Interested in taking a look at a new solution accelerator? You can sign up to join the beta for the Windows 2008 Server Security Guide and be one of the first to preview this solution accelerator and its components. One of the goals of this solution accelerator is to supply IT professionals with best practices and automated tools to help strengthen the security of servers running Windows Server 2008.

The guide is now in Beta release, and is available for your review on  Microsoft® TechNet. Check out the Executive Overview by clicking here.

Cheers!

For that matter.....Do you even like Microsoft Webcasts?

My team is on a conference call right now and we are discussing webcast attendance and how to get more people to attend. All of us are raising some interesting questions but we are on the inside and may not have an appropriate perspective. I want to know what you think about our webcasts and what you want from them. More Demos? Less Demos? Different topics? How deep should we go? Are they discoverable? Are they too long or too short? Guest speakers? I am just throwing things out there.

You tell me -What do you want in a webcast?

Cheers!

Here is the Office 2003 SP1 Policy Reference link. And here is the Office 2007 Policy Templates and Office customization too link.

Cheers!

For those of you that attended my Santa Rosa Technet event, here is the link to the most current Group Policy Spreadsheet. This only cover through Vista RTM and does not have any updates for Windows Server 2008 or anything coming down the pipe in Vista SP1. I will ask around to see if/when the spreadsheet will get updated though I suspect it will simply get refreshed at the same link.

***Update**** Here is a link to the Windows 2003 SP1 Group Policy Spreadsheet.

Cheers!

Raul commented on my previous BitLocker Post with a question that I felt compelled to make into a post.

"I had a quick question about the key for BitLocker to unlock your computer, when you have it on your flash drive, if you make it a hidden folder can the computer still read it and log you into your computer without it locking you out?"

The Bitlocker key is not in a folder on the USB drive, it is in the root. However, the file itself can be marked as hidden. If you do this though, it can not be read during startup and you will not have access to the drive. You would then need to put the USB memory stick into another machine, mark the key file as *NOT* hidden, then unlock the original machine. I verified this by testing it out on my demo machine.

I seem to recall someone asking me if it was ok to mark the key file as READ ONLY. In fact, when BitlLocker prompts you to write the key to the USB device, that file is actually marked as read only. This provides basic protection against someone opening the file, accidentally hitting a random keystroke or the delete key and munging the BitLocker key. Though it is simple enough to remove the read only flag and make changes. Don't do it.

Cheers!

Oh yeah!  Another question from my event....

"What versions of Windows Mobile does the Windows Mobile Device Center support?"

I knew we supported WM5 and WM6 because I have used both version with it. We actually support Windows Mobile 2003 and later though which is great news for people with older devices.

Cheers!

First, let me start off by saying that my event yesterday was in Saratoga, Ca. Not San Jose. Not Cupertino. Not Santa Clara. It was Saratoga.

Second, I found a very small bar that does Karaoke and went last night. The bar is Woodham Sports Lounge and was located by our concierge, Melissa. Not only did she run a great registration desk for us but she helped me find the karaoke bar. The bar is tiny, but had decent sound and a fair number of regulars. I sang twice - "Black Coffee in Bed" by Squeeze and "How Much I Feel" by Ambrosia. Good Times.

But I guess you are really reading this post because you want to know about BitLocker. I had some great question at the event on BitLocker. In fact I fielded too many questions which threw me off schedule, but I hope I at least answered most of the questions the crowd had. One questions that I opted to verify was - "Does BitLocker ship in they Vista Business Edition?". I thought it did but opted to check first. Turns out, BitLocker only ships in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions. I personally think it is silly that it does not ship in the Business edition, but I don't make the rules on what features ship with what products.

So....to that end, my pledge is to ping the product group and ask them why it isn't in the Business edition. I will post the results here when I have them.

There were also a series of questions around the partitioning requirement for BitLocker --

Why do we need at least two partitions?

What are the partition size requirements?

Those answers can be found in detail at the Technet BitLocker Drive Encryption page. But, in short....

At least two partitions are needed because there are pre-startup authentication system integrity checks that must happen outside of the encrypted environment.

It is recommended that the SYSTEM partition be at least 1.5 gigs in size to accommodate WinPE, the boot files, and other files that are related to system setup or updates. The remaining partitions can be any size we need for our environment.

One question that I am surprised did NOT come up was around the type of encryption used to protect the keys. The chart below give a break down of that.

Finally, I would recommend reading the BitLocker FAQ on the Technet site. I know a lot of our FAQ pages are pretty lean, but this one is quite good.

Cheers!

There have been some funny spoof videos over the years, but this is one of the best. It is also the single most star studded video (that I have seen us do). And it is long! Clear the next 7 minutes.....and laugh out loud...it's good for you!

Bill Gates’ last day at Microsoft (video) - istartedsomething

Cheers!

I met Robby Sparks and his wife Misty when my wife and I traveled with a group to the UK. At that time I didn't know that Robby was a science fiction fan. Not long after moving to Washington, Robby emails me and asks for my mailing address. I didn't think anything of it at the time and didn't think about it all when some weeks later I received a small manilla envelope in the mail. Inside was Volume 1: Issue 6 (Summer 2006) of APEX - a quarterly Science Fiction and Horror magazine.

I have been a sci-fi/fantasy/horror reader since I was a kid and figured it was something I signed up for somewhere or that it was a promotional copy sent to me. The mag sat for a day or two and then I started thumbing through it. I read a few of the short stories and started hitting a few of the web sites for the authors and assorted other places advertised. Then I stumbled upon one of the short stories and recognized the name - none other than Robby Sparks!

Apparently Robby is now helping promote APEX and also branching off into acting and directing because he recently posted a short movie to YouTube entitled - The Door of APEX - which he wrote and stars in. His wife Misty did the camera work. The basic premise is a man sees troubling images and wants to know why so he goes to see a psychiatrist. I will leave it at that.....

Btw.....the image of the man that flashes at the beginning of the video is the covert art from the issue above that he was published in.

Robby.....remember me when you become famous!!!

Cheers!

I have recovered.....almost.

My wife and I had some people over to the house New Year's Eve. I believe the last person left around 4am. That by itself would not have that much impact on my recovery. However, we were in Florida for a week just before New Years (3 hour time zone shift) and I have enough problems sleeping at home much less on the road. Add in our almost 24 hour awake time making connections getting home from Florida the day before the New Years Eve party and I was in pretty sad shape till this morning.

I am also hopelessly behind on email. I am spending today catching up while building out some demo machines for the new content we are delivering starting next week. In glancing at email it seems there are a number of support related questions which I will likely convert to blog postings throughout today and the weekend.

The Technet Live Events team is starting delivery of new content next week. I will be in San Jose, Ca on Jan 8th then on to Santa Clara, Ca on Jan 10th. I round out my "tour" of California on Jan 15th in Los Angeles. Of course "Los Angeles" is a big area to cover so to be more specific, I will be in Century City.

We are going to be doing two sessions - The first on BitLocker and I will being doing some Live Bitlocker encryption and decryption on multpile partitions. Pretty cool stuff and will be refelctive of what I am using on my own corporate laptop. Teh second sessions will dive into Network Access Protection (NAP) and the new Network Policy Server (NPS) in Windows Server 2008 (btw....NPS is our implementation of RADIUS.....plus some BALCO approved application boosters).

I am also looking to do Karaoke on the evenings of Jan 8th and 10th. If you are interested in having a night out you are welcome to join me. I may even have to revive the Karaoke challenge. More on that later.....

Cheers!

If you read my previous post and bothered to go out to the Robert Scoble's post which prompted it, you will see me kind of going toe-to-toe with Robert. In my own opinion, I think Robert just doesn't like being confronted much less being wrong which is why we have been going back and forth. I also think he has become such an Apple fanboy that he can't see past his Mac to understand that there are excellent products and features being delivered by lots of companies besides Apple.

But that is just my opinion.

I would like for you, the 12 regular readers I have - :) - to correct me if I am wrong.

If you want the short version, go read Scoble's post. Then read comments #5(me), #7(Scoble), #24(me), #28(Scoble), #32(Scoble), #39(me), #41(Scoble), #44(Me).

I would like to know if, in your opinion, it is me or Robert that does or does not get it.

Cheers!

Check out one of Robert Scoble's recent posts regarding connecting a MacMini to an HDTV. He runs through a list of cool things he now has because he connected the MacMini to a computer to his HDTV. There isn't a item in his list that we have not been able to do, and do very well, with a Windows Media Center PC for the last 5 years. He even makes mention that he has a Media Center but he apparently didn't understand what it was capable of or never actually used it else he would have known these things. he could have saved himself $700 if he just would have.....well......RTFM.

He then details why the PC connected to a TV "revolution" hasn't materialized yet. Each of his reasons (with the exception of the Dave Winer software....which I have not investigated) is actually invalid.

1. "Dave Winer's Software" - haven't seen it so I can't comment (***update*** - it appears Dave's software is Mac only)

2. $700 for a consumer device is too much - I agree with that. But there are $500 Media Center PC's on the market. They don't have the CableCard HDTV capabilities which does bump the price up but I would argue that HD has yet to saturate the consumer market enough to make it a high enough priority for most consumers. HDTV Sales maybe soaring but consumer understanding of how to make use of them is lagging behind. That will change dramatically over the next few years though and I believe we will see much higher adoption.

3. "It still seems a bit weird to connect a PC to a TV" - I was doing this with my Apple //gs 20 years ago. It was weird then. It hasn't been weird for at least 3-5 years now and certainly is not weird today. Every major retailer has a Media Center PC's for sale and most have one connected to big TV's in their electronics departments or displaying recorded content on a demo machine in the PC department. Just because you have to go to an Apple store to see a Mac do it doesn't mean that PC's haven't been able to do this for 5 years now.

4. "Too many people assume a TV is just for watching TV and haven’t considered doing anything else on it. Sounds like the cell phone market before the iPhone, huh?" - I don't really want to comment on the whole iPhone thing but I have to. Scoble seems to suggest that prior to the release of the iPhone, the everyday cell phone user didn't use their cell phone for anything except making and receiving phone calls. The every day American cell phone user has been sending text messages, posting to blogs, listening to music and browsing the web with their phones for years. Maybe not with the same flash and overpriced device that the iPhone provides us, but we have been doing it. Go outside the US and cell phones are used for purchase transactions, watching TV, listening to the radio, gaming, authentication and identification. When considering TV's, Windows Media Center, MythTV and other similar products have allowed consumers to use their TV's as a picture editor and viewer, movie player, Internet browser, stereo, personal video recorder, digital picture frame and more for years. I will be the first to admit that the everyday consumer has been a little slow to get on the bandwagon but the products are out there and people are using them.

I have been using Windows Media Center since it was in beta for the 2004 edition. When I lived in the San Diego area I started with MCE 2004 and a couple of WinTV-250 analog tuner cards. I very quickly added an over-the-air HD tuner to add HD recording capabilities for the local channels. For a brief period in SoCal that machine would (usually on Thursday evenings) be recording 2 analog channels and an HD channel at the same time. That would all be taking place in the background while I was browsing the web, listening to music, viewing and editing pictures I had stored on the Media Center from my digital camera. I am not much of a gamer these days but i did play some Quake and other games back then all while the Media Center did it's thing in the background.

Now that I live in Redmond, WA I am on the wrong side of a hill to be able to get OTA HD broadcasts so I have relied on my cable-company's HD-PVR to record HD content. But I am very close to investing in a system similar to what Keith Comb's posted about recently. I wouldn't even be making this investment if it weren't for the fact that I am on the wrong side of the hill and my existing Media Center is the same one I started out with in SoCal. That 5 year old hardware is a little dated now and can easily be re-purposed in my house for some other use so I am looking to build a new Media Center system. I am looking to put together a dual CableCard tuner system and ditch my cable company's DVR box so I can reduce the amount of hardware in the living room.

Cheer

I am delivering Part 4 of an 8 Part series on Windows Server 2008 this morning. My session deals with some of the new AD features like Read Only Domain Controllers, Server Core, and some of the new infrastructure enhancements that have been introduced to Group Policy for Windows 2008.

You can Register Here

Webcast starts at 9:30am Pacific!  See ya there!

Cheers!

I was in Riverside, CA today delivering a Technet session on Unified Communications and Office Communication server. I like demoing with live production environments when I can and usually I use my servers at home. I don't have a PBX or OCS installed at home though so I have been using my UC number here at Microsoft and demoing all of the cool OCS Client features using my real account. I posted my work number on screen and had anyone in the audience who wanted to call go ahead and ring me. A few people took me up on the offer and called in. I answered a few of the calls, let some roll over to voice mail and even did a conference call back to some of the attendees. It was a cool demo and the audience liked it.

Unfortunately, I had some issues connecting to my Exchange server so I was unable to show the missed calls and voice mails roll into my inbox. They did make it though as the graphic below shows. (I cut out phone numbers to protect the innocent....). I wanted to make sure the audience could see how it looks when you can connect to Exchange and see the communications in the Inbox. Of the calls that came in, 22 of them were unique.

If you have not had a chance to see Microsoft Unified Communications in action, check out our UC Launch events and our Live Technet Briefings. I will be in Albuquerque and Phoenix doing some of these in two weeks.

Cheers!

I still have my cell phone number and have no intention of getting rid of it (yet) so feel free to continue reaching me via cell. I am also Unified Communications enabled and I am diving head first into using it as my primary communications method. So I am posting my UC number as well.

UC# - 425-705-8506    <---   Call this number first when trying to reach me

Cell - 425-647-3440     <---   The above number will be forwarded to my cell line most of the time. Call this one if the above flakes out.

Cheers!

You can grab it here... Exchange 2007 SP1 Download

***Update - provided a more reasonable URL***

Cheers!

I have had several people email about additional resources for the sessions we delivered in Redmond. We have a standard landing page for all sessions resources over at http://technetevents.com/resources. In fact, we have archived much of our content there since April of 2006. If you still need additional information, let me know!

Cheers!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.....more developery stuff.....

Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter

On November 29, 2007 Microsoft will be hosting Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter on the Redmond, Washington campus. This daylong event is free to anyone who wants to learn about designing and developing with Microsoft Silverlight 1.0.

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 is a cross platform browser plug-in that enables for easy development of media rich web sites. For more information, visit http://silverlight.net.

November 29, 2007
Microsoft Redmond Campus
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA
Building 33, Kodiak Room
** Please have a photo ID with you to register onsite and park

Check-in: 8:00 am
Event: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359153&Culture=en-US
or by calling 1-877-673-8368 and referencing Event ID 1032359153

AGENDA

8:00 am – 8:30 am - Breakfast

8:30 am – 9:00 am - Introduction to Silverlight - Mithun Dhar

9:00 am – 10:00 am - Getting Started with Silverlight - Laurence Moroney

10:00 am – 10:15 am - Break

10:15 am – 11:15 am - Microsoft Expression Design Tools - Arturo Toledo

11:15 am – 12:15 pm - XAML Essentials for Silverlight - Laurence Moroney

12:15 pm – 1:00 pm - Lunch

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm - Developer Tools for Silverlight - Adam Kinney

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm - Media, Markers and More - Ernie Booth

3:00 pm – 3:15 pm - Break

3:15 pm – 4:15 pm - Popfly and Silverlight – Writing a Silverlight ‘Social’ app - Popfly Team

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm - What will Silverlight look like in future versions? WPF - Ernie Booth

Post Event - Evening event with XBOX, networking and refreshments

Cheers!

Another question from a customer --

Do you have any info on locking a Mobile 5 device? Particularly the web access capabilities so that the client cannot access any web sites outside of the corporate network. Basically, protection against virus’s or infected attachments getting onto the device.

If this device is synching to an Exchange server, then whatever Exchange is configured to do for anti-spam, anti-malware, anti-virus applies to the mobile device. Since you are synching data that is already placed in the mailbox, anything preventative measures Exchange is configured to do will help protect the mobile device.

As for web-surfing, there is a little in the way of simple policy management at this time for Mobile devices. The big stumbling block here is that mobile devices don't authenticate against your domain so they don't get Group Policy applied to them. If you have a Windows Mobile 5 device that has the Message Security and Feature Pack installed or a Windows Mobile 6 device, Exchange 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2007 allow you to do some basic policy management. You will see additional improvements in this for Exchange 2007 SP1 which does add some features but nothing that allows for configuring what web sites a mobile device can or cannot access. 

You can read about some of the policy updates here –

New Client Access Features in Exchange 2007 SP1

If you want to read about all of the new features in Exchange 2007 SP1, check out this link –

What’s New in Exchange 2007 SP1

Cheers!

I have had a couple of requests lately for some good reference materials for SBS 2003. MS Press has a couple of books that are decent --

Small Business Server 2003 Administrator's Companion

Small Business Server 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion

If you really want to dig into SBS though, I would recommend picking up a few of the books by Harry Brelsford. He has been working with SBS since it's inception and knows SBS inside and out. You can get a listing of books by Harry on SBS over at his site --

http://www.smbnation.com/smb%20books.htm

One book by Harry that is not in his list but is excellent reading --

Small Business Server Start Kit -- Excellent if you are new to SBS

I have not read this book but I have seen a couple of promising reviews --

How to Cheat at managing Microsoft Small Business Server 2003

Also, a couple of SBS blogs to get subscribed to....

The Official SBS Blog (Microsoft)

EBitz - Susan Bradley (SBS Diva!)

Cheers!

I recently received the following question from a customer (and I have received this many times over the years)....

Do you happen to know if the command line FTP program in Windows 2000 Server supports Active and Passive FTP or just Active FTP?

The command Line FTP client for Windows 2000 does not support passive mode. For that matter we don't support passive mode with the built-in FTP.EXE in any of our Windows OSes. You can enable passive mode in IE though.

IE7 --

Tools --> Internet Options --> Advanced --> Locate "Use Passive FTP" in the "Browsing" section. Check this box.  You must also disable Folder View for browsing in IE for passive mode to function. Advanced --> Locate "Enable FTP Folder View". Uncheck this box.

Resources -

SlackSite - Good Definition of Active vs Passive

MOVEit Freely -- *FREE* Command line FTP utility that supports active/passive mode xfers

Microsoft KB Article 271078 -- Explains typical error you may see what attempting to use FTP and passive mode is required

Microsoft KB Article 323446 -- Microsoft article on configuring IE for Active/Passive Mode

Cheers!

We are going ahead with our afternoon events! The power has been up since 10am with no blinks so it appears we are good. Of course, I can't control if someone knocks out another transformer, but barring that, we are all set for ALL the 1p-5p events in Redmond.

Cheers!

The power just came back on! At this time we are planning to go ahead with the afternoon events. I would encourage you to check back to the blog or call my voice mail closer to 11am just to verify that we have not had any additional power issues.

cell - 425-647-3440

Cheers!

If you are reading this, you probably were impacted by the power outage we had (still have) in Redmond this morning. It is now 9:45a and the power is still out. The latest word is that power might be restored by 1-2pm.

After some discussion, we are now planning on waiting till 11am before making the call on the afternoon events. So check back to the blog or call my cell number @ 11am to find out of the afternoon events will go ahead as scheduled.

Cell - 425-647-3440

Cheers!

subtitled.....

"What the Hell?  Developer stuff on Chris' Blog?!?!?!?!?"

Yeah.....well I would love to avoid the developer stuff but in the interest of assisting people with their questions I am making my inaugural post with the "Tech Support" tag and about developery stuff...

Question from Email -- "I am sort of the guinea pig for Vista in our area.  We work with communications.  I don't have any sort of feeling as to how Microsoft has transitioned to 64-bit sockets.  I was wondering if you might be able to suggest some books or publications  or even Microsoft classes on socket programming with Vista?"

Answer -- Well. I don't have a clue about that stuff so I sent an email to some coder types I know to see what they could provide. Zain Naboulsi, one of our developer evangelists got back in touch with me and referred me to one of our forums that is specific to the WinSock Kernel API's. Zain pointed out there is an "Introduction & Guidelines - Winsock Kernel" guide at the top of the forum that is recommended reading.

I also did a few quick searches myself to see what I could blindly add to the mix....

MSDN Article - Developing Applications for 64bit Windows

MSDN Article - What's New for Windows Sockets

MSDN Article - Windows Sockets: Blocking 

Blog Site - Windows Core Networking blog

Reader....let me know if this get you going in the right direction!

Cheers!