John Howard - Senior Program Manager in the Hyper-V team at Microsoft : Websites

Cleartype Tuner

jhoward — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:27:00 GMT

One of these always useful links to have - I just changed to a new laptop a couple of weeks before Christmas, and the default LCD display was somewhat fuzzy even with ClearType turned on. If you didn't know, you can use an online tool to optimise the cleartype settings here. There's also an XP Powertoy to achieve the same thing here available here. As it happens, (personally) I think the Toshiba M3 laptop display simply isn't in the same league when it comes to clarify as compared to my older Dell 5160. Both are running at their max resolution 1400x1050. Even after tuning the Tosh, although better, it's a long way from perfect. It's a real shame. And to top it all, I have the most annoying single "dead" pixel shining bright-green just off centre....

HMV Case Study

jhoward — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:51:00 GMT

There's an interesting case study recently published on the Microsoft UK web-site for HMV who are using Microsoft Technologies to support both their physical stores and online store. You can read more here.

(Just also noticed it was mentioned in the latest TechNet Flash email newsletter - to receive your copy, sign up here)

TechNet Magazine - you can now read it online for free.

jhoward — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 15:29:00 GMT

As I mentioned a little while ago, TechNet Magazine subscriptions were free (to US based people though). Although there's something in the pipeline to make the magazine available in the UK, the good news is that you can read the full content online now at www.technetmagazine.com. There's lots of great articles in the Nov issue. Interesting column also by Raymond Chen talking about the Shell Folders registry key too. Honestly, never knew that was why it exists!

Singularity Operating System - another use for virtualisation?

jhoward — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 13:16:00 GMT

I've always had an interest in Operating System internals, and have just finished reading the in-progress research document on a new operating system called "Singularity". The research work is being done by Microsoft Research, and the aim of this OS is to examine what a new operating system would look like if it took a fundamental design change to focus on reliability - if one process fails, it has no effect on other processes. To achieve that, they introduce the concept of SIPs or Software Isolated Processes with well-defined interfaces or channels between processes, including those of the core OS such as drivers for example.

One major effect on the isolation and trust between processes means that, on an x86 architecture, it is no longer necessary to run kernel mode in Ring 0 and user mode in Ring 3 - everything can run in Ring 0 without fear of bringing down the kernel from a user mode process. Think about the toll taken by context switching and the number of CPU cycles involved between Ring 0 and 3 - it is not insignificant. If this overhead is no longer there, although message passing across channels introduces another overhead, the net performance figures were surprising good, and that wasn't even with a finely tuned build. (Almost) all of the operating system is written in managed code (Sing#).

Anyway, made interesting reading - worth taking some time to take a look, even if it's highly unlikely to ever become a production released operating system. The home page of singularity is here. The research paper and the Channel 9 video are the links to follow.

Now why am I blogging this - when reading through, see if you can spot the references to where I think they used Microsoft Virtual Machine technology (ie Virtual Server or Virtual PC) to develop the OS. Drop me a comment if you spot it - two specific points around half way through the research paper made me think :-)

Online Labs

jhoward — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 11:13:00 GMT

Just got news in my inbox that all the US Virtual Labs for both Technet and MSDN are running on Virtual Server 2005 R2 which I thought was kind of cool.

If you haven't had a chance to play with the online labs - you should. There's lots of labs which get regularly refreshed, and more importantly take the stress out of having to build your own virtual environment to learn more about the technology. For example, on the TechNet virtual labs, most technologies are covered including ISA, SQL Server, MBSA, WSUS, Active Directory, SMS, Live Communication Server, RMS... and the list just keeps going. For developers, worth checking the MSDN virtual lab site too.

Get TechNet Plus for half price

jhoward — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 17:09:00 GMT

Thought you'd like this one if you live in the UK at least. Check out this page on microsoft.com, where there is a huge pricing discount for TechNet Plus subscriptions. If you purchase TechNet Plus directly through that site (ie not through a partner) from now until the end of the year, there is close to a 50% reduction in costs. This means, for example, a years TechNet Plus Single User subscription comes in something like £270. If it wasn't for the fact I work at Microsoft, I'd consider buying this myself, and I'm honestly not just saying that because I work at Microsoft. I'm not, and never will be, a salesman, just a techie :-). With the full evaluation software included in the subscription, including beta's of the Windows Vista client and server operating systems and servers, it really seems to me to be excellent value for evaluation and testing.

Cheaper Windows Server solution for mid-sized businesses

jhoward — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 09:44:00 GMT

Just noticed a promotional combination offer running in the UK for a Windows Server System Solution aimed at mid-sized businesses, combining a number of core technology components including Window Server 2003 Standard Edition, Exchange 2003 Standard Edition and MOM 2005 Workgroup Edition.

The good part about this offer is that it includes 50 new combination promotional CALs at approx 20% less that Open Licence programmes prices. :-)

For more info, take a look here.

Proxy server configuration

jhoward — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 15:38:00 GMT

Always a co-incidence. I was writing a script a few days ago which essentially is a Technorati "pinger" for blog updates. I was writing it at home, and it was working fine. I forwarded it to a few colleagues, and wasn't expecting them to tell me that while they were physically on the Microsoft corpnet, it didn't work. The reason was simple - it just required a tweak to ensure the proxy was configured correctly. However, I just ran across this KB article for a completely different reason when investigating proxy configuration for the Windows Update client. Interesting reading and worth knowing.

TechNet improvements

jhoward — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 12:22:00 GMT

Just came across this yesterday. If you are a TechNet subscriber, changes to the online site have been made which makes organising your subscription much easier through the introduction of the TechNet indexes. You can find this at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/index.

In this Septembers shipment, you get an offline version of the indexes. The index allows you to easily search for products in the subscription to locate which disc it is on by Full Text, by disc number or by part number.

Business Desktop Deployment

jhoward — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 18:18:00 GMT

I was following up a couple of queries with people about desktop deployment last week, and noticed that the Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment was updated a few weeks ago to version 2.5. Rather than re-gurgitate info that other people have already been more on the ball about, take a look at these links for more detail: here and here. If you want to go straight to the microsoft.com to view, here's the link.

Edit VHD, VUD and VFD files directly

jhoward — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:26:00 GMT

Gilles Vollant of WinImage fame contacted me a few weeks ago to have a look at the latest beta of WinImage. I've been playing with it for a while now and it's been acting flawlessly. Why would this be of particular interest to me? One very good reason - the beta supports mounting VHD (Virtual Hard Disk), VUD (Virtual Undo Drives) and VFD (Virtual Floppy Disk) files. The VHD file format is available under license, and I'm guessing that this beta is using that interface to support that capability? If you're lucky enough to work at Microsoft, you have a raft of internal tools at your fingertips. One of these allows you to mount a VHD file directly as a disk on the host. It uses a device driver to do this, but unfortunately I've never been able to get it to work under Windows Server 2003 which I run on my laptop. Great under XP though. Hence, for me there's always been an option to boot into XP and mount VHDs, alter them accordingly and not need to boot the Virtual Machine itself.

Although WinImage doesn't expose the VHD as a drive in that way, I can still add/delete files & folders from within it's interface, including drag-and-drop. For me, one less reason to have to boot back to my spare XP partition - the WinImage beta runs fine under Windows Server 2003 for me. Great stuff - really useful and has a raft of other formats it supports and other useful functionality. Now for that cold patching capability I alluded to a few months ago. Please, somebody :-)

Please remember that the version of WinImage I'm using is still a beta - I've only been testing it out on copies of VHDs, not masters. Be safe out there!

Vista Beta 1 Internet Explorer 7 problems with some sites

jhoward — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 11:21:00 GMT

This is fairly well publicised if you look around the Internet, but not in a single place that I could find. Hence, more for my own reference once I blow this beta build away, I'll want to get back to where I am. Certain sites don't recognise IE7 in the User Agent detection coding, and you may need to apply a few changes to make it work. Take a look at http://www.fiddlertool.com/useragent.aspx for some scripts to change IE7 to switch between IE6 and IE7 mode, and to see what your browser is exposing. Also, have a look at the IE teams great blog for more information about this topic.

Windows Genuine Advantage

jhoward — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:33:00 GMT

You may have noticed, if you've been downloading anything recently from microsoft.com, that with the exception of security updates, you now have to install an ActiveX control. Windows Genuine Advantage went live on 25th July after some 10 months of beta use as a global anti-piracy initiative. If you want to know why this is being enforced and what this is about, have a read-up on the presspass site here.

Security management column

jhoward — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 12:00:00 GMT

Jeffrey R. Jones, the Director of the Microsoft Security Business Unit has recently completed the fourth and final part of his column on Security Management. It makes interesting reading and worth a spare 15 minutes for a scan through....

Part one discusses Windows, Linux and Security Notifications
Part two discusses when an issue affects multiple products
Part three discusses patching
Part four discusses security management.

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IT Forum 2005 - Barcelona

jhoward — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 11:01:00 GMT

The Microsoft IT Forum 2005 web-site is now live to take registrations. The agenda is being formulated now and will be going live in the next few weeks. This is a major event for IT Professionals in Europe (or even further in many cases) with many high-profile speakers, plus an optional full day of in-depth pre-conference on Monday 14th November. Many more details to follow soon, but there will be (approx) 175 breakout sessions, 125 chalk and talk sessions, several panel discussions plus, of course, loads of hands on or instructor led labs. For now, here's the structure of the core tracks:

Microsoft Business Solutions
Messaging & Mobility
Data Management
Management & Operations
Connected Systems Infrastructure
Identity & Access Management
Office System
Windows Client
Security
Core Infrastructure

I'm the "track owner" for the Core Infrastructure track and am now putting together a great set of sessions for that track.

So now your part.... If you plan on attending and have a "must see" session under Core Infrastructure (eg Windows Server 2003, R2, Virtual Server, Longhorn Server, Storage etc), let me know pronto - most of the decisions will be made in the next 10 days! Click the banner to find out more information, including registration information and early-bird discounts. I look forward to seeing you there!