Tag: Windows

Microsoft Steadystate

Sick of having all these changes made on your Windows XP machine at hom eor the office? Well Microsoft has just released a new tool called SteadyState.
Windows SteadyState, successor to the Shared Computer Toolkit, is designed to make life easier for people who set up and maintain shared computers.
     
An easy way to manage multiple users

You can manage whole groups of users as single user accounts. The new Windows SteadyState console makes it easier than ever to create and modify user profiles.
 
 
A locked-down platform for stable shared computing

Not every computer user should have access to every software capability. Your system can be more stable and consistent when you limit user access to control panel functions, network resources, and other sensitive areas.
 
     
Set it and forget it

Once you have everything set up the way you want it, you can share the computer and rest easy. Any changes a user might make to the configuration or hard disk can be undone by simply restarting the machine.
Interesting to see how well it works in an SBS environment, but if it does then it could be very handy.
For more info about SteadyState see :
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

The most vulnerable part of your PC may not be Windows

Recent surveys have shown that the greatest number of vulnerabilities that exist on user systems these days are related to all the add on programs that are installed.
 
Applications like iTunes, Flash and Acrobat to name but a few are rarely updated once they are installed yet they continue to be used on a regular basis. The problem for most users is how do they keep up with all the updates that maybe required on their systems? Not easy.
 
Here at least is a web site that wil tell you what is not up to date :
 
 
Microsoft Windows Update is used to determine if your system is missing security updates from Microsoft.

The Secunia Software Inspector covers the most common/popular end user applications:
* Internet browsers
* Internet browser plugins
* Instant messaging clients
* Email clients
* Media players
* Operating systems

Windows Server SP2 issues

Here are some articles from Microsoft about issues that may arise once you install Windows Server Service Pack 2 onto your system :
 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936594/ You may experience network-related problems after you install Windows Server 2003 SP2 or the Scalable Networking Pack.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939421 Best practices and known issues when you install Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 on a Windows Small Business Server 2003-based computer.

 

IP address change failed

We have changed IP addresses on a few SBS servers over the years and never had any real dramas using the Change IP address wizard from the server manager. That was until recently.
 
When we went to change the IP address we received an errors that IP change had failed. We set it back to the original and then tried to change it again. It took a few attempts but finally it did change.
 
We rebooted thinking everything would be fine but soon found errors with the DHCP server. It was working but we couldn’t view the DHCP server in the console manager. Also when we tried to do NSLOOKUP from the DNS console we got nothing.
 
The workstations all got their IP addresses correctly and everything seemed ok but we still felt that something was wrong. That night the backup software (Brightstor) failed backing up the Active Directory with Error E3156 EC8007003a. Also, the overnight SBS report was full of Exchange errors. There was definately something still wrong.
 
After extensive investigation as to why the server was still listing the old IP address in places, even after we successfully completed the change IP address wizard, it turns out that there was a manual entry for the server in the HOSTS file! Someone had manually gone into c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and inserted an entry for the servername and the original (old) IP address. Clearly this will cause a problem since the HOSTS file normally takes precedence when doing IP lookups. Not wanting to point the finger at any party but it would appear that the previous IT people had made this entry because they had issues configuring something and thought it would fix their problems. Sure hope it did for them because it caused us no end of grief.
 
Once we removed the old IP entry from the HOSTS file everything started to magically work again (as it should!).
 
Moral of the story? Never, ever set a static IP address in the hosts file.

Microsoft Exam insurance

Thinking of taking a Microsoft Certification exam? Maybe an idea to hold off just a little while until they announce their exam insurance for August.
 
 
It would appear that if you take an exam and fail during the period you can take it again without cost. Alternatively, if you pass on your first attempt you’ll get a discount towards yoru next exam.
 
No dates have been set but the web site says that it is coming in August. Check the above web site for more information.