How to be a Problem Solver

How to be a Problem Solver   Or how to deal with an angry customer.  In particular note the over communicate concept even if it’s nothing more than we’re still working on it and here’s what we’ve done so far.

Un guide complet sur le déploiement de Windows 7 en téléchargement

Je n’avais pas vu l’info (merci William !!) Microsoft vient de publier un guide dé déploiement très complet.

Brief Description

Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine
Download the New eBook: Deploying Windows® 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and Microsoft® TechNet Magazine. Looking for guidance specific to Windows 7 deployment? Check out what the industry's leading experts have to say in this free Microsoft Press eBook with selected chapters from the Windows 7 Resource Kit on Deployment Platforms, Planning, Testing Application Compatibil

Voici le sommaire (332 pages) :

Chapter 3 Deployment Platform
Chapter 4 Planning Deployment
Chapter 5 Testing Application Compatability
Chapter 6 Developing Disk Images
Chapter 7 Migrating User State Data
Chapter 8 Deploying Applications
Chapter 9 Preparing Windows PE
Chapter 10 Confi guring Windows Deployment Services
Chapter 11 Using Volume Activation
Chapter 12 Deploying with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

Pour le télécharger :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=EE2A1D38-88A9-43B3-95BC-7E962F0B6030&displaylang=en

Laurent Gébeau

Source :

http://danstoncloud.com/blogs/william/archive/2009/11/08/document-pdf-de-332-pages-sur-le-d-233-ploiement-de-windows-7.aspx

First iPhone worm discovered - ikee changes wallpaper to Rick Astley photo

Apple iPhone owners in Australia have reported that their smartphones have been infected by a worm that has changed their wallpaper to an image of 1980s pop crooner Rick Astley.

The worm, which could have spread to other countries although we have no confirmed reports outside Australia, is capable of breaking into jailbroken iPhones if their owners have not changed the default password after installing SSH. Once in place, the worm appears to attempt to find other iPhones on the mobile phone network that are similarly vulnerable, and installs itself again

On each installation, the worm - written by a hacker calling themselves "ikex" - changes the lock background wallpaper to an image of Rick Astley with the message:

ikee is never going to give you up

What's clear is that if you have jailbroken your iPhone or iPod Touch, and installed SSH, then you must always change your root user password to something different than the default, "alpine". In fact, it would be a good idea if you didn't use a dictionary word at all.

The worm will not affect users who have not jailbroken their iPhones or who have not installed SSH.

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/11/08/iphone-worm-discovered-wallpaper-rick-astley-photo/

People having issue to sign-out their Windows Live ID or Hotmail

If you are seeing the message below when signing out of Windows Live ID or Hotmail pages by Microsoft:

Sign out failed!

We could not sign you out because your browser seems to be blocking third party cookies.

• Close all browser windows to sign out.
• To prevent this error in the future, you must enable third party cookies by chaging your browser settings.

You should just close the browser.  If you don't want to see the above message, add passport.com, live.com and hotmail.com in your cookies manager.  If you are using MSN (e.g. personalized or customized MSN page), add msn.com too!

See discussion in http://www.calendarofupdates.com/updates/topic24848

Microsoft Application Architecture Guide

I’m putting this here for future reference.

FSWeekend 2009

Time for a little update. This weekend was the annual FSWeekend in the Netherlands again, and I was present there on behalf of NL2000 and FSDeveloper. For NL2000 this was certainly not the first time we were there and it was a lot of fun to meet all those users of our scenery again. There are people you see almost every year at the weekend. For FSDeveloper it was the first time we were (a bit) visible at the event. Due to the more technical nature of the FSDeveloper community there was maybe a little less interest, but hopefully it helped some people to get starting in making some addons themselves.

Another interesting thing at the FSWeekend was that IVAO had organised a seminar about the future of Flight Simulation. At those sessions a panel discussed the consequences of the closure of ACES and what it meant for our hobby. The panel of 5 consisted of Jonckers (IVAO), Kenny Moens (IVAO), Mathijs Kok/Winfried Diekmann (Aerosoft), Francois Dumas (FSAddon and more) and me (NL2000/FSDeveloper). I guess this topic could deserve its own blog post later on, but in short the participants agreed that for the short term the consequences were mainly more stability and more time to develop nice addons. For the longer term the opinion varied more, but it is logical that you look differently at it when you try to make a living on FS addons. The fact that Aerosoft is considering to build their own simulator was also discussed of course and that sounds interesting indeed. I guess we'll see what the future brings, but the FSWeekend also showed that there are still many people enjoy flight simulation as a hobby.

So with the FSWeekend over now, it is time to move on to some other things again. Besides the busy work schedule and the normal family activities, I will try to focus on two things in the coming weeks. The first one is to finish the typical Dutch windmill objects for the NL2000 scenery. Since we got asked many times at the FSWeekend when the next release will be, it guess I should try to give this some priority. Because we can't release a Dutch scenery without such objects, we should keep up the myth that we all live in windmills and wear clogs. Oh and to come back to the question about the NL2000 v4 release (which I answered a dozen times this weekend), it will be released when it is ready and we can't promise a date yet. But we can see the end of the beta testing tunnel by now.

The other activity I want to put some focus on is the new gPoly tool I am planning. The idea has crystallized quite clear in my head by now, so I am looking forward to start the actual coding. I really think that a tool to make the creation of custom ground polygons a lot easier would be helpful to many developers. So hopefully I can report some progress on this soon.

Vint Cerf: 'Google doesn't know who you are'

Interwebs founding father and Google evangelist Vint Cerf has insisted that when you search Google, the company doesn't know who you are.

Thursday morning, at a mini-conference in San Francisco, the always entertaining Cerf sat down with Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg and other tech luminaries to discuss "open" mobile networks. But at one point, the conversation turned to the epic amounts of user data pouring onto Google servers across the globe.

As Mossberg started to complain about Google using Gmail and other sign-in services to tie more and more search data to real live people, Cerf quickly interrupted. "We still don't know who you are," said the Google figurehead.

Mossberg begged to differ, pointing out that as netizens sign-in to their Google accounts in order to use other services, the company also ties those accounts to search data. "When I search Google, you can see - right up at the top of page - that I'm logged in. You can see my Gmail address," he told Cerf. "You know who I am."

But Cerf insisted that even in those situations, Google doesn't know you. "You are somehow conflating things that I think need to be disaggregated," Cerf told Mossberg. "A Gmail identifier doesn't tell us anything. It's just an identifier. We have no other thing to tie that to. It's just an identifier [You said that already. -Ed]. And by the way, you picked it. We didn't."

As ridiculous as that may sound, it's a common Google argument. When a federal court recently asked Google to divulge the identity of an innocent Gmail user - if the account was still active - the company told us that wasn't possible.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/07/cerf_on_google_data_collection/

Migration Step Thirteen: You installed in migration mode!

And we finished the install and the "migrate to Windows SBS" is ready to go.

Under the hood the FSMO roles have been added to this box and the SBS 2003 is no longer the king of the domain.

[Meanwhile I have to take a break to wash my car so I'll be back later tonight to continue blogging this test migration]

We have 21 days from this point to have the two SBS boxes work together.  After 21 days you have to demote/remove the SBS 2003 box.

Parsing XHTML documents with .NET 4.0 and XmlPreloadedResolver

When I looked at "What's new in System.Xml in .NET 4.0/Visual Studio 2010" with the beta 1 release I presented an example that shows how parsing an XHTML document referencing one of the W3C XHTML 1.0 DTDs can be sped up by using the new XmlReaderSettings.DtdProcessing set to DtdProcessing.Ignore. The drawback I mentioned is that any referenced entity in the document would then throw an exception.

What I overlooked at the time of the beta 1 release but I have found now in the recent beta 2 release is the new class XmlPreloadedResolver in System.Xml.Resolvers. It allows you to avoid any network access to the W3C's server for the XHTML DTDs but nevertheless parse any XHTML document having entity references as it uses copies of those DTDs stored in an assembly deployed with the .NET framework.

If I use that class with an adaption of the older example the code looks as follows:

            Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch();
            XmlReaderSettings settings = new XmlReaderSettings();
            settings.DtdProcessing = DtdProcessing.Parse;
            

            string xhtml = @"<!DOCTYPE html 
     PUBLIC ""-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN""
     ""http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"">
<html xml:lang=""en"">
<head>
<title>Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Price is: 100 &euro;</p>
</body>
</html>";
            watch.Start();
            using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(xhtml), settings))
            {
                while (reader.Read()) 
                {
                    if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Text)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine(reader.Value);
                    }
                }
            }
            watch.Stop(); ;
            Console.WriteLine("First parse: elapsed time: {0}", watch.Elapsed);

            watch.Reset();

            settings.XmlResolver = new XmlPreloadedResolver(XmlKnownDtds.Xhtml10);

            watch.Start();
            using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create(new StringReader(xhtml), settings))
            {
                while (reader.Read())
                {
                    if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Text)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine(reader.Value);
                    }
                }
            }
            watch.Stop(); ;
            Console.WriteLine("Second parse: elapsed time: {0}", watch.Elapsed);

Running that code here with Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 in a virtual machine outputs numbers clearly showing the speed gained by parsing with the XmlPreloadedResolver:

First parse: elapsed time: 00:00:04.6378648
Second parse: elapsed time: 00:00:00.0441933

Migration Step Twelve: Turn off WSUS on the source server

Saying 'no to patches' reminded me that if you have an SBS 2003 R2 with WSUS on the box and ESPECIALLY if you have a Win2k8 server in the network, go into the source server box and disable the WSUS service there.

If you don't, during the install it may try to install patches on the server.

From the www.sbsmigrationtips.com site:

O. Disable WSUS on Source domain prior to migration

If you have a deadline set for a Windows 2008 update in WSUS that is past-due, your SBS 2008 setup can fail when the update is automatically installed and the SBS 2008 server is rebooted.  Deadlines are not automatically set in SBS 2003 but can be set by the Admin through the native WSUS console.  We recommend disabling WSUS for the duration of the migration.

Migration Step Eleven: Figuring out what you screwed up when the install gets stuck

Because I checked the box in the answer file to allow me to review each screen, I got stuck with an error that it could not find the source server and to check if the source server name was wrong.

Huh?  I know that's the right name.  I checked all of my reference materials including the David Overton SBS 2008 migration book that says:

I know that name is correct, what gives?

So then I do the Shift-F10 trick.  I go to the SBS 2008 box that has a blue background and just that white box and the error screen there and there's no button to get under the operating system and to look at the log files... or is there?

Click to get your mouse on that server screen.  Hit shift-f10 at the same time and you'll get a command prompt window pop up.

Now type in explorer and hit enter.  What do you see?

A nice mouse clickable computer window that you can drill down into and find the setup log file.

C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs and then the setup.log file

The log file you are looking for is http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/10/01/key-small-business-server-2008-log-files.aspx the setup log file

And in there it says it can't ping the source server.

Huh? 

And when I go back to the command window and ping the server name, indeed, I can ping by IP, I can ping by servername.domain.lan.  I can't ping by servername only.

What the?  My IP addresses are right, I can ping in other ways, is the firewall messing me up?

And this is where signing up for that SBS 2008 newsgroup will help  https://connect.microsoft.com/sbs08/content/content.aspx?ContentID=8333  Because you need someone to bounce your "Dang, I'm stuck and I don't know what else to check" off of someone else's brain who has more brain cells than you do (especially during certain times of the install process).

Wayne Small had the necessary excess brain cells. He suggested that I check the subnet and then the netbios settings on the source server network card.

And bingo!  In the changing of the network card down to one nic from two I stupidly didn't realize that I may have flipped nics and got it on the one that had netbios disabled.  I reenabled netbios and it worked.

Once I reticked that box, the new server could ping the source server by name. 

Last but not least, I do not check the option to have the newly built server get updates DURING the install.  You are introducing change when you shouldn't be introducing patch change.

Say no.

Conferencia presencial en MUG de Argentina (Exchange 2010)

Hola a todos el dia Martes 10/11 estare acompañanado a Mauro Tartaglia uno de nuestros miembros de GLUE en una conferencia Presencial de Exchange 2010.

Los esperamos!!.

SEMINARIO GRATUITO "Overview de Exchange 2010". Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Lugar: Auditorio MUG - Rivadavia 1479 1º Piso - Oficina A. Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Enterate de las novedades y funcionalidades que Exchange 2010 trae para hacer tu trabajo más simple.

Orador: Mauro Tartaglia.

Fecha y Horario: Martes 10 de Noviembre de 18.30 a 21.30 hs. · Alta disponibilidad · Administración · Storage. · Mail Tips. · OWA 2010. · Unified Messaging. Conferencia gratuita. Registración previa obligatoria VACANTES LIMITADAS. REGÍSTRESE AL EVENTO. (*) Evento gratuito, por favor ignore la pregunta sobre forma de pago.

Registro en http://www.mug.org.ar/Eventos/3364.aspx

Carlos Dinapoli

Book review: the design and evolution of C++

I’ve just finished re-reading (I’ve read if for the first time around 2000) this fantastic book which was written by Bjarne Stroustrup, who is the responsible for the design of C++. I haven’t used C++ professionally for over 6 years now! However, I’ve always been fascinated for its power and complexity and I do intend to start using it again really soon (btw, my first professional gig as a dev consisted in writing C++ code and that’s probably why I’ve got some affection for the language).

One of the reasons I enjoy this kind of book is because I’m always curious to understand why option A was preferred over B for a specific feature. And Bjarne does an excellent work on that area with this book. He goes all the way back to the roots of C++ (I’m too young to remember it being called C with classes) and explains all the rationale that is behind all the major decisions taken during C++ design and evolution. If you’re looking for a book that teaches you how to program with C++, then this isn’t really for you. However, if you’re puzzled about some C++ feature or if you think that something shouldn’t really work the way it does, then this book is for you (I’m positive that you’ll see that your idea wouldn’t really work in some specific scenario which gets used by 0.05% of the guys that use C++ :) ).

My score: 9/10.

Windows Update Error 80072EE2 - Hyper-V Guest issues....

Over this weekend I have had to quickly build a Virtual SBS2008 server for one of my clients.   I came across an interesting issue which took me a while to figure out, so I am plonking it up here on the blog so that others that may come across the problem will find it quicker.

A quick description of the setup.

Dell Poweredge Server, Onboard Broadcom Netxtreme II network card, Addon gigabit NIC from SMC networks (Realtek chipset).   Windows 2008 R2 is on the HyperV Host.  SBS2008 is installed as the only Guest on the HyperV setup.   This is all behind a Sonicwall NSA240 on a dedicated LAN network.

The SBS2008 Virtual machine would not update from Windows Update and the log file (c:\windows\windowsupdate.log) was showing a lot of errors with the code 80072EE2.   When you search for this on the internet it makes mention of reinstalling the various DLL’s involved with Windows Update, and also ensuring that your network settings are not blocking connections to the Windows Update servers.   None of these suggestions helped me.

So, I decided to do some packet captures on the network whilst Windows Update was running.   It turned out that every time Windows Update ran on the SBS Virtual Machine, it could no longer ping the default gateway (yet the host machine could).   This pointed me back to the network cards….

What I found odd about this is that I had already installed the latest drivers for the Broadcom and the Realtek chipsets.  I had also disabled the various offloading options on the physical network cards to see if that would help, but no change.

However, after a coffee, I realised that I was missing one step…    the step that fixed this problem was:

I disabled the Offload options on the Microsoft Virtual Network card on the SBS Host, and as soon as I did that, Windows update started to work.

Hopefully this may help some one save a few hours

The DataContext component: creating entities

Before we can move on and take a look at the AdoNetDataContext component, we need to talk about one more topic: creating entities and how it might be integrated with DataContext component. The DataContext exposes a createEntity method which can be used for  creating new objects of a specific type. Internally, that method will always delegate the creation of a new entity to the function to which the createEntityMethod property points to.

As you’re probably wondering, this is something you’ll only need to configure if you need to use the DataContext features associated with identity (and even in that case, setting the createEntityMethod is optional if you’ve set the getNewIdentityMethod property).

The createEntityMethod property should reference a function which receives two parameters (a DataContext reference and a string with the “type” of the object that should be created) and initializes the metadata necessary for tracking that object. If you recall the previous posts, you’ll surely remember that we’ve added an internal __meta property to all the objects stored by the DataContext instance.

We could improve our DataContext used at the time by setting the createEntityMethod to a function which initializes the metadata associated to that object. Here’s how I’d augment the entityManager we’ve been using with a new method used for creating new entities:

createNewEntity: function (dataContext, entitySet) {
    var obj = {};
    entityManager.getNewIdentity(dataContext, obj, entitySet);
    return obj;
}

As you can see, we’re simply relying in the getNewIdentity method because it is responsible for setting the __meta object used for that purpose. Referencing entityManager instead of this might seem little strange at first, but that’s needed because the DataContext won’t call the reference through the entityManager instance (it will simply call the function through the reference it got to it during initialization:

var ctx = Sys.create.dataContext(
  {
      serviceUri: "PeopleService.svc",
      getIdentityMethod: entityManager.getEntityId,
      getNewIdentityMethod: entityManager.getNewIdentity,
      isDeferredPropertyMethod: entityManager.isDeferredProperty,
      getDeferredPropertyFetchOperationMethod: 
                                 entityManager.getDeferredProperty,
      createEntityMethod: entityManager.createNewEntity
  }
);

And that’s it. There’s really not much to say about the createEntity method. Stay tuned for more on MS AJAX.

McAfee - New Corporate and Home Support Forums

In 1997, our company adopted McAfee as an AV standard for all PCs and servers.  Even durng these early years for the Internet, they were one of the 1st AV Vendors to use public forums to leverage support costs.  I've been a member of these forums for over a dozen years, primarily sharing security news and safe practices.  In November 2009, McAfee implemented a state-of-the-art community forum environment, which includes home and corporate product support forums, security awareness forums, and other resources. 

NOW LIVE! McAfee Online Support Community
http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2009/11/04/now-live-mcafee-online-support-community/

QUOTE: The McAfee Online Support Community gives you a way to interact with other McAfee business users to ask questions and share best practices. Additionally, you’ll be able to talk with McAfee professionals about McAfee products, security awareness issues, and emerging trends — plus give us feedback on product and service enhancements.

McAfee - Home Page for New Community Forums
http://community.mcafee.com/

Multiple test files

Back here http://msmvps.com/blogs/richardsiddaway/archive/2009/11/05/creating-temporary-files.aspx or http://richardsiddaway.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!43CFA46A74CF3E96!2595.entry I showed how to create temporary test files.

We can simply create multiple test files like this

1..10 | foreach {new-tempfile -path c:\test\test1 -size $(Get-Random -Maximum 1mb -Minimum 1kb)}

A one line PowerShell script that generates 10 files in the given folder with random names and sizes.

Migration step Ten: Answer file

 Create a migration answer file. Follow the steps on pages 19 through 23 in the Microsoft migration document. 

Collect the information for the migration answer file.

 Run the Answer File Tool. When you create a migration answer file, leave the Certificate authority name blank. For more information, see this blog post (http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2008/08/gotcha-using-sbs-2008-answer-file.html  ).

I never choose to install updates during the install process.  I can guarantee you that Microsoft does not test installs each time a new Patch Tuesday comes out.  And so far there's been no need to insert an update into the install routine early on.  You can patch AFTER the box is stood up.

Windows Live One Care is now defunct so I uncheck that.  Forefront is a 120 day trial.  So for me I'm not installing either one.

Then the part that is VERY VERY important

Leaving the cert name blank.

If you put in your domain name, you won't be able to choose your domain name when you run the domain wizard.  Leaving it blank means that the server will do what it needs to do.

c  Copy the answer file to removable media such as a USB memory card.

c  On the destination server, change the BIOS settings so the server will not boot from the type of removable media used to store the migration answer file.

In my case I'll be saving this answer file to a virtual floppy disk.

In the HyperV settings, choose and setup up a virtual floppy disk.

Then in the settings of the machine, browse to this location.

Then unattach it so it can be attached to the new SBS 2008 we will be building

 And now we're all set to start building the SBS 2008 box

So we start the boot process

And keep in mind that at this point you have to use tab and space bars in the HyperV if you are rdping into the box like I am

I don't put in a keycode at this point.  First off this is a trial run, and I prefer to enter the code in later anyway.  Just uncheck the "auto activate" box and tab over to the next and hit enter

Yes, I really don't want to put in a product key right now.

We only get a custom option

It starts to copy

It will then reboot

It will reboot again

And you'll start to see the normal blue screen boot up

Yes, I really do have a backup.  Several of them.

Now Check the date/time and make sure they are correct to you and your time zone.  The Time zone is VERY IMPORTANT as if they are majorly off the two systems can't domain join.

Then check your IP addresses, your gateway (where your router is)

On the next screen where it wants to confirm the business name details again... remember LEAVE THE CERTIFICATE AUTHORITY BLANK

The next screen will confirm your source server name .... and I'll showcase what I stupidly did wrong and what diagnostic things I did to help figure out what I did wrong in the next blog post.

Migration Step Nine: Check the health of Exchange

c  Optimize Exchange Server and mailboxes. Follow the instructions on pages 16 through 17 in the Microsoft migration document.

c  Empty the Deleted Items folder.

c  Archive older mail

It can take a long time to migrate large Exchange Server mailboxes. It will take less time if you reduce the size of the mailboxes before the migration. To help reduce the size of the mailboxes, ask each of the users to do the following:

·      Empty the Deleted Items folder

·      Archive older mail

For additional information about optimizing Exchange Server, see the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer at the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=101795).

To empty the Deleted Items folder

To archive older mail

Well since this is my test run, I will suck this up and not do this step, but in the real migration about a week before the real migration, I'm going to remind folks of the tasks they should have been doing all along...that is keeping their mailboxes clean.

Now Amy Babinchak and Philip Elder recommend to defrag the exchange databases:

The following can be done to test the health of the Exchange databases at the command prompt and with the stores dismounted (remember to backup):

• MS KB192185: How to defragment with the Eseutil utility (Eseutil.exe)
• TechNet: Eseutil /G Integrity Mode.
• TechNet: Eseutil /P Repair Mode.
• MS KB301460: Exchange Command-Line Parameters for Isinteg.exe Tool

So here's what I'm going to do:

1. In Exchange System Manager, right-click the information store that you want to defragment, and then click Dismount Store.
2. 

Now that the databases are stopped you can make a copy of these files (just in case)

In my case I have these on another drive, you may see these on your C: drive.

1. At the command prompt, change to the Exchsrvr\Bin folder, and then type the eseutil /d command, a database switch, and any options that you want to use.

 This will take some time.

And then it will indicate it's done.

And don't forgot at the end to go remount the store

Migration Step Eight: Raising the functional level of AD

c  Raise the functional level of the Active Directory domain and forest. Follow the instructions on pages 12 through 14 in the Microsoft migration document.

To be fair this probably should have been done sooner in the steps, but it's still in the prelim phase and before we've started the install of SBS 2008 so we're still during the time phase appropriate to this.

Download details: Windows SBS 2003 to 2008 Migration Guide:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=52b7ea63-78af-4a96-811e-284f5c1de13b&DisplayLang=en

On page 12-14 of that document is the instructions to change the functional level.

To raise the functional level of the domain

Now we do the forest....

To raise the functional level of the forest