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Francisco Morais

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April 24

Windows 7: Setting up a USB bootable device for installs

Este artigo foi publicado pelo Jeff Alexander, um IT Pro Evangelist na Australia e explica como instalar o Windows 7 a partir de um disco USB.

Publico-o na integra para lhe poder aceder quando precisar!

http://blogs.technet.com/jeffa36/archive/2009/04/22/windows-7-setting-up-a-usb-bootable-device-for-installs.aspx

Windows 7: Setting up a USB bootable device for installs

WTB_banner_win7
These days I install, re-install and install Windows 7 again and I wanted a quicker way of doing this without having to use a DVD all the time.  Plus I wanted to be able to install x64 and x86 for both server and client.  And I have a HP Mini 2140 on loan which of course does not have a DVD drive.  So enter the humble USB key to solve this task.

You will need at least a 4GB USB key to fit the entire contents of the Windows 7 DVD.  In Australia you can pick these up for under $25 now so it’s not a huge outlay.  We have a bunch in the office as part of a promotion so I have one for x86 and x64.  So the next thing you are going to need to do is format this disk using DISKPART.  Follow the steps below:

  1. Insert the Windows 7 DVD into the optical drive on your computer.
  2. Insert the USB drive and make sure you can see it in explorer.
  3. Run DISKPART – I’ll use screenshots to explain the rest of the steps.
  • At a command prompt type DISKPART

diskpart1

  • Now before you do anything else make sure you have inserted the USB drive and you can see it in explorer.

diskpart2

  • Type LIST DISK to see a list of available disks

diskpart3

  • Type SELECT DISK 3 ( in my case it happens to be disk 3)

diskpart4

  • Type CLEAN which will wipe the disk

diskpart5

  • Type CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY

diskpart6

  • Type SELECT PARTITION 1

diskpart7

  • Type ACTIVE to make this partition the active partition.

diskpart8

  • Type FORMAT FS=FAT32 (wait for it to get to 100% complete)

diskpart9

Type ASSIGN so a drive letter gets assigned in explorer.

diskpart10

Now you should have a USB disk ready for the Windows 7 source files.  If you have the DVD load that into your DVD drive and copy the entire contents to the root of the USB drive.  Once that is done you will have a bootable USB disk ready for you to build your machines much much faster with Windows 7.

I find this a useful and quick way to get machines build and it’s portable as well!

March 26

Talking about Torneio Microsoft - Equipa MIC

 

Quote

Talking about Torneio Microsoft - Equipa MIC
Torneio Microsoft - Equipa MIC
Hosted by: Francisco Morais
Date and time: Thursday, March 26, 2009, 3:45 PM - Wednesday, July 01, 2009, 4:45 PM
Location: My Indoor
View this event on Windows Live
March 19

Talking about Ask the Directory Services Team : How do I find out what changes are going on in my Active Directory

Este artigo veio em tão boa altura e está tão bom que não resisto a publicá-lo na integra!!!
 
How do I find out what changes are going on in my Active Directory?

 

Herbert here. Here are some common questions asked by AD Administrators:

- Why has my AD database size increased by 500MB in the last three weeks?
- I see lots of AD replication in Domain Controller monitoring. What are all these changes?

Both symptoms can be severe enough to impair the operations of your AD forest. Here are examples of past occurrences that we tracked down:

312403  Distributed Link Tracking on Windows-based domain controllers
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312403

318774  Removing duplicate and unwanted proxy addresses in Exchange
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;318774

940262  The Active Directory database size increases unexpectedly because a Windows Server 2003-based DNS server inappropriately creates several SerialNo objects
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;940262

In order to find the cause for the problems, you should find what has changed in the AD database recently. Now Active Directory assigns an "Update Sequence Number" (USN) to each change. These USNs are 64 Bit Integers and are specific to a Domain Controller. The DC GUID and USN together uniquely identify a database change. A USN is both assigned to originating changes and replicated changes. So even for read-only GC content, you see local USNs getting written.

You can use these USNs to identify recent changes in the database of each DC. Each AD Server (includes AD/AM and LDS) has an attribute named “highestCommittedUSN” on its RootDSE object. Here’s an example output from LDP:

...
12> supportedLDAPPolicies: MaxPoolThreads; MaxDatagramRecv; MaxReceiveBuffer; InitRecvTimeout; MaxConnections; MaxConnIdleTime; MaxPageSize; MaxQueryDuration; MaxTempTableSize; MaxResultSetSize; MaxNotificationPerConn; MaxValRange;
1> highestCommittedUSN: 175389104;
4> supportedSASLMechanisms: GSSAPI; GSS-SPNEGO; EXTERNAL; DIGEST-MD5;
...

Based on this number, you can query for the most recently changed Objects using an LDAP query. As an example, I’m using LDIFDE and I’m subtracting 10000 from the “highestCommittedUSN” value seen on RootDSE:

Ldifde /d dc=contoso,dc=com /s contoso-DC1 /r "(usnchanged>=175379104)" /f domain-NC-last-10000-080919.txt

This file now contains the names of the objects that were changed or created recently. The object names give you a hint as to what area of AD you need to look at, but it may not be enough of a clue yet. If they are not all new objects (very recent whenCreated attribute), you may want to look at what attributes have been changed. Also, you want to know from which DC the object change is originating.

Maybe the DC that writes all the changes is the primary DC your provisioning system is working against, or it’s a DC you don’t expect to see. To get this information, retrieve the object meta-data using:

repadmin /showobjmeta <DC name> <Object-DN>

The output looks like this:

Loc.USN         Originating DC   Org.USN  Org.Time/Date        Ver Attribute
=======     =============== ========= =============       
...
175389437     HQ\contoso-DC1   175389437 2008-09-16 18:12:46    2 name
...

The leftmost column is the local USN; the more interesting fields are to the right, where you see the originating DC information and change time-stamp, attribute version and name. If the version is really high, it could mean excessive updates to this attribute which deserves more investigation.

You should also look out for changes seen for linked attributes (Windows Server 2003 Forest Mode and higher):

Type    Attribute     Last Mod Time                    Originating DC  Loc.USN   Org.USN        Ver   Distinguished Name
============================================================================
ABSENT  member 2008-09-19 15:14:01       HQ\contoso-DC1 175384020 175384020   2    CN=test-user1,OU=Test-OU,DC=contoso,DC=com
PRESENT member 2008-09-16 18:22:29       HQ\contoso-DC1 175379684 175379684   1   CN=test-user2,OU=Test-OU,DC=contoso,DC=com

Note: High values for USNs will distort the table view.

Many “ABSENT” and high version numbers indicate high activity with linked values. “ABSENT” indicates a deleted link, so you can think of it as a value tombstone. It’s treated just like an object tombstone in the database. During replication it means that the value is deleted from the attribute, in this case a group membership.

Attributes that can contain lots of data deserve special attention. This often applies to attributes containing binary values, including the security descriptor for AD or Exchange, or attributes containing certificates. Note that by default, LDIFDE does not dump “ntSecurityDescriptor”. If any of these attributes show high version numbers or a recent update time stamp on many objects, you should investigate further. It will depend on the attribute on how you investigate the changes, for example for “ntSecurityDescriptor” you can dump it using DSACLS and check out any excess Access Control Entries.

Excessive changes to “ntSecurityDescriptor” are not so much a problem regarding database size because there is single instance storage for these since Windows Server 2003. But they can take lots of replication bandwidth.

The information on objects, attributes and originating DC you collected so far should give you good hints regarding the originator of the changes. If it’s not clear yet, you can enable auditing on successful changes to these attributes to find out the process that is making these changes. It may be necessary to make the attribute viewable in ACL Editor so you can define auditing for it. See the guide in:

296490  How to modify the filtered properties of an object
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;296490

But what if there is no pattern evolving while you get the data?

One approach is to repeat the LDIFDE export and reduce the window until you see a pattern. Maybe the problematic changes only happen at certain times of the day, so it would also play a role when you create the export. Or the changes happen on a branch office that only replicates at a certain time of day.

But there are also more naming contexts that may have excessive changes, such as Configuration or the DNS partitions ForestDnsZones and DomainDnsZones, and on GCs. Hopefully, the admins of the other domains are already aware of the excessive changes. This is how you search the whole of the GC data:

Ldifde /d "" /s contoso-DC1 /t 3268 /r "(usnchanged>=175379104)" /f GC-last-10000-080919.txt

Hint: Keep in mind that this query only shows changes for attributes that are present in the GC.

And finally, the problem may not be with existing objects that are changed, but with objects that are deleted and re-created all the time. Deleted objects still take database space for the tombstone, and the new objects cause replication traffic. LDIFDE can include deleted objects in the query when you pass the “/x” option:

Ldifde /d dc=contoso,dc=com /s contoso-DC1 /x /r "(usnchanged>=175379104)" /f domain-NC-last-10000-deleted-080919.txt

If the combined size of the tombstones is a problem, you have to wait until the garbage collection is done before you can reduce the size of the database file using an offline defragmentation. We advise against shortening Tombstone Lifetime for the sole purpose of kicking out these objects earlier. When you have strict replication enabled and replication quarantine is enforced, this shortening TSL to a few days can have a drastic impact on the availability of your Active Directory.

I hope you’re having fun investigating all your ongoing AD changes. I think you’re up to a few interesting findings.

- Herbert Mauerer

November 30

Active Directory Topology Diagramer

The Active Directory Topology Diagrammer (ADTD) tool is now available for download for free from the Microsoft Web Site at the following address: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=cb42fc06-50c7-47ed-a65c-862661742764&displaylang=en&tm#Overview

Brief Description

The Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer reads an Active Directory configuration using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and then automatically generates a Visio diagram of your Active Directory and /or your Exchange 200x Server topology. The diagramms include domains, sites, servers, administrative groups, routing groups and connectors and can be changed manually in Visio if needed.

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November 08

Exchange Server Documentation Updates - November 2007

A new set of documentation regarding Exchange 2007 is available from the Exchange Server documentation team.

The Exchange Server documentation team is pleased to announce the following new Exchange Server 2007 content.

You can see these articles and other Exchange Server documentation content in the Microsoft Exchange Server TechCenter.

To see what content has changed for Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1, take a look at What's New in Exchange Server 2007 SP1.

The following downloads are also now available for SP1 content:

 

and I've noticed the "geekness alert!" send by Rui Silva and I will download and print the poster!!

That's super cool!

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November 07

Insight for Active Directory v1.0

ADInsight is an LDAP (Light-weight Directory Access Protocol) real-time monitoring tool aimed at troubleshooting Active Directory client applications. Use its detailed tracing of Active Directory client-server communications to solve Windows authentication, Exchange, DNS, and other problems.

ADInsight uses DLL injection techniques to intercept calls that applications make in the Wldap32.dll library, which is the standard library underlying Active Directory APIs such ldap and ADSI. Unlike network monitoring tools, ADInsight intercepts and interprets all client-side APIs, including those that do not result in transmission to a server. ADInsight monitors any process into which it can load it’s tracing DLL, which means that it does not require administrative permissions, however, if run with administrative rights, it will also monitor system processes, including windows services.

Insight for Active Directory v1.0

 

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October 24

Microsoft vs. Blackberry

Microsoft announced the new Microsoft® System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 and that will make the main competitor rethink all strategy.

The main reasons that keeps Blackberry selling devices and servers are the supportability, the easy way to manage devices from a centralized point in the network. And the feeling of security that a blackberry user gets when he use his device.

From now on Microsoft will try to compete in this areas, centralizing the management of mobile devices in the Active Directory via Group Policies and bringing a new layer of security to the mobile network, implementing software distribution

Very well explained @ Mr. Mobile

There are 3 core areas of capability in Systems Center Mobile Device Manager 2008.

1) SECURITY: Windows Mobile devices will be able to participate in Active Directory.  They will join Active Directory and can then be managed through Group policy to allow administrators to control the features and functions of a Windows Mobile Device.  You can control whether WiFi can be enabled, the camera can be used, which applications can be whitelisted or blacklisted.  There are over 130 policies that can be deployed.  

2) DEVICE MANAGEMENT: IT teams can manage Windows Mobile phones end-to-end through a single solution rather than many, helping save time and resources.  

  • Easy distribution of software over the air
  • Easily add more users as needed and as solution grows
  • Over the Air enrollment of devices- just type in a password and go.
  • Integration with Windows Server and mobile development investments, such as AD, GP, MMC Console, Powershell, WSUS 3.0, and Microsoft Dynamics

3) DATA ACCESS: System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 provides a Mobile VPN that gives a secure single point of access to the corporate network.  You can use this to access any line of business applications or Intranet applications.  It also enables a fast reconnect if disconnected and provides easy transition from Wi-Fi to carrier networks with Internetwork Roaming

System Center Mobile Device Manager will be available in the first half of 2008.  

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Scalability

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Security

October 19

PopFly goes public

PopFly goes into a public beta and the logo had changed too!...

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Introduction

What is Popfly?

Microsoft® Popfly™ is a web site and tool to help people create and share web sites, mashups, and other kinds of experiences. It has two parts: the social network, which we call "Popfly Space" and the online tool for creating different kinds of experiences, which we call "Popfly Creator."

What can you do with Popfly?

Programming is not something that takes years to learn. With Popfly Creator, in just a few minutes, you can create something that will have people saying "wow."

With Popfly you can create a mashup using functionality from Virtual Earth, Flickr, Yahoo!, Twitter, and more.

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October 15

Hotfix for Excel

Hotfix for Excel released

"(...)If you're a fan of the numbers 65534.9999999995 and 65535.99999999995, we've got good news for you. The bug that caused them to display 65535 and 65536 has been fixed. We released a couple of hotfixes for the issue yesterday. If such things interest you, head over to here and here to check out the Knowledge Base articles that will help you. Those are the fixes for both Excel 2007 and Excel Services in Office SharePoint Server 2007. One other note: This is NOT a security vulnerability. It's a formatting issue with the display of some calculation results."

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October 12

Windows Live SkyDrive updated

The beta of Windows Live Skydrive was updated today.

the news are:

  • increased storage capacity, from 500 Mb to 1 Gb

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  • RSS Feeds on Public Folders

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  • See who uploaded a file

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  • Add a contact directly within SkyDrive

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You can check for more @ the Windows Live SkyDrive team blog

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October 11

ITIL Foundations

Since last week I'm ITIL Foundations Certified, but WTF is ITIL?

the best description (...and help for the exam...) I've found it  on Jose Barreto's blog:

"(...)a framework for IT Services Management. But what can you really learn from a set of books on IT Infrastructure published by a UK government agency? Oh, quite a lot!

The idea behind it is to offer best practices for IT processes, using consistent terms that can be understood globally, no matter what IT environment you work on. If you find any value in similar systems like the ISO 9000, CMMi or EFQM, you will probably benefit from learning about ITIL. For me, the most important aspect of this training was to get a better understand of what this ITIL buzz is all about and to understand the terminology used by it. It helps put the entire set of IT Processes in perspective.

So what are these processes anyway? Well, the ITIL books define a number of them and, since they all interact with each other, it’s actually hard to talk about each one individually. They are grouped into two major groups each one in its own book: Service Support and Service Delivery. The Services Support book describes services (and a function) that is offered to your end-users (called simply IT users). The Service Delivery book includes services that are provided to the teams that sponsor or hire those IT Services (called simply IT Customers). There are other books in the library, but these are the main ones."

check the rest of the post for a more explanatory description of some processes and some study material.

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October 02

Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer

The Microsoft Active Directory Topology Diagrammer reads an Active Directory configuration using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and then automatically generates a Visio diagram of your Active Directory and /or your Exchange 200x Server topology. The diagramms include domains, sites, servers, administrative groups, routing groups and connectors and can be changed manually in Visio if needed.

October 01

Windows Mobile Communicator RTM

Microsoft released the new communicator client for Windows Mobile devices.  Communicator Mobile 2007 requires Windows Mobile 5 or 6.  The client can be downloaded here.

 

September 27

IE7Pro - The Ultimate Add-On for Internet Explorer

For those of you who want to take the browser experience beyond the "normal", and for those of you who are asking for a IE 7 add-on that closes the gap between IE and other browsers...

(...)IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro."

IE7Pro - The Ultimate Add-On for Internet Explorer

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September 25

Windows VISTA SP1 (beta)

About the same time as Windows Server 2008 RC0 gets out, the beta version for the Windows VISTA SP1 is out there too.

"(...)Windows Vista SP1 beta (build 6001-16659-070916-1443) is available now for download at connect.microsoft.com in English (~3GB), German and Japanese as Client or ClientN for x86 and x64 versions. Optional component(s): Language Packs for EN-DE-JP."

As always, there is a white paper you should read before:  Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta White Paper.

 

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Windows Server 2008 RC 0

From the Windows Server Division WebLog

"(...)Yehaw! , today I pleased to announce the availability of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 0, and with it...the very first public release of Windows Server virtualization (codenamed Viridian). 

You can download the bits today as part of our customer technology preview (CTP)program.

Not only does this milestone indicate that Windows Server 2008 is ready to march down the path to RTM....but it also is the first time WsV will be part of the code base and available to everyone. Now is the time for organizations to start testing with key virtuzliation scenarios...such as server consolidation....as well as getting ready for many of the other key features of Windows Server 2008.

With Windows Server virtualization CTP, customers will now be able leverage the scalability of hypervisor-based platform and features, including multi-processor guests, large memory allocation (more than 32 gigabytes per machine) and integrated virtual switch support that enables IT organizations to virtualize most workloads.

In addition to the RC0 news there are a couple of other things going on today that are of interest:

1. Microsoft and Zend have been working together on a technical collaboration with the PHP community to significantly enhance the reliability and performance of PHP on Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. As part of this collaboration, the IIS product group has been working on a new component for IIS6 and IIS7 called FastCGI Extension which will enable IIS to much more effectively host PHP applications. You can get the FastCGI extension ( a free download) as part of the Go Live release of Microsoft FastCGI Extension for IIS 5.1/6.0 (FastCGI Extension) from the IIS community site, www.iis.net.

2. Windows Vista SP1 - Windows Vista SP1 beta will be released to approximately 12,000+ private beta testers.

Great week here at Microsoft!

Cheers,

Ward Ralston

...

Great, lets delete all of the VM's with the June CTP release and install it again... :-)

 

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September 24

Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer

 

A few days after the RTM launch, here it is: the "Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer"

"The Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer Tool is a diagnostic tool that gathers configuration information from a Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 environment and determines whether the configuration is set according to Microsoft best practices. You can install the tool on a client computer that runs Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, or on a server that runs Office Communications Server 2007.
Note: Although you can install the Office Communications Server 2007 Best Practices Analyzer directly on the computer that runs Office Communications Server 2007 Server, we recommend that you install and run this tool on a client computer.
The tool uses set of configuration files to gather information from the Office Communications Server 2007 environment. It compares this data against a set of pre-defined rules for Office Communications Server 2007, and reports potential issues. For every issue reported, the tool provides the current configuration in the Office Communications Server 2007 environment, and the recommended configuration.
With the proper network access, the tool can examine your Active Directory and Office Communications Server 2007 servers to do the following:

  • Proactively perform health checks, verifying that the configuration is set according to recommended best practices
  • Generate a list of issues, such as suboptimal configuration settings or unsupported or not recommended options
  • Judge the general health of a system
  • Help troubleshoot specific problems
  • Prompt you to download updates if they are available
  • Provide online and local documentation about reported issues, including troubleshooting tips
  • Generate configuration information that can be captured for later review "
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September 21

Introducing Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007

This collection of 2-hour clinics explains the enterprise capabilities provided by Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. These clinics are for infrastructure specialists working within organizations that are looking to deploy Office Communications Server within their solutions.
Topics covered within the collection include:

  • Enterprise Instant Messaging
  • On-Premise Conferencing and Telephony
  • Incorporating Office Communications Server Functionality within custom applications
Student prerequisites
Familiarity with the following:
  • Active Directory concepts
  • Exchange messaging concepts
  • SharePoint concepts
  • Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 fundamentals
  • Fundamental concepts of Windows Server 2003
  • Fundamental networking knowledge and experience

This offer includes the following:


Clinic 5126: Introducing Enterprise Instant Messaging Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 (Beta)

Clinic 5127: Introducing On-Premise Conferencing Using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007

Clinic 5128: Introducing Enterprise Telephony Using Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

Clinic 5129: Customizing Real-Time Communication with Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007

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