Silicon Shecky

Infosec Practitioner

Connect

2008 and Vista SP2 now available

By Leave a Comment

So, after a long refreshing weekend, I”m back, and over the course of that weekend something interesting happened.

Service Pack 2 for Server 2008 and Vista was officially released. Now you might say, “Its only a service pack, what is the big deal?” The truth is, especially in this day and age, any Service Pack is a big deal. Not only does it roll up security updates that had been previously released, but it usually also has bug fixes, some new features, and a few other goodies inside it, plus it lays the groundwork for what is to come.

Especially with Vista, the Service Pack is a major thing. I have not read the release notes on it yet, but have heard that it does address a bunch of issues with Vista. I seriously recommend downloading it and testing it on non-production machines first though.

Thanks Microsoft

By Leave a Comment

So, in the midst of not writing too much this week, I’ve had a lot of headaches. Headaches that you can avoid.

Headache number one. Always do a daily check of backups. Make sure that everything including SQL databases are being backed up properly. If they aren’t, find a way to remedy that.

Headache number two, SQL 2005. Yes SQL works nicely, but when you have people who insist on using the Eval version past its 120 period, upgrading them to the full version is a pain. One that Microsoft can fix by not forcing an uninstall of the eval and install of the full version. Oh and double check all backups before you do the uninstall.

Headache number three, Windows updates and Symantec Endpoint. I have hit this one a few times this week, where Windows Update goes into a weird connection and install loop for a patch and can’t install it so keeps retrying to the point that Symantec Endpoint 11 things the server is under a DoS attack. Course this eventually led to other issues that required a reboot of the servers in question, so they worked properly again. Well two of them did, the third one led to…

Headache number 4, ease of finding information from Microsoft. Yes, Technet, and Google are nice items, but when one puts in a search about corrupted exchange log E00, you would think that you would get all the info or at least KB articles that offer solutions for it. This is not the case. It took about 100 different search strings along the exact same parameter, with a small change here, small change there to words or order, to finally find the missing step to bring back up a clients exchange information stores.

Yeah, its been a busy week, but at least there are lessons to be learned. The biggest one is that Microsoft is painful.

Windows 7 due out this year

By Leave a Comment

So at Tech-Ed yesterday, it was announced that Microsoft plans on releasing Windows 7 in time for the holiday season this year.

The question is what shape will it really be in, and will it be worth it. A lot of good has been said about Windows 7 since its beta came out. Requirements of systems are known also at this point, including needed a minimum of 1 GB or ram 2GB if you are going to use XPM.

Speaking of XPM you do need to make sure that your processor supports the hardware virtualization for it. Both AMD and Intel have software that will check your processor and let you know if it can support XPM.

As it is, one of the online DJs I know did his show from a Windows 7 machine last night, and running the software for DJing in XPM mode worked great for him, which does give some hope that  Microsoft got it right.