Last week we held a 2 day series of hands-on labs for ISA server and Antigen that convered a huge range of scenarios and practical solutions for security, junk mail filtering and anti-virus. I hope all of you that attended will agree that it was an awesome...

Many of you have been asking how you can create ISO images from CD's, Virtual Floppy Images from floppy disks and create you own bootable CD's.... Firstly, what is an ISO image? An ISO image file is an image of a CD-ROM disk saved in ISO 9660 format ...

This is a question that I have been asked several times. There is a really useful document I suggest you look at; The Windows XP Pro resource kit documentation . I will start with a few of the questions I have had recently. Slipstreaming XP SP2: Q: What...

Now I am back from the RSA Conference, I have a few moments to put the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on my ASUS EEE Top machine. The fastest way for me to do this considering the machine does not have a DVD drive is to create a bootable USB flash drive with...

Thinking about migrating to Windows Home Server (WHS) 2011 ? Using an HP MediaSmart Server (EX470 or EX475)? Not sure how where to start? – you may just want to read further… I have had a Windows Home Server for several years and after reading many reviews...

I have had a number of people ask me this question and am pleased to say that we were also provided with a solution by Mark Torng.... " Some users calling me with issues saying they couldn’t use outlook because the mail server was not found, also not...

As part of my journey to install Windows Home Server 2011 on my HP MediaSmart EX470 server, I have been looking for useful add-ins and customizations. Below is a list of the ones I have implemented and found useful, though keep in mind that not all are...

As you all know, without SCVMM, moving VMs manually (for example when doing an upgrade of a server or rebuilding a cluster etc) is not just a copy and paste scenario. A good friend of mine; John Kadianos from Hyper Technologies ( www.hypert.com ) shared...

WOW! is the word that crosses my mind when thinking about the presentation on the 23rd September. This event was made special by Chris and Ryan from CMS Consulting and by the audience. The more I come to know the IT Pro community here, the more I come...

I was sitting wondering the other day how I could squeeze more Virtual Machine performance on a test box I have and came across an article from RoudyBob http://roudybob.net/articles/927.aspx which was talking performance tips for Virtual Server 2005....

Windows Server 2003 R2 is not that far off and I keep being asked questions about what changes / improvements are being incorporated in to Server 2003 R2 and how do they affect me? Firstly I would suggest you look at the R2 site on the Microsoft.com...

I was sitting at home the other day going through the log files for the Windows XP SP2 firewall (as you do for want of something more stimulating) and thought you might like to know about the utilities I use and have found for parsing these files. Please...

Bruce Cowper IT Pro Advisor Microsoft Technet Canada . I would like to take this opportunity to offer you a warm welcome to my Blog. As an IT Pro Advisor for Microsoft Canada , I am passionate about reaching out to and engaging with the IT Pro community...

It seems like a world ago, but as a follow up from the Vista Beta 1 Install Fest last year, we (and that is everyone that came along) have received a letter from Foodpath in Mississaga, thanking us for the donation. “On behalf of the board of Directors...

For all of the weather watchers out there (and in Canada I think that means all of us...) I have over the summer had the priviledge of testing this little beauty: http://www2.oregonscientific.com/shop/product.asp?cid=2&scid=4&pid=603 ...

For all of you wondering if I had disappeared from the planet, you may be pleased to know that I am simply moving blogs. Based on your feedback the Canadian IT Pro team is amalgamating our efforts and our blogs in to two new spaces: The Canadian...

For best performance, should I use dynamic or fixed disks, how about differencing or raw disks and what about for specific workloads? If you have ever asked yourself questions like those (and let’s face it if you are a geek like me, frequently)… do I...

One of the challenges I often get asked about is "how can I use the Intellegent Message Filter on SBS 2003 if I am using the POP connector?" The answer is that there are many POP connectors / pullers that essentially pull down the email from a POP account...

One of the challenges I always came up against, both as a security consultant and as an network administrator was account lockouts... I kept coming up against this in a number of ways: - Accounts being locked out because of attempts to brute force the...

You may have wondered why I have been a little quiet of late. Well, the reason [beyond actually having a vacation of Christmas and New Year] is that I am currently in Seattle at an internal Microsoft event called TechReady. At this conference, we have...

I suddenly remembered as a follow up from the ISA 2004 presentation the other night that I had not posted up the example HTTP header filters as requested... I am awaiting the uploading of the session informartion to the TechNet Site, so watch this space...

For those interested in Virtual Server, the VSMT is a very useful free tool that allows you to Virtualise a Physical box. Here is an edited version of the QB article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=555306&SD=tech by Guilherme Whitaker Carnevale...

In the past couple of posts on this I took you through creating virtual machines and backing them up. In this section I am going to concentrate of controlling the virtual machines. In Part 4 I will look at some of the extended features available and beyond...

Further to my last post, for those of you concerned about the Sony DRM rootkit you may be happy to know that the Windows Defender (was the Microsoft Anti Spyware) tool has a signature for dealing with the software. http://blogs.technet.com/antimalware...

I have had the MS fingerprint readers for quite a while now and have found them to be great convenience devices. These consumer units were produced in conjunction with DigitalPersona but are aimed at helping us deal with a challenge we face more and more...