Have you ever had unexplained blue screens or indecipherable hex error codes when using Windows? Well of course, we all have! Now here's an opportunity to find out what happening with your system and how to sort it out. Mark Russinovitch is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft corp and the link below is a video of Mark showing how you can find root causes to unexplained error messages. It's about 70 minutes long but well worth the time investment.

http://www.microsoft.com/emea/spotlight/sessionh.aspx?videoid=722

Spring is almost upon us and here at Microsoft Ireland we're getting ready to launch the latest versions of our key server  products:  Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 .

To celebrate the launch of the products we will be holding launch events in Northern  Ireland and the Republic of Ireland  culminating in our high-energy  product showcase event in Tripod in Dublin on Tuesday 11^th March 2008.

At the event you will be brought through a 2 hour experience which includes an introduction of the three products and a tour where you can observe and engage with product demos and gather information on your own area of interest.

The venue will be divided up into various sections covering the complete  range of topics in which the products have been designed to excel: virtualisation; web development and hosting; security;  ease of deployment and management; business intelligence; and much more.

There are three 2-hour showcase sessions to choose from throughout the day.

• 12.00-14.00
• 15.00-17.00
• 18.00-20.00

Best of all, come to the showcase and  you will leave with a promotional kit that includes product licences for Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to let you play with the products in your own time. 

Visit http://www.microsoft.ie/launch2008/  to register! 

Interest is expected to be high so register now to avoid disappointment!

For further information on other launch events around the country, visit www.microsoft.ie/launch2008.  

The feature complete February CTP for SQL Server 2008 is now available for download. This is the first CTP to deliver all the key functionality thta's planned for the final release. Three key areas that we've made big enhancements on are:-

• Data Compression, which reduces the storage and manageability cost of your database and provides significant performance improvements for workloads such as data warehousing.
• Enhancements to Policy Based Management, including policy violation alerts, policy import, the ability to run and evaluate multiple simultaneous policies, view the facets and evaluate policies when Object Explorer is connected to Analysis Services and Reporting Services, and more.
• Integrated Full Text Search, which makes the transition between Full-Text Search and relational data seamless while enabling the use of full-text indexes to perform high-speed text searches on large text columns.

More than 100,000 users have already registered for the community technology programme so if you'd like to join in and try it for yourself visit the link below.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2008/prodinfo/download.mspx

Join the Quest field experts in Dublin on 13 March to find out how Quest Active Directory solutions are helping customers from small businesses to enterprises of over 400K users across all sectors secure, automate and manage their AD better than ever before.

With over 7,000 organisations using Quest AD solutions software to protect and manage over 45 million Active Directory accounts, Quest Software is the leader in Active Directory Management worldwide as cited by Forrester Research, Inc.

• User Management Provisioning and Roles
• Group Policy Management
• Password Management & User Self Service
• Troubleshooting & Recovery
• Auditing & Reporting
• Extending AD to non-windows platforms such as Unix and Linux
• Security enhancement through two-factor methods

To register - visit:-

http://www.quest.com/events/listdetails.aspx?contentid=6796&technology=&prod=&prodfamily=&loc

Two of the three sessions are now full - register quickly to claim a place in the last remaining session.

Date: Tuesday, 11th March 2008

Venue: Tripod, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2

Time: There are three sessions to choose from:

12.00-14.00 NOW FULL
15.00-17.00 Register Now!
18.00-20.00 NOW FULL

At the event you will be brought through a 2 hour experience which includes an introduction of the three
products and a tour where you can observe demos and gather information on your specific areas of interest.
The venue will be divided up into various areas covering a broad range of topics across the three products.

Best of all, you will leave with a promotional kit that includes product licences for Windows Server 2008,
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 .

Visit www.microsoft.ie/launch2008 for further information on community events, new products, local stories on launch and the Launch Experience 2008 – also watch this space for information on launch event in Belfast on
April 8th.

This release has an updated "first-run" experience and no longer requires Windows Genuine validation. Because the installation package has been updated, this release has a different WSUS package ID than the original Windows Internet Explorer 7 package.

If you use WSUS, you may need to take action even if you have previously declined Windows Internet Explorer 7. If you have configured WSUS to "auto-approve" packages marked as an Update Rollup for installation, Windows Internet Explorer 7 will be automatically approved for installation.

Action Required

Microsoft understands that some enterprise customers use the WSUS channel to keep certain desktops current with the latest security and reliability updates, and that IT administrators may wish to postpone deployment of IE7 in such environments. To help minimize disruption, you should review the Knowledge Base article 946202 "Windows Internet Explorer 7 to be distributed via WSUS February 12, 2008", which outlines the steps to take in order to manage how and when Internet Explorer 7 is installed.  

You will need to take action if you:

• Use WSUS to manage updates in your environment.
• Have Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) based computers or Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) based computers that currently have Internet Explorer 6 installed.
• Do not want to upgrade Internet Explorer 6 machines to Windows Internet Explorer 7 at this time.
• Have configured WSUS to auto-approve Update Rollups for installation.

Note: As previously communicated, the Internet Explorer 7 Blocker Toolkit is designed for Automatic Updates only and therefore will not block WSUS updates (see Internet Explorer 7 Blocker FAQ). 

Additional InformationThe following links provide additional information you may find useful. 

Internet Explorer 7 via WSUS

• Knowledge Base article 946202 - "Windows Internet Explorer 7 to be distributed via WSUS February 12, 2008" (KB 946202) - outlines distribution and steps you should take to manage your Internet Explorer 7 roll out
• Microsoft Manageability Team Blog post - WSUS distribution summary
• WSUS Team Blog post - general guidance on managing approval of updates in WSUS
• TechNet Internet Explorer Center - resources for IT Professionals including IE7 Deployment Guide, IE Administration Kit, and Readiness Toolkit

Update Management Solutions

• TechNet Update Management Center
• Comparing MBSA, MU, WSUS, and SMS 2003

• Windows Server Update Services
• Systems Management Server 2003

If you're thinking about (or have already started) deploying  Windows Vista or 2007 Office System in your organisation, you should check out this free deployment guidance event in Dublin on February 25th -

You can register here:-

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032367886&Culture=en-IE

The upcoming Vista SP1 brings enhancements in security, performance and reliability. Since Vista launch, enhancements have been delivered over Windows Update and by the partner community. Today, 10-times more applications have ‘certified’ or ‘works with’ Windows Vista Logos than at launch and there is support for an additional 700K devices – making it the most supported OS ever. Read the WhitePaper and download SP1 update (technet subscribers).

Stuck in traffic on your commute everyday? I spend a full day on the M50 every week going nowhere fast. There's only so much radio you can listen to! I've tried learning chinese - I've even listened to Wikinomics on audio book. I had a great idea then that if only we could produce technical audio casts that you could listen when you were stuck in traffic - you could keep up to date and get the most out of the commute deadtime! Great idea that unfortunately someone at MS already had before me (forget about the early retirement plans!).

TechNet Radio is a series of audio casts that you can download from the Technet Site -  unlike the audio streams of webcasts, they're designed to be listened to and not viewed so there are no references to PowerPoint slides that you can't see.  In fact most of them take the form of an interview with an expert on whatever the topic is: currently they're running a series on mobility. We're planning to do one or two of these locally so if anyone has any topics they'd like to hear - let me know.

You can check it out for yourself at:-

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ie/bb510143(en-us).aspx