A blog covering Azure, Hyper-V, Windows Server, desktop, systems management, deployment, and so on …
Microsoft has published a white paper on how small and medium enterprises can secure wireless networks using PEAP and Passwords and Windows 2003.
Many organisations have banned WiFi despite some of the benefits such as flexibility and cost savings. There’s lots of fear about attack and we’ve all seen how open many organisations are … who needs to pay for Internet Access in Dublin’s IFSC or in New York’s Time Square? But if you do things right then you can take advantage of WiFi.
There have been some reports to MS that SP2 for Windows 2003 can fail to install if there are too many updates installed on the computer. Apparently the database that maintains this information can have problem with more than 100 updates. A work around has been posted by Mark Stanfill.
Symptoms of this problem are you get a “Failed to install catalog files” error when you perform a manual installation. You will also get “960.484: InstallSingleCatalogFile: MyInstallCatalog failed for Tmp.0.ntprint.cat; error=0xfffffbfe” in svcpack.log.
Mark has posted a manual and a scripted work around. The latter will prove valuable to anyone deploying SP2 via start up script or via something like SMS.
Credit: Mark Stanfill.
I was at a Microsoft session that was supposed to be attended by the best and brightest of MS technology administrators and consultants in the country. I was stunned when one of them asked what the situation was with cloning machines that were licensed with OEM licenses. This makes me wonder what their person’s employers have been doing for the last 10 years! Is that a “random” license audit I hear making its way to his office?!?!?!
Here’s the short story about OEM licensing. They come with a PC that you buy from the likes of HP, Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, etc. They are cheap. The reason they are cheap is that they are TIED to that machine. If the machine dies, the license dies. If you dispose of the machine, you dispose of the license. You cannot transfer that OEM license to another machine. This license requires that you use the license key from the sticker on the box. This is important because an OEM license install requires activation with MS.
If you are going to use a cloning mechanism (Ghost, WDS, ADS or even RIS) for OEM builds then you must use an OEM media kit and not use the unattended feature for the license key. This will mean that your build will continue in an almost unattended manner … it will only pause to wait for someone to enter the license key from the box. Beware! PC resellers have been known to do very strange things to the setup files on their media kits. You may have to do some black magic to make the media kit more generic to support other PC specs.
An option for complete unattended installs is to buy an “OEM upgrade” from Microsoft. This allows you to use a single media kit and single license key for all machines that you have purchased with an OEM license. The advantages:
You can even go one step further and save some more money by buying a “Desktop Core CAL”. This includes the OEM upgrade and some other licenses, e.g. Office Professional, Windows Server, Exchange, SharePoint Server and SMS.
It’s hard to describe MOSS 2007 and Windows Sharepoint Services to people. Helpfully, Microsoft has released a VHD (a virtual disk that can be loaded on Microsoft Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005 R2) with a pre-configured MOSS 2007 installation. That’ll give you an idea of what Sharepoint and Microsoft’s collaboration solution is all about.
"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight. Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability".
You may have already read something about this and have probably already encountered the problem if you have migrated to Vista. There is no supported version of Adminpak for Vista and MS will not be releasing one. They say you should RDP onto the server you want to manage and then do your work there. Well that’s a crock of steaming $&!% if ever I’ve heard one. In the age where we want easier administration and dynamic infrastructure, the biggest player in server infrastructure is telling us that they want our job to be harder.
This seems to be a trend from MS as of late. Exchange 2007 shipped with some admin functionality not being added into the GUI. Lots of config tasks can only be done by using Powershell. MS might want to wake up and realise that not everyone in IT is or wants to be a programmer. The good news, I’m told, is that some of this functionality is going to be added back into the GUI by Exchange 2007 SP1.
There will be a replacement for Adminpak though. It is in development and is currently called Remote Server Administration Tools. It will not be released until at least the same as Vista Service Pack 1. That’s expected towards the end of this year possibly around the same time as Windows Server 2008 which is allegedly on schedule for business release at the end of the year.
To use some mixed martial arts parlance, I’ve gotten my hooks in and stuck on a rear naked choke. Eircom had no choice but to admit their mistake. Today, I received my letter of apology from the Australian owned telecoms company that took my broadband service without my knowledge or consent, billed me and then had their solicitor send me a threatening letter. The apology explains that they were mistaken in doing all of that.
Winner by submission, Aidan "The Whirling Dervish of Fury" Finn!
I just saw an organisation called CAMARA (in Ireland) being mentioned on ENN. They will take old, working computers from individuals or organisations, refurbish them, install an OS and software and send them to Africa for training centers. This is a way that a business or person can make a difference with a computer that might not serve their needs any more but way prove useful to a school in Africa.
This is the minimum spec:
As you can see, it’s pretty low based on a modern business machine. If you’re doing an upgrade to Vista then you’ve likely got lots of fully depreciated machines like this that can make a difference elsewhere. Any business in Dublin that is donating more than 10 machines can actually get them to pick up the machines. They also offer a process where they will securely wipe the hard disks to DOD standards. If you’re really concerned about this then you should check out DBAN, a free tool that I highly recommend.
The machines are installed with LINUX and open source office products to be placed in training rooms. They take in volunteers to go over to Africa, set up the room and provide training to teachers and students.
It’s a worthy cause. The list of contributors should put concerns at ease. It includes AIB, the Dublin universities, GE, government departments, AOL and Anglo Irish. To them, I say "well done".
Give the site a look-see. I hope that if you are outside of Dublin, this post might spur you on to find an organisation near you that can provide a similar service, either to a third world country or to some other impoverished area.
Credit: ENN.
Mark Russinovich (huge brained Microsoft internals whiz) has posted an interesting article detailing how he has found that independent software vendors are still writing basically insecure code. What makes this scary is that he found several major security software vendors were included in his findings. He hasn’t named names for the obvious reasons … I suspect he’s probably contacted them directly and his reputation in this business makes him a man to be seriously listened to.
After June 30, you will likely no longer be able to buy Office 2003; you must buy Office 2007 licenses. If you have volume licensing, then you can actually downgrade to Office 2003 from Office 2007. That is not an option for off-the-shelf or OEM licensing.
This might be a good time to have a serious look at Office 2007. I had serious concerns about the new user interface, particularly in Word. However, after a couple of days, I got used to it and found I could do things much faster with O2007. I’ve been using Office 2007 at home since the public beta programs early last year. I’m currently using Office 2003 at work and I’m struggling to get used to the old GUI J
Note: MS will stop shipping O2007 on the 30th. Some boxed copies will likely be sitting in retailers and in warehouses which will still be available to buy off of the shelf.
