Finally, Windows Vista beta 2 goes public

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

The betas are ready! Windows Vista

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about the confusion caused by Bill Gates’ announcement of Vista beta 2 availability (the fact that I could download it from a Microsoft site but that other Microsoft channels were saying it was not yet available). Over the following days it because clear that although registered beta testers could get hold of beta 2, it had not yet been released to the public. That all changed this week – the beta is now available for download or order via the Windows Vista Customer Preview Programme – but if you’re going to try it, beware.

I’m running Windows Vista beta 2 on my main notebook PC with no significant issues but others are reporting that beta 2 is not as stable as it should be. The key point to note is that unlike products from some vendors (e.g. Google, who seem to leave products in a perpetual beta cycle – Google Mail for example!) in Microsoft “beta” really does mean pre-release software – not the final product, so don’t use it on your main PC unless you know that your data is safe should Vista implode on you.

DNS and operations master roles placement with Active Directory

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I had a call last night from a client who is implementing Active Directory (AD) in his organisation and was trying to resolve some replication issues. Like so many problems in AD the issue was related to the DNS configuration and once I had made a few configuration changes on the DNS servers to build a forwarding hierarchy from the remote sites to the head office and then on to the ISP, everything started to work.

Whilst I was looking over his domain I also noticed that there was only a single global catalog (GC) server – the first domain controller that he’d installed (the same DC that was holding all the operations master roles, although in his single domain forest the co-hosting of the infrastructure master and GC roles will not cause problems with phantom indexes as described in Microsoft knowledge base article 248047).

Microsoft knowledge base article 825036 describes best practices for DNS client settings in Windows 2000 Server and in Windows Server 2003 whilst Microsoft knowledge base article 223346 discusses the placement and optimisation of operations master roles.

Keeping files synchronised between data sources with SyncToy

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Several months back, my mate Toffa told me about a tool called SyncToy that is great for keeping two disks synchronised (e.g. a primary and a backup). Last night I installed it (to make regular backups of my digital photos and music to my new external hard disk) and was very impressed. It’s actually a free Windows PowerToy and I was using v1.0 – SyncToy v1.2 is available and includes a number of enhancements.

The tool offers five modes of synchronisation between pairs of folders (left and right) and users can also preview the changes before running the synchronisation job:

  • Synchronise: New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.
  • Echo: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.
  • Subscribe: Updated files on the right are copied to the left if the file name already exists on the left.
  • Contribute: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.
  • Combine: New and updated files are copied both ways. Nothing happens to renamed and deleted files.

Microsoft are positioning this as a tool for photographers but to be honest it looks good for anyone who keeps data in multiple locations (like backing up a laptop to a server at home). I know people who swear by Novell iFolder (for keeping data synchronised, secure and available wherever they are) but SyncToy looks like a perfect synchronisation solution for many Windows users who just need to make sure that a second copy of their important files is available if the first one is lost or who want to synchronise files stored on multiple devices in a number of locations.

OWA 2003 ActiveX control issues from IE 6.0 and 7.0

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Since switching my everyday PC over to Windows Vista, I’ve been unable to reply to any e-mails using Outlook Web Access (OWA) whereby the reply pane opens, but the ActiveX control doesn’t load. I tried various browser settings before a bit of googling turned up a thread on the microsoft.public.exchange.admin newsgroup that seemed to describe an annoying “click to activate the control” message that I’d been experiencing with fully-patched Windows XP clients (caused by the Internet Explorer update described in Microsoft knowledge base article 912945).

Microsoft knowledge base article 911829 describes the problem as well as highlighting that Windows Vista does not support the ActiveX control used by OWA for HTML editing. Once I’d installed the associated hotfix on my Exchange Server 2003 server the issue was resolved for both my XP and Vista clients.

P2Ving my notebook PC: part 2

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 18 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Last week I wrote about how I’d lost most of my bank holiday weekend trying to perform a physical to virtual (P2V) conversion of my corporate notebook PC. Well, I’m pleased to say that I’ve resolved the remaining issues and I’m very happy with the results.

The last remaining problem after I’d used PlateSpin PowerConvert to carry out the conversion to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 was getting the Cisco Systems VPN Client to work. I spent two days trying various settings, removing and reinstalling the VPN software (and the Zone Labs Integrity Client that my corporate VPN connection also requires) but was getting nowhere.

With or without a VPN solution, my end goal was a VMware virtual machine, as Microsoft Virtual Server is intended as a remote/server virtualisation solution, and Microsoft Virtual PC only runs on Windows/Macintosh platforms (I needed a cross-platform solution as I intend to run my virtual machine as a guest on both Windows and Linux). That’s where VMware Server beta 3 came in useful, as I used its virtual machine importer feature to import the Virtual Server configuration before installing the VMware Tools and copying the whole virtual machine elsewhere to run it using the VMware Player.

If this sounds complicated, then there are some good reasons for taking the physical hardware – Microsoft Virtual Server – VMware Server – VMware Player route.

  • Firstly, PlateSpin PowerConvert didn’t recognise my VMware Server beta 3 server and I don’t have a licensed copy of VMware Workstation/GSX/ESX (except an old VMware Workstation 4 licence) so Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 was my only viable route.
  • Secondly, whilst VMware claim that their Player supports Microsoft virtual machines, my experience is that the import fails.
  • Finally, VMware Player does not include VMware Tools. Although VMware Tools can be installed to a virtual machine within VMware Player, the use of VMware Server to carry out the import provided an ideal opportunity to install the tools.

Incidentally, VMware Server’s virtual machine importer was very impressive, giving me the option to use the existing Virtual Server disks or to copy them to VMware Server format (I chose the latter) as well as options for legacy or new VMware formats. It can also import from certain disk image files and that may well be a method of avoiding the use of the software that I used to carry out the P2V operation.

Once I’d rebuilt my notebook with a different base operating system (I’m using Windows Vista beta 2 at the moment), it was simply a case of installing the VMware Player. Although I don’t recall any errors on installation, I did need to manually configure the VMware Bridge Protocol on my Ethernet connection as VMnet 0 (and reboot), before VMware Player would allow the guest to connect to the network.

Plug and play dealt with the virtual hardware changes along the way and the VPN connection worked first time (without any obvious changes) – I can only assume that the VMware bridged network connection works in a different way to the Virtual Server network that was causing my VPN client to fail in a Virtual Server virtual machine.

After spending most of today working with my Windows XP virtual corporate client running as a guest under Windows Vista, the whole project seems to have been a success, although I’m still planning on dual-booting Windows Vista with Linux (keeping the virtual machine on a partition accessible from both operating systems) so there may well be a part three to this story yet.