joeware - never stop exploring...

Just one reason I tell people that virtualization of Domain Controllers in production scares me… This is a post from one of the Microsoft newsgroups. As more and more people move to virtualizing their DCs I expect to see more and more of this.
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windows.server.active_directory
Hi,
Due to a VMWare problem the local [...]

This is pretty darn creative…
http://www.damnfunnypictures.com/html/Anime-Girl-Casemod.html

I received this email previously but I just happened to stumble on it this evening when trying to clean my inbox[1]. It made me chuckle. I have to hand it to the guy for having the stones to write me and ask me to start charging for one of my utilities and being honest in why he wants [...]

I was combing through the newsgroups looking for folks in need of assistance and I ran into a relatively interesting problem:
I updated our recipient policy in Exchange 2003 to add a new SMTP domain name to everyone’s mailbox, it all looked great until I noticed it added the domain to our custom contacts in the [...]

Back in 1969/1970 Dr. Laurence J. Peter  wrote what is obvious to anyone who has ever worked in a large company or government or military…
“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his (her) level of incompetence.”

Have you ever seen a person who was amazing when they were at previous lower level and went down hill (maybe [...]

You may recall the previous blog entries
http://blog.joeware.net/2005/06/12/36/
http://blog.joeware.net/2005/06/12/38/
about the new ACL that appeared in Windows Server 2003 SP1… The one that locks down who can work with the service control manager, like for instance enumerate services, etc. This problem impacts the Exchange tools as well as monitoring, etc many folks have set up.
Well another MVP [...]

I forgot to announce an update that occurred to AdMod back on Nov 6. It is a typo fix, new version is V01.08.02.
Also AdFind has been V01.34.00 uploaded this evening. There is a bug fix for a very specific issue with filtered security descriptor CSV output. Also I added the -qlist, -onlysacl, and -onlydacl options. I was [...]

If you are an MSDN Subscriber (not just the library…) then Office 2007 is now available to you for download. It went up yesterday I believe but I wanted to download it before I told anyone. ;) 
BTW, the site is still downloading quickly…

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is…

It means that Jim Allchin is very close to retiring…
That is a sad thing in my eyes, Jim is an amazing person and I believe Windows will change considerably without him and not necessarily for the better. Jim is an executive management level person who outgeeks most tech level people and gives geeks a [...]

Josh Ledgard blogged about some internal softie experiences in getting a QFE… It cracked me up…
http://blogs.msdn.com/jledgard/archive/2006/08/28/how-hard-is-it-to-get-a-hot-fix-from-microsoft-it-s-not-easy-online.aspx

Some interesting points…
1. With his choice of search key words Google took him directly to his KB article, Microsoft’s own live search didn’t…
2. This quote which I wholeheartedly and completely agree with
When are we going to realize that [...]

Not sure how this slipped by me, it isn’t like I am following the NET stuff all that closely but I expect I will hear about the bigger things usually… Anyway, the 3.0 version of the NET Framework is now available. I have no clue what they did for it but I hope they fixed [...]

I was perusing the newsgroups this evening and ran across someone with a “case” issue with logon names in Active Directory. It seems some software he was using required a specific case[1]. Well AD doesn’t case about case… at all. However this person was having a problem changing the case. I looked at it and [...]

Do you have PSTs that have duplicate emails in them? I certainly do, well sometimes do… I have a habit of backing up a lot of my files across my various PCs and this gets messy for PST files because Microsoft Outlook isn’t intelligent to properly merge PSTs, it just keeps everything. Quite annoying actually…
So anyway, [...]

http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2006/11/08/it-s-time.aspx

As I have mentioned previously, CPAU is an app that I have on the joeware site that is amazingly popular but not something that really excites me and isn’t one the utilities that I really love. It was just sort of something I whipped up to help myself in a couple of cases with a bunch [...]

You will have noticed the previous two posts were about Vista changes. Why did I post them? Well because I am actually FINALLY forcing myself to really dig into it and understand how it impacts joeware. Honestly I should have spent considerable time on this before but I will use the excuse of being far [...]

If you manage, integrate, or develop code for Windows PCs in a business environment; you will want to read this document I am linking to below. I am not sure if it is at 100% yet as there were a couple of things mentioned that I don’t believe were correct, but it should be required reading [...]

Microsoft Standard User Analyzer - This tool will help you identify issues in programs that make it so an application can’t run as a normal user. Very detailed. This was floating around for some time, I recall seeing one of the early revs of this tool several years ago at a special Microsoft Security MVP summit and we [...]

Is likely going to kill us for future IT support. Well at least those of us in the US, Canada, Germany, UK, and other Western Europe countries.
Right now we seem to be in a phase where we are shipping low end tech positions to India or Costa Rica or Mexico or various not so well to do [...]

Gary Olsen wrote a very good, IMO, article on virtualizing domain controllers for SearchWinIT / TechTarget. You can see it here
http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid1_gci1227204,00.html?track=NL-118&ad=568999&asrc=EM_NLN_693996&uid=320601
He touches on a lot of the points and pitfalls around doing this…
In general, I am not for virtualizing DCs in production except in very specific well defined cases. Those specific cases primarily being [...]