What is BitLocker? BitLocker lets you encrypt the hard drive(s) on your Windows 7 and Vista Enterprise, Windows 7 and Vista Ultimate or Windows Server 2008 and R2. BitLocker will not encrypt hard drives for Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows 2003. Only...

When you install Server 2008 R2 (or Windows 7) to a fresh partition, sometimes you’ll receive the following message: Then, after installation, when you inspect the disk configuration in Disk Management, you see this partition named System Reserved...

Q: (from Mandi) I was reviewing the EAP licensing slide deck and I need to understand exactly how the program works to make sure that we are capturing the correct licensing capabilities and are giving the customer accurate license usage counts and consumptions...

In an announcement today regarding the future of our MidMarket Server Suite, Essentials Business Server, the future development of the product will be discontinued as of June 2010. For those Partners serving the SMB market, your favorite server for the...

Windows Server 2008 R2 includes new features that require a schema upgrade. You do not have to upgrade your schema if you want to run Windows Server 2008 R2 in your environment, but you do need to upgrade your schema if you want to leverage the new functionality...

I've already talked about how to eliminate UAC for a stand alone Vista machine, now I am going to show you how to set a domain Group Policy to eliminate UAC for all of your Vista workstations. My original post is here . I apologize for the delay in getting...

Q: (from Alysia) I met you when you spoke at an event for the Chamber of Commerce late last year.  I briefly announced that we planned to host a Social Media series this year and you were kind enough to mention that a former colleague of yours was...

Q: (from Michael) I am a gold partner with the Virtualization Solutions competency. We are working on several server consolidation opportunities and want to enhance our profile in the area as an infrastructure solutions provider by putting together an...

This is great news for people that do not have Hardware Assisted Virtualization (HAV) available in their machines. When we released XP Mode, we said that it required HAV, we’ve now released an update that provides XP Mode functionality on non-HAV ready...

Q: (from Barbara) Our company is planning to host a Window 7 Seminar for clients in April. The first need I have is for postcard that we can send out about our event. I have found one on the MS  website but it is a PDF copy and needs to modified...

Q: (from Stacey) We have a customer who has an Exchange migration project coming up.  He has (2) Software Assurance vouchers, each for 1 day.  I looked on the Microsoft site & it looks like you have to be a Packaged Service Provider &...

Q: (from Gail) Do you know what the specific vouchers are that a partner gets with SA? A: There are two types of vouchers: training and deployment planning. My starting point for details on those benefits is the SA Benefits PDF: Software Assurance Benefits...

Q: (from Suzanne) With discontinuing this product, do we have a factsheet or something we can give to partners who have actively been selling this product? A: http://www.microsoft.com/ebs/en/us/faq.aspx One of the REALLY important tid bits… “Beginning...

Windows Phone 7 Series holds a promise to be an amazing personal mobile phone with new innovative user interface and functionality , as well as a great development platform on which you can quickly and easily build games and applications. With a myriad...

Most of you already know that in this age of the Secure Computing Initiative (aka Secure Development Lifecycle) at Microsoft that we actually have made tremendous strides in providing not only more secure software but more robust software as well. ...

Technorati Tags: Windows Foundation Server , SBS As most of you know, I seldom do the standard “cut-paste” thing for this blog and like to at least put my own spin around things, but this is something I ran across (the Q&A section below) that I think...

This is a repeat of one of my posts from January on the old TS2 blog, but I thought it was worthy of a re-post.  And you know platform security is one of my favorite subjects. Does Microsoft Look For Vulnerabilities in Their Own Products? Well, if...

For those of you who are Microsoft technology certified already, or for those who are thinking about the value of adding technology certifications to your portfolio of industry acumen, there WILL be exams (to use a variation on the movie title phrase...

Microsoft Wave No this isn’t our “Wave 14” 2010 products but in it’s own way it’s just as cool.  Also, you hear about some other companies that seem to get all the “innovation” credit and buzz, but Microsoft spent over $9b last year on research and...

Today we released an Out of Band security fix for Internet Explorer. This fix covers IE 6, 7 & 8 and it is a critical fix . We don’t release normal fixes Out of Band and we recognize how difficult it is for our partners and customers to react to a...

Q: (from Matt) I have a very quick question about the downgrade from Windows 7 Pro to Xp Pro. Would I as an OEM have to take Xp from my stock as well as Windows 7, and give them both to a customer? My client wants to use windows Xp on their network and...

We have a page that lists our supported OS’ under Hyper-V here . This is where I need to explain the difference between supported and Yes it works . Supported means that we will help troubleshoot and maybe even provide fixes if there are issues with a...

As you’ve already read , we’ve renamed Terminal Services to Remote Desktop Services (RDS) in Windows Server 2008 R2. RDS also gives us the ability to leverage Aero Glass from a Remote Desktop Connection. This is a multi-step process, but there are really...

Almost every mobile computer that is currently shipping has a Fingerprint Reader on it. How convenient... I've had a lot of customers get excited about the convenience of no more passwords when they think that a finger will do. Well personally, I give...

We've already talked about BitLocker, but I wanted to provide an overview of the other encryption solutions for Windows Vista, Windows XP and Server 2003 / 2008. If there's interest, I'll drill into more detail on any / all of these, so please let me...