anyweb

the smsts.log is found in various places, read this post to get details about it..

great work thanks for sharing and feel free to post that guide in the MDT part of windows-noob also

thanks and welcome !

Internet Explorer 9 has now been downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours since its Monday night release. That is over 27 downloads every second, or over 240 downloads every 9 seconds. Wow. We want to thank everyone around the world for downloading IE9 and the enthusiastic reception. 2.3 million downloads in 24 hours is over double the 1 million downloads we saw of the IE9 Beta and four times that of the IE9 RC over the same time period. In case you missed it, check out the collection of videos from the SxSW launch event. Ze Frank’s demo of Star.ME is one not to be missed! You can see all of the demos and the complete launch event by clicking play below. And to download Internet Explorer 9 for yourself, visit http://www.beautyoftheweb.com. via > http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/03/16/2-3-million-downloads-of-ie9-in-the-first-24-hours.aspx

When Microsoft first introduced Internet Explorer 9 at PDC in November 2009, it didn't show much. A few benchmarks, some talk about the technologies that the browser would use, and a little information about the direction that development would take. But it was a significant event nonetheless. After years of playing catch-up—the stopgap Internet Explorer 7 added tab support, and then the solid Internet Explorer 8, which offered little in the way of support for new Web innovations—Microsoft was starting to position its browser not only as good, but able to take on the competition and be best in class. And with the release today of Internet Explorer 9, the company has gone on to deliver just that—IE9 is the most modern browser there is. Microsoft set out to do four things with IE9. The browser had to be fast, it had to be standards-compliant, it had to be trustworthy, and it had to put the focus on sites and Web content, rather than the browser. Ars has been following the browser's development since the first public preview in March 2010, with extensive coverage of the beta and release candidate, but those major points are still worth looking at. Focus on sites Internet Explorer 7, and then Chrome, have ushered in a trend for stripped-down browser interfaces. Internet Explorer 7 ditched the menu bar by default (though this default was later changed), and Chrome took this design a step further by putting its tabs on top and all but abandoning the toolbar concept. Internet Explorer 9 builds on—or rather, subtracts from—the work done in previous Internet Explorer versions. Its interface is stripped down, clean, and simple. The intent is that the site should be the focus, not the browser frame. So tabs have moved alongside the address bar—though they can be moved below it if desired—the status and menu bars are gone by default, the toolbars are gone by default, and the icons on the buttons use new artwork. read the entire story > http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/reviews/2011/03/the-most-modern-browser-there-is-internet-explorer-9-reviewed.ars

to install a patch just try a run command line step like this wusa.exe "Windows6.1-KB2443685-x86.msu" /quiet /norestart cheers niall

Microsoft is rumored to be preparing an “Aero Lite” UI for Windows 8 according to leaked components from a recent build. The “Aero Lite” UI is likely replace the Windows 7 Basic interface. Microsoft originally invented the Basic UI for those unable to run the full Windows Aero experience. Windows 8 is rumored to include a full 3D interface which has so far failed to leak out of Redmond’s tight ship. The Aero Lite UI has been revealed in msstyles files supplied to Angel of Despair. The new user interface is rumored to feature some flat Metro styles, similar to those found in Microsoft’s Media Center application and Windows Phone 7. Microsoft’s primary Windows 8 interface is believed to be fully 3D. The interface will be “fully dynamic” and able to adapt to user habits. Icons and shortcuts will adapt to different usage scenarios to speed up daily tasks. Windows 8 is also rumored to include a new fast hibernation system. The system will hibernate in around three to six seconds and save all open documents and running tasks. Rumors suggest that Microsoft will create a dual-UI for Windows 8. A tile-based user interface codenamed “Mosh” will reportedly be included. Microsoft has so far been extremely quiet on the Windows 8 front. Windows Chief, Steven Sinofsky, took to the stage at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January to introduce a technology preview of Microsoft’s Windows ARM support and show off an early build of Windows 8. Microsoft is partnering with ARM-based manufactures NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments to produce new Tablet devices. Steve Ballmer has described the next release of Windows as the company’s “riskiest product bet”. It is understood that Microsoft will feature deep cloud integration into the future OS to realise its vision of “three screens and a cloud”. One Microsoft employee recently said he believes Windows 8 will be the “most important Windows ever shipped.” via > http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-preparing-metro-inspired-aero-lite-ui-for-windows-8/?utm_source=windows-noob.com

it might matter if you chose different settings on a different site server, unless you have a good reason i would stay with the default collation settings

Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 “NoDo” update is due later this month but here’s a quick look at its key features. Microsoft has promised improved application resume times and better marketplace search alongside a new copy and paste feature. The company has delivered on all three with “Nodo”. First up is copy and paste. Microsoft’s copy and paste implementation does the job but is difficult and fiddly to use. I had troubles getting the copy dialog box to surface on multiple occasions and it seems to respond randomly to various means of tapping on the screen. Copying isn’t always copying either, pictures do not copy despite being selectable. I tested copy and paste in native Windows Phone applications to ensure this wasn’t an experience broken by a third party. All-in-all copy and paste feels rushed and like an afterthought from Microsoft, it could be a lot better. Second is Microsoft’s performance improvements for resuming applications. I found that several games resumed a lot quicker than before, despite the differences in devices. This is a welcome improvement for Windows Phone as the company strives towards “Mango” where it will offer full multitasking across its operating system. The last and final key improvement in “NoDo” is the Marketplace search improvements. Searching for generic sounding applications or even ones named “Twitter” or “Frogger” would often displace search results on the device. Relevant applications would end up at the bottom of lists following music and artist information. Microsoft has changed this search behaviour in “NoDo” and it’s greatly improved. It’s now much easier to find applications within the Marketplace. Overall, Microsoft’s “NoDo” update brings little to be excited about as a Windows Phone 7 owner. The improvements are minor and ones that could have arguably been part of the original RTM build. Microsoft has officially confirmed that “NoDo” will be distributed in “the latter half of March”. The company is widely expected to make the update available in the week of March 21 with several carriers suggesting March 24 as a launch date. via > http://www.winrumors.com/first-impressions-windows-phone-7-nodo-update-video/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WinRumors+%28WinRumors%29&utm_content=Twitter

Microsoft is among the many U.S. companies whose operations were impacted by the massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Here’s a status report from the company, issued yesterday afternoon and still current as of this morning. We’ll post further updates as they’re available. Microsoft has activated its Disaster Response protocol and is currently accounting for all of its employees and assessing all of its facilities for any impact. The company is reaching out to its customers and partners to conduct impact assessments. We do know at this time that there is no disruption to Microsoft’s cloud based and hosted services. Microsoft is starting to reach out to provide free incident support to help our customers and partners impacted by the earthquake to get their operations back up and running. The company provides free temporary software licenses to all impacted customers and partners as well as lead, governments, non-profit partners and institutions involved in disaster response efforts. Exchange Online will be made available at no cost for 90 days to business customers in Japan whose communications and collaboration infrastructure may be affected. Microsoft hopes this will help them resume operations more quickly while their existing systems return to normal. Microsoft is also contacting customers, local government, inter-government and non-government agencies to support relief efforts. Microsoft has a disaster response cloud based communications portal based on Windows Azure available that governments/NGOs can use to communicate with citizens or intra-agency for information, situational awareness and communication purposes. Bing Maps currently provides imagery of the area and are working on securing before and after imagery for a disaster response mapping application. On Microsoft’s disaster response site, the company has listed ways for people to help, including links to several non-profit organizations that are offering support to help victims of the Japanese quake. via > http://www.geekwire.com/2011/status-report-microsoft-japan

Windows 7 SP1 hasn’t been out too long, but Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard have already said they are going to start shipping it pre-loaded on their machines. Laptops and desktops from Lenovo will be shipped with Windows 7 service pack 1 starting in early April. Hewlett-Packard have said they are planning shipments of business PCs preloaded with Windows 7 SP1 soon afer. HP won’t be shipping consumer PCs with the service pack until around mid-June however, as they are going to wait until their back-to-school-product launch. Windows 7 SP1 was made available at the end of February to the public, while Technet and MSDN subscribers got their hands on it about a week before. At the moment most users should probably have it installed if they have their Windows Update center configured to automatically download and install new updates. SP1 didn’t contain any major fixes, but it does patch up and fix a few little bugs that Microsoft have discovered since Windows 7 was released by in October 2009. Dell have declined to say when they are going to start shipping their machines with the service pack installed, but their CEO Michael Dell said in the past that PC’s with Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors and Windows 7 Service Pack 1 could boost the client PC refresh cycle. Microsoft haven’t yet released any Windows 7 installation media with SP1 to PC Makers, and we’re still not sure when they will. Currently PC Makers have to manually install SP1, a process which can take hours. More than likely, the sooner Microsoft release Windows 7 SP1 media, the sooner it will start shipping on machines. via > http://www.windows7news.com/2011/03/12/windows-7-sp1-coming-loaded-pcs-early-april/

If you’re a Windows Phone 7 user, you’re likely frustrated at the lack of Windows Phone 7 (WP7) updates since launch. Now, before you yell “They aren’t slow!” you should take a look at this post by Paul Thurrott. The fact is that if you purchased a WP7 at launch, it’s been a long wait for a wide range of performance and bug fixes, and for the implementation of copy and paste. This is the update that's been causing a lot of 'anxiety'. Luckily Microsoft is paying attention. Eric Hautala, whose job it is to get these updates out to WP7 users worldwide, has just shed some light on the update process for WP7. In short, Eric acknowledges that they have been slow and that the slowness is causing many of us to be “understandably anxious”. He explains that with 9 handsets on 60 carriers (in 30 countries), the process can be complex. After Microsoft and the OEMs complete their parts of the update, all of the carriers have to test the update on their networks to ensure that it doesn’t cause any problems for them or their customers. The various carriers have different testing times and requirements, which can hold up rollouts of updates, and Eric emphasizes that this is normal practice for rolling out software updates on any phone – he however doesn’t mention that Apple bypasses carriers completely when rolling out updates. The potential for carriers to block updates has been a big concern for a number of WP7 users, and Eric doesn’t actually discount the theory that carriers can block updates. Instead, he explains that Microsoft works hard with carriers to get updates out on time and that WP7 users “should ultimately receive all the updates” that Microsoft sends out. Note the usage of the word “should”. So what’s the good news in all this? Well, Microsoft is listening. It’s likely that they’ll learn from their mistakes and the publicity those mistakes have had, and they’ll be working to improve future update rollouts. Eric also says that the delayed launch of NoDo “should in no way impact the timing of future updates, including the one announced recently at Mobile World Congress featuring multitasking, a Twitter feature, and a new HTML 5-friendly version of Internet Explorer Mobile.” via > http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-details-the-complicated-wp7-update-process

It seems that Microsoft has signed off the RTM build of Internet Explorer 9 just a few days before the final version is released to the web on Monday. According to a number of Russian sites, the RTM build is 9.00.8112.16421.110308-0330 and was compiled on March 8. Earlier in the week, Microsoft officially confirmed that Internet Explorer 9 will be launching at 9 PM PST on March 14 as was previously predicted by Neowin back in February. The launch will take place as part of their "Beauty of the Web" event, which will be hosted by the Internet Explorer 9 team in Austin City Limits Live. The event will begin at 9 PM on Monday, March 14, 2011 at the Moody Theater. The event will also mark a year to the day that Microsoft launched the first Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9 to developers and the public. Microsoft also confirmed that the public would be able to download the final version of the popular browser at 9 PM PST. Users who have already downloaded the release candidate version of the browser will automatically be updated to the final version, most likely via Windows Update. via > http://www.neowin.net/news/internet-explorer-9-hits-rtm-build

Earlier this week, Microsoft’s French public relations site acknowledged that Microsoft had decided to delay the first major Windows Phone 7 update. On March 10, the WP7 team confirmed that “NoDo” delay, and elaborated on the reasons. In a post to the Windows Phone Blog, Eric Hautala, General Manager, Customer Experience Engineering, confirmed what the French PR site said on March 9 — that NoDo, the first major update to the Windows Phone OS 7 operating system, which will include copy-and-paste and CDMA support — would commence in the latter half of March.Until this week, Microsoft officials had said NoDo would hit in the first half of this month. Hautala said the problems with the first “minor” WP7 update in February had led Microsoft to push back the NoDo due date. From Hautala’s post: Hautala also emphasized that the NoDo push-back doesn’t mean “Mango,” an update slated for later this year, is going to be late. He blogged: (I also take his wording to mean that the IE 9 Mobile browser isn’t going to hit before the rest of Mango, as I’ve seen some bloggers speculating. Microsoft officials have declined to say, when I’ve asked, whether the company is planning to deliver any WP7 updates between NoDo and Mango.) I’ve heard that Microsoft is still planning to get Mango to its partners in the September/October 2011 timeframe so they can deliver it to customers and preloaded on new WP7 devices in time for holiday 2011. That’s what I’m still hearing, for what it’s worth. Kudos for the WP7 team being transparent here. Minus points for the delay in being transparent, which has led to a lot of angst among the loyal Microsoft user and enthusiast base upon which Microsoft depends…. via > http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-confirms-windows-phone-7-nodo-delay-says-mango-not-affected/8904?tag=mantle_skin;content

hi Jason, to start off with, if you retain the same domain does everything migrate as expected for the user (leave out the /MD switch) ? cheers niall

first of all i'd recommend that you do not capture a domain joined image, this can cause issues with gpo's being applied to it amongst other registry specific changes, far better to capture a workgroup computer which can be domain joined in the deploy task sequence later, as regards the name, do you have a Set Computer Name step anywhere in the deploy task sequence and what does it contain

what delay did you set ? if you check any of the users states that are stored there, have they successfully migrated or not ? if there was a problem with the State Restore phase then the Release State Store step may not have run, if that step has not run then the timer (for state deletion) will not start which in turn will mean that the data will remain on the SMP

I met Garth Jones (ConfigMgr MVP) at the Global MVP Summit in Seattle and I heard about Ehansoft and one of the cool things they are doing is giving away reports every month, Garth is a very nice guy so return the favor and see what's on offer over there, want a cool report ? check it out - and vote - http://support.enhansoft.com/Forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=29

in Software distribution, select the Package in question, locate the Program, right click on the program choose properties and on the General Screen you can see the Category option at the bottom of the window, simply select a category or type a new one to set it.

I would recommend still using the Build and Capture approach but change the way you are currently doing it, instead of build and capturing a FAT image, slim it down to only the bare essential FAT apps, such as Office 2010, Symantec Antivirus etc, do NOT include any drivers in this image and do not do any customisations to it, DO apply Windows updates to it and create this image on your favorite Virtual Platform (hyperV is good as it requires no drivers and you don't want any drivers in your master image), you will use this captured WIM image for the next stage, a Deploy Task Sequence. The Deploy task sequence will be used to deploy your thin captured image and should contain groups (which are based on WMI detection) of install drivers steps to install drivers for whatever models you intend to install on, this task sequence should also contain your Dynamic layers, where you install applications that change often like Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader (small apps generally). Any Windows customisations should take place in the Deploy Task Sequence, this way you can adapt/react to what your users need/want quickly without the need to recapture the image. well I hope that gives you some ideas cheers niall

you can have multiple pxe service points as long as they are not on the same subnet, are they ?

also check your client version matches the configmgr version, you mentioned sccm 2007 sp2 but in the screenshot it looks like the version of your client isSCCM 2007 sp1

no those screenshots were taken on a virtual machine as far as i remember, just press PrintScreen