Author: Andreas Stenhall

I’ve just watched Mark Minasi doing an interesting presentation on IPv6. He is indeed a great speaker by the way. I’m not going to get into details on what the presentation was all about but instead I’m going to sum it up with a few words. Do not be frightened by IPv6 and do not disable IPv6 on your machines. Instead go on and learn it, today! You will have to learn it sooner or later anyway and the sooner the better I would say :)

Microsoft it talking a lot about something called “the new efficiency” but what in the world does this mean? Basically it means cost savings but at the same time gaining new enhancements and features which helps the end-users becoming more productive, using new products such as Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010 and Office 2010.

A couple of examples from the ITPRO  view on “the new efficiency” is the fact the Exchange 2010 reduces storage costs to a minimum and cost savings using new power savings feature called core parking in Windows Server 2008 R2.

From the end-user perspective there are for example the new feature called “mailtips” in the mail client (Outlook and Outlook Web app) which beforehand tells us for example if he or she is about to send an email to a user which is out-of-office or, allowing the user to take action based on knowing this information. Another example on how the new products work together on the client side is “DirectAccess”. This feature as you probably already know makes the users constantly connected to the corporate network regardless of where they are in the world as long as they have an internet connection.

Now, enough with the “sales talk”! :)

At TechEd today Microsoft eventually announced that Exchange Server 2010 is now available for general availability. It doesn’t show in the download list at TechNet yet but I guess it will be out during the day or evening.

First session at TechEd is completed! It was a really interesting session about SharePoint 2010 which seems to be a huge improvement over previous versions of SharePoint and WSS. Everything is made easier and more user friendly but there also seems to improvements on patching SharePoint 2010.

Some of the improvements and changes:

•  Better browser support (Firefox & IE of course)
•  Ribbon interface (AJAX) with live formatting of text etc.
•  Groove is renamed to SharePoint workspace
•  WSS 4.0 is renamed to SharePoint Foundation 2010
• Editing of Office documents within the SharePoint interface.
•  Many many more improvements :)

In RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) version 7 a new feature is added that allows us to redirect the microphone to the remote machine and record the audio on the remote machine. This feature works only when connecting to Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 and if you have a Remote Desktop Client 7.0 which is a part of Windows 7 and was release as a standalone update for Windows XP and Windows Vista recently.

Anyway, for the redirection of the microphone device from your local machine to the remote Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 machine you need to allow the redirection. In Windows Server 2008 R2 you make the setting for the RDP-tcp connection in TS or RDS host settings but in the Windows 7 client there is no GUI for enabling redirection of the microphone. So on the remote machine you must start regedit.exe and go to

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\RDP-Tcp

You need to make sure the value fDisableAudioCapture is set to 0 (1 is the default and means microphone redirection is disabled). Voila!

When installing Windows 7 on the HP nc4400 range of laptops it will likely hang at “completing installation”. Microsoft says it is a known compatibility issue with this particular model and HP are working on getting a BIOS upgrade out the door. Stay tuned!

So in one week from now I will be in Berlin participating in TechEd Europe 2009. I’m really looking forward to it and I am convinced it will be a blast!

Windows 7 already contain RDC version 7.0 but now Microsoft has released the 7.0 client for Windows XP and Windows Vista. Some of the benefits of using the RDC 7.0 connecting from Windows XP or Windows Vista are:

• Windows Media Player Redirection.  This feature lets you play even a HD file on the remote machine without any lag as the video and audio is processed on the local machine.
• True multi monitor support!
• Performance improvements. This is alone a good reason to use the latest RDC 7.0 client.
• Many more new features and improvements, read more at RDS blog.

Note that the above features only work when you connect from Windows XP or Windows Vista with RDC 7.0 to a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 machine.

 Download and more information at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969084

The Infrastructure planning and design guide for DirectAccess has just been RTM:ed and can be downloaded from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=164151. If you’re planning on implementing DirectAccess read this document! ;)

Just a quickie about troubleshooting installation issues. You are not always stuck if the installation fails as you can always get to the log files if the setup for instance appear to have hung. Do this by pressing Shift + F10 to bring up the command prompt. Insert a USB memory stick and copy the log files from the hard drive to the USB memory stick and then analyze them on another machine! This KB article documents where you find the various setup log files.