They already are releasing the product late (the BETA will be released in conjunction with the RTM of Longhorn), and now they are removing some of the most highly-touted features that actually were going to set the product apart from the leader? Some of the ground-breaking features being axed:

• Hot-add of resources (memory, processor, storage and networking)
• Live migration (this is a killer app currently being offered by VMWare in their VMotion technology)
• Support limit of 16 cores (4 processor, quad core) though I don’t see this as a big issue. I think you’d need some pretty hefty hardware for your host to even get close to that many cores being useful. My vision probably isn’t as broad as the developers though – I’m sure we’ll see Quad-proc, Octo-Core boxes on the desktop a few years out.

Stings, doesn’t it? Time to start looking at VMWare…

Another dismal take on the news.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/06/07/426475.aspx

The key is [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillService] . The time is in milliseconds.

On another note, here is an article detailing the steps to enable shut down or save state of a virtual machine when the Virtual Server Service shuts down.

http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/46057/46057.html

For the 3024/3048/5012 products:

1. Connect to the switch via the console port and manually reboot the switch
2. As soon as power is applied, press and hold the ESC key
3. At the command prompt, type “EmergencyPasswordReset” (case-sensitive without the quotation marks)
4. At the confirm (Y/N) prompt, type X
5. If done properly, you will receive a message stating that the password has been disabled
6. Type G and hit enter to reboot the switch

The switch will reboot with the password disabled.

This saved us in a pinch. Just goes to show that Physical Security is still the first and most important security.

In the SMS 2003 Administrator Console, expand Site Hierarchy, then your Site Name, then Site Settings, then highlight Discovery Methods.

On the right-hand side, double click Active Directory System Discovery, then click the tab “Polling Schedule.”

Click the checkbox “Run Discovery as soon as possible.” The checkbox will clear once the discovery request is made.

Easy, no?

Compress Pictures!

This is an even simpler method for reducing Microsoft Office document sizes. Once you click “Compress Pictures,” you can choose the level of compression (printed or screen / web), and whether to delete cropped areas of pictures or not. You still have the original image, right?

The only thing left is to make this the default option during Office setup; If it’s possible, you’ll see it here. Please comment if you experience success with this tip

Joel

Edit: Found another awesome resource for reducing Office Document file sizes: University of Queensland “Ask IT” page (they also have the same information in .PDF handout format)

Tips for setting up a Windows XP Pro computer to perform administrative tasks on a MS windows network. Links to downloads of the tools you’ll need.

I love it when I come across another great blog. Thanks Rob Durkin!

read more | digg story

“I need to send a powerpoint to a grant organization, and it’s got to get there TODAY! I tried sending it but got a message saying that it exceeds the limit for this user. I need you to take that limit off as soon as possible!”

Whoah, whoah – hold your horses. Those limits are there for a reason. How big is the file?

“I don’t know! Can you please just take the limit off?”

Well, let’s see what we can do first. Right click the file and click … [explaining right click vs. left, what tab the file size is listed on under a file's properties window (it's the general tab)...] OK. So the file is 11MB. That’s 7MB more than the limit. Let’s try something:

1. Open the document and right click on an image.
2. Click “Format Picture.”
3. Now click on the tab “Picture.”
4. Click Compress
5. Select “All pictures in document.”
6. Choose a resolution (hint: screen creates a smaller file).
7. Check “Delete cropped areas of pictures” and “Compress Pictures.”
8. Click OK (and Apply if prompted).
9. Save the file. If you’re paranoid, save it with a new name.

So what’s the file size now?

“It says 1.1 em-bee”

You should be able to send it now.

“Wow, thanks!”

Resource used:

Microsoft Office Assistance: Reduce the size of your PowerPoint files

How to boot the Microsoft Windows Preinstall Environment from an RIS server by using PXE-enabled clients

looks promising.

The first adventure was successfully capturing a build with the Image Capture CD. I created the CD per the instructions in the included guide. Windows PE got all the way to attempting to connect to the Image Share, then crapped out with an error code 8000704fc.
My initial attempt did not include any additional network drivers, and as a result, Windows PE was unable to connect to the share I setup for capturing images to. After a few botched attempts at including the drivers, I realized that all the .inf and other related driver files had to be in the same folder – Windows PE does not search through subfolder structures. After lumping all the drivers together, I was able to capture an image (4.6 Gigs) and move on to the next step: deployment.

I created the OS Package and Program, then created an Image Installation CD, with the same driver setup. I popped it into a bare metal system and booted to the CD. This time, it began restoring the image, then failed at the State Restore phase with “exit code 3″ – it turns out that there is a hotfix that addresses this issue. I called Microsoft PSS, got the hotfix and applied it. I re-created the Image Capture CD, grabbed the image, and the created the package, program and installation CD. I started the Image Installation process just before leaving this afternoon. We’ll see tomorrow if it was successful.

• Very high CPU utilization
• Vitrually unresponsive systems
• Violent end-users
• Vicious finger pointing (not really, but it was a good V-word!)

While doing research, we’ve noted that the 2 things common on systems with these symptoms was that SVCHOST.EXE (Automatic Updates in this case) or CCMEXEC.EXE were the main CPU hogs. Killing CCMEXEC, running ccmclean.exe, or sometimes killing the Automatic Updates service would bring the system back from the brink.

Googling for “ccmexec cpu” and similar phrases came up with a few places to start looking:

SMS Admin newsgroup
MyITForum Discussion

Hopefully we’ll get this nailed down and have:

• Responsive systems
• Readiness for update deployments (we’re temporarily suspending them until we get this worked out)
• Really happy customers
• Raises (maybe not).

How to Troubleshoot Windows 2000 Hardware Abstraction Layer Issues

How to force a Hardware Abstraction Layer during an upgrade or an installation of Windows XP

HAL options after Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Setup

More information to follow once we begin to more fully understand the copncept of Hardware Abstraction Layers.

Needless to say, users were somewhat confused by this.

To get rid of the message, we either had to:

1. Run around to every Dell PC in the organization
2. Uninstall Dell OMCI
3. Remotely disable chassis intrusion detection and clear any current detections

Obviously we chose option three. With Dell’s OpenManage IT Assistant software, I was able to build a remote CIM command line to execute on a set of systems (in our case any system that was reporting a status of degraded). Here’s the command we ran:

system cim action=setcim ipaddress=$IP username=$USERNAME password=$PASSWORD authenticationlevel=packet classpropertyvalue=Dell_SMBIOSsettings::ChassisIntrusion:4

To execute the command, I setup a new command line task in ITA, targeted at a query of computers whose status was not “OK.” I set this to run once an hour, since clients were still being discovered and inventoried as this was happening. By setting the query to only hit degraded clents, we avoided running this needlessly on clients already configured properly.

Dell OpneManage Client Instrumentation User’s Guide

Client Instrumentation Documentation

Dell OpenManage Server Administrator User’s Guide

Server Administrator Documentation

Dell OpenManage Client Connector User’s Guide

Client Connector Documentation

Dell OpenManage IT Assistant 7.2 User’s Guide

ITAssistant Documentation

Here’s the platform in a nutshell: The Client Instrumentation (or Server Administrator for servers) is installed on the managed system and interfaces with the system’s data providers (BIOS, Disks, Chassis, etc), and makes this data accessible through the standard WMI interface. On the Management Station (usually a server set aside for Systems Management), the IT Assistant and Client Connector allow administrators to access and manage the systems and their configurations through the WMI Interface. IT Assistant is the main management application (one to many) that provides an overall view of system health and status and Client Connector (one to one) can be launched from IT Assistant to manage an individual client. Server Administrator can also be launched from within IT Assistant for individual Server Management, though it runs on the managed server rather than on the management station.

Some nutshell eh?

Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to get a deeper understanding of SMS 2003. Unfortunately, the more I learn about SMS, the more I realize that it’s going to continue to broaden it’s scope of management. From the enhanced post-SP1 patch and update management features to the Operating System Deployment Feature Pack and beyond. Luckily, MyITForum.com has got more information than I could possibly ever read, tons of tools, downloads and an active forum of knowledgable experts. Expect to see plenty of links to these folks as I discover more of their content.

This fixed it.

Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server Documentation