Windows 2008 SP2 and Windows Vista SP2 Released to public

Yesterday Microsoft has released to public Windows 2008 SP2 (Do not confuse with Windows 2008 R2 that should come out only in the end of the year) and Windows Vista SP2.

SP2 require SP1 to be installed first, you cannot install SP2 directly.
For those who want to block the Service Pack, you can still use the Windows Service Pack Blocker which work with this version as well.

Major Improvements for Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 SP2:

• Based on customer experience and research, SP2 improve the support for Microsoft Partners programs and improve reliability of non Microsoft applications.

• SP2 adds support for the 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) from VIA Technologies
• SP2 integrates the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless, which contains support for Bluetooth v2.1 and Windows Connect Now (WCN) Wi-Fi Configuration.
• SP2 includes ability to record data to Blu-Ray Disc media.

• SP2 includes Windows Search 4.0
• SP2 removes the limit of 10 half open outbound TCP connections
• Print server and spooler performance improvements for printers

• SP2 provides the Hyper-V virtualization environment as a fully integrated feature of Windows Server
• SP2 provides an improved power management
• SP2 improves backwards compatibility for Terminal Server license keys
•  Improved manageability features with DFS/FRS console and Storage Resource Manager

• Provides a single installer for both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.
• Improves manageability through logging in the system event

For more detailed list view the following source.

How to monitor a workgroup computer without using a gateway server in System Center Operations Manager 2007 (SCOM)

In order to monitor the servers in the DMZ or any other workgroup environment, we need to perform the following steps which described in KB article 947691.

Link: When you try to install a System Center Operations Manager 2007 agent on a workgroup computer without using a gateway server, Operations Manager 2007 cannot see the workgroup computer

OpenHebrew - Free Hebrew Support for Iphone & Ipod Touch

After HebDev decided to stop developing their free Hebrew translation for the Iphone and leave the market only with the non-free solution, apparently another Iphone developer named Tom Zickel has decided to develop his own Hebrew support for the Iphone.
The Hebrew support is running for few months now, and the Hebrew support exist starting of march although I've heard of it only in the last few days.

as taken from the project site:
OpenHebrew - a free high quality Hebrew support for both the iPhone and iPod Touch.
This project comes in 2 parts, the first is only the Hebrew support without Hebrew translation of the interface (what most people abroad might prefer) and the second part is the Hebrew translation itself (which was done by the iVrit project).

The Hebrew support works on versions 2.2 and 2.2.1 as well.

Description of Update Rollup 8 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

Yesterday Microsoft has release Update Rollup 8 for Exchange 2007 SP1, the KB is: 968012

I've decided to mark the main Issues that the update rollup fixes:

·  954639  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954639/ ) Exchange Information Store service stops responding intermittently on an Exchange 2007 server

·  956633  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956633/ ) User calendar permissions are removed after you run the Set-MailboxCalendarSettings cmdlet in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

·  958239  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/958239/ ) Exchange Server 2007 does not generate an event log message for public folder replication messages even though a property validation exception is thrown and the replications do not occur

·  960367  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960367/ ) Error message when you run the Export-Mailbox command on a folder that has more than 5000 items in Exchange 2007: "-1056749164"

·  960495  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960495/ ) The Information Store service crashes continuously on an Exchange Server 2007 server

·  960633  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960633/ ) The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service crashes on an Exchange Server 2007 that has the mailbox server role installed

·  960703  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960703/ ) Extended characters are replaced by question marks when you send an e-mail message that contains extended ASCII characters by using an IMAP4 client in Exchange 2007

·  960775  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/960775/ ) You receive a "Message too large for this recipient" NDR that has the original message attached after you restrict the Maximum Message Send Size value in Exchange Server 2007

·  961152  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961152/ ) The Exchange information store service (Store.exe process) crashes intermittently when you migrate user data from Lotus Notes to Exchange Server 2007

·  961443  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961443/ ) Users cannot use Outlook Web Access for Exchange Server 2007 to open an address book

·  962235  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962235/ ) The date and time information for a "Follow Up" flag is missing if an Exchange 2007 user sends a message to an external recipient

·  967097  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967097/ ) Users may receive duplicate calendar items for the updated instance on mobile devices

·  968673  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968673/ ) The EdgeTransport.exe file of Exchange 2007 servers crashes continuously and Event ID 10003 and Event ID 5000 occur

·  969690  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969690/ ) Unresolved sender for delivery status notifications after applying update rollup 7 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1

·  970687  (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970687/ ) A search operation in Outlook does not return a correct result if there is a corrupted HTML message in the target folder in an Exchange Server 2007 environment

You can download it from the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968012

Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 available in Q3 2009

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is the industry's leading server for e-mail, calendaring and unified messaging. Exchange Server 2007 is the foundation for a dynamic and holistic unified communications experience, and has been designed to meet the challenges and address the messaging needs of today's businesses. Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) enables customers to increase their operational efficiency and it sets the foundation for the transition to Exchange Server 2010, which is expected to be available in the second half of 2009.

A public beta of Exchange Server 2010 is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010.

• Enhanced Auditing - New Exchange auditing events and audit log repository enable Exchange administrators to more easily audit the activities occurring on their Exchange servers. It allows the right balance of granularity, performance, and easy access to audited events via a dedicated audit log repository. This simplifies the auditing process and makes review of audited events easier by segregating audited events in a dedicated location.
• Exchange Volume Snapshot Backup Functionality - A new backup plug-in has been added to the product that will enable customers to create Exchange backups when a backup is invoked through the Windows Server 2008 Backup tool. Exchange Server 2007 didn't have this capability on Windows Server 2008 and additional solutions were required to perform this task.
• Dynamic Active Directory Schema Update and Validation - The dynamic AD schema update and validation feature allows for future schema updates to be dynamic deployed as well as proactively preventing conflicts whenever a new property is added to the AD schema. Once this capability is deployed it will enable easier management of future schema updates and will prevent support issues when adding properties that don't exist in the AD schema.
• Public Folder Quota Management - SP2 enables a consistent way to manage quotas by improving the current PowerShell cmdlets to perform quota management tasks.
• Centralized Organizational Settings - SP2 introduces new PowerShell option that enable centralized management of many of the Exchange organization settings.
• Named Properties cmdlets - SP2 enables Exchange administrators to monitor their named property usage per database.
• New User Interface for Managing Diagnostic Logging- SP2 enables Exchange administrators to easily configure and manage diagnostic logging from within the Exchange Management Console.

Source: msexchangeteam

Tool Review: SolarWinds IP Address Tracker - Manage IP addresses

IP Address Tracker is a new free tool from SolarWinds that provides simple IP address management. It scans your networks and lists all used and unused IP addresses with their DNS names and their response times. SNMP-enabled devices also display the machine type, system name, and location.

IP addresses can be marked as available, unused or reserved and comments added to each host. Each IP subnet has its own tab, which makes it convenient to keep track of all of your networks. The tool’s filters are also useful features. You can restrict its output to available addresses (by default IPs of hosts that didn’t respond), used addresses (IPs of machines that have responded), and reserved addresses (IPs that you mark as reserved).

This tool can be download from Here:

http://www.solarwinds.com/products/freetools/ip_address_tracker/

Tool Review: Vmdk2Vhd - Convert VMware VMDK to Hyper-V VHD

This tool is called Vmdk2vhd and it free to download from VMtoolKit.com.

This tool is a little bit old (last release was on Nov 2006), and there are probably better solution like SCVMM, but this tool can do the job.

"Vmdk2Vhd is a simple utility to convert virtual hard drive images from VMware's VMDK format into the Microsoft's VHD format. This is a sector by sector copy operation from one format to the other and the source file remains unaltered."

 

http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry8.aspx

Black screen after installing Microsoft Windows 7 RC x64