In light of the fact that we will be bumping shoulders with them at the up-coming Microsoft Tech-Ed 2007 SEA, not to mention the fact that we have a huge collection of MS related topics that have built-up on our must-post-about list, we thought it would be suitable to give all of these matters at hand some environment where they can somehow magically link from one another as though it made complete sense:

Thanks to the comprehensive and watchful eyes of Ed’s TechEd Blog, we now have confirmation of the Track Topics & Synopses of the up-coming event taking place in September, later this year:

  • Windows Infrastructure Track - Introducing Vista & Server 2008
  • Messaging & Collaboration - Sharepoint & Exchange Services
  • Systems Management - Operations & System Configurations
  • Enterprise Data Management - New SQL Server (Katmai)
  • Architecture & Teams - Service Orientated Infrastructure
  • Developer Technology - AJAX, AJAX, AJAX (We wish)
  • Web User Experience - Silverlight is finally mentioned…

Here is last year’s official web-page, information from which can be downloaded as a PDF here.

If only we were lucky enough for them to be giving out their new PowerPoint Laser Pointer Media Remotes:

Do more and carry less with the first ever Notebook Mouse with integrated slide presenter, laser pointer, and media remote control. It’s an all-in-one super tool for the office, road, and home—the only input device you need. Smoothly navigate through Microsoft Office PowerPoint® and other presentations from up to 30 feet away from your PC. Use for multimedia presentations and control digital entertainment from the comfort of your living room sofa.

Not that we have anything specifically bad to say about Vista or Office 2007, other than it looks so much more nicer than it runs, and although we have upgraded our Vista machines to XP (coined by Chris), here are some very useful Vista tips:

From The Cable Guy (regarding IPv6 Auto-configuration in Windows Vista):

IPv6 is about more than extending the address space from 32 bits in IPv4 to 128 bits. IPv6 hosts can also automatically configure themselves, even without the use of an address configuration protocol such as DHCP for IPv6 (DHCPv6).

Based on RFC 2462, all IPv6 nodes automatically configure a link-local address for each interface. An IPv6 host also uses router discovery - an exchange of Router Solicitation and Router Advertisement messages - to determine additional addresses and configuration settings. Included in the Router Advertisement message sent by the router are the Managed Address Configuration (M) and Other Stateful Configuration (O) flags, which indicate whether the host should use DHCPv6 for additional addresses or configuration settings.

From 4sysops (using Apache on Server Core - Longhorn):

Mark Wilson installed Apache on Windows Server 2008 Server Core and it seems to work without problems. All you have to do is to run msiexec /i apache.msi. Now, you might ask why Microsoft made IIS available on Server Core if Apache works…

4sysops (and a very few number of other people) also points out Windows Server 2008 changes to DNS functionality:

The DNS Server service of Windows Server 2008 provides a couple of new features and changes.

Background zone loading
DNS server can now load zone data from Active Directory in background.

IPv6 support
Windows Server 2008 fully supports IPv6, the next version of the Internet protocol, and so does its DNS service.

RODC support
DNS clients are redirected to a writable DNS server for updates.

GlobalNames zone
Are you still using WINS (Windows Internet Name Service) in your organization? We do! Some applications still use single-label names (names without a dot). If you have more than one domain, you usually run into problems with such applications if they are using DNS for resolving IP addresses. The GlobalNames zone feature is supposed to be the solution for this problem.

Link-local multicast name resolution (LLMNR)
LLMNR or multicast DNS (mDNS) enables clients to resolve names on a peer-to-peer basis within a subnet if no DNS server is available. Windows Vista also supports this feature.

Following-on from something mentioned above with Service Orientated Infrastructure, which is one of the topics at the up-coming Tech-Ed event, here is some more information on how to keep an eye on your server using Operation Manager 2007:

PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP OF ALL
Comes in the form of a little-known "out of memory" issue with Vista…

The solution comes from Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report:

Have you experienced any of these problems with Windows Vista? After opening a large number of programs and windows, you try to launch a new program or open a new browser tab or even switch back to an already running program and instead:

  • You get a strange “out of memory” message, despite the fact that you’re using only a fraction of the RAM installed on your system.
  • The window opens but its contents refuse to load.
  • The window opens, but menus are missing, dialog boxes are empty, or buttons don’t work.

The problem, as it turns out, is as old as the Windows NT family. I’ve found references to this issue that date back to the mid-1990s and Windows NT 3.1 and 3.5. The fix for Vista, just as for those much older versions of Windows, involves editing a key in the Windows Registry.

The fix for 32–bit Windows Vista is simple: The interactive desktop heap size needs to be bumped up to a value greater than its default setting of 3072KB. I recommend a conservative approach: increase the value to 4096 and try that for a while. If you continue to bump into the problem, try a higher value. On one system here, I’ve been running without issues using a value of 8192KB.

OK, with that out of the way, here are the step-by-step instructions:

  1. Click Start, type regedit in the Search box, and click the Regedit icon that appears at the top of the Start menu.
  2. Click OK in response to the UAC prompt.
  3. In Registry Editor, navigate to the following key:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
    – SYSTEM
    – – CurrentControlSet
    – – – Control
    – – – – Session Manager
    – – – – – SubSystems
  4. In the contents pane to the right, double-click the Windows value from the bottom of the list. This opens an Edit String dialog box containing a very long text string.
  5. Scroll through this text value until you find the section that begins with SharedSection. Change the second value from its default of 3072 to a higher number. Do not change any other values.

Restart the computer. If your experience is like mine, you’ll find that those odd error messages are gone and that you’re able to open many more windows without any display issues.