Author: Andreas Stenhall

I realize I have been very quite on blogging for a few weeks, mainly due to a visit to Microsoft in Redmond and the MVP Summit which was suceeded by a three week vacation with my family.  Now I am at TechDays in Örebro, Sweden. Just got out from my session about AppLocker in Windows 7 which I think went quite smooth. The interest for TechDays is enormous and it has been a long day so far and it not over yet. I will attend a session on Windows 7 later today and will definetely not miss the party tonight. Still some jetlag though due to the vacation but I will struggle to get at least a couple of beers…

I also have a lot of catching up to do with my Inbox and other cool stuff that has been announced while I was on vacation, among many other things Microsoft has released some very interesting information on virtualization, read Mikael Nyströms blog post to get the summary,

There is this license tool that comes with Windows Automated Installation Kit and is installed by default. This unheard of tool is called Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT). With this tool you can scan for instance all computer  objects in Active Directory to see the license status of all client machines as well as servers.

You will see what type of key (KMS/MAK) the machine is using, transition licenses from MAK to KMS, see if the license is activated on each machine and you will also be able to identify which machine is the Key Management Server.

The current version of this tool is version 1.2 but 2.0 is coming. Version 2.0 is needed to activate soon to be released Office 2010  but it also sports new features such as a command line interface for automating scans without using the user interface.

This week Microsoft have made two really interesting announcemants, the first being the release of App-V 4.6 and the second one being MED-V 1.0 SP1. (Release Candidate). Take a look at this MS post for what is new in App-V 4.6 and what is new in MED-V 1.0 SP1. Also do not miss this post on how to sequence Office 2010 for use with App-V 4.6.

Join Chris Jackson in the webcast Migrating from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 8 (Level 300) to learn what you need to know when you migrate from IE6 to IE8. Actually I met Chris at the MVP Summit that took place last week and he is indeed a great and inspiring speaker and an interesting person to talk to. What Chris doesn’t know about application (and web site) compatibility is not worth knowing :)

WinRE (Windows Recovery Enviroment) is included by default in Windows 7, and this allows you to boot to WinRE to access recovery tools such as Complete PC image restore, system restore or to access a command prompt to run other useful command. You can access WinRE by booting a Windows 7 machine and press F8 and choose “Repair your computer”.

WinRE being included in Windows 7 is great but what is even greater is if you replace WinRE with DaRT (Diagnostics and Recovery Tools) included in Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) which is available to Software Assurance customers. By doing this you get additional types of useful tools such as the ability to reset the passwords of local account, hotfix uninstall, crash analysis, reach computer management or use Windows Explorer. Now this is great! :)

The guide on how to replace WinRE with DaRT can be found at bink.nu.

Well, the answer is quiet simple and here are a couple of reasons:

Conversation view: Nested view of each conversation, with the ability to see both incoming and sent items in one thread without having to change to the sent folder. This is also available in Outlook Web App which is great.
Multiple Exchange accounts:  It is possible to have up to three Exchange accounts in one Outlook profile. No more creating separate profiles for multiple Exchange accounts.
Ignore conversation: Are you familiar with being spammed with a lot of unnecessary emails, like “where will we eat lunch today”, “watch this funny movie” etc etc? With ignore conversation all future replies to such a conversation is automatically directed to the Deleted items in Outlook. Sweet!
Mailtips: When about to send an email to someone who is out of office you will be notified by this instantly before sending the email. This is by default but you can also create your own mailtips rules for certain distribution groups etc.

I must also mention improvements to IMAP which is splendid! So when will Office 2010 go to RTM?

Issues joining a Windows 7 machine to a domain, where the domain controller handling the domain join request is having old NT4 rests on it, has surfaced. The problem is related to an old overload workaround when upgrading an NT4 domain to Windows Server 2000 or 2003 domain controllers. The KB article which provide the solution is now published, see KB2008652 for more information on the resolution. Note that the problem also applies to joining Windows Server 2008 R2 servers to the domain.

I haven’t been posting much about System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) but that will change, starting right now. Well System Center ConfigMgr plays a significant role in for instance deployment, management and inventory of Windows clients so it feels natural to extend the posting about SCCM.  I start off with hinting at these two add-ons:

Dashboard manager (beta): Present stats for ConfigMgr with charts, meters and such in a very graphical overview. See status for patch management, depployments and more! Sign up for beta and download at Microsoft Connect.

ACT (Application Compatibility Toolkit) Connector: An updated Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 – Application Compatibility Toolkit Connector has been released. This connector presents ACT information in the ConfigMgr console. Download at Microsoft Download center.

TechDays is a two-day Swedish conference hosted yearly by Microsoft and partners. I will be there to speak about AppLocker in Windows 7. I will specifically talk about what makes it so great but I will focus on how to implement it and what to think about while doing so. There will be a bunch of other very interesting sessions on the latest Microsoft products so I hope I’ll see you at TechDays in March!

Just wanted to post a quick reminder that if you turn off UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista or Windows 7 you also turn off “Protected mode” in Internet Explorer. Turning off UAC is not recommended but if you do, make sure that you run with a standard user account.