Windows 7 RC (build 7100) expires March 1, 2010

“Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you'll need to rebuild your test machine using a valid version of Windows before the software expires. You'll need to rebuild your test PC to replace the OS and reinstall all your programs and data."

I didn’t realize I still had the RC Build running on my primary workstation.  I have also been very busy and am *not* keen on spending a day doing an entire system rebuild.

Although Microsoft (and most IT Pros) recommend a clean install with the production code (Build 7600), there is a way around the problem.

If you attempt a standard upgrade by running setup.exe using the latest build, the upgrade fails, and you receive the message below:

The way around this issue is to copy the contents of the DVD (3.01 GB for Ultimate x64) to a folder on your drive. 

Next, edit the source\cversion.ini file using a text editor like Notepad.

Edit so the MinServer and MinClient values match the example below and save the file.

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000.0
MinServer=7100.0

Run setup.exe, and proceed.  You will need a valid license key for Windows 7 and your system will be upgraded.  You can confirm the new version by typing the command “ver” from the command prompt.

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,software,Win7

Where’s my Windows 7 telnet client?

And how to enable Remote Administration on Windows 7 (and Vista).  Telnet and other features are not installed by default with Windows 7 (or Vista). 

To install, go to Control Panel – Programs – Programs and Features – Turn Windows features on or off.  This opens a Windows Features dialog box where you can enable or disable features. 

For remote server administration, you want to install the Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, which adds a laundry list of tools which you manage with the same interface (screen shot below).

Technorati Tags: Win7,telnet,utilities

Location Aware Printing

This is a Windows 7 feature I stumbled upon this on my work laptop.  I noticed that my default printer changed when I connected to my home wireless network.

TechNet has a walkthrough article and downloadable document detailing the setup.  A screen shot from my laptop is below showing how you can customize the default printer based on your network connection (and, yet, I miss Frank Zappa).

Technorati Tags: Win7,printers

Microsoft Security Essentials

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is a free anti-virus from Microsoft.  I am finding it appears to work at least as well as ClamWin, Avast!, and Symantec.  I have installed and tested it on Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit Edition and Windows 7 Basic 32 bit Edition, and Windows XP SP3 32 bit Edition. 

On the Windows XP workstations, MSE discovered several trojan’s (MP3 and WMV files) previously undetected using Symantec Endpoint Protection 11.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,security,Symantec

Free Microsoft Training and MS-Press eBooks

Below are links for free eBooks on Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.  They are pretty good overview books, and worth a read to give you a better understanding of both operating systems.

Microsoft is also offering several free online training modules for Exchange 2010, OCS 2007 R2, SQL Server, Virtualization (VMM 2008 R2 and Hyper-V), and Windows 7.

Free Training

Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=EE2A1D38-88A9-43B3-95BC-7E962F0B6030&displaylang=en

Download the New eBook: Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and Microsoft® TechNet Magazine. Looking for guidance specific to Windows 7 deployment? Check out what the industry's leading experts have to say in this free Microsoft Press eBook with selected chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit on Deployment Platforms, Planning, Testing Application Compatibility.

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 eBook

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/C/0/5C0BD0AB-040D-4C56-A60B-661001012DDA/Windows_Server_2008_R2_e-book.pdf

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 is a deep-dive e-book, that will get you up to speed on how R2's new features and capabilities work, including Hyper-V and RDS virtualization, management, IIS and the new Web application platform and, of course, all the synergistic goodness between Windows Server and Windows 7. Free for a click, so don't miss out.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MS-Press,Training,eBooks

Free Exchange 2010 eBook - "Exchange 2010 - A Practical Approach"

 

Red Gate Software - Exchange Server Archiver and "Exchange 2010 - A Practical Approach"

Considering Exchange 2010 is a fresh-out-of-beta product, this is a welcome overview of the product.  The book covers the following topics:

Chapter 1 – Overview of Exchange 2010 new features
Chapter 2 – Installation
Chapter 2 – Co-existance with previous Exchange versions
Chapter 4 – Exchange Management
Chapter 5 – High Availability – new features of 2010

 

Technorati Tags: Exch2010,archive,eBooks

Philly.Net Code Camp!

Thanks to everyone attending.  The weather was crap, but we had a pretty good turn out.  I appreciated the input regarding the next Code Camp. 

• Microsoft Certification Options
• Microsoft Licensing
• Windows Internals 5th Edition
• System Internals tools
• Book overview and demo exercises
• Exchange 2010 cluster demo
• SQL 2008 Infrastructure
• SQL 2008 Cluster book
• SQL 2008 Design design optimization
• Win2008 R2 - Hyper-V R2, HA options

Reference links from Exchange 2010 presentation attached here.

Technorati Tags: Code Camp,SQL,Exchange

I love broadband

There is not a week that goes by where I am not amazed with the rapid advances in technology.  In the past few months, I have downloaded gigabytes of data from various sites, mostly new operating system distribution ISO’s.  This morning, I’m sitting in my den on a laptop with a wireless connection to the Internet.  I am downloading a 339 Meg file in less than ten minutes with an average transfer rage of 1.53 Mb/sec. 

My laptop weighs 6 lbs, has a dual core CPU, 4GB of RAM, and two SATA drives (150 and 500 GB).

In the mid-80’s, I ran a public access UNIX system and several different multiuser BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems).  At that time, the limitation of file transfers were 2400 bps (bits per second) modems.  The size of the downloads were typically about 20 minutes.  The size of our hard drives were 10 Meg to 40 Meg.  I was running a full UNIX system, with development tools, man pages, application software, and downloads on a system with two 40Mb disks and a ‘high performance’ RLL controller.

Technorati Tags: storage,broadband

Windows 7 – telnet not enabled by default

How to enable telnet Windows 7.  The process is similar for Vista:

• Open Control Panel
• Go to “Programs”
• Now, in “Programs” window, on the left side, find “turn windows features on or off” and click once
• Find “Telnet Client” and mark it
• Click on “Ok” and reboot your computer
• Enjoy using Telnet Client in Windows Vista or Windows 7

 

 

Technorati Tags: software,Windows 7

Nick Bradbury: FeedDemon to Sync with Google Reader?

What is RSS and why is it important?

RSS = Real Simple Syndication. It is an internet standard for publishing HTML based content that allows end users to receive summary information published to a site without making a browser connection to the site.

I have a list of 100+ sites that I visit for work, to receive news, and personal interests. Using an RSS aggregator, I can skim through all my feeds very quickly, flag the ones I’m interested in, and review them later. FeedDemon let’s me manage the flagged content and optionally synch it with a server for an annual subscription fee of $15.

Now, it looks like they will offer a synch capability with Google Reader. I think this is where Google has an edge on Microsoft. Microsoft tries to offer turn key solutions, but users like me are looking to pick and choose ‘best of breed’ solutions and integrate them into the cloud (Google, Microsoft, others).

Nick Bradbury: FeedDemon to Sync with Google Reader?

Sprint HTC Mogul – Hard Reset

While traveling, I had my HTC Mogul die.  The symptoms were ‘artifacts’ on the home screen (overlay), and the device was generally unresponsive.  I turned was able to turn the phone off and on, but it was stuck at the green Windows Mobile 6.1 initialization screen.  I had to remove the battery to shut down.  A soft reset made no difference, so I performed a hard reset.

This is disturbing when you are on the road, but at least the problem was resolved in less than 30 minutes.  No additional hardware or software was required, ActiveSync and Mobile applications data are retained on the laptop.  I have considered disaster recovery applications for Windows Mobile, but I do not think this is necessary.

Data lost after the reset was limited to Text messages.  I didn’t have any other data in local storage because I configured all other applications to store on the SD card.

Hard Reset – hold down both the soft keys (right and left with the dot at the bottom of the device) and press the reset button on the base of the device.

1. After the reset, you are prompted to be sure you want to reinitialize the device.  You must respond using the keyboard. 
2. System performs an auto-restore with Sprint customizations, some of which can not be uninstalled.
3. Next, the phone auto-restarts to initialize the auto-restore.
4. The phone can be used at this point, but I need to restore my contacts and applications, so I connect to my laptop running ActiveSync 4.5.
5. ActiveSync device with local laptop.  I configure my synch to maintain
   1. Contacts - ~900 contacts – everyone I know, business, personal, and family
   2. Calendar – three month history of appointments
   3. Tasks – typically 45-75 total
   4. Notes – 55 notes
   5. Favorites – 5
   6. Microsoft Office OneNote – light use, about 20K-30K
6. Reset Theme and interface.  I use Windows Default and simplify the interface so I don’t have to scroll the screen.  I also added my basic Owner Information.
7. Add/Remove Programs
   1. Developer One Agenda – install on device
   2. Evernote Mobile (3.0.0.981) – storage card
   3. OneNote Mobile – storage card
   4. Microsoft Voice Command PPC 1.60 – device
8. Device restarts after the Voice Command install to re-initialize the device.
9. Last, reset the Ring Tones to my personal choices

Technorati Tags: Windows Mobile,HTC,Sprint,Mogul,ActiveSync,disaster recover

Can you spare some disk space?

I just have to post this.  I received this error while attempting a file transfer to a new SATA array on my server.

Technorati Tags: disk,Windows

Alternate virus removal method - Windows XP

A friend’s home PC appeared to be infected with the Sasser virus.  He receives the message “LSASS.EXE application failure; click OK to terminate or click cancel to debug” when starting the computer.

Typically, I remove the drive and put it into one of my old systems and disinfect the system drive.  The infected system has a SATA drive and my test system is IDE only, so I thought it was time to use a LIVE CD to fix the problem.

I tested the Dr. Web Live CD and Kaspersky Rescue Disk.  Both worked, but it appears that Kaspersky was the more through of the two at discovering the many viruses on my friend’s PC.  I found the Kaspersky virus signature updates a bit confusing – the status button didn’t appear to change after the update, however the update was successful and the application ran flawlessly.

Scanning took about two hours for a 250 GB drive that with under 100 GB of data.

 Raymond’s Live CD Review

Dr. Web Live CD

Kaspersky Rescue Disk

Technorati Tags: anti-virus,XP,LiveCD,malware

Upgrading Katie’s Desktop

 GParted – Welcome

Katie’s PC is a 2.0 GHz IBM workstation, but the original 40GB disk is full, and it needs more RAM.  I didn’t have a lot of time to spend on this upgrade, so I backed the system up using Acronis True Image Home 11.0 and restored to a spare 160 GB Hitachi disk. 

The problem I had is that Acronis restored the original ~38GB image onto the 160GB drive.  I probably missed something, but this was an opportunity to test re-sizing a disk drive.

I downloaded the latest GParted Live CD ISO file from SourceForge and burned it to a CD using Alex Feinman’s ISO Recorder v2. 

I booted the CD, took the defaults, and it boots into X-Windows and auto-starts GParted.  Through the application GUI, you select the disk you want to resize, click on the edge and slide to resize.  Optionally, you can enter in the disk/partition parameters to resize.  Click OK, accept parameters, and it is complete. 

After re-start, Windows XP SP2 automatically performed a checkdisk, which completed successfully, after the first start of Windows, I received a message that Windows installed a new device and required a restart.  After the restart, I was back in business.

Technorati Tags: GParted,partition,editor,hardware,Win32

Latitude D630 Broadcom NetXtremem 57xx

 

Me thinks there are  ‘issues’ with the Dell Latitude D630 network drivers.  This is the second time my machine went into network hell since the Spring.  I also debugged a memory leak with the wireless driver a few months ago as well.  The symptom today was the TCP/IP protocol stack would not load when upon system start up.  It wasn’t a DHCP or network issue, it was the TCP/IP stack failing to load on the card.  The network cable connection was detected correctly, but you could not do anything via the network.

Another symptom was the system hanging on shutdown.  Probably waiting forever for network processes.

You would think the debugging process would be faster on my part, since I ran into this before but nooooo.  Just the restarts were a killer due to the system hangs…  I started with rolling back system state, rolling back the driver, attempted uninstall of the driver (hangs machine).  Bah!

The fix was going into Safe Mode, uninstall the device, re-start and re-discover.  I tried to install an older, stable driver (per Google searches), but after the re-start, the system installed a *newer* driver from Microsoft.  The latest posted Dell driver was 10.26.0.0 (which was installed originally), after re-discovery, I am running 10.78.0.0 from Microsoft.

Hope this saves someone some time.

Technorati Tags: Dell,Latitude,D630,TCP,network,drivers

Windows Mobile 6.1 Firmware – Sprint Mogul

I updated my phone with a developer version of the firmware.  The production release was issued 8.6.2008 and the link below matches the exact rev I have installed on my phone.

I found the following benefits of the firmware:

• NO SYSTEM RESETS.  None, since the firmware update.
• Device certs for ActiveSync support (future requirement for my company for security)
• Longer battery life (this is more qualitative, but it is noticeably better)
• Text messages conversations are threaded
• Eliminated occasional problems I had answering calls when phone locked
• Java updated – Google Mail application works
• GPS application support enabled – works with Google Maps real time
• Did I mention NO SYSTEM RESETS?

There are probably some other issues, but these are ones I know off the top of my head.

Also, I had a local problem with ActiveSync that I resolved with help from Sandy Dahri.  Details on link below .  The root cause appears to be a beta release of Microsoft Desktop Search 4.0.

Windows Mobile 6.1 for Mogul - Sprint

http://www.htc.com/us/SupportDownloadList.aspx?p_id=75&cat=all

ActiveSync problem fix

http://www.paulbegley.com/2008/07/office-2007-and-activesync-45-problems.htm

Technorati Tags: HTC,Sprint,Microsoft,mobile,firmware,ActiveSync

END_OF_NT_EVALUATION_PERIOD

Sarah is taking the HP TX1110US laptop back to school in August.  Last week she mentioned that the system was mysteriously shutting down after about an hour or so.  I tried to ignore the problem, but I wanted to image the system before I installed XP.

I reset the System configuration so it would not automatically restart.  An hour later, the BOSD shows the event END_OF_NT_EVALUATION_PERIOD. 

This can’t be a Good Thing.  I Google (yes, it’s a verb).  Don’t find much, but I dug around TechNet and found that this can be generated if you installed a beta of Windows Vista SP1.  Crap.  Yeah, I did that, and never updated (well, I thought I updated…).

I uninstalled SP1, restarted (three step count down to complete the uninstall).  After restart, I used Vista Windows Update and painfully re-installed the pre-SP1 fixes, SP1, post-SP1, and just for good measure the latest security fixes as well as some HP specific hardware driver updates.

NOW the system is up and running.  I will image (Acronis is my friend), and install XP (yes, a legit license I have from my IBM Z-Pro workstations which are now running Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows 2008 Server.

Technorati Tags: Vista,backup,BSOD

Office 2007 and ActiveSync 4.5 Problems

ActiveSync stopped doing a bi-directional synchronization with my Sprint HTC Mogul a few weeks ago (naturally before I went on vacation). 

I never discovered the root cause of the problem, but it may have been a combination of Microsoft Desktop Search 4.0 beta, my Outlook profile, and my being very busy and not sorting out the problem when I noticed the synch stopped working.

Around the same time, Outlook generated an error on opening that stated it was not the default Mail Client, even though the option was properly set.

Problem: ActiveSync would not synchronize Outlook with my HTC Mogul.  Period.  End of story.  Not even thinking considering it.  ActiveSync would connect properly, display the proper count for Contact items (934!), the count would jump to 100/934, then complete and go to Calendar without any Contacts being copied.

I reset the phone, still no joy.

Finally, Sandy suggested I delete the contents of \Windows\Messaging on the device. 

This worked!

Resolving the default client error was resolved by a re-install of Office 2007.  All my settings were saved, including my Outlook Profiles, it was just inconvenient.

I also upgraded the HTC Mogul to Windows Mobile 6.1 (Developers build downloaded from third party site, not HTC or Sprint).  It’s a very nice upgrade and I’ll post after I have it running for a few weeks.

 

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Office,ActiveSync

MSN.COM - W32.Spybot.Worm in the wild

There appears to be some malware in the wild.  I received a MSN note from one of my MSN Contacts this afternoon.  The FQDN for the link was gallery.aokhost.com and the link includes my MSN e-mail address and it has a sentence about "Hey, is this really your pic?" or a similar phrase.  The URL includes a PHP script and the users MSN contact (username@domain.com).  It appears the PHP script loads the malware and the user Contact is used only to lure you to click the link.  The malware is dumped to C:\Windows\msn.com on my Windows XP Pro system.

I am running Symantec Endpoint Protection 11 with current virus definitions. It appears to have run once, then SEP11 quarantined it, but a system restart was required to fully remove it from my system.

It does not appear that any other damage was done to my system other than hitting my Contacts and spawning the IM's to everyone on my list.

Symantec Corp Edition 10.1 with current virus definitions will remove the infected file after a system restart.  The Symantec link is below and they have a whole page of remediation tools for W32 malware.

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2003-053013-5943-99

Technorati Tags: malware,MSN,software,antivirus

Google Experimental Search

http://www.google.com/experimental/index.html

Keeping track of new features in Google is almost a part time job.  I stumbled onto the Alternate View for search results and thought I should post the Experimental Search page.

A comprehensive overview with examples was posted on Ars Technica

My first week at Unisys, I took an accelerated Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 course. Craig (the awesome Unified Communications Instructor) pointed out you can narrow searches to just Microsoft or Linux topics by appending 'microsoft' or 'linux' to google.com to get an alternate, filtered search view.

http://www.google.com/microsoft

http://www.google.com/linux

Technorati Tags: Google,beta,Microsoft,search

Vista SP1 Install

I am in the process of installing Vista SP1 on my HP AMD laptop.  The process is rather tedious, but you run a CMD script which updates your registry.  The update preps your system so you receive up to four hotfixes which are prerequisites for Vista SP1.  I applied two out of three required a restart.  I restarted after the third and my system was able to see the SP1 update when I forced a Windows Update check.

The download was ~300 Meg, and it was 'stuck' at 95% for the better part of an hour. 

After the download, you walk through an SP1 install wizard.  After the update is applied, you restart the system.  It restarts in character mode and applies 66,829 file updates which display on the top of the screen.  The last update is a registry update and the system automatically restarts into graphics mode.

After the restart, it updates the system in three stages, the progress is displayed as the Stage number and the percent complete for the stage.  The last phase took about 30-35 minutes and at this point, the update has taken several hours...

I was one of the many people who experienced the joy of the Vista "unauthorized change" feature and I'm not happy.

I'm not sure what happened, I install *lots* of beta, Microsoft, and third party software on all my systems.  I know what I am doing - aside from an engineering degree, I have been an MCSE since 1996 and MCT since 1998, teaching server and client operating systems.

Currently, my system is still unusable.  I will work on it later today and re-install an operating system if I am unsuccessful in fixing the Vista SP1 upgrade.  I may just choose to upgrade to Windows XP Professional, using an unused license I already own.  I am NOT happy.

Technorati Tags: Vista,SP1,XP,operating systems,Windows,Microsoft

Joel Oleson's Blog SharePoint Land : 7 Years of SharePoint - a History Lesson

Joel Oleson's Blog SharePoint Land : 7 Years of SharePoint - a History Lesson

Sharepoint is a great tool. I am doing a deep dive on SharePoint after joining Unisys, but I have used it in limited capacities for the past four years and it's an awesome tool, particularly when you use Web Parts and MOSS Search. For me, Search is the key - a product can have all the features in the world, but if I can't find what I need, when I need it, it's worthless.

This is an interesting article by one of the SharePoint team members that gives you some background into the origins of the product and product components.

Zune for Christmas

Originally, I saw the re-furb and brown 30 Gb original Zunes on sale, but I waited a bit too long.  Then while I was on my road trip to pickup Sarah from Tech, I found a white, refurb Zune at buy.com for $109, so I jumped.

I could not be happier.  Initializing the Zune, it automatically installed the latest client on my desktop and upgraded the firmware to the 2.3 release.

During the initial setup, I pointed it to existing folders for my audio, video, and podcast folders.  The synch was pretty quick and after it sucked up everything, I still had 19Gb free.  The only

The only problem I had was synching NPR podcasts. By comparing file MP3 ID tags on files that synched correctly and the NPR files, I determined the Zune filters based on the Genre tag.  Genre = Podcast to synch to Zune. I updated using a Sourceforge MP3 tag editor massid3lib.  It worked like a charm.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/massid3lib

Technorati Tags: MP3,Zune,Microsoft,Sourceforge,podcast

Microsoft Update - 714 Meg

Wow - this may be a record update for my systems.  The largest offender is Office 2007 SP1, which is 619 Meg in size.  The other updates include:

• Windows XP - four security updates
• Windows XP - DST update for multiple countries
• IE7 - Cumulative Security update
• Windows Live Writer update
• .Net Framework 3.0 SP1
• .Net Framework 2.0 SP1

32 bit Windows memory support

This subject has come up on several occasions, so I'm posting a note with several references on the topic.

Basically, 32-bit Windows desktop operating systems (XP, Vista) will not address more than 3 GB of installed memory.  You can add the /3GB switch to your BOOT.INI file, but hardware constraints, including your video card and BIOS will limit how much RAM above 3GB is available for the operating system. 

NOTE:  This is particularly an issue for high end video cards because the amount of video RAM is deducted from the 4GB theoretical limit for 32 bit operating systems, so even if you have 4GB installed, a 512 Meg video card could reduce your available ram to under 3GB.

Microsoft MSDN article: Memory Limits for Windows Releases

Microsoft MSDN article: 4-Gigabyte Tuning

Dude, Where's My 4 Gigabytes of RAM? - this article includes a nice Intel map of the 32 bit address space memory allocation details.

Gadwin Systems, Inc. - Print Screen

Gadwin PrintScreen is an easy to use utility that allows you to capture any portion of the screen, save it to a file, copy it to Windows clipboard, print it or e-mail it to a recipient of your choice.

Another All Microsoft All The Time post.  I left the full link for Gadwin Systems because they deserve the kudos for a great screen capture program.  This isn't a Microsoft specific application, but it fills a niche for my day-to-day work.

I have Gadwin PrintScreen configured to use the Print Screen key and by default I pick a rectangular portion of my screen and it is captured to the clipboard.  Optionally, you can define a default directory and file name template (like ProjectName$1.jpg) and default format (BMP, JPG, etc).

The automatic file capture is awesome when documenting a project and it beats using Alt-Shift-PrintScreen and dumping it to Word.

Highly Recommended.

 

. 

Personal Computing Experiment

I am in the process of re-architect my personal computing life.     Over the next 3-6 months I want to re-focus on technology.  Partly this is a response to my attending Microsoft TechEd 2007 this past June.  The last time I attended TechEd was in June, 2003.  This was when Microsoft released Windows 2003 and Exchange 2003.  This year, I was very, very impressed with not only the depth, but the enterprise quality of the products.  I feel that doing a 'Total Immersion' in Microsoft technologies will help me become a better technical resource for my group, and also improve my ability to provide comprehensive, cost effective solutions to our clients.

Starting this week and through the end of the year, I plan to move from a 'best of breed' approach to a pure Microsoft environment for all aspects of my personal and professional computing.  I will document the process and note exceptions and challenges as they occur. 

I am starting by converting all my tools to Microsoft and upgrading my home network to Windows 2008.  We will be All Beta All The Time!

I am posting this with the latest release of Windows Live Writer.  This web site is running on a CentOS server I share with Peter Gamble.  I will maintain this site, but also experiment with Microsoft Live Spaces where I have a site.