If you’re headed to World Wide Partner Conference 2009, I’ll be seeing you there. I’ll be in town from Sunday at 6pm until super early Friday morning. Additionally you’ll be able to find me at the WSSG Booth (#621) at the following times:
I’ll be Tweeting before and after while I’m in town using the #WPC09 hash-tag.
For other SBS team information, make sure to follow the Official SBS Team Blog.
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Folks, a quick post to let you know a minor change in how I communicate. My blog will remain unchanged, and I will update it with SBS and WHS information that I obtain, etc. I have now unlocked my Twitter account, and plan to use this to update with all sorts of technical information I find. Feel free to follow me if the content suits you.
Facebook I will be keeping for my closer friends (do not be offended if I don’t friend you!). If you wish to connect with me, feel free to use Twitter, my blog or Linked-In. And as always, if you have a blog idea that will benefit others, you can always email me.
Finally, because engaging with the community is my secondary job, if responses are delayed, please be understanding. I’m doing as much as feasibly possible!
I look forward to connecting with you!
If you’re using Forefront Security for Exchange with Small Business Server 2008, and you somehow managed to erase all of the scheduled tasks, you may also notice that Forefront never updates itself automatically, this is because the scheduled tasks kick off the updates.
Before you do anything, you should make sure follow the Forefront Security for Exchange Repair Document. If that still fails, you can re-import the Forefront scheduled tasks by downloading this ZIP file of XML tasks that were exported from a working SBS 2008 Server.
Here is what you need to do:
Now you should receive updates automatically for Forefront Security for Exchange. Thanks to a Canadian SBS Partner, Andrew, for figuring this out!
From the sounds of it, it looks like Windows 7 is going to be available for pre-order from the Microsoft Store! But you’re going to have to be quick, quantities are limited!
The offer begins tomorrow (June 26th, 2009), and continues while supplies last, or July 11, 2009, whichever comes first.
When you pre-order, you’ll get your copy quickly after it’s available (October 22nd! for General Availability), and you’ll get it fast and save while doing that! Pre-order a Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade for $49 or a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade for $99 at Microsoft Store. That's about half off the estimated retail prices.
More information is available at the Windows team blog.
Since the release of Windows Live Writer, I have been using it to update my blog. It allows me to update my blog offline as well as speeds up the adding of blog posts (such as this one) to my blog.
A little while ago, Windows Live Writer started crashing when I was adding hyper-links into my post. It didn’t matter if I used CTRL+K, or the menus. I wanted to check out if I had a failing plug-in installed, but going to Options would also crash Writer.
Searching on the Internet, I discovered that Windows Live Writer has issues with a corrupted Glossary. Essentially it boils down to the glossary XML file having a bad format. I still haven’t determined *how* this happened, because I’m not updating it manually, I only use Writer to update it.
Anyways, if you check out the Writer Log file (which is at c:\users\<username>\AppData\Local\Windows Live Writer\Windows Live Writer.log), you’ll notice the following:
System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for 'WindowsLive.Writer.HtmlEditor.Linking.GlossaryManager' threw an exception. ---> System.Xml.XmlException: The 'entry' start tag on line 3 does not match the end tag of 'glossary'. Line 76, position 3.
Essentially this will point you to the fact that your Glossary Manager is having problems. Your glossary XML file is at “c:\users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Windows Live Writer\LinkGlossary\linkglossary.xml"
I took a different approach to fixing the problem than my source, I ended up renaming the file to linkglossary-old.xml, and then re-opening Writer. Writer will create a new file for you. I opened the new file in Notepad and noticed that it only contained a single <glossary> tag. I hit enter and added a </ glossary> tag, then copied one by one all the "<entry></entry>” blocks out of the old file into the new file. Once I found one that didn’t work, I just deleted it (since I can always re-create it if I want).
[This post courtesy of Vita Xiao]
If you haven’t heard, Windows Live Mail has recently made access to your mail via POP3 a standard account, instead of a premium paid account feature! This means that you can configure your Small Business Server 2008 POP3 Connector to download mail directly from Windows Live Mail, making a transition from Windows Live Mail to Small Business Server and Exchange even easier! You can do this for all your @hotmail.com, @live.com and @msn.com email addresses!
Simply use the following settings in your POP3 Connector UI:
The UI will look like this:
While you’ll also notice you can send mail via Windows Live via their SMTP server (smtp.live.com, port 25), Live requires that you send as the LiveID you authenticate as, so while it might be tempting that you use Windows Live as your smart host, you won’t want to because all of your company email will come from one email address. Furthermore, when you send mail through the Live Mail service, you are sending on behalf of that particular user. If you send too many pieces of email, or too many NDRs, that particular user can be classified as a spammer, and limited in their ability to use their account. So stay away from using this as a smart-host!
Enjoy your seamless transition to Exchange from Hotmail.
Looks like Microsoft’s new Anti-Malware software is available for download in beta. I’ve been running the Alpha for a while now on my Acer Aspire One Netbook. I like it because the Acer has limited resources. I’m running Windows 7 RC on the Acer, the Live Essentials for email, messenger, and I wanted to protect the laptop because it jumps between networks often.
I like MSE because:
So if you wanted to try out the new Security Essentials, you can today!
If you’re checking out Windows 7 Beta and you haven’t yet switched to the release candidate, now is the time to do that. Starting on July 1st, the Beta will reboot every 2 hours and expire on August 1st! You can still download the release candidate up to August 15th from here.
When using the release candidate, Microsoft is still interested in your feedback, you can do that using Microsoft’s Input website.
[This post courtesy of Becky Ochs]
I'm back from vacation, and all rested up and it's time to continue with the tips that have built up! This one is great. Have you ever been on a "Me Too!" e-mail thread? You know those ones that people won't stop replying-all to save your life. It's tough for the mail server to handle with large distribution lists (although with Exchange 2007, roughly 15.5 million email messages were delivered in the span of an hour, as seen in the link above), but mostly irritating for people on the mail list.
With the introduction of DRM (Distributed Rights Management), once configured your users can click a button and not allow “reply-all” as an option to the message. However, this does lace DRM meta-data around the message such that you need to connect to your corporations “rights-management” server to actually open the message. It also means that on mobile devices, you have to ensure the device is enabled for DRM, and then download the entire message just to decrypt and read it.
Well, there is an easier way with Office 2007!
That’s all there is to it. Now when someone hits reply or reply-all, the message goes to whomever you specify in that list. Thus if the whole alias is back on the mail when you get it back, you know that person explicitly wanted to send to that alias, and there are no issues when trying to open it on a smartphone, or without Internet access (like on a plane).
Now DRM still has it’s uses, such as preventing forwarding, or copy/paste out of the email, so choose your technology wisely!
Being a 75% mobile worker, I’m constantly on the move. This means that I live and breath on my laptop. Windows 7 has helped me be more productive and efficient. With faster boot times, more reliable sleep/hibernation modes, and improved security and access (such as Direct Access). My mobile computing has never been easier.
To make it one step easier, I discovered a particularly nifty feature that I found over at Life Hacker. Windows 7 has a new printer manager feature that allows you to set your default printer dependant on which network you are connected to, perfect for a mobile worker such as myself.
Before we get into details on how to configure this, we should all working hard to reduce our carbon foot print and work on going green in the office. With new technologies and plenty of access, printing should be one of those last resort things.
Having said that, Windows 7 can switch your default printer depending on which network you’re connected to. For example, at my home I want the default to be my HP Laser Jet 2506dn printer. At work I want it to be the crazy Xerox copy center behind the kitchen.
To set this up simply do the following:
From this point forward, when you are connected to that network, you’re default printer will always be what you expect. If you do a lot of printing, might save you some time. Or if you have users that take laptop to and from work, might save you some support time in the evenings as they go home and try to print from there.
If you’re interested in the Life Hacker post, you can read it here. Thanks Life Hacker!
This past Friday, I was in Los Angeles at Microsoft Tech Ed as I mentioned before. I didn’t have a slot targeted for high attendance: 9am Friday morning, after a big party. But wow! 45-55 people joined to learn about Small Business Server 2008!
I hope you enjoyed Tech-Ed, I know I did.
Check out Susan’s Blog for a roll-up, a discussion on backup, and our follow-up discussion on migration at the WESS booth.
Additionally, thanks to Susan for her help during the presentation and at the booth with Oliver.
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One of the lesser used features of Windows is the “Send To” menu. This menu enables you to copy any file to any other location within the “Send To” menu.
I’m often on out on corporate shares and such and I want to copy files and folders down to my local PC for faster access, or I might just want to move things around my hard drive to get things organized. Instead of opening up two Windows Explorer Windows, you can use the one, right-click the file you want and go to the “Send To” menu, and then choose to copy it to any location you choose. But how do you update the “Send To” menu?
WinHelpOnline.com has a simple solution:
Now when you right-click and choose that “Send To” menu, you get the additional locations you need to make your life more efficient!
(More Details at WinHelpOnline.com, this also applies to Vista)
Next week I’ll be in Los Angeles to attend Tech-Ed 2009, North America Edition. Come and join me in room 409 on Friday May 15th from 9am to 10:15am for the session:
Windows Small Business Server 2008: Up and Running in Under an Hour
During the session I will go over all of the core concepts of Windows Small Business Server 2008, and how you can finish setup in just under an hour using a pre-installed server. The MVP community has already started to pick up the excitement.
See you there!
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