Tag Archives: Microsoft

Sysinternals made easy.

You can now access sysinternals tools direct from the command line (great for scripts) by accessing \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\toolname.exe for example \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\autoruns.exe This is great for running the command directly from a dos prompt or in a script or even just copying the file(s) directly to a server automatically without having to download each file from a web browser. Thanks to Ed Bott for the tip off and extra thanks to sysinternals for doing this
You can also download most of the tools in one go with tips on creating start menu icons for all the files in the zip file
Alternatively you can just “copy \\live.sysinternals.com\tools\*.exe .” to copy them to your drive.

Hyper-V Release candidate 0

I upgraded to the latest version of Hyper-V this evening but none of the VM’s would start. This is because the new version is unable to read the old machine configuration files (nice integration there!). The trick is to delete the machines and then create new ones pointing to the old vhd files that do not get deleted. The only thing is that an xp sp2 machine will not be able to use the integrated services disk for it’s network adapter as the integrated service is xpsp3, vista or w2k3/8 only. Instead you have to delete the network adapter and create a legacy network adapter. At that point you could download sp3 (if you don’t already have it) and then use the integration cd or just carry on without the integrated services.
I didn’t bother with the sp3 upgrade (yet) and the machine had a problem with the vga controller and an “unknown” device. The VGA works after XP boots up, detects it is running at a low resolution and offers to change it to 800*600 which is acceptable for the testing I am doing in a lab environment in preparation for the next exam. The unknown device didn’t seem to be causing any problems so I’m not worrying about it for the moment.
The Windows 2003 server needed the integration cd inserted and offered to upgrade my previous components and then worked well with all the components being recognised.

XP service pack3 vulnerability – already!

So Microsoft update a patch today to do with Adobe flash player and I quote “Caveats: This bulletin is for customers using Macromedia Flash Player version 6 from Adobe. Customers that have followed the guidance in Adobe Security Bulletin APSB06-11, issued September 12, 2006, are not at risk from these vulnerabilities. Vulnerable versions of Macromedia Flash Player from Adobe are redistributed with Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2, Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3, and Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.”

Now XP sp3 has only been out a couple of weeks, if that, Adobe released their bulletin in September 2006 so how on earth is WindowsXP sp3 vulnerable – surely flash should have been updated in the xpsp3 release! This seems to make a mockery of the security focus that Microsoft are meant to be working hard on and coming on the heels of the recent snafu’s with Windows updates and genuine advantage, it’s no wonder people are not very happy with patching.

shhh – I’m studying!

As I found out that the 2nd chance exam offer runs out at the end of this month (for the initial exam – you have until the end of June to take the retake) I’ve decided to try and get my MCSE by the end of the month so I’m swotting really hard. I’ve finished the first half of the Microsoft Press book for 70-293 tonight – I started it on Sunday night and last night we were out for a couple of hours so it’s not bad going. I’ve scheduled the exam for Friday afternoon and after that I’ll only have 2 more to go.
I’ve also pushed the guys at the office to take advantage of the offer, so far I know at least 2 of them have booked exams and if the others are reading this – then just do it! With this offer I really don’t think there is any excuse for someone not to be an MCP at a minimum, especially when the exam fee is reimbursed on passing and the 2nd chance removes a lot of the pressure.

Initial SharedView thoughts

Kevin Devin asked how SharedView fits with Netmeeting and Livemeeting – my first thought when I was using this product was that it appeared to provide similar functionality to netmeeting. This product is actually the Tahiti product that Microsoft purchased, rebranded and re-released as a new beta product.
I’ve not used netmeeting for several years so the statements may not be entirely accurate.
However the differences I see are as follows

  1. Looks a lot nicer than the netmeeting did.
  2. You can share your desktop with up to 15 people – netmeeting was limited to 1.
  3. Works much better through firewalls – I’m guessing it is http based so no firewall tweaking needed.
  4. No directory support included – netmeeting had the ability to join a directory of available chats – this needs an email address to connect to the original host (but there must be a directory on MS’s servers somewhere but it is just not viewable to the public)

I didn’t find the performance to be that great, with my two pc’s connected the screen refresh was pretty slow and artifacts would often be left behind on the screen. I did like the fact that you could see the guests cursors (but this would be pretty hectic with 15 guests) but you can turn this feature off.
If another program was moved over the top of the shared application, a grey box would appear on the guest screen where the application was – this almost looks like screen corruption but it isn’t.
The host computer will only share one monitor, spreading the shared application over 2 screens will only share the portion of the application on the hosted screen
It takes a small part of the desktop as the controls get placed at the very top of the screen – a nice feature would be to merge this into the title bar of the application to recover a little more screen estate.
File sharing worked nicely and I was easily able to share files between the two computers. It would be nice to have the downloaded file appear in a most recently downloaded window or have the option to open the file once it was downloaded in the same manner ie/firefox does.
I’ll be adding my feature notes to the Sharedview forums shortly.

footnotes in Word

If you’ve ever tried to create a footnote in Word and got the daft error message that states “Start At must be between 1 and 16383 for this format.” when the Start At is set to 1 (or 2 or 3 or 4 or …) then the fix is to select the entire document apart from the last paragraph mark (turn the viewing of paragraph marks on by pushing the ΒΆ button on the toolbar) and then copy paste the document into a new document. Hopefully the document is not that big and that you can copy paste with no problems! Thanks to this post on google groups for the answer