I am probably the last Microsoft blogger to actually get round to writing something about this… but hey, I have been busy! Microsoft recently released to the public their free anti-virus solution, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). I had been trialling the beta versions for a few months on a Windows...

A very common request that clients make when starting a Windows deployment project is that we must reliably and accurately demonstrate that Windows Vista or Windows 7 is worth upgrading to from Windows XP, especially if the purchase of new hardware is not part of the project; often, and logically, clients...

A Knowledge Base (KB) article and related software update was released on the May 20th 2008 that seems to have gone fairly unnoticed by quite a few people.  The article ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952830 ) is rather vaguely titled "Description of Windows Script 5.7 for Windows XP"...

The new Task Scheduler functionality that was introduced with Windows Vista is superb, it knocks spots off what Windows XP ever had; my favourite feature is the ability to fire a task if a certain event is logged in the Windows Eventlog, which is great because it opens up all sorts of possibilities....

How often have you had an error pop up in a dialog box full of useful error numbers, filenames, return codes, and plenty of other stuff, only to start cursing because you could not get a hold of the text content of the dialog box?  Normally people resort to a screengrab of the error box but the...

To install a Windows Live product(s) you need to download and install the WLInstaller.exe file, which is a rolled-up package of all the Windows Live services.  You run the installer and then you can choose the components that you want to install from the main screen.  This is a great way to...

By default, Windows XP downloads and installs updates from Windows Update nightly at 3 a.m; why did Microsoft choose 3 a.m.? I mean, the average user does not have their computer on that that time of day so it seems a rather bizarre default setting to to choose to me. The reason I am blogging about this...

Ever wanted to install/uninstall/enable/disable various Windows components automatically during installation or deployment? I have compiled this list from various sources which lets you easily do just that! You simply add the whole list to either your unattend.txt file or your sysprep.inf file and change...

Ever wanted to create a 'junction point' style pointer but using a network drive as the source? Now you can! With Windows XP you can create junction points on your disks but the prerequisite is that the source point is on your local disk. This is no good if you need to create the junction point that...