Category: Software, IP & Companies

Windows Vista Deployment Articles to Read

Note: These links were created with the Copy Text as Link tool for IE.

This live post is a collection of articles related to mass deploying Windows Vista. Please feel free to add your own as we all prepare for this. I’ll add and drop articles from here as they seem to be more or less important.

My current Windows XP deployment technique involves Symantec Ghost, SysPrep, and several custom built applications. We ship multiple computers and the most recent CD boots to a network using DHCP and a dynamicly generated computer name to ensure that a single CD can be used by the shipping and service departments to deliver a consistent image to our clients on new and repaired PCs, regardless of the model. This techniqe also involves creating a factory backup of the image after it is fully configured in the event an install goes bad and must be restarted (hasn’t happend yet) and allows for rolling backups of the operating system partitions and drive mirror.

The goal is to have a similarly efficient deployment process when we deploy Vista based machines on a set date in the near future.
Articles listed here may not be strictly related to Imaging, but may also include details describing running different types of programs under Vista in hopes that any problems can be foreseen:

Deployment
Inside Vista’s new image-based install
The simple life
ImageX and WIM Image Format
Deploying Windows Vista
Windows Vista imaging and deployment
Is the Windows Image (WIM) format used by the Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) OS Deployment Feature Pack the final version that Windows Vista will use?
WIM image format From Wikipedia
Customizing Windows Vista Deployments
Hackers get Hacked with new Windows Vista or directly here. – hacking article that discusses sysprep and WIM images.
Plan, Build, and Deploy Guide
A Guide To Pain-Free Desktop Deployment

Networking
Every Vista PC to get a domain name
Could Vista actually slow down networks?

Release/Version Details
Windows Vista Product Overview for IT Professionals
Vista goes gold: the frenzy begins
Work PCs to miss out on key Vista features
Tough new rules on Vista “OEM”
Windows without windows: Microsoft goes command-line with Server Core
Windows Vista RC1: you have the right to do … nothing, actually
Vista’s account protection: one click and it’s gone

Software/hardware issues
Vista scoots to new boot, but it’s still kinda rooted (A discussion of Vista’s handling of the MBR)
HOW TO: Dual-boot XP and Vista
HOW TO: Run Vista on Linux/XP
Vista still lacks full nVIDIA support
Microsoft deliberately blocking disc burning software in Vista, claims Alcohol
HOW TO: Install Nero 7 on Vista
Nero runs under Vista (at last!)
HOW TO: Coax retro DOS games to play on Vista
Need to eavesdrop on a network? Try Microsoft’s new free tool.
Activation
Vista RTM cracked by pirates before release
Microsoft closes piracy loophole: mandatory activation for volume licenced Vista

Virtualization
One for all

Older XP technologies
Let’s build!
Roll with it

A very good walk through of Windows Vista

If you haven’t gotten a chance to play with Windows Vista yet, you might want to take a gander at the LifeHacker article on the subject. It’s picture rich, and a pretty thorough overview of what you’ll be getting.

I just got word yesterday to ramp up for deploying our first Vista based products. It’s coming on like a steam train.

Right now, the way I’m looking at it, I’m not likely to upgrade EVER. Something might change my mind some day… some future game I HAVE to have might require DirectX 10 which, right now, is Vista only. That’s not all that likely. I might get a new machine that has it bundled, I guess. Win XP works well enough for me right now and I am already fighting the activation wizard WAY to often….

In fact, I started my prep work for Vista being the only MS OS sold: I reinstalled Suse Linux on my main machine…

Here’s that article: Q&A with Microsoft about Windows Vista

Click to go to the original site.

Notes on Microsoft/Novell Anouncement: SUSE Linux/Windows Interoperablity

(Article Draft – Corrections will be made to spelling and grammar – These views are mine coming as fast as I can type with the live announcement. I apologies for any typos/misquotes/misinterpretations.)

Microsoft and Novell made an abrupt disclosure via their web cast site that there would be a VERY IMPORTANT announcement. That announcement occurred at 2:19pm PST/5:19pmEST. This announcement is important to large scale Enterprise and Server/datacenter operators as well as the developer community. It offers more choices, opportunties and technologies to IT operators around the world.

You may view the WebCast session in its entirety using any with these links:

Please, as you listen to the session, if I can enhance or correct any of my notes, please let me know in a comment on this post.
Continue reading Notes on Microsoft/Novell Anouncement: SUSE Linux/Windows Interoperablity

BIG LIVE Microsoft/Novell/Linux? announcement RIGHT NOW

Bridging the devide between Closed/OpenSource and Linux/Windows

It will last till 2:49pm GO THERE NOW!!!!!!

It started 2:19pm EST
Steve Ballmer to Deliver Industry Announcement

November 2, 2006

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will deliver an announcement during a press conference today, Thurs., Nov. 2, in San Francisco beginning at 2 p.m. Pacific time / 5 p.m. Eastern time. Details of the announcement will be provided during the press conference.

http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/webcasts.mspx

My take on the Winternals/Sysinternals buy-out by Microsoft

Over on the ZTree forum, I defended Mark Russinovich when he was being accused of selling out for money..

Hmmm… become the 15th to accept the position of Microsoft Technical Fellow, the most prestigeous technical position at the most lucrative software corporation on the planet – with the salary to boot… or turn it down because there is the possiblity that you can no longer provide free software from your promotional/blog site…

Hmmmm…. That’s tough personal choice and I’m sure their 85 employees would have agreed that this was an important DEMAND that should have entered into the negotiations even if it meant lowering any possible wage increases.

Well, maybe not… 😉

It seems that many people disagree with that. They think that Mark should have made the same response as Open Source fundamentalist Eric S. Raymond when he was offered a job by Microsft. His response letter is a fun read:

I’d thank you for your offer of employment at Microsoft, except
that it indicates that either you or your research team (or both)
couldn’t get a clue if it were pounded into you with baseball bats.

On the ZTree forum I went on to say, and its worth repeating here, that the thing is, I am just not that much of a Microsoft hater. I think there are companies that treat their employees worse. I think there are ones that have more arbitrarily bought and shelved products. I think there are OS providers that have more unilaterally have said “THIS IS HOW OUR SOFTWARE IS USED” and “THESE ARE THE MANUFACTURERS THAT WILL MAKE COMPUTERS THAT RUN OUR OS”.

So, when I hear about a guy who has for years worked with Microsoft, made money off of utilizing and being an expert in the APIs built into their software, who was a key note speaker at their conventions, who then takes a job when they offer, I am not surprised. They were bed fellows, despite any minor disagreements on what architecture should or should not be left in their OS.

BTW, I’m not saying that Microsoft is pure and has never used unfair hiring practices. I just don’t see this as an example of it. They HAVE had business savvy yet morally repugnant business practices in the past.

What Borland devotee doesn’t know that? Heck, a large portion of Microsoft .NETs success is due to them hiring 34 Borland employee within 2 1/2 years. It culminated with MS absconding with Borland’s chief Delphi architect, Anders Hejlsberg. This was at a time when Anders was in the middle of the JBuilder design and Microsoft was being sued by Sun for including the word JAVA in the poorly designed Microsoft Java products. You can read all about that here: http://delphi.about.com/od/delphifornet/a/conspiracydnet_2.htm.

If the rumors at the time were true and Anders got a 1 million dollar signing bonus and six months paid leave in addition to the stock options and salary commensurate with being the lead on the .NET architecture, can you really blame him personally for taking the job? I guess some do, but if I thought I could do the job without violating any previous NDAs and non-competes, it would be mighty hard to turn that job offer down. Even though he was their chief architect, Borland could not have been paying him all that well at the time. I’d be surprised it that signing bonus would have matched much less than 5 years of his Borland salary.

That one was well worth a rant but still it was obviously a smart move on MS’s part. They didn’t shelf him, they used him and he’s probably more than earned his salary and bonus.

Even ten years out the Anders Hejlsberg hire feels much more like betrayal than the Winternals hire does. The 120 million that Microsoft paid to Borland 4 years later, proves it. Such a lawsuit won’t exists around the Winternals buy out.

What do you think? Did Mark and Bryce sell out to big business or were they morally obligated to accept the offer for the benifit of their families and decendents? Are the those two things mutually exclusive?

Goodbye Sysinternals! Hello MS RootKit Revealer..

I was shocked when I followed a link from the ZTree forum over to Winternals.com. Winternals and Systernals are sites that host some of the very best and most unique core operating system tools out there and most of it is free…

This announcement comes one week to the day after the Austin Texas based Winternals, with its 80+ employees, reached a settlement with Best Buy and its subsidiary Geek Squad. So, this is a bangup month for Winternals.

Even the non-geek heard of the firestorm that erupted over Mark’s discovery of a Root Kit installed by Sony CDs. Well, that discovery was made while he was beta-testing a recent version of RootKit Revealer, one of the may free tools he offers on his site. Well, now we have to call it the Microsoft Rootkit Revealer.

Mark is no stranger to the people at Microsoft. It is unlikely that his near-celebrity status was what drew Microsoft’s eye. In fact, I beleive Mark has been a key speaker at Microsoft’s Technet Canada’s IT conference Energize IT!

So, now Mark has a chance to take their advice to “Get your geek on!” for real. The Winternals FAQ of course views this as a very positive move:

Winternals and Sysinternals have been acquired by Microsoft. Winternals is a leading provider of systems recovery tools for Windows-based enterprises worldwide and Sysinternals is one of the leading community and enthusiast sites for people interested in information about the internals of the Windows operating system.

This can only be a good thing for founders Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell personally. And I wish them all the best. Mark blogged:

I’m joining Microsoft as a technical fellow in the Platform and Services Division, which is the division that includes the Core Operating Systems Division, Windows Client and Windows Live, and Windows Server and Tools. I’ll therefore be working on challenging projects that span the entire Windows product line and directly influence subsequent generations of the most important operating system on the planet. From security to virtualization to performance to a more manageable application model, there’s no end of interesting areas to explore and innovate.

You see that term there? “Technical Fellow” – that’s a BIG deal. That means he’s regarded as one of the top 14 technicians at Microsoft. To quote Bill Gates: “Impressive. Most impressive.” or was it Bill that said that? anyway, the big question is if that innovation will be stifled by the obligations entailed in managing a software package with such a wide global distribution.

And what is going to happen to all of those free tools from Sysinternals?

Mark tells us:

Microsoft is still evaluating the best way to leverage the many different technologies that have been developed by Winternals. Some will find their ways into existing Microsoft products or Windows itself and others will continue on as Microsoft-branded products. As for Sysinternals, the site will remain for the time being while Microsoft determines the best way to integrate it into its own community efforts, and the tools will continue to be free to download.

Well, I’ll wager that Mark and Bryce are off on a two week island vacation right about now and I think I’ll go start downloading the existing tools now… Ta!

PS: I feel like I should apologize to Bryce Cogswell. He’s just behind the scenes in this move. I get the feeling he’s Winternals Paul Allen. With Paul’s personal assets of $22 billion USD, I suppose there are worse comparisons to be made…

PPS: It is interesting to note that people have begun to point to the missing LockSmith download page as an indicator of MS’s plan for the free tools. (Google Cache of the Page) I think it is more likely that during the rebranding of the SysInternals site, they got rid of a page that described a tool that could no longer be downloaded outside of the Administrators Pak. Perhaps bad timing on their part.

Related articles:

If you like this article Digg It! ( My first attempt at Digg’ing. I feel like that frog from Kellogs but I guess he was Diggem…)

A horrible, horrible time suck…

Whatever you do, if you’re at all obsessive compulsive about puzzles, DO NOT click on any of these links…

http://www.TheCodeCave.com/swf/hapland.swf
http://www.TheCodeCave.com/swf/hapland2.swf
http://www.TheCodeCave.com/swf/hapland3.swf

Hapland is a game that is sort of like viewing a complete “incredible machine” that you must figure out how to activate in the right sequence… You must look at the cause and effect of everything on the screen and figure out the right sequence to light the torches and activate the portal at the end of each level.

My 10 and 8 year olds (and my wife and I) have solved Hapland1. Now we are working on 2. We’re kind of stuck at the moment… but we’ve made some progress…

Anyway, these games were written by the fine folks at foon.co.uk. I recommend that you visit them; there’s a link inside the game. I’m hosting locally since it downloads much faster and I want to play it at near full screen. At foon.co.uk, it is a fixed size.

Impressions of the Developer Studio 2006 World Tour

1. Abstract

The Borland Developer Tools Group is doing a world wide tour to demonstrate the usability and productivity of the Borland Developer Studio. They are also trying to send a clear message to their devoted developers that the Delphi divestment doesn’t denote Dooms Day.

2. Overview

I attended the May 31, 2006, Columbus, Ohio event hosted by Anders Ohlsson. Anders’ official title, with Borland, is Staff Engineer. But it’s worse than that. He’s really in marketing.
Despite that, he’s congenial, intelligent and knows his stuff fairly well.

During the presentation he fielded many questions from the the audience. One thing that surpised me was the standard response to questions that he could not answer. He didn’t say contact support or even look at the FAQ on our website. Consistenly he said “Go to the blogs.”. I even doodled that in big bold letters across the top of one of my pages of notes. “Go to the Blogs” was the response to questions ranging from specific code upgrade issues to queries like “What’s the latest dirt on Dev Co?”.

BTW, the most important place to look for answers is the blog of Borland’s Chief scientist Allen Bauer, “The Oracle of Delphi”. He’s who has most freely discussed matters regarding the spin off of the developer tools. NOTE: Anders’ wording and hesitation in that sentence led me to believe Bauer had been a bit more liberal with discussing the matter than he had been been authorized to OR perhaps that the tighter leash on everyone else was chaffing a bit.. It was clear that there was definitely a list of items that could (and likewise could not) be discussed by Borland employees.

Continue reading Impressions of the Developer Studio 2006 World Tour

Lookie lookie I got a package! $400 of software!

(Editor Note: If you are trying to find how to install custom PEAR modules on 1and1.com, you actually want to go to “How to install custom PEAR modules on 1and1.com and other shared servers”. There’s more information there.- B)

Visual Studio 2005 Standard came in the mail yesterday.


Goodies.JPG

Very cool.

And it was all free: http://www.thecodecave.com/?p=55

Even cooler!

Also included was a coupon for 50% a microsoft certification package. And another coupon for $400 VS2005 professional.

Now to see if I can activate ASP.NET on a 1and1 Linux server… It looks like it is possible…
according to this article. You just need Project Monkey’s (Mono’s) mod mono package installed. Heck, it’s worth a try just because I haven’t seen any documentation about running ASP.Net on 1and1’s apache servers…

I’ve had very good luck installing everything else on 1and1 including custom PEAR modules, AWStats, PHPMyAdmin, CVS. 1and1 is a great host for technical people that can actually read instructions a see what is behind them. The ONLY negative thing I have to say about them that they play it a little too safe in their tool upgrades. For instance their MySQL databases haven’t been migrated to MySQL 5 yet. But jeez they have presences in most major countries on this planet. The bigger a company is, the slower it moves to change. That isn’t something to complain about, in the business world, it is often a good thing. I’d rather have a slow update, then have them crash my site.

Anyway, if I get it to work, I’ll post how…