Command
Podcast: How To Manage User Rights, Patches And Group Policy
This installment of SearchWindowsSecurity.com's Ask the Security Expert
podcast takes a look at Windows patch management, user rights management
and Windows network security. Learn how you can know for sure if your
Windows patches have actually been installed, how to prevent software
installations with a Group Policy setting, and how to manage general
user rights for files and folders.
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Manage-Policies
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Windows Server News |
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Windows Server 2008 vs. Linux Ubuntu In Power Test
Going green has been the latest craze and has even found a niche in the
computer world with power consumption comparisons. In this exclusive
article, SearchEnterpriseLinux.com contributor Pam Derringer pits
Windows Server 2008 and Ubuntu against one another to examine their
power consumption.
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Power-Test
Does Upgrading To SharePoint Server 2007 Mean Rebuilding?
Learn how to plan and perform a gradual upgrade from Microsoft SharePoint
Portal Server 2003 to MOSS 2007 by testing, rebuilding and redeploying
custom Web parts.
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-SharePoint-Server-2007
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WServer Third Party News |
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Recovery with TimeData is fast and intuitive at any granularity - whole
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impacted.
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-TimeData
Save XP: Make Your Voice Heard!
Close to 200,000 people have signed the petition since January 14.
However, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer thinks we're not serious about the
Save XP movement, nor does he seem to take the people who signed it
seriously. That's where you come in. Help InfoWorld meet their goal
of 300,000 unique petition signatures by June 2008. Please ask your
friends, family and colleagues to join the movement by signing up at:
http://www.wservernews.com/080512-Save-XP
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WServerNews FAVE Links |
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This Week's Links We Like. Tips, Hints And Fun Stuff.
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WServerNews - Product of the Week |
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