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I’m a big fan of Windows Media Center from Microsoft, below I will share my story on how my media center has been configured. I have spent the last couple of months on tuning my media center, so it could be the center of entertainment and TV in the family, as well as reasonable WAF-accepted.

Read more…

The announced ASP.NET vulnerability (Microsoft Security Advisory (2416728) from Microsoft is also affecting Exchange Server. The Exchange Team has tested the patch for this vulnerability and has approved it and it’s recommended to apply this to your Exchange servers as soon as possible.

The Exchange Server team has completed validation of this fix against Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, 2007 and 2003 and we are pleased to report that we have not identified any issues related to the application of this patch on an Exchange Server.

We recommend that Exchange customers consider applying this fix to all of their Exchange Servers which have an affected version of ASP.NET installed on the underlying Operating System in a timely manner to help protect against any attempts to exploit this vulnerability within their environment.

Details of the fix and its application, along with download links can be found here:
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-070 – Important: Vulnerability in ASP.NET Could Allow Information Disclosure (2418042)

For more information and direct download links, read Scott Guthrie’s blog post: ASP.NET Security Update Now Available

The Core Configurator is a CodePlex project that can be used to administer Windows 2008 R2 Server Core installations.

It is completely open source so it can be amended and change to fit your requirements, this version has been a year in the making and has been written in powershell with a reference to Winforms so that a GUI format is displayed.

It’s a small application that you can either copy to the server or else run from a USB stick or network drive.

Get the great little tool here.

Couldn’t resist anymore, I’ve bought myself a Fujitsu Scaleo Home Server based on Windows Home Server. The server is the 2. generation WHS from Fujitsu and it was just to cheap (approx 360$) to resist anymore, apparently Fujitsu has dumped their prices this spring with like 50%.

I like the idea of having the homeserver handling backup of my PCs and the integration to my Mediacenter, especially now with Power Pack 2 for WHS.

Specs of the Fujitsu Scaleo 2105 is:

• Intel® Celeron® 420 processor2 (1.6 GHz, 512 KB, L2 Cache)
• 2 Gb memory
• 2 x 500GB harddrives

Official data sheet.

Experience so far… It’s very quiet, not a single noise from it.

If you are like me and you use Groove 2007 and also have several partitions on your disk, I use a smaller partition for the OS and another one for data etc.

I’ve found a great guide on how to relocate your Groove 2007 data files to another disk and it works for Groove 2007 in Windows Vista.

Read the full guide: How to relocate your Groove 2007 files to another disk

Looking for ADSIEdit on a Windows Server 2008 ?

In previous versions of Windows, you installed ADSIedit and the other Windows Support Tools from the server installation media.

The Windows Support Tools are now included in the RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) and can be installed as features in Windows Server 2008. 

ADSIedit is part of the Active Directory Domain Controller Tools feature, and can be added by following these steps:

1. In Server Manager, click on Features, then Add Features in the right pane
2. Expand Remote Server Administration Tools –> Role Administration Tools –> Active Directory Domain Services Tools
3. Put a check next to Active Directory Domain Controller Tools
4. Click Next, then Install

A new blog has gone live, the new blog “Engineering Windows 7” is hosted by Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky. Jon and Steven, along with members of the Windows 7 engineering team will post, comment, and participate in this new blog about the upcoming Windows 7.

Read the new blog here.

Ever had those drivers or devices that just won’t go away even though you’re sure you’ve uninstalled them. Could be a netword card that was replaced and you keep getting warnings that the system insists there is still an adapter installed with the same IP address.

To get rid of unwanted drivers, devices:

1. Open the “Start” menu and choose “Run…”
2. Type “cmd” and press enter
3. At the command prompt, type:
   “set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1”
   and press enter (nothing happens here, which is ok. we just set an environment variable, which enables us to see hidden devices in Device Manager)
4. In the open “cmd” type “devmgmt.msc” and press enter (This will launch the Device Manager Console)
5. In the Device Manager Console, select “Show Hidden Devices” from the “View” menu
6. Expand the various branches in the device tree (e.g. Network Adapters) and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers
7. To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall

Be careful though, you should note that non-loaded devices and drivers are “grayed” out, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should delete all of them. It’s recommended to only remove items you know you don’t need. Be careful that you don’t change too many devices or you might need to re-activate your Windows installation.

If you accidentally exit the Device Manager Console you will need to start over again at the command prompt.