Can't wait to get home tonight..... just saw a pointer to this download on microsoft.com which is an addin for Windows Desktop Search, supported on Windows Vista which provides indexing capability for network shares. Given I've got hundreds of GB of data sitting on network shares which I'm regularly...

This week has been a little strained, hence quiet on the blogging front. Apart from a hectic week at work (more to follow on that shortly), the reason was a "disaster" which happened late last Sunday evening - everything was working at home one moment, and dead the next. Since the move over from the...

Here's a tip I learnt a couple of months ago and meant to post up before - totally forgot. Maybe it's force of habit, but rather than opening a new instance Internet Explorer, going to the address bar and typing in a web page, it's quicker to do start/run (ie Windows+R) www.microsoft.com instead. No...

One of those oddities I discovered a couple of days ago after trying to tune down my IIS box which is configured with a static IP address. I stopped the DHCP Client service as I figured (incorrectly) that it wouldn't be needed due to not using DHCP for that server. I didn't notice a problem until I tried...

I received an email from David Solomon - author of Windows Internals this morning. By amazing coincidence, I happened to have a copy of it open and reading it just as the email came in. David & his colleage, Mark Russinovich regularly give courses to folks in the Windows Core OS Division here in...

Just thought it was worth mentioning this - another "R2" joins the fold, hot on the heals of Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Windows Server 2003 R2. This time it's SMS which gets a refresh. SMS isn't really a product I can hold my hand up and say I know well, but I'm installing the R2 beta in a virtual machine...

I was on the train a few days ago and ended up chatting to some guy (apologies, I'm terrible with names) about stuff which inevitably deviated into technology - of course we got to the bit when I mentioned I worked for Microsoft. His relatively small company continues to run Windows Professional 2000...

There's often those situations where you need to clear read-only attributes from a directory tree in bulk. In the past, having been a command line junkie and developer, I've used the attrib command with the /S parameter to include sub-directories as I've invariably had three or four command prompts open...

I thought this was a good time to remind you - if you've been waiting for Windows Server 2003 R2, there really isn't much longer to wait. From February, Windows Server 2003 R2 will be on the Volume Licence price list, in Select and MSDN disk shipments and also available through OEM/Retail/Channel Partners...

For those of you who were unable to attend IT Forum 2005 in November, a quick reminder that there are two full-day events re-running some of the most popular content. This will be held on the Microsoft Campus in Reading. The registration links are below - I know they are close to filling up, but if you...

Yesterday, I finally got round to plugging the new disks I bought back from Seattle into one of my servers which is destined to become a main file server at home. I have one share containing around 60GB of data and used the new DFS-N and DFS-R capability in Windows Server 2003 R2 to copy the data from...

Thought this was worth sharing as it came up on an internal discussion a few days ago. To find out more about FSRM in Windows Server 2003 R2, take a look here . Questions were being asked like, if a user kicked of a robocopy, for example, copying thousands of files all of which fail screening/quotas...

Although I have a fair few ideas as to mini-projects to complete over the Christmas & New Year holiday, it will probably come as no surprise to many of you that there is always the possibility that family will get in the way ;) On the assumption that I can find enough excuses, one thing I've prepped...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. The final part to the RPC/HTTPS series shows you how to alter the configuration we have such that Outlook 2003 can move seamlessly between external and internal connectivity through the use of integrated authentication. To do this, we need...

A few other queries have been filtering through since Windows Server 2003 R2 went "RTM" last week. One such query relates to whether the Print Management Console in Windows Server 2003 R2 can only manage printers which are on print servers running Windows Server 2003 R2. This is not the case. Only the...

I've been doing a few technical interviews in the UK of late, and anyone who mentions Active Directory on their CV usually gets this question - which is the most important FSMO role? In fact, there's a second part to the question - why? There wasn't any particular point to the question, however even...

Common question I've seen raised a few times recently. Can you use Windows Server 2003 R2 either as a guest or a host for Virtual Server 2005 R2? Yes, absolutely. Remember Windows Server 2003 R2 is simply Windows Server 2003 SP1 with additional functionality on top. The underlying kernel is unchanged...

Another question asked on Wednesday evening's Intro to R2 event was about the blob size limitation in Domain Based (ie Active Directory integrated) DFS-Namespaces. Has it changed since Windows Server 2003 SP1? The answer is no, the same limits apply. The recommendation is for around 5,000 links and the...

I've had several emails today following last nights TechNet event - an Introduction to Windows Server 2003 R2. The most popular question by far is how can people get hold of it? The answer is on microsoft.com, where you can either register to receive an evaluation CD set or register to download (but...

Just realised I hadn't posted up info about this one before. With Windows Server 2003 R2 "RTM'ing" (Releasing To Manufacture) today, I'll be co-presenting a TechNet event, "An Introduction to Windows Server 2003 R2" with Samm DiStasio, Director of Windows Server Product Marketing Group based in Redmond...

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it. The last part of this mini series is where we setup the networking on the Virtual Machine guest we...

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it. In part 3, the new cluster group for the virtual machine was created. In the penultimate part of this...

Continuing the blogcast series on infrastructure essentials. In the last part, forms based authentication for Outlook Web Access was back running again, bouncing through the localhost listener. In this part, we put RPC/HTTP back into place. We create a publishing rule for the Exchange Virtual Directory...

If you watched the demonstration blogcast of Virtual Server 2005 R2 I posted up at the weekend, yesterday, I ripped the environment apart to build it again from scratch so you can see how I built it. Part 2 of 5 performs a similar configuration to what we did in the previous part on Node 1, but on...

With Virtual Server 2005 R2 just a few days away from public availability, many of you will want to know more about Host Clustering - a new capability supported with this release - what better way to find out than with a live on-demand demonstration, so read on.... Some of you may have been fortunate...