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Outlook: Sending to the Wrong Email Address

Deborah Kurata — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:31:31 GMT

One of my friends sends an email message to me telling me about their great new job and letting me know that they have a new email address. I dutifully update my Outlook Address book and fix the address.

Five unanswered emails later, I realize that I have been sending email to the WRONG email address. Even though I fixed my Outlook Address book, the Outlook Most Recently Used (MRU) list still has the OLD email address. What's to be done?

Then Beth Massi shared with me an Outlook tip that I want to pass along: You can delete items from the MRU in Outlook!

Say I am typing in John's name:

If I am not watching closely, I will send it to the wrong address again (nowhere.com).

To prevent this mistake:

Highlight the incorrect address.
Press the Del key.

The unwanted MRU entry is then deleted.

Enjoy!

So what updates get installed when you click 'yes' to updates during the SBS 2008 installer

bradley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:21:00 GMT

The only updates at this time that get installed when you say 'yes' do that update screen as SBS 2008 gets installed are security updates. There are no installer updates offered up at this time. There are no installer only updates that I've seen period.

If there were such updates, I'd tell you to say yes to that window. But there is none at this time. And in fact in the release notes, there's a known issue where you'll get a bogus error message at the end of the install due to the fact that it couldn't properly get patches installed during that process.

So let's review why I say no:

1. There are no installer fixes included (at least at this time)

2. They are only security patches.

3. They take a long time to download.

4. They introduce risk during a time that you need to reduce risk.

You might encounter the error “One or more updates cannot be installed” during server installation

On the Get important updates page of the Install Windows Small Business Server 2008 Wizard, if you choose Go online and get the most recent installation updates (recommended) and then click Next, the Installation finished page appears and informs you that the wizard encountered some non-critical issues. If you click View installation issues, the wizard displays the error “One or more updates cannot be installed.”

To resolve this issue, make sure that the server is connected to the Internet, and then do one of the following:

· Download software updates immediately

· Configure software update settings to approve updates automatically

To connect to the Internet

1. Open the Windows SBS Console.

2. On the Home page, click Connect to the Internet.

3. Follow the instructions in the wizard.

To download updates immediately

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, and then click either Windows Update or Microsoft Update.

2. Follow the onscreen instructions to download and install the available updates.

To configure software update settings

1. Open the Windows SBS Console.

2. On the navigation bar, click Security.

3. Click the Updates tab, and then, in the task pane, click Change the software update settings.

4. On the Server Updates and Client Updates tabs, choose from the following four update options:

· High. All updates and service packs are automatically approved for installation.

· Medium. All security, critical, and definition updates are automatically approved for installation.

· Low. All security and definition updates are automatically approved for installation.

· None. No updates are automatically approved for installation.

5. On the Schedule tab, choose how and when to update your servers and client computers.

6. On the Included Computers tab, choose the computer names and update groups that you want to include in updates. You can also change the update group to which individual computers belong.

7. Click OK to apply the changes.

8. To synchronize your software update settings immediately, in the tasks pane of the Windows SBS Console Updates tab, click Synchronize now.

Getting Change Events

RichardSiddaway — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:04:22 GMT

I wasn’t particularly happy with the script for getting change events on the filesystemwatcher we discussed last time. As a quick recap we ended up with this

            001              
002               
003               
004               
          Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "File System Changed" | where {($_.EventIdentifier % 2) -eq 1} | foreach {               
    "{0}, {1}, {2}" -f   $_.SourceIdentifier, $_.SourceEventArgs.FullPath, $_.TimeGenerated               
                  
} 
       
 

Which depends on the correct identification of the order in which events are issued. That seemed like too much manual intervention. It was too late last night to solve so I had another look today and came up with this

            001              
002               
          Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "File System Changed" | Group TimeGenerated | where {$_.Count-eq 2} |                
foreach {$time = $_.Name; Get-Event | where {$_.TimeGenerated.ToString() -eq $time}| select -First 1} 
       
 

use get-event with the correct source identifier. We then group on timegenerated. File Changes will generate two change records per event so we select where the count is 2. Pass those into a foreach and retrieve the events matching that time. We select the first one of each pair to only access a single record. One neat line of PowerShell does it all.

Technorati Tags: PowerShell,events,filesystemwatcher,change

OpsMgr: Green Computing Management pack pour Windows Server 2008 R2

Yann Gainche — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:46:00 GMT

Operations Manager se met au 'Green Computing'.

Microsoft a publié un pack d'administration 'Power zgManagement Pack' pour Windows Server 2008 R2. L'objectif est de donner de la visibilité sur la consommation énergétique des serveurs.

Ce pack d'administration est destiné à Windows Server 2008 R2 et nécessite Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Téléchargement : Windows Power Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 v 6.0.6735.0.

Tech-ed Berlin 2009: Day 1

vanDooren — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:39:00 GMT

After a boring cab drive to the airport, I had an even more boring flight to Berlin. And that is exactly how I want all my flights to be. I don’t want it to be the thrilling and exciting near-death experience I had once, flying to Nice.

I arrived in Berlin safe and sound, and took a cab to the hotel. Sadly, the hotel is not near the conference center, on account of there not being any hotels nearby. The hotel is 2 short train rides away. It’s really easy to find. And of course, to those that know me it will come as no surprise that it took several tries for me to arrive at he correct location.

What sucks most is that a) my flight got rescheduled sometime ago (leaving 1 hour later than expected), delayed for half an hour, and the event agenda got re-shuffled since I booked. As a result, I missed 2 sessions. Because for some silly reason, someone decided that the keynote should be at the end of the day instead of the beginning.

Had I known this in advance, I’d have left for Berlin yesterday. I didn’t because I wanted an extra day with my wife and kids. Ironic, since they weren’t at home yesterday due to unforeseen circumstances. Next time I’ll just leave on Sunday, taking some extra time to travel.

Whatever. I am typing this while the keynote speech is starting. It’ll probably be an hour and a half filled with mind numbing explanations of why Microsoft technology is the greatest on earth.

I have to say I preferred Barcelona as the venue for tech-ed, for a number of reasons:

1) Walking down the street in November. Berlin: 5 degrees Celsius and rain. Barcelona: 20 degrees Celsius and cloudless skies.

2) Crossing the street from the hotel and being at the event in less than 2 minutes.

3) The venue itself. The messe is a complex of industrial looking buildings, with concrete, asphalt, etc, rather than the aesthetically pleasant looking ICC in Barcelona.

4) additionally, the idea of having 1 big event for developers and IT professionals is less than stellar. Because now, there are only half as much developer sessions as there used to be in Barcelona. Only 1 real C++ session, no large selection of .NET and C# and SQL Server sessions...

Still, I’ve had my first coffee of the day and I am starting to get a feel for the place. Tech-ed is still a good place to be. And if my knowledge of German cuisine is still accurate, the food will be good, plenty, and NOT drowned in olive oil.

CLI324: Windows ‘Lucky’ 7

This session was hosted by Mark Minasi

It was a good session, and basically enumerated the features of 7 that are either new, or changed from Vista or XP.

Mark is a great speaker, and managed to make the time fly while discussing the topics. It was not in depth so I am not going to repeat too much of it here. The things that got me interested most are the ability to image disks into files, like VMWare virtual disks. These disks can be shared, backed up and mounted. Very exiting stuff that would make my life easier, if we ever get to the point where we will actually use 7.

Other cool features are the ability to deploy to USB media, which would presumably allow me to boot from USB disk, as well as the ability to easily perform preconfigured installs.

When talking about Vista and how 7 compares to it, Mark mentioned that one Microsoft developer said ‘We are going to throw Vista under the bus’, comparing it with Windows Miserable Edition. Interestingly, In terms of raw speed, 7 is really not that much better. But when it comes to perceived speed, 7 is the clear winner due to being more responsive, and getting less in the way of what the user wants to do.

The talk was great, and the speaker connected well with the audience.

Sadly, this was the only technical session I will see today. As luck would have it, there is only 1 C++ talk this tech-ed, and I missed it. At least they could have scheduled some boring IT talks in the first 2 sessions but alas.

The actual keynote

The keynote itself so far has the hallmarks or every other keynote I’ve seen so far. A couple of tech delegates got singled out for public humiliation while a couple of IT bigwigs (presumably million dollar customers) sat on stage explaining how good their infrastructure is and how Microsoft helped them to enable it.

Bla bla bla snore.

I don’t want to sound jaded here, or un-appreciative of the fact that my company is letting me attend this event (I am really grateful), but keynote speeches tend to be hype and blubber, void of tech content and generally a waste of time. What was even worse about this keynote is that they didn’t show off anything related to Visual Studio 10. Instead, they demoed Server 2008 Hypervisor and Exchange 2010.

That said, it is interesting to a developer like me that with the newest release of 2008R2 and the System Management Center software, detailed knowledge and understanding of the low level OS guts are no longer absolutely necessary. Between the 2 of them, those applications let admins manage their infrastructure with only a modicum of nitty gritty knowledge. The software goes out of its way to be user friendly.

That is not a bad thing. It just feels weird that you can administer a complex system without having to troll through log files, understand dcom security configuration, and other arcane things.

At least tomorrow I’ll be able to dive deep in technical content, and hopefully start my day with bacon and coffee. At least 2 plates of the former and 2 big cups of the latter.

Wrap-up day 1

The travel was good, the weather not so much.

The windows 7 presentation was good, the keynote not so much.

I had a very good pizza in an Italian restaurant, for only 7 euros. Dirt cheap.

I am now making a schedule of which sessions I want to see, and when to see them. Some of the sessions I’d like to see are scheduled in the same slot, but some of them get repeated throughout the week so I can probably schedule my attendance so that I can see most of the people I want to see.

Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server MP for OpsMgr 2007

Rui Silva — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:32:13 GMT

Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 v11.0.0324.00 is available to download. Brief Description The Management Pack for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server monitors the availability, security, configuration and performance of an FPE deployment. Overview The Management Pack for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE) allows you to discover FPE installations and components and to monitor them within System Center...(read more)

La vie numérique de vos enfants…

Patrice BONNEFOY — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:31:19 GMT

Bonsoir tout le monde, Etre attentif à ce que votre enfant peut découvrir sur le web est indispensable pour qu'internet reste une source de savoir et de loisirs sûre. C'est la nouvelle campagne de Microsoft qui nous est proposée au travers d'un parcours personnalisé en 3 étapes afin d'y voir plus clair sur les risques encourus par votre enfant. Des conseils, des outils. C'est ici ... Bonne soirée. Patrice....(read more)

Exchange Server 2007 MP for OpsMgr 2007 SP1 v6.0.6741.0

Rui Silva — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:05:18 GMT

The Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 v6.0.6741.0 is now available to download. Brief Description This Management Pack includes an extensive set of monitoring including synthetic transactions to effectively monitor Exchange 2007 and report on performance, availability, and reliability of its server roles. Overview The Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for Operations Manager 2007 SP1 is designed to monitor Exchange 2007 key health indicators, collect...(read more)

The Executive Guide to Service Management in an Uncertain Economy | Realtime Nexus

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:02:05 GMT

In an uncertain economy, IT departments can count on two very certain demands: increase productivity and cut costs. When it comes to service management, CFOs, CIOs, and IT managers face the difficult challenge of developing a strategy that is tightly Read More......(read more)

Softpedia's exclusive interview with Malwarebytes: Malwarebytes Accuses, IObit Plays Dead

donna — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:48:29 GMT

Malwarebytes burst the bubble this week and came out accusing IObit of copying their database, thus providing through their IObit Security 360 product the same protection as Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. The copyright infringement implications led to DMCA serving of the latter to a number of software download websites in US.

Both security vendors have engaged in a war of statements on their respective blogs, stirring up heated discussions among users on their forums. Speculations have been made, opinions expressed, but no official answer to clear all haze has been given. We tried to learn about the sparks that lit the scandal and the elements fueling it.

Before we begin, we'd like to note that, in order to be fair and give everyone involved a chance to express their point of view, we also sent a set of questions to IObit for a similar interview. We have received a short response from one of the company's representatives, making it clear that the vendor had more important software development-related tasks on hand than to continue responding to Malwarebytes' accusations.

From the reply we got, we conclude that IObit's position regarding this issue remains unchanged. The company describes Malwarebytes' claims as mere rumors and its actions as unwarranted attacks.

On the matter of other antivirus vendors possibly making similar accusations in the future as a result of this incident, the IObit spokesperson stressed that the company did not steal signatures from anyone and noted that everyone was encouraged to test their database.

Continue reading in http://news.softpedia.com/news/Malwarebytes-Accuses-IObit-Plays-Dead-126389.shtml

Hat tip: Randy

E assim foi: Microsoft Techday 2009 em SP

Cleber Marques — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:53:00 GMT

Enfim estou aqui para comentar o sucesso do Techday 2009 em São Paulo, evento gratuito para profissionais de infraestrutura e desenvolvimento realizado na UNIP entre os dias 03 e 06/11/2009 pelas comunidades MCP Brasil, Canal System Center, Codificando e WinSec. Como representante da comunidade Canal System Center eu quero agradecer ao Vitor Nakano que foi o principal meio para que este evento acontecesse.

Em 4 dias tivemos cerca de 700 visitantes, entre comunidade e alunos da UNIP, estamos satisfeitos com o resultado e já paramos para pensar na próxima data do evento. Por enquanto fiquem com as fotos desta última edição:

Dia 03/11/2009 - Dia 04/11/2009 - Dia 05/11/2009 - Dia 06/11/2009

Meu muito obrigado para todos os palestrantes, convidados, presentes, influenciadores e aos coordenadores da UNIP Anchieta.

Obrigado pela leitura e até a próxima publicação,

Abraços.

Cleber Marques

Microsoft MVP & MCT | Charter Member: SCVMM & MDOP
Projeto MOF Brasil: Simplificando o Gerenciamento de Serviços de TI
Meu Blog | MOF.com.br | CleberMarques.com | CanalSystemCenter.com.br

Silverlight 3 DataForm Edit Pencil

KevinMcNeish — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:40:00 GMT

Here's a quick tip--if your Silverlight 3 DataForm is not dsplaying an Edit Pencil in the upper right corner, set the DataForm's AutoEdit to false (or if using the Visual Studio or Expression Blend IDE, uncheck the AutoEdit checkbox). Best Regards, Kevin McNeish INETA Speaker Chief Architect MM .NET Application Framework www.oakleafsd.com...(read more)

new location

ralfwigand — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:18:00 GMT

I just moved my blog to http://interop.blog.de. Please visit me there...

Mein Blog ist umgezogen auf http://interop.blog.de. Dort geht's weiter.

Silverlight 3 and the Bindable Attribute

KevinMcNeish — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:06:00 GMT

You may see a number of videos and sample code for Silverlight 3 that uses the Bindable attribute to specifying editing features of an entity property when working with the Silverlight DataForm control. However, the Bindable attribute (as well as the System.ComponentModel assembly) were removed from Silverlight with the Silverlight 3 RTM. Now, if you want to specify if an entity property you are binding to should be readonly, set its Editable attribute like this: [ Editable ( false )] public DateTime...(read more)

Exchange Server 2010 RTM download available

Anderson Patricio — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:03:55 GMT

Hi folks,

Exchange Server 2010 RTM has just been released for download at Microsoft download site.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 helps IT Professionals achieve new levels of reliability with greater flexibility, enhanced user experiences, and increased protection for business communications.

Flexible and reliable - Exchange Server 2010 gives you the flexibility to tailor your deployment based on your company's unique needs and a simplified way to keep e-mail continuously available for your users.
Anywhere access - Exchange Server 2010 helps your users get more done by giving them the freedom to securely access all their communications - e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging, and more - from virtually any platform, Web browser, or device.
Protection and compliance - Exchange Server 2010 delivers integrated information loss prevention, and compliance tools aimed at helping you simplify the process of protecting your company's communications and meeting regulatory requirements.

This software is intended for evaluation purposes only. You must accept the license terms before you are authorized to use the software. There is no product support for this trial software. You are welcome to participate in the forums to share your trial experiences with others and to ask for advice.

Get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=05741f65-2a7b-4070-879f-d74208d6171d&displaylang=en&Hash=p7EU0gyhY4DEbH1Kipa3uP2uqNEJBU6x8oXNokye62E1aoNzVuAdGKn5z%2bpQxA0UMZ9tlXMiGQL%2bhmwYy1%2btbA%3d%3d

Technorati : Exchange Server 2010, RTM, download
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Flickr : Exchange Server 2010, RTM, download

[WMUG] Thankyous for the 6th November 2009

Cliff Hobbs at myITforum.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:45:38 GMT

I just wanted to post up some quick thankyous relating to our event last Friday: First to all of those that took time out of their day/ schedules. It was great to see so many people there, talk to many new faces and some regulars as well. Second to Inframon Read More......(read more)

The AdoNetDataContext object: what about saving?

luisabreu — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:34:24 GMT

Well, this really doesn’t deserve any special attention. Ok, let me put it another way: there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes, but you shouldn’t have to worry with any of it.

I’ve thought about writing a post on the objects that end up being used by the AdoNetDataContext to propagate changes back to the server, but after some thought, I’ve give up on that idea because I’m not seeing anyone use any of these classes directly (yes, the AdoNetDataContext should do it all for you).

And that’s why I’m wrapping up this series on MS AJAX preview 6. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as did…Now, I do need to find another topic to keep me busy looking at new stuff…any ideas?

Released: Exchange Server 2010

Exchangepedia Blog — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:30:00 GMT

djoin.exe not a Powershell command

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:29:31 GMT

I’ve heard from a speaker I respect the question whether Microsofts strategies are consequent because they are basing everything on Powershell, however the djoin.exe-command is not a Powershell command.

Interesting one, but also very understandable if you think about it. Djoin.exe is created to provide the following possiblity in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7:

Create a computer account in the directory and store a file to support a offline-join of the computer to the domain
Offline join the computer to it’s account using the file created in the prior step

The Active Directory Domain Services product group has created a lot of Powershell Commandlets to support Management of Active Directory on Windows Server 2008 R2, actually you can download the Active Directory Managment Gateway Service to support the Powershell commands running against Windows Server 2003 (R2) or Windows Server 2008 (without R2). The Management Gateway provides the Active Directory WebService, which is used by Powershell and the new Administrative Center. The WebService is automatically there if you install a Windows Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller, therefore you don’t need the Management Gateway there.

The Active Directory Powershell Commandlets are available on Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows 7 with the Remote Server Administration Tools for Active Directory installed. If a system has not the Active Directory

As I said before, one of the two main responsibilities is to join computers offline to the domain, either in Scenarios with RODCs (e.g. in the DMZ) or mass-creation / joining e.g. if you have your hardware vendor or distributor preinstalling machines for you.

So – would we want to install the Remote Server Administration Tools for Active Directory on Clients or member servers just to join them to the domain? Nope. Would we want to have multiple powershell-modules for AD (e.g. one for server management, one for joining domains, one for directory data management, …)? Nope.

So I guess an exe for this purpose is OK, and I also guess that this is the reason behind.

Ponderings about the incident that hit Gizmodo (courtesy of Gawker)

sandi — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:08:09 GMT

While I was on holidays, a malvertizing incident hit Gizmodo (via advertising sold to Gawker). The miscreants impersonated the legitimate advertising agency Spark Communications, registering the domain spark-smg.com (the real domain is sparksmg.com) to assist in the impersonation.

Publicis have since taken over the fraudulent domain spark-smg.com but we still have access to historical information about the domain which is interesting.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the domain itself, I have a few observations to make. In short, the tricks used were not new.

"Gawker Sales Guy" says on the businessinsider.com web site that"

"The reason this is news (and the reason we sent it here in the first place) is because these guys were so thorough they managed to fool multiple levels of safeguards we have in place to keep this thing from happening. There was literally NO way for us to know, short of calling the agency and doing background checks on everyone we work with."

Why did nobody notice that the domain spark-smg.com being was used, instead of sparksmg.com. I concede that the difference between the domains is subtle, but even if the "Gawker Sales Guy" who was corresponding with the miscreants did not notice the subtle difference in domains at first, I would have expected him to take a closer look when one of his emails bounced on Saturday 28 September.

The realities of malvertizing *are* well known in the industry nowadays, thanks to all of the publicity that it has received over the past year or so. Many warnings have been sent out by various parties and there have been many high profile incidents. The new person approaching Gawker, the bounced email, and the wide variation in time of day when emails were received should have all given the Gawker Sales Guy reason to pause and take a closer look (despite the fraudster claiming, in one email, to be in London). "Background checks" should be standard operating procedure, and "calling the agency" using their main telephone number (not a direct line) should also be standard operating procedure, even after background checks have been completed, whenever a new name appears.

Gawker Sales Guy (http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-gawker-scammed-by-malware-pretending-to-be-suzuki-2009-10#comment-4ae6561900000000008b1b70) then goes on to say:

"This was truly damn near impossible to spot as a fake."

This claim is impossible to judge without specific technical information. That being said, the ads have to touch something bad as part of the malvertizement process, even if the malicious behaviour itself does not trigger.

On the BBC web site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8328399.stm) it states:

"Blaming the fact that staff used Linux operating systems on their production machines for "not noticing sooner", it advised concerned users to load some up-to-date antivirus software and "make sure your system is clean"."

The fact that staff use Linux on their production machines is not why the staff did not see the malvertizements. As regular readers of this blog know, the miscreants behind malvertizing actively manage their campaigns, deliberately doing all they can to avoid detection by victim web sites via geo-targeting, IP exclusions and whatnot. I would be *extremely* surprised if the malicious behaviour would have been triggered if the malvertizement was displayed on a computer within an IP range associated with the victim web site, or the infrastructure used to serve the advertisement, even if it were running an old, vulnerable, version of Windows. The bad guys are not fools – they are not going to allow malicious behaviour to trigger on a computer known to be owned by the very people they are trying to fool and defraud.

Online Media Daily (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=116269) states that it "is believed to be the first to successfully mimic the identity of a major advertising agency".

Ok, I suppose we can argue about what a "major" advertising agency is, but it certainly is not the first time an advertising agency has been spoofed (or the first time that the bad guys have made preparations to do just that). Some malicious domains that I have seen, and reported on in the past, that could be used to spoof legitimate ad networks include:

byronadvertising.eu (used to impersonate the legitimate byronadvertising.com and byronadvertising.co.uk)
koeppelinteractive.co.uk (impersonating koeppelinteractive.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
quigley-simpson.net (impersonating quigleysimpson.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
mediavest-corp.com (WHOIS referred to support@us-resources.com, an email address also used with the legitimate mediavest.net)
posnerpromotion.com (impersonating posneradv.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
adconion-inc.com (impersonating adconion.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
carat-inc.com (impersonating carat.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
pubmatic-inc.com (impersonating pubmatic.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
doubleclick-ssl.com (impersonating Doubleclick)

Then there are the fake sites pretending to sell advertising directly on behalf of large corporations:

nokia-corp.com (shared IP with lacoste-ads for a while - can be assumed to impersonate Nokia)
foxinteractivemedia-inc.com (impersonating fox.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
lacoste-ads.com (impersonating lacoste.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
orangeadvertising-inc.com (impersonating orange.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
hyundai-inc.com (impersonating hyundai-motor.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
singlesnet-inc.com (impersonating singlesnet.com, redirecting visitors to that domain)
vonage-inc.com (used to impersonate the real Vonage)

Tribalfusion has even been impersonated in a credit reference.

Anyway, let's take a look at spark-smg.com and see what danger signs we can find by examining historical data (taken from before Publicis Groupe S.A. took over the domain).

spark-smg.com
ICANN Registrar: BIZCN.COM (a known problem Registrar)
Created 4 September 2009 (a very new domain, another bad sign)

IP address (up until on or about 3 October 2009): 212.117.175.6

212.117.175.6 = Luxembourg Root Esolutions (another problematic host, too often seen in association with malvertizing).

Note: A check of the IP range 212.117.175.% reveals a few domains associated with advertising that should be treated with caution:

RevolteChMedia.com (claims to have been around since 2004, but the domain was only registered on 13 October 2009 - ICANN Registrar BIZCN.COM, INC))

BellWayInteractive.com (registered on 14 September 2009 - ICANN Registrar BIZCN.COM, INC)

SmartMediaWay.com (registered 14 September 2009 - ICANN Registrar BIZCN.COM, INC)

GoldBayMedia.com (registered 14 September 2009 - ICANN Registrar BIZCN.COM, INC)

How to make your session prominent at TechEd Europe

Ulf B. Simon-Weidner — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:25:36 GMT

Funny – I arrived at TechEd Europe and many already talked to me about my session – I figured out it’s now popular because it had been rescheduled from Tuesday morning to Wednesday morning, so everyone at TechEd got a separate paper with the session updates and mine was one from the few.

I’ve also heard it’s popular looking at the registrations, so if you plan on coming, come a bit early to make sure to get in. We also do a re-run on Thursday morning.

SIA02-IS: Active Directory: What's New in R2

Join this interactive and open discussion about Active Directory updates in Windows Server 2008 R2 or other topics that you bring up. Join product group members and an MVP with undoubted Active Directory experience.

It’s an interactive session, so we will be there (Brjann Brekkan, Technical Product Manager for Identity Management and I are presenting the session togehter), listening and talking to you about the questions you have about the new features of Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008 R2.

The session is scheduled on

Wednesday, 9:00, Interactive Theater 4 (green)
Thursday, 9:00, Interactive Theatre 6 (pink)

Ulf

OpenOffice Is Looking Good

Bob Phillips — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:45:00 GMT

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

I have blogged previously about what a rubbish job MS have done with Conditional Formatting in Excel 2007, but it seems it is worse than I feared.

In this same file I now had CF setup as I wanted, after much trials and tribulations, but I needed to insert a new column, but the CF was required to be different than the CF on either side.

First thing I tried was to simply insert the column. Of course, this meant that it inherited the CF from the column to the left, which was not what I wanted, so I opened the CF dialog and thought I would change the range that the rule applies to from those two columns to just my newly inserted column, and change that rule. This I did, but it wiped out the rule entirely from the other column. And to compound the problem, it cleared the format fill colour from the newly inserted column, and when I changed the rule and added back the fill colour, every cell in my range showed the colour, even though only a single cell matched the condition being tested for.

So I tried another approach. I created a column off the data area, setup the CF exactly as I wanted for that column, then added an index number in the first free row so that I could sort the columns into my required order. For some unknown reason, this removed my CF, gave it the CF of the column to its (new) left, and also managed to setup data validation as was applied to its (new)O column to the right. Genius! I knew what I wanted to do, but the designers at MS decide they know better, in two ways.

So how did I fix it? I first deleted the CF from the column that is already present, then inserted my new column. I then re-instated the CF that was in the previous column, and added the CF in my new column. Not a great chore, but I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO FIGHT THE SOFTWARE to do what I want to do. And you can bet that the next time I need to do it, I will have forgotten, and I will go through all this pain again.

Whilst I am having a good rant, when are MS going to default CF (and Data Validation) edit boxes to update, so as to avoid accidentally inserting rubbish when you hit the arrow keys. I can’t recall ever thinking the default was useful.

Getting your ADO.NET Data Services uris right: the easy way

luisabreu — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:13:00 GMT

Here we are again, for more on the MS AJAX library. In the previous post, we’ve seen that we can interact with ADO.NET Data Services by using the AdoNetDataContext instances. Today, we’ll be looking at more advanced features of the ADO.NET Data Services which are also available in the MS AJAX library.

Before going on, I must confess that I’m not really an ADO.NET Data Service user (I guess this has made me curious enough for taking a peek in the future). However, since the MS AJAX library offers such great support for it, I couldn’t resist doing some digging and seeing which options are available for interacting with an existing data service.

According to the docs, ADO.NET Data Services can “be surfaced as a REST-style resource collection that is addressable with URIs and that agents can interact with using standard HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT or DELETE”. In practice, and if we go back to our previous example, we can get all the images by using the uri http://:…/Services/ImageDataService.svc/Images. Besides this simple option, which returns all the images contained in the object, there are still other interesting options. For instance:

we can navigate through related properties;
we can expand associated properties;
we can filter the returned results;
we can paginate the returned data.

All these operations are specified through uris. We can easily do them by building the uris by hand. For instance, we can modify the previous example so that it also displays the associated :

<body xmlns:sys="BLOCKED SCRIPTSys"
      xmlns:dv="BLOCKED SCRIPTSys.UI.DataView">
    <div 
      id="myView"
      class="sys-template"
      sys:attach="dv"      
      dv:autofetch="true"
      dv:dataprovider="{{ _ctx }}"
      dv:fetchoperation="Images"
      dv:fetchparameters="{{ {$expand: 'Tags'} }}">
        <h2>{{Name}}</h2>
        <img sys:src="{{Uri}}" sys:alt="{{Name}}" />      
        <div class="sys-template"
            sys:attach="dv"
            dv:data="{{ Tags }}">
            <span>{{Name}}</span>,
        </div>
    </div>
</body>

By using the $expand parameter, we’ll end up getting each image’s associated tags and we can display them by using a nested DataView control. The next image shows what happens when we load the previous page:

We could specify all the “special” parameters this way. However, there is another way: we can rely on the Sys.Data.AdoNetQueryBuilder class for doing building the uri for us.

The AdoNetQueryBuilder’s constructor expects the base uri and exposes several properties which we can use to build the uri which performs a specific operation against the existing ADO.NET Data Service. You’ll probably end up using the ones which are present in the following list:

skip and top: we can combine them for paginating data;
orderby: used for indicating the sorting order;
filter: responsible for filtering the returned data;
expand: used for specifying the properties which will be “expanded” and included in the response.

I must confess that I really didn’t find the use of this object intuitive at first. However, after running some experiences, everything started making sense. In order to show you how you might end up using this object, suppose we want to get all the images and associated tags and that we want to order them by name. Here’s a possible solution:

<head runat="server">   
    <style type="text/css">
      .sys-template{
        display: none;
      }      
      img{
        width:320px;
        height:212px;
      }
    </style>
    <script type="text/javascript" 
      src="../Scripts/MicrosoftAjax/start.debug.js">
    </script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var _ctx = null;
      Sys.require([Sys.components.adoNetDataContext,
                   Sys.components.dataView],
      function () {
        var uriBuilder = 
              new Sys.Data.AdoNetQueryBuilder("Images");
        uriBuilder.set_expand("Tags");//$expand
        uriBuilder.set_orderby("Name");//$orderby
        _ctx = Sys.create.adoNetDataContext({
          serviceUri: "../Services/ImagesDataService.svc"
        });
        Sys.create.dataView(
             Sys.get("#myView"),
             { dataProvider: _ctx,
               autoFetch: true,
               fetchOperation: uriBuilder.toString()
             });

      });
    </script>
</head>
<body xmlns:sys="BLOCKED SCRIPTSys"
      xmlns:dv="BLOCKED SCRIPTSys.UI.DataView">
    <div 
      id="myView"
      class="sys-template">
        <h2>{{Name}}</h2>
        <img sys:src="{{Uri}}" sys:alt="{{Name}}" />      
        <div class="sys-template"
            sys:attach="dv"
            dv:data="{{ Tags }}">
            <span>{{Name}}</span>,
        </div>
    </div>
</body>

This time, I’ve opted for using an imperative approach. Things are really similar to what we had before; however, notice that now we’re using an AdoNetQueryBuilder object to set the fetchOperation property of the DataView object.

We start by instantiating the AdoNetQueryBuilder object. If you recall it, I said that this wasn’t really intuitive…it was only looking at the source code that I’ve understood that I was supposed to pass the name of the resource I wanted to access (instead of passing the base uri for the service – not sure on why the constructor’s only parameter is called uri, when resource would have make things so much easier!). Since I was interested in retrieving images, I only had to pass the string “Images” to the constructor.

After having an instance and setting the required properties (recall from above that we wanted to get images+tags and to order everything by name), we can simply call the toString method to get the string which represents the operation we need to perform. And that’s it. We’ll still be speaking about MS AJAX in future posts, so stay tuned for more!

What’s in the ZuneHD firmware update?

Rod Trent at myITforum.com — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:52:41 GMT

Microsoft released the v4.3 firmware update for Zune HD players and it includes the following additions and fixes: Support for the upcoming 3D games and applications. Auto Suggest feature for text input. Faster web browsing experience. Landscape keyboard Read More......(read more)

Don't Miss the Silverlight Toolkit for Getting Additional Silverlight Mojo!

KevinMcNeish — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:41:00 GMT

Regardless of whether you have installed Silverlight for VS 2008 or VS2010, you will want to install the additional Silverlight Toolkit: http://www.codeplex.com/Silverlight This toolkit gives you additional controls, components and utilities released outside the regular Silverlight release cycle. This is good news because Microsoft is releasing new Silverlight functionality iteratively. Rather than providing these controls with a "big bang" release, Microsoft is releasing them iteratively...(read more)

OpsMgr: Le pack d'administration Exchange 2007 NATIF pour Operations Manager 2007 SP1 est enfin disponible.

Yann Gainche — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:03:00 GMT

Microsoft vient de publier une nouvelle version du pack d'administration Exchange 2007 pour Operations Manager 2007 SP1. Il s'agit d'une version native, comme celle qui est disponible pour Operations Manager 2007 R2.

Beaucoup de choses ayant changées, bien lire la documentation avant.

Téléchargement : Exchange Server 2007 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager 2007 SP1 v6.0.6741.0.

OpsMgr: Correctif cumulatif important pour Operations Manager 2007 SP1 (971541)

Yann Gainche — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:55:00 GMT

Un correctif important pour Operations Manager 2007 SP1 vient d'être publié. Il s'agit du correctif KB971541 qui intègre de nombreux correctifs POST-SP1 et permet la prise en charge de Windows 7 et de Windows Server 2008 R2.

Ce correctif permet également la mise à jour des serveurs SQL hébergeant les bases OpsMgr de SQL Server 2005 vers SQL Server 2008.

Enfin, ce correctif est nécessaire pour utiliser la dernière version du pack d'administration Operations Manager qui permet de gérer des applications 32 Bits avec un agent 64Bits comme cela est le cas avec les serveurs SCCOM 2007 déployés sur Windows 64Bits.

Téléchargement : Update Rollup for Operations Manager 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB971541).

Getting started with the AdoNetDataContext

luisabreu — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:54:35 GMT

Today we’re going to start looking at the AdoNetDataContext. This class expands the DataContext object and uses several specific methods for ensuring the correct interaction with an existing ADO.NET Data Service.

These internal methods added by the AdoNetDataContext are essentially used in identity related operations. In other words, it extends the base DataContext class by introducing several methods which turn on identity support (btw, I’m talking about the stuff we’ve seen in several of the previous posts).

In this post, I’ll be reusing the sample ADO.NET Data Service which is included in MS AJAX preview 6. Here’s the model used internally by the ImageDataService.svc ADO.NET service:

In this case, and since this is just an intro post, we’ll build a simple page which shows all the images returned by this ADO.NET service:

<head runat="server">   
    <style type="text/css">
      .sys-template{
        display: none;
      }      
      img{
        width:320px;
        height:212px;
      }
    </style>
    <script type="text/javascript" 
      src="../Scripts/MicrosoftAjax/start.debug.js">
    </script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      var _ctx = null;
      Sys.require([Sys.components.adoNetDataContext, 
                   Sys.components.dataView],
      function () {
        _ctx = Sys.create.adoNetDataContext({
            serviceUri: "../Services/ImagesDataService.svc",
            mergeOption: Sys.Data.MergeOption.appendOnly
        });        
    });
    </script>
</head>
<body xmlns:sys="BLOCKED SCRIPTSys"
      xmlns:dv="BLOCKED SCRIPTSys.UI.DataView">
    <div 
      id="myView"
      class="sys-template"
      sys:attach="dv"      
      dv:autofetch="true"
      dv:dataprovider="{{ _ctx }}"
      dv:fetchoperation="Images">
        <h2>{{Name}}</h2>
        <img sys:src="{{Uri}}" sys:alt="{{Name}}" />      
    </div>
</body>

By now, you shouldn’t really be surprised by anything that is shown in the previous snippet. As you can see, the AdoNetDataContext class protects us from all those nasty details associated with the communication with the ImageDataService.svc server side service. I’m not going to show you how to add, edit or remove items because the samples released with preview 6 already have code which shows how to do those things.

On the next post, we’ll see how to do more interesting operations by using the AdoNetQueryBuilder object. Stay tuned for more on MS AJAX.

Watching the file system

RichardSiddaway — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:15:50 GMT

We saw how to watch for WMI events http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2009/11/07/powershell-wmi-events.aspx. In this post we will look at watching the file system. This time we will use the .NET System.IO.FileSystemWatcher object which means we use Register-ObjectEvent instead of Register-WmiEvent.

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          ## folder to watch               
$folder = "C:\test"               
## watch all files               
$filter = "*"               
## events to watch               
$events = @("Changed", "Created", "Deleted", "Renamed")               
##               
## create watcher               
$fsw = New-Object -TypeName System.IO.FileSystemWatcher -ArgumentList $folder, $filter               
$fsw.IncludeSubDirectories = $true               
##               
## register events               
foreach ($event in $events){               
    Register-ObjectEvent -InputObject $fsw -EventName $event -SourceIdentifier "File System $event"               
} 
       
 

We can start by defining the folder we want to watch and which files. In this case I want to watch all files. We can restrict it to certain files e.g. $filter = “*.txt”

Wildcards work in the normal way for this filter. We could even restrict to a single file. The events we are interested in are defined.

After creating a System.IO.FileSystemWatcher object using the folder and filter in the construction we set the IncludeSubDirectories property so we are watching the whole path.

Finally we need to register an event for each event we are interested in. Notice how the SourceIdentifier changes to identify the particular event.

We can see the Eventsubscribers we have created.

PS> Get-EventSubscriber | Select SubscriptionId, EventName, SourceIdentifier | ft -a

SubscriptionId EventName SourceIdentifier
-------------- --------- ----------------
             3 Changed   File System Changed
             4 Created   File System Created
             5 Deleted   File System Deleted
             6 Renamed   File System Renamed

We now need to perform some actions on the files – create, change, rename, delete that we are monitoring

PS> Get-Event | group SourceIdentifier

Count Name                      Group
----- ----                      -----
    7 File System Changed       {System.Management.Automation.PSEventArgs, System.Management.Automation.PSEventArgs,...
    1 File System Renamed       {System.Management.Automation.PSEventArgs}
    1 File System Created       {System.Management.Automation.PSEventArgs}
    1 File System Deleted       {System.Management.Automation.PSEventArgs}

If we look at this in more detail

PS> Get-Event | select EventIdentifier, SourceIdentifier, TimeGenerated

                        EventIdentifier SourceIdentifier                        TimeGenerated
                        --------------- ----------------                        -------------
                                      1 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:46:39
                                      2 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:46:39
                                      3 File System Renamed                     08/11/2009 11:49:53
                                      4 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:49:53
                                      5 File System Created                     08/11/2009 11:53:18
                                      6 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:53:18
                                      7 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:53:31
                                      8 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:53:31
                                      9 File System Deleted                     08/11/2009 11:54:22
                                     10 File System Changed                     08/11/2009 11:54:22

Note that we get pairs of events – the second event of the pair is always a change event. If we just want to see the changes (and remove duplicates). Just be careful on this and check whether its the odd or even record you need if running multiple registered events.

            001              
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          Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "File System Changed" | where {($_.EventIdentifier % 2) -eq 1} | foreach {               
    "{0}, {1}, {2}" -f   $_.SourceIdentifier, $_.SourceEventArgs.FullPath, $_.TimeGenerated               
                  
} 
       
 

We can use Get-Event to pull the change events from the queue. The modulo arithmetic on the EventIdentifier ensures that we only get the first change record. We can then dump the file path and time of change.

In a similar way we can interrogate the other events

            001              
002               
003               
004               
          Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "File System Created" | foreach {               
    "{0}, {1}, {2}" -f   $_.SourceIdentifier, $_.SourceEventArgs.FullPath, $_.TimeGenerated               
                  
} 
       
 

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Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "File System Renamed" | foreach {             
    "{0}, {1}, {2}, {3}" -f   $_.SourceIdentifier, $_.SourceEventArgs.OldFullPath, $_.SourceEventArgs.FullPath, $_.TimeGenerated             
                
} 

            001              
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          Get-Event -SourceIdentifier "File System Deleted" | foreach {               
    "{0}, {1}, {2}" -f   $_.SourceIdentifier, $_.SourceEventArgs.FullPath, $_.TimeGenerated               
                  
} 
       
 

These four could be combined into a single script if required.

Combined with the process tracing we did previously we can now track what programs are started on a system and what files are accessed.

Technorati Tags: Powershell,events,files

Migration Step Eigheen: Moving the trusted cert

bradley — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:06:00 GMT

If you are like me and already have a godaddy cert ...and believe me when I say I have one... I bought the dang thing for ten years in advance so I wouldn't accidentally forget to renew it. So I kinda want to keep this cert and not rebuy it.

But we can move it from the one box to the other...no prob.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52b7ea63-78af-4a96-811e-284f5c1de13b&DisplayLang=en

From the detailed migration documentation is this step:To export a trusted certificate from the Source Server

1. On the Source Server, click Start, click Run, type mmc.exe, and then press ENTER.

2. On the console, click File, and then click Add/Remove Snap-in.

3. Click Add, choose Certificates from the list, click Add again, and then click OK.

4. On the pop-up window, click Computer Account, click Finish, and then click OK.

5. Expand Certificates, expand Personal, and then click Certificates.

6. Right-click the certificate that is issued to your Web site (for example: remote.contoso.com), and then click All Tasks, and then click Export.

Note

There may be multiple certificates with the same name. Ensure that you choose a certificate that has a valid expiration date and that was issued by a trusted authority. If you are not sure which one to use, open Internet Information Services (IIS), determine which certificate IIS is using on the Source Server, and then choose that certificate.

7. In the Certificate Export Wizard, click Next.

8. Ensure Yes, export the private key is selected, and then click Next.

9. Ensure Include all certificates in the certificate path if possible and Export all extended properties are selected, and then click Next. Do not select Delete the private key if the export is successful.

10. Type a password to protect the certificate file, and then click Next.

11. Choose a location to save the .pfx file (for example, C:\trustedcert.pfx), and then click Next.

12. Finish the wizard.

To import the trusted certificate to the Destination Server

1. Move the trustedcert.pfx file to the Destination Server by using either the network or a USB drive.

2. On the Destination Server, click Start, type mmc.exe, and then press ENTER.

3. On the console, click File, and then click Add/Remove Snap-in.

4. Choose Certificates from the list, and then click Add.

5. On the pop-up, select Computer Account, click Finish, and then click OK.

6. Expand Certificates, expand Personal, and then click Certificates.

7. Right-click Certificates, click All Tasks, and then click Import.

8. On the Certificate Import Wizard Welcome page, click Next.

9. Browse to the location of the saved .pfx file, and then click Next.

10. Type the password that you typed in the Export procedure, ensure that Mark this key as exportable and Include all extended properties are selected, and then click Next.

11. Ensure that the certificate will be imported to the Personal folder, and then click Next.

12. Finish the wizard.

On the next screen where you can't see the cert... don't panic. Click the drop down menu to see the pfx file format

Voila...there's your transfered cert from the other box

Make sure that "mark the key as exportable" so that when we ever do this again...we can move it again.

To do this next step at this point in the migration you can hit cancel on the migration steps, jump over to the main console and run the Add a trusted certificate wizard.

To ensure that the Destination Server is using the newly imported certificate, run the Add a Trusted Certificate Wizard.

To run the Add a Trusted Certificate Wizard

1. Open the Windows SBS Console.

2. On the navigation bar, click the Network tab, and then click Connectivity.

3. In the task pane, click Add a trusted certificate.

4. On the Welcome page, read the information, and then click Next.

5. On the Get the certificate page, click I want to use a certificate that is already installed on the server, and then click Next.

6. On the Choose an installed certificate page, click the certificate that you just imported, and then click Next.

7. When the wizard finishes, click Finish.

One thing I moved over as well and put in the trusted root cert store is the godaddy intermediary cert bundle.

Using our handy dandy virtual floppy disk and moving it from one machine to the other and importing it, this time into the trusted root certs

And now to test..we can go to http://domain.com or go into the IIS 7 (not 6) console and go down to SBS web applications and browse to the port 80 and it should slighly freak out and give off a pink warning because internal to the network there's no WWW and my cert has a WWW on the front.

So there you have it, we just moved my umpteen year cert from my one box to the other.

Stay tuned for our next chapter Nineteen ....in "How the server migrated"

Tomorrow's episode... Exchange migration. Will our email move? Will our public folders replicate? Stay tuned you'll be on the edge of your seats for this next blog post!