Kurbli : CP

PowerShell Webcasts available

Kurbli — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 17:24:53 GMT

Don Jones is doing a series of PowerShell WebCasts over at Microsoft.com. There are the one coming up:

Functions, Filters, and Efficiency in Windows PowerShell (Level 200) Tuesday March 20, 2007 11:30-12:300 PST
Windows PowerShell and Windows Management Instrumentation (Level 200) Tuesday April 17, 2007 11:30-12:30 PST
Converting from VBScript to Windows PowerShell (Level 200) Tuesday May 22, 2007 11:30-12:30 PST
Under-the-Hood Extensions in Windows PowerShell (Level 200) Tuesday June 19, 2007 11:30-12:30

You can get more information about this series including links to previously recorded webcasts HERE.
Enjoy!
Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at: http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx

Source: PowerShell Webcasts available

I'm rocking out to As Tears Go By by Marianne Faithfull from the album Blazing Away

ReactOS 0.3.1 Released

Kurbli — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 09:08:30 GMT

A virtuális ügyek kipróbálására fogom használni.

fireballrus writes with news of the release of ReactOS 0.3.1 — press release, changelog, download packages. ReactOS is "an open source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with applications and drivers written for the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (NT4, 2000, XP, 2003)." The press release notes: "Please don't forget this is an alpha-stage operating system, which means it is not suitable to replace your main OS. Also, this release is aimed to be run mostly in virtualizers / emulators (like QEmu, VMWare, Parallels, etc): because of the big amount of changes, our development team was not able to test/fix all problems which arise when running ReactOS on real hardware."

Source: ReactOS 0.3.1 Released

I'm rocking out to Me & The Devil by W.A.S.P. from the album The Neon God part one: The Rise

User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

Kurbli — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:11:11 GMT

A Calendar of Updates postja hívta fel a figyelmem erre a fontos, leginkább TS környezetben használható service update-re:

The User Profile Hive Cleanup service helps to ensure user sessions are completely terminated when a user logs off. System processes and applications occasionally maintain connections to registry keys in the user profile after a user logs off. In those cases the user session is prevented from completely ending. This can result in problems when using Roaming User Profiles in a server environment or when using locked profiles as implemented through the Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows XP.
On Windows 2000 you can benefit from this service if the application event log shows event id 1000 where the message text indicates that the profile is not unloading and that the error is "Access is denied". On Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 either event ids 1517 and 1524 indicate the same profile unload problem.
To accomplish this the service monitors for logged off users that still have registry hives loaded. When that happens the service determines which application have handles opened to the hives and releases them. It logs the application name and what registry keys were left open. After this the system finishes unloading the profile.

Source: Download details: User Profile Hive Cleanup Service

Updated version of Jetstress (v.08.01.0075)

Kurbli — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 10:04:30 GMT

Hasznos segédeszköz.

A while after the release of the new Jetstress 2007 (08.01.0038), Microsoft made a minor update to this storage performance testing tool, in order to correct some issues, as described in Hyungmin Lee blog: Jetstress 08.01.0075 has fixed a list of issues. Here are the links to download the new version (v.08.01.0075):

Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress Tool (32 bit)
Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress Tool (64 bit)

Overview
Use Jetstress to verify the performance and stability of a disk subsystem prior to putting an Exchange server into production. Jetstress helps verify disk performance by simulating Exchange disk Input/Output (I/O) load. Specifically, Jetstress simulates the Exchange database and log file loads produced by a specific number of users. You use Performance Monitor, Event Viewer, and ESEUTIL in conjunction with Jetstress to verify that your disk subsystem meets or exceeds the performance criteria you establish. After a successful completion of the Jetstress Disk Performance and Stress Tests in a non-production environment, you will have ensured that your Exchange disk subsystem is adequately sized (in terms of performance criteria you establish) for the user count and user profiles you have established. It is highly recommended that the Jetstress user read through the tool documentation before using the tool.
Note Jetstress is only supported when running with Exchange 2000, Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007 or newer versions of ESE.DLL. Also, due to this support limitation, Jetstress is only supported on Windows 2000 Server, Windows Server 2003, Advanced Server, Datacenter and newer Windows OS platforms (Windows NT 4.0 and older builds are not supported).

Source: Updated version of Jetstress (v.08.01.0075)

Unpatched Vulnerabilities page

Kurbli — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:27:41 GMT

Ha egy ilyen To Do List-em lenne, elmennék nyaralni, mert vagy elintéződik magától, vagy bedől az oldala, de a vége nem látszik.

The Not So Real Time Monitoring of Reported Unpatched Vulnerabilities page here in CoU has been updated today.
Changes
Adjustment on number of unpatched advisories for the following products:

Windows Vista - 1 out of 0 to 1 out of 2
Windows XP Pro - 32 out of 170 to 32 out of 177
Windows XP Home - 29 out of 155 to 29 out of 161
Windows 2000 - 24 out of 146 to 24 out of 151
Outlook 2003 - 1 out of 12 to 1 out of 14
IE 7 - 3 out of 4 to 4 out of 6
IE 6 - 19 out of 110 to 19 out of 111
Firefox 2 - 1 out of 2 to 2 out of 3
Office 2003 Pro - 8 out of 31 to 5 out of 32
Office XP - 6 out of 35 to 3 out of 35
Windows Defender - 0 out of 1 (added in the list)
Live OneCare - 0 out of 1 (added in the list)
Trend Micro Anti-spyware - 0 out of 1 (added in the list)

Single Day Event On: 2/14/2007

Source: Unpatched Vulnerabilities page

SAN and NAS virtualization

Kurbli — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:08:22 GMT

After some years of false starts and false hopes, storage virtualization, also known as block virtualization, is finally proving its worth. All the major vendors have embraced it, most notably IBM, EMC, and HDS (Hitachi Data Systems); the solutions themselves have improved; and customers, typically large shops managing large SANs with intense data availability requirements, understand how to deploy it and where to get good ROI. No longer a technology in search of a problem, storage virtualization offers a way to address a wide range of storage management woes.

Source: SAN and NAS virtualization

Photos: Intel teraflop chip on board

Kurbli — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:40:10 GMT

Intel last week demonstrated an 80-core chip capable of producing 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, known as a teraflop.

Source: http://news.com.com/2300-1006_3-6158220-1.html?tag=ne.gall.pg

IBM announces sHype

Kurbli — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:20:59 GMT

Vesd össze:
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Friday, February 09, 2007 12:00 PM PST
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,128888-c,vistalonghorn/article.html elképzeléseivel az IBM announcement-et. A vágy és a tett esete.

"We're going to look at a fundamental piece of enabling technology. Maybe its hypervisors, I don't know what it is," he said. "Maybe it's a new user interface paradigm for consumers."

"It's too early for me to talk about it," he added. "But over the next few months I think you're going to start hearing more and more."

Quoting from the IBM official announcement:

The IBM secure hypervisor architecture, or "sHype," is a Research technology designed to run in conjunction with commercial and open source hypervisors that control servers and data in a shared environment. sHype aims to provide a security "wrapper" around distributed workloads in the data center, extending mainframe-like security to pooled data and resources across multiple IBM and non-IBM systems.
sHype is designed to bring stronger security guarantees to popular x86 and blade servers. As is increasingly common, IBM Research developed the sHype technology not just in its own labs, but implementing early versions of sHype with customers to test and evaluate the code. Additionally, portions of sHype have been contributed to the Open Source community and are being used, for example, as part of the open source Xen hypervisor kernel.
...
sHype works in conjunction with hypervisors by establishing a virtual machine to act as a data center "security foreman." The foreman uses preset configurations, business policies and exceptions set by the customer to lock down all content of the data center. It then automatically sets policies that evaluate, rank and code workloads as well as the physical and virtual resources needed to run each workload. Once workloads and resources are locked together, the integrity of the data and resources is assured and can be better managed by hypervisors accordingly...

Source: IBM announces sHype

A potential "Y2K7 problem", avagy "Boldog Új Év"

Kurbli — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 10:22:46 GMT

Hihi .

A member of the Visual Studio team at Microsoft blogged about a "Y2K7" (year 2007) problem they were facing with the build numbers they were using. They used a file versioning scheme like Major.Minor.Build.QFE where the Build number representend the build date. For example 50325 means the file was built on March 25, 2005. The problem is that this number would become 70101 on January 1st, 2007, but this version number field is only a 16 bit integer which can hold a maximum value of 65535. Therefore Microsoft changed their build numbering scheme earlier this year. If you are using a similar scheme you only have few days left to change it.
http://blogs.msdn.com/quanto/archive/2006/12/19/y2k7-crisis-coming-up.aspx

Source: A potential "Y2K7 problem"

Godfather of soul James Brown dies

Kurbli — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 10:05:58 GMT

Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)

Iconic singer had more than 119 chart singles and recorded more than 50 albums.

Source: Godfather of soul James Brown dies

Dear Santa Bill and Santa Ozzie

Kurbli — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:57:07 GMT

Felőlem hozhatná Bill Haley (vagy Ozzy Osbourne) is, csak a http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/ -ról legyen letölthető minden decemberben az összes lokalizált változaté tárgyévi összes patch-e egy ISO file-ban.
Cherry Coke is lesz egy kartonnal.

Susan,

I have just installed WXP Pro SP2 on my newly rebuilt machine. Do you have any words of wisdom with regard to how I can make sure that I have all of the critical patches up to date without going through everything that has been released over the past 3 or 4 years? I don’t want to spend two weeks of work time installing patches.
Dear Santa Bill (or Ozzie):
I know what you'd like me to answer that with... "Buy Vista!" but the reality is that Vista isn't out for the retail marketplace yet. Now hopefully the inlaws will be over during Christmas so it will give this person an excuse to be in their home office and take the eons of time to go from XP sp2 to final patched up versions. The reality is that you haven't made it easy for the home user to take a XP sp2 machine up to full patch status for one machines. Oh sure, you've given us admins things like WSUS and what not..but for the one machines that we have to deal with, or that hopefully you'll have to deal with over your Christmas vacations with your families..... how about reconsidering once again a roll up cdrom.
http://www.incidents.org/diary.php?storyid=1939&isc=83521d98ca25d669c73156778eb3e00e While that gives us some idea.... What I'd really like from Santa Bill or Santa Ozzie is an official Microsoft ISO available in December of each year of "fill in the blank" supported consumer operating systems so that we as sons and daughters of folks that use us a tech support at home can do it easily, or, as in the case of the person who asked, someone trying to get one business system up to full patch state quickly.
P.S. I'll even leave cookies and milk under the tree for you.
...

Source: Dear Santa Bill and Santa Ozzie

Windows Vista Review (Paul Thurrott)

Kurbli — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 10:28:41 GMT

Bink:

Paul has been working hard on his Vista review, time to post the current status, check if you are up to date!
Windows Vista Review
2006-11-08
Windows Vista Review, Part 1: Introduction
2006-11-08
Windows Vista Review, Part 2: Windows Vista Product Editions
2006-11-08
Windows Vista Review, Part 3: Installing Windows Vista
2006-11-09
Windows Vista Review, Part 4: The Vista Experience
2006-11-12
Windows Vista Review, Part 5: Windows Vista Features
2006-11-16
User Interface Features
2006-11-16
Security Features
2006-11-29
Performance Features
2006-11-30
Reliability Features
2006-12-05
Internet Features
2006-12-11
Bundled Applications New!
2006-12-14
Digital Media Features New!
2006-12-17
          Networking Features
Soon!
          Mobility Features
Soon!
          Other Features
Soon!
     Windows Vista Review, Part 6: Compatibility
Soon!
     Windows Vista Review, Part 7: Where Windows Vista Fails
Soon!
     Windows Vista Review, Part 8: Wrapping Up

Source: Paul Thurrott's Windows Vistea Review update

use your windows mobile device as a webcam

Kurbli — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 20:31:22 GMT

Version:
1.04

Release date:
2006-12-16

Price:
$14.90

Ateksoft have released an application to allow you to use your Windows Mobile Device as a Webcam. It's called Web Camera Plus.

I haven't had a chance to test it myself yet but supposedly it was tested and works with Skype 2.5, MSN Messenger 7.5, Windows Live Messenger 8.0, Yahoo! Messenger 7.5 and 8.0, Windows Media Encoder 9.00, Windows Movie Maker 2.1, Virtual Dub 1.6, VLC media player 0.8, WebcamXP PRO 2006 2.30, Camfrog Video Chat 3.80 and many others.
It can also work through any connection: USB ActiveSync, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPRS, 3G, LAN.
You can find more details HERE

Source: use your windows mobile device as a webcam

Update on Internet Explorer 7, DEP and Adobe Software

Kurbli — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 19:53:37 GMT

Because browsers can host plug-in extensibility, security settings within the browser can make plug-ins fail. This is why in Internet Explorer 7 Data Execution Prevention (DEP) is off by default. When it is enabled many plug-in components fail to run, often crashing the browser.
You can enable DEP by navigating to the following dialog and checking the highlighted option shown below (note, you must elevated to admin first, otherwise the option is grayed out):

I have some great news, however.
Two of the most well-known and commonly used browser plug-ins, the Adobe Acrobat browser helper object and the Adobe Flash Player, now run when DEP is enabled.
So jump on over to the Adobe site, download the latest versions of Flash Player and Acrobat Reader, and enable DEP in IE7! I have!
A Big Thanks to the folks at Adobe for doing this.

Source: Update on Internet Explorer 7, DEP and Adobe Software

MSFN - Adobe Reader Speed-Up v1.36

Kurbli — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:01:43 GMT

Adobe Reader 8.0-ra is!

Adobe Reader SpeedUp is a simple application that was created to help make the loading time of Adobe's Acrobat/Reader software bearable for everyday use. AR SpeedUp only needs to be used once (a process taking only a few seconds) and then your 'Reader will be transformed forever. There are also some tweaking options available. "w00t!", as the young kids say.
Download: Adobe Reader Speed-Up v1.36 (Freeware)
View: Change Log
Homepage: Adobe Reader Speed-Up

Source: MSFN - Adobe Reader Speed-Up v1.36

Host Integration Server 2006 Operations Manager Pack Released to Web

Kurbli — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 01:04:05 GMT

The Host Integration Server team is pleased to announce that a Operations Manager 2005 management pack has been released for the Host Integration Server 2006 product. The Management Pack can be used with both the standalone Host Integration Server 2006 product as well as the Microsoft BizTalk Adatpers for Host Systems package.
The HIS 2006 package builds on the HIS 2004 overhaul in order to deliver:

Host Integration Server 2006 Alert Monitoring
Host Integration Server 2006 Health Indication and Monitoring
Host Integration Server 2006 Performance Monitoring
Automated configuration discovery and role-based assignment of monitoring rules
An easy-to-understand and navigable processing rule group hierarchy
Public views of Host Integration Server 2006 servers, alerts, and groups
Operator tasks for use in response to common situations

Feel free to download it and give it a try.

Source: Host Integration Server 2006 Operations Manager Pack Released to Web

Australian researchers develop fastest ever wireless link

Kurbli — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:57:42 GMT

From Queensland Business Review
The CSIRO ICT Centre has announced a new wireless system able to send and recieve six gigabytes of information per second.
...
"The system is also ideal for creating networks to meet short term needs such as emergencies and large events."
...

Source: Australian researchers develop fastest ever wireless link

Insecure.org's 2006 list of top 100 Network Testing Tools

Kurbli — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:19:00 GMT

Hasznos dolgok.

The 2006 edition of this list is available at the following site:
http://sectools.org/
QUOTE: After the tremendously successful 2000 and 2003 security tools surveys, Insecure.Org is delighted to release this 2006 survey. I (Fyodor) asked users from the nmap-hackers mailing list to share their favorite tools, and 3,243 people responded. This allowed me to expand the list to 100 tools, and even subdivide them into categories. Anyone in the security field would be well advised to go over the list and investigate tools they are unfamiliar with. I discovered several powerful new tools this way. I also point newbies to this site whenever they write me saying “I don't know where to start”.

Source: Insecure.org's 2006 list of top 100 Network Testing Tools

Update (General Mayhem comment): ezt már egy régebbi blogomban is megírtam, de azt valószínűleg kevesen olvassák.

Vista group policy settings

Kurbli — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:42:41 GMT

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=41dc179b-3328-4350-ade1-c0d9289f09ef&displaylang=en
This spreadsheet lists the policy settings for computer and user configurations included in the administrative template files (admx/adml) delivered with Windows Vista (RTM build 6000).
One of the best tools around for knowing the possibilities with Group policy is the Group policy spreadsheet... well it's just been updated with Vista info.
There's geek reading for a Thanksgiving for ya...
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Source: Vista group policy settings

Windows Vista - Free security guide available

Kurbli — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:14:06 GMT

Microsoft developed a security guide earlier this month that can be helpful in assessing and establishing security controls for the new Windows Vista environment.
Windows Vista Security Guide - General Information
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/security/guide.mspx
Windows Vista Security Guide - Key Information published at TechNet
https://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/security/guide.mspx
QUOTE: The Windows Vista Security Guide consists of five chapters, and an appendix that you can use to reference setting descriptions, considerations, and values. The Windows Vista Security Guide Settings.xls file that accompanies this guide provides another resource that you can use to compare the setting values. The following figure shows the guide structure to help inform you how to optimally implement and deploy the prescriptive guidance.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Implementing the Security Baseline
Chapter 2: Defend Against Malware
Chapter 3: Protect Sensitive Data
Chapter 4: Application Compatibility
Chapter 5: Specialized Security – Limited Functionality
Additional resources are noted below:
Microsoft Threats and Countermeasures Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/guidance/serversecurity/tcg/tcgch00.mspx
Windows XP Security Guide
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/prodtech/windowsxp/secwinxp/default.mspx
Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | live it!

Source: Windows Vista - Free security guide available