R2 recalled :(

Yes, it's true, R2 is recalled today

cnet reports it.

But in the end, it is infact the best thing for our customers.

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... To Answer a Diva's Questions

I thought I'd take a moment out of my evening to answer Susan's Questions. She was kind enough to ask, so I will answer.

1. Has the Mrs. parked her domain yet?

That would be a no. Where the Internet is concerned, she lives vicariously through me. :) I'm the wild Internet man. :)

2. so.. what mean thing did your co-workers do to your office?

About that office decoration thing... You see, about 2 months before I left, an office mate (by the name of Marc) moved into my office. Then about 3 weeks before I left, the glorious server (known as Catfood) moved into my office. Options were limited, but creativity was high.

... The decorations continued, let me explain the specifics.

Exhibit 1

As you can see, everything "Canadian" was removed from my office (including my Canadian flag), and replaced with U.S.A flags and pictures. The "prison" door was placed over my window (Side note: this door was used on my manager's office when he got married, I can't really say who built it, but if you want the blueprints, let me konw). You can also see that my really sweet LCD is missing, which you get a better view of in the next Exhibit.








Exhibit 2

As you can see, the widescreen LCD is replaced by an overly deep 21" CRT monitor, and my Windows Vista Beta 2 desktop was attached to a super high (*cough*) quality 12" CRT, with courtesy prison bars on it.

Onward and Upward ...
Exhibit 3


You can clearly see the Windows Vista logon screen here, spanning a solid 12" monitor. Ok, maybe it's not clear, but it's working!

Finally, Exhibit 4
What office fun would be complete without...

... the replaced picture of the new wife with the stick drawing (quite a good replica of the actual picture I might add).

As you can see, the office decorations didn't imped on my co-worker Marc, nor did they prevent the function of our proud Catfood server. For those Canadian's out there, I did get my flag back in time for Canada Day.

Susan, you asked, hopefully this answers.

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How to point your Windows Media Center to SBS R2 Update Services

So you are one of the first to hop onto the Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 band-wagon, but you have a Media Center PC and still have to manually reboot and manage it.

Well, wait no longer! There are some simple steps to follow on your Media Center PC to have it manually sign-up for automatic updates and reboots.

On your Media Center PC, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, then Run and type in gpedit.msc and press enter, or click ok


2. Expand Local Computer Policy, Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, and click on Windows Update.


3. Make the following updates to the right hand pannel:
   
   • Allow Automatic Updates Immediate Installation - ENABLED
   
   
   • Allow non-administrators to receive update notifications - ENABLED
   
   
   • Automatic Updates detection frequency - 1 Hour
   
   
   • Configure Automatic Updates - 2-Notify for downloads and install
   
   
   • Delay Restart for Scheduled Installations - 5 minutes
   
   
   • No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates - DISABLED
   
   
   • Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations - 10 Minutes
   
   
   • Reschedule Automatic Updates scheduled installations - Enabled (Wait 1 minute)
   
   
   • Specify intranet Microsoft update service location - http://SERVERNAME:8530
   
   
4. close gpedit.msc


5. Click Start and then Run and type in cmd and press enter or hit OK


6. From the command prompt, type in gpupdate /force

That's all there is to it! Next time you look at the Update Services snap-in on the server, you'll notice your Media center PC is listed, and now managed by SBS R2 Update Services!

One less thing to worry about.

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I took a month off, now I'm back..

Hey Folks,

It's been over a month since my last post, and I can't appologize. :) Yes, the rumours are true, I got hitched while I was out, then spent a glorious two weeks in Maui, Hawaii!


My wedding day was great (as you can see), and Maui is definately a great place to visit. As it turns out, the cost of living in Hotels at Hawaii is even higher than the Seattle Area!! So now I return.

R2 shipped just after I left, and I hope you've all upgraded. I upgraded my home networking to R2 prior to leaving, and manually pointed my Media Center PC to SBS R2 for it's upgrades. It all works flawlessly! All the critical security upgrades were applied and all the machines rebooted, while I was sitting on a beach somewhere (now that's what I call being a great IT person! :o) ). I simply got the text messages that my server was rebooting. How easy is that?

Well, I'm back now, finally caught up on email and ready to roll.

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In Seattle for a while? Here are some things to do!

So this is funny, I was in my office and one of our Interns stopped by to talk about something, so naturally, I stalled "What are you doing this weekend?" He had no idea. I built a list of things to do in Seattle that are somewhat interesting and sent it to him. For the past month, I've been trying to find that mail, and send it to a number of Interns or people coming into town. So I figured I'd post it here, it makes finding it much easier ... For those that there isn't enough information for, a simple MSN Search or Google Search will help out there....

General Sites
A great overall site on the internet is the Seattle's City Search website, although sometimes I find it hard to find the cool stuff, but you can find upcoming events, etc there.
Kirkland

• Market Street


• Houghton Point


• Kirkland Avenue Pub - a younger croud

Belleuve

• Bellevue Square Mall - somewhat pricy, but still pretty neat to check out


• Cheese Cake Factory - great sit down place, not too expensive


• The Tap and Grill - over 100 beers on tap!


• There are lots of theatres in the area, but the best one is Lincoln Square across from the Bellevue Square mall.

Issaquah

• XXX Rootbeer - no, not a strip joint, great burgers and on some Sunday's, car shows!

South of Seattle

• Emerald Downs Horse Track - Watch the horse races and have dinner, or get down on the track


• South Center Mall

Local Hikes

• Mt. Si - 4 miles up, but a great view from the top. On a clear day you can see the City and Mt. Rainer. Dare to climb the Haystack on the top!


• Wallace Falls - Much easier of a hike, and very beautiful. You can get to the lower falls pretty easily, but keep going for a final reward

Tourist Sites

• Snoqualmie Falls - Pretty damn high falls, if you have the time, it's fun to hike down the side and down to the river, but it's not required to enjoy yourself


• The Museum of Flight has a ton of information on old planes, it's a really cool museum that talks about old planes, space travel, etc.

Down Town Seattle

• Pike Place market - Really cool public market right down town, go in the summer if you can!


• Bill Speidel's Underground Tour - Learn about the history of Seattle, in a fun commical way. Oh, and walk underground while doing it.


• Pioneer Square - Visit the original part of downtown seattle


• Woodland Park Zoo - Apparently the first Zoo on the 'net (according to the URL!), but it's a really cool place to go and check out some animals, Much more exciting if you go when it's cool out, so the animals are somewhat active


• Seattle Science Center - Since Microsoft pumps cash into here, you can imagine that it's pretty high tech. In addition, there is an IMAX theatre that shows cool Hollywood movies!


• The Seattle Center - Games, theme park, you name it, they have it


• Experience Music Project(EMP) - If you like music, and the history of music, and well, pretty much anything about music, you should visit the EMP and prepare to spend a day or so there.


• Science Fiction Museum - Check out the history of Sci-Fi from the beginning through to the present!


• Space Needle - Somewhat of a let down after the CN Tower back home, but still something you can do to be "Sleepless in Seattle". I'd recommend going at dusk, so you can see the city, then watch the sunset, then see the lights of the city, it's the biggest bang for your buck.


• Seattle Aquarium - Another great museum of fish, really fun if you've got some time to kill, there is an IMAX theatre here too, although it typically shows nature shows instead of real Hollywood movies


• Pike Place Pub - I always like eating here, it's pretty good, not too expensive, and they have pretty good beer


• The Pyramid Alehouse is located across from the two stadiums, if you're waiting for a game, totally go in here and grab a beer before the game!

Freemont

• The Freemont Market is kind of cool to see.


• And while you're in Freemont, make sure you check out the troll under the 99th bridge (39th Street under 99/Aurora Road)


• Also. If you're up for a little bit of history, and a huge park, check out Gas Works Park.


• One of my favourite sit down pubs is in Freemont, check out the Red Door.

Ballard
A little further to the sound than Freemon is Ballard, an Industrial part of Seattle gone touristy. Some places to head to include:

• The somewhat pricey, but very romantic restaurant called Ray's Boathouse.


• In addition, the Ballard Locks are pretty interesting to go and see. They are in a park and if you cross the damn you can see a fish ladder, which is great!

Queen Ann
Queen Ann is part of Seattle, but it over looks the down-town core. In fact, if you're looking for a great picture of the city with Mt. Rainer in the background. Kerry Park is a great place to take it.

Capitol Hill
Again, Capitol Hill is part of Seattle, but not the down-town core. Capitol hill is a little more "free", but there still are some good places to visit like:

• The Garage, which has bowling, pool and is a bar as well.

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Today marks a special day in the blog-o-sphere

Susan Knows it

Do you?

Kevin Beares, our community lead has taken a big step into the future and started blogging. Boy, I remember My first post, it was short compared to Kevin's.

I know we all look forward to seeing what Kevin has to say on his blog, so fire up your RSS feeders and stay on top of the news from the SBS product team.

For your convenience, I have linked to it from the SBS Team blogs on the right hand side of this blog.

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Using Smigrate to dump SharePoint to a .CAB file

Dean's presentation to the Puget Sound Users Group had yet another nugget of information on SharePoint. Did you know that sharepoint comes with another admin tool other than sbsadm.exe. It comes with...

smigrate.exe !!

So what can it do?

• Works with sites based on WMSDE


• Size is unlimited


• Requires Admin Access


• Pick and choose site content


• Pick and choose sites


• Allows you to migrate between WSS versions

So what can't it do?

• Does not preserve customization or security


• Will not overwrite existing sites

So what does it do? well, run it! It's located %Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\60\BIN\

Here is the help for smigrate (acquired by typing "smigrate /?"

Backs up or restores a SharePoint Web site.

Usage (backup): smigrate -w -f [-e] [-y]
Usage (restore): smigrate -r -w -f [-x]

Operations and Parameters:
-f Backup filename - required. Specify a filename with the extension .fwp.
-e Exclude subsites during backup - optional. No parameters.
-r Restore - optional. No parameters.
-w Website URL - required. Valid URL to a SharePoint Web site.
-x Exclude security during restore - optional. No parameters.
-y Confirm that you want to overwrite an existing backup file.
-u Administrator username.
-pw Administrator password.
Specify * as the password to be prompted for a password.

Example backup:
smigrate -w http://server -f backup.fwp
smigrate -w http://server -f c:\backups\backup.fwp
smigrate -w http://server -f \\share\folder\backup.fwp
smigrate -w http://server -f c:\backups\backup.fwp -e -y

Example restore:
smigrate -r -w http://server -f backup.fwp
smigrate -r -w http://server -f c:\backups\backup.fwp
smigrate -r -w http://server -f \\share\folder\backup.fwp
smigrate -r -w http://server -f c:\backups\backup.fwp -x

Now here's the fancy thing: rename .fwp to .cab, then crack the file open with windows explorer. Surprise, there's all your files.

Have fun with this one. :)

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How to Setup a Recycle Bin for Windows SharePoint Services

Two weekends ago, Dean did a presentation for the Puget Sound Small Business Server Users Group. The presentation was on a number of nice little tips and tricks, specifically with Windows SharePoint Services.

One of the major topics that Dean covered was how you can create a recycle bin for SharePoint. The recycle bin is actually really cool. A user deletes a file, and it's removed from the site and shows up in a place in the filesystem.

The tool is a 3rd party tool posted over on the GotDotNet website at SharePoint Tools: Workspace Home.

In order to get the instructions and the files, you have to sign-in at the site and look in the lower right hand quadrant. you want to download the two files marked RecylceBin Installation Manual Build 24, and RecycleBin 1.1 (Build 24).

If you have heavy sharepoint users, this is a great tool that you should definately install on your server to protect the files on your site.

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Want to give the Small Business Server Product Team Feedback?

NOW IS YOUR CHANCE!!!

Microsoft has a new program called Connect that will help us get feedback from you, the SBS community. Here's the details:

The Small Business Server Product Team would like to hear from the SBS User Community. This direct anonymous survey of the SBS User Community is brought to you by the SBS Product Team.

You are invited to participate in the Windows Small Business Server Community program on the Microsoft Connect Web site at http://connect.microsoft.com. This Site has been set up to directly gather feedback anonymously from you, SBS User Community.
Your role in the SBS Community is important to us. Microsoft Connect enables you to connect with Microsoft developers, product managers, and other development team members to help us make our products the best they can be.

To accept this invitation and become a member of this program, please follow these steps:

1. Use your Internet connection to visit our Web site at http://connect.microsoft.com.


2. Click on "Invitations" on the left-side menu.


3. You will need to sign in using a valid Passport and before you can continue to the "Invitations" page.


4. Enter your Invitation ID in the blank. Your invitation ID is: COMM-GKXK-WJKV


5. Click "Go."


6. If you have not previously registered with Microsoft Connect, you may be required to register before continuing with the invitation process. This a light registration and we will not use any information that you provide to contact you later unless you tell us otherwise.

Now, please follow the steps shown to you by that program to become an active participant. Once you complete the steps, you will be automatically approved. From that point forward you should be able to log into this site using your passport account and take any surveys that are available to you.

Here is the link to the survey: SBS Community Survey. You will find this link on the main page of the http://connect.microsoft.com site under Small Business Server Community Site.

Join the Feedback community! Voice your opinions, tell us what we should think?

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Another Meet the Team is Up!

Yep, another recording of meet the team is up. Dean Paron!

Check it out over on the Official SBS Blog

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Customizing Outlook Views

Just the other day, I realized I hadn't shared this great tip with you. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but Outlook has multiple views on different things such as Contacts or Tasks.

On the right you'll see what I'm talking about with different views. This may surprise you, but this list is not static!

You can add things to this list simply by

• clicking on the menu View


• then mousing over Arrange By..., Current View, then clicking on Define Views


• on the next dialog, simply click on the New button and follow the on-screen instructions.

You can add as many custom views as you want. Don't forget that you can create views that filter on Categories.

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Small Business Server R2 Reached Release Candidate Status Today!

Today was an exciting day in Redmond: because today the Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 was signed off as a release candidate. What does this mean? It means SBS R2 is coming close to hitting the market. Those of you who have signed up to receive R2 and help find bugs should be receiving CDs in a week or so.

I will be the first to admit, when I looked at what was going to be placed in R2 about a year ago, I wasn't excited. Now I'm dying to place it up on seandaniel.com for the patching, the new server status report, storage resource manager plus a few others. What's stopping me? I need a new hard drive first.

I'm sure once it does gets to all of you guys, you will really enjoy what we've done with R2, and may your SBS boxes have the green check forever!

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Finally getting my hands on Exchange's new IMF

So you guys probably think us Microsoft folks have all the angles worked out. Well, if it makes you feel any better. I installed the Exchange Service Pack 2 without reading the release notes.

So, now I ended up in this funky state where I had IMF v1 installed on my home Small Business Server, with Exchange Service Pack 2. If you had read the Release Notes, you would know you're supposed to un-install the IMF v1 before installing Exchange Service Pack 2.

Luckily there was an easy fix.

1. First Un-install the Exchange IMF v1 from A/R programs.


2. Second, Re-apply Exchange Service Pack 2 to the machine


3. Finally, to get the best experience, you should configure your server to get updates bi-weekly on the IMF v2 by simply following KB 907747 - How to update the Intelligent Message Filter version 2 in Exchange Server 2003 SP2

Now you're back to getting updates and have the latest IMF installed on your server.

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The "Chico" Smartphone Theme - Free Download!

Warning: This download is provided "as is" and confers no rights, warranties, and comes with no support.

Ok, got the juicy disclaimer out of the way. Now to the good stuff.


So I've created a couple of themes. I know I promised an SBS Theme, but I couldn't just get it working exactly the way I wanted. I figured you guys 'n gals out there had waiting long enough for your free download.

As you can probably tell it involves a picture of my dog, Chico. So let me take this opportunity to introduce you to the little furry critter at the top of this website. His name is Chico, but he also answers to "9 lbs of FURY!".

So, I present you with the Chico Theme.

Ok, so what do you have to do to install this?

• Connect your device to the desktop you downloaded the theme to


• Uncompress the theme to a known folder on your desktop


• Open Explorer and navigate to Mobile Device, My Mobile Device, Application Data, Home.


• Copy the two files in the zip file into this file on the mobile device


• On the device, open up the Settings, choose Home Screen.


• In the Home Screen Layout, select Chico and click Done.

I'm currently running this theme on my WM5+feature pack device (SMT 5600), and haven't really tested it on any other devices/versions. So use at your own risk.

Enjoy my little buddy Chico!
Sean

PS. The picture might be close to exact size!! ;o)

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