27 September 2007

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Shell Help

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Exchange Management Shell Help file helps you use cmdlets in the Exchange Management Shell to perform day-to-day administration of Exchange 2007. You can view help in the Exchange Management Shell by using the Get-Help cmdlet. This Help file applies to the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (SP1) version of Exchange Server 2007
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20 September 2007

FI freeware is a DIR alternative

Download FI.zip, an alternative to the DIR command, which provides file age and size filtering, security, device, alternate data streams, and file link information.

Scripting Example
If you wanted to delete all the files in the C:\Logs directory whose last write date is greater than 7 days:

for /f "Tokens=*" %%f in ('fi /A-d /b /gw">"7 C:\Logs\*.*') do del /q "%%f"
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15 September 2007

Windows Server 2008 Step-by-Step Guides

These step-by-step guides help IT Professionals learn about and evaluate Windows Server 2008.

These documents are downloadable versions of guides found in the Windows Server 2008 Technical Library. (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=86808)

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13 September 2007

Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 CTP (September 2007)

The Power Toys for .NET Compact Framework 3.5 CTP provides a early preview of several tools for evaluating performance, obtaining diagnostic information, configuring and working with the .NET Compact Framework.

Tools included in this package:

Remote Performance Monitor and GC Heap Viewer – Provides real time counter data (ranging from Garbage Collector activity to type loading info) on a running NETCF application. The GC Heap Viewer feature allows you to capture the managed heap at any moment your app is running to view live references, and allows you to compare multiple snapshots to find memory leak issues.

NETCF CLR Profiler – CLR Profiler is an instrumenting allocation profiler for NETCF applications. It provides detailed allocation visualizations, allocation callstacks visualizations and useful for diagnosing memory management issues.

App Configuration Tool (NetCFcfg.exe) - On-device tool for specifying what version of the NETCF runtime an application will run against, displaying installed versions of NETCF and displaying info about DLLs in the GAC.

NETCF ServiceModel Metadata Tool – The .NET Compact Framework ServiceModel Metadata Tool (netcfsvcutil.exe) allows you to generate a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) client proxy to help developers consume WCF services on device. Like svcutil.exe, which is the desktop version of the utility, netcfsvcutil.exe is a command-line tool that generates service model code from metadata documents and generates metadata documents from service model code.

Remote Logging Configuration Tool – The Logging Configuration Tool enables users to easily configure logging options on a NETCF device including: loader, interop, network, error and finalizer logs.

NETCF Network Log Viewer – A utility for viewing NETCF network log data.

Known Issues: These tools are a pre-release to the community for early feedback. Currently known issues are listed here for your reference:
  • CLRProfiler: failure to get heap dump at around 160000 live objects
  • CLRProfiler: error interpretting the profiler log data: Index is invalid
  • CLRProfiler: Error parsing data in profdev.raw file when app call stack is 4000 calls deep
  • CLRProfiler: “Unhandled exception, Cannot access a disposed object” sometimes occurs on second or third click of “Show Heap Now”
  • CLRProfiler: Error loading profiling log. The results may be inaccurate after a completed app run
  • GC Heap Dump doesnt work with emulators
  • CLRProfiler: “Exception, value too large or too small for an unsigned int” when opening heap view window via “Show Heap Now” for the second time
  • CLRProfiler: Unhandled exception when trying to view individual items in heap dump at around 1600 objects
  • CLRProfiler: Unexpected exception: failure to dump heap when allocations are not profiled (ie. Profile it with allocations is unchecked)
  • CLR Profiler: Sporadic Index out of range error when callstack is deeper than 500 calls
  • Remote Performance Monitor Heap dump: While getting heap dump 'view gc heap' button should be grey
  • CLRProfiler: root node in dumps has a incorrect painting in some cases
  • CLRProfiler: long operations need hour glass or progress bar like when expanding a large cal tree
  • Heap dump: confusing 'cycle' line in ObjectReferences view
  • Killing app in CLR profiler won't kill the app on the attached device
  • CLRProfiler: deleting logs not belonging to this session when running multiple instances of the CLR Profiler
  • CLRProfiler: unable to prune heap dump view if looking at individual instances
  • CLRProfiler: call graph: zoom to node looks wrong (caller should not show 0 callees when it has callees)
  • CLRPRofiler: Goto tree view and then view -> All functions, then try to click on the name tab in the new window, functions should be sorted but are not
  • CLRProfiler: Unable to move nodes when call graph window is expanded to a big monitor
  • NETCF App Config Tool : Should validate if the file entered exists before trying to create the app.config file instead of failing
  • CLRProfiler: module graph looks wrong
  • CLRProfiler: generic types don’t show actual parameter types
  • CLRProfiler: comparing two identical logs gives an error and so does cancelling a comparison
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10 September 2007

Microsoft Launches Translation Service

Microsoft launched a service for automatic translation called Windows Live Translator. The site lets you translate a text limited to 500 words or a web page from English to German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian.
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07 September 2007

XML Notepad 2007 (2.5)

XML Notepad 2007 provides a simple intuitive user interface for browsing and editing XML documents.
Handy features include:
  • Tree View synchronized with Node Text View for quick editing of node names and values.
  • Incremental search (Ctrl+I) in both tree and text views, so as you type it navigates to matching nodes.
  • Cut/copy/paste with full namespace support.
  • Drag/drop support for easy manipulation of the tree, even across different instances of XML Notepad and from the file system.
  • Infinite undo/redo for all edit operations.
  • In place popup multi-line editing of large text node values.
  • Configurable fonts and colors via the options dialog.
  • Full find/replace dialog with support for regex and XPath.
  • Good performance on large XML documents, loading a 3mb document in about one second.
  • Instant XML schema validation while you edit with errors and warnings shown in the task list window.
  • Intellisense based on expected elements and attributes and enumerated simple type values.
  • Support for custom editors for date, dateTime and time datatypes and other types like color.
  • Handy nudge tool bar buttons for quick movement of nodes up and down the tree.
  • Inplace HTML viewer for processing xml-stylesheet processing instructions.
  • Built-in XML Diff tool.
  • Support for XInclude
  • Dynamic help from XSD annotations.
  • Goto definition to navigate includes and XSD schema information.
Download
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September Critical Security Bulletins Advance Notification, 5 patches

Critical Security Bulletins

Microsoft Security Bulletin 1

- Affected Software: Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4

- Impact: Remote Code Execution

Important Security Bulletins

Microsoft Security Bulletin 2

- Affected Software:

- Visual Studio .NET 2002 Service Pack 1 (KB937057)

- Visual Studio .NET 2003(KB937058)

- Visual Studio .NET 2003 Service Pack 1 (KB937059)

- Visual Studio 2005 (KB937060)

- Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (KB937061)

- Impact: Remote Code Execution

Microsoft Security Bulletin 3

Affected Software:

- Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4

- Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 on Windows 2000 Service Pack 4

- Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 on Windows XP Service Pack 2

- Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 on Windows XP Service Pack 2

- Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 on Windows Server 2003 Service

Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

- Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 on Windows Server 2003 Service

Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

- Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications on Windows Server 2003

Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2

- Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications on Windows Server 2003

x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition Service Pack 2

- Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications on Windows Vista

- Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications on Windows Vista x64

Edition

- Impact: Elevation of Privilege

Microsoft Security Bulletin 4

- Affected Software:

- MSN Messenger 6.2

- MSN Messenger 7.0

- MSN Messenger 7.5

- Windows Live Messenger 8.0

- Impact: Remote Code Execution

Microsoft Security Bulletin 5

- Affected Software:

- Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Server

2003 Service Pack 1 (KB934525)

- Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Server

2003 Service Pack 2 (KB934525)

- Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Server

2003 x64 Edition (KB934525)

- Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 on Windows Server

2003 x64 Edition Service Pack 2 (KB934525)

- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (KB937832)

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06 September 2007

Windows Live Suite Download

Here it is the Windows Live 2.0 wave in the form of 1 installer.

http://g.live.com/1rebeta/en-us/WLInstaller.exe

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04 September 2007

PXE, aka Pre-Execution Environment - Part 1

Few days ago, I’ve received 50 new servers without any OS preinstalled. The servers came without floppy drive and CD/DVD. I tried to connect an external CD (USB) or Disk on Key, but servers didn’t start. So, I decided to run PXE Boot. If you don't know what PXE is, here’s what is written in Wikipedia:

“The Preboot Execution Environment (PXE, aka Pre-Execution Environment, or 'pixie') is an environment to boot computers using a network interface card independently of available data storage devices (like hard disks) or installed operating systems.”

There are several solutions of PXE implementation. Microsoft has its Remote Installation Service (RIS), there are sort of HP, Symantec and Acronics. Some of them are based on Linux.
I decided not to straggle with Microsoft RIS or Linux and fortunately I found a more simple solution.

So, here is an explanation of what I did:
WHAT WE NEED:
1. Additional Computer, running Windows to act as the PXE server. I have used Windows XP.
2. Syslinux-3.51.zip (or other version) from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/boot/syslinux/ (We need only a few files).
3. DHCP and TFTP Server software for windows (I used TFTPD32. As a DHCP server you can use a MS DHCP Server from Windows 2000/2003).
4. DOS bootable floppy. I have used a boot image with NetBoot and Boot image of clean Windows 98. Both images can be downloaded here.

WORKSTEPS:
Download the software above into a temporary folder on the computer that will act as the PXE Server.
1. On the future PXE server, create a following directory structure:
C:\PXEServer
|
--- TFTPRoot
|
---Boot
|
----- pxelinux.cfg (This is a directory, not a file)

2. Download and Unpack syslinux-3.51.zip in any Temp directory. We need only 2 file from the archive. Take a pxelinux.0 and put it in the root of C:\PXEServer\TFTPRoot\Boot . Then, from the directory memdisk take 'memdisk' file and put it same place (C:\PXEServer\TFTPRoot\Boot).
Take file menu.c32 (from \syslinux-3.51\com32\modules) and put it to the C:\PXEServer\TFTPRoot\Boot.

3. Download Tftpd32 v3.03 from http://www.jounin.net/tftpd32_download.html and extract the tftpd32.exe files to C:\PXEServer.

4. Now we need a boot disk image. You can take a boot floppy and create an image, by using the WinImage. I have downloaded Universal TCP / IP Network Boot disk from http://www.netbootdisk.com/

Created diskette, and then made an IMA image in WinImage.

NOTE : Universal TCP / IP Network Boot disk uses a boot disk which created at Windows XP. It was a problem to use this diskette for PXE boot, so I took all files from created disk and placed them in the boot disk of Windows 98. If you do not have time to create an image, you can simply download it here.

5. Now, in the C:\PXEServer\TFTPRoot\Boot create directory pxelinux.cfg (I am not mistaken, as it is written-pxelinux.cfg directory).

6. Inside pxelinux.cfg create a text file default. Please note that the file should be NO extension. In my file you have an option to select which boot image to use, image with network Support (Universal TCP / IP Network Boot disk) or simply use a clean boot of Windows 98. Here is a content of my default file:

DEFAULT menu.c32
TIMEOUT 300
ALLOWOPTIONS 0
PROMPT 0
MENU TITLE PXE Boot System
LABEL NetworkBoot
MENU LABEL ^Network Boot
kernel memdisk
append initrd=w98se-netboot.IMA
LABEL CleanBoot
MENU LABEL ^Clean Win 98 Boot
kernel memdisk
append initrd=W98.IMA
LABEL BootNormal
MENU LABEL ^Boot Normal
LOCALBOOT 0

7. Now, let’s run tftpd32.exe. In Global Settings select TFTP Server and DHCP Server. See Figure 1 for an example of my setup. After finishing settings click OK.


Figure 1

8. On the DHCP Server tab make settings appropriate for your network. The one of the most important settings, this is' Boot file '. Set the 'Boot file' to ' /boot/pxelinux.0 '. See Figure 2 for an example of my setup. Remember to click on SAVE button.


Figure 2

9. The server setup is DONE! Now, you can turn on a new server and choose at startup PXE Boot. Further installation, is a thing of technology :).

Note: If you already have any DHCP server at your network, it will be a problem. I'd like to advise to disable another DHCP server or to configure it as written above. For example Microsoft DHCP Server Boot option file is 67 (67 Bootfile Name).
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02 September 2007

Free IIS 7 Beta Hosting

Want to Go Live but don’t want to set up a server? These great Hosting partners have the answer and the best part is, it’s FREE! IIS7 Beta Hosting is an excellent way for developers & designers to take the sites they’ve played with on IIS7 in Windows Vista and test them early on IIS7 in Windows Server Codename "Longhorn" Beta 3 today. Furthermore, for PHP developers, this is a great opportunity to check out the new FastCGI component that enables scalable PHP hosting on Windows.
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