More Vista Ultimate Extras on the way

This was really a "no update" update, The Ultimate Extras team posted an announcement that they are in fact still working on the extras that they talked about in January, specifically Dreamscene (animated wallpapers) and 20 language packs for the multi language user interface. Basically, they will be ready when they are ready.

Of course they should wait until the extras are stable and work properly, and I don't want you to think that I am giving them any grief. If the extras are delayed because they aren't stable, then I think that is a good decision.

Although I like eye candy, I usually turn it off after a little while. You see, I use my machine to do work, and I don't particularly care about windows animations, etc. So Dreamscene isn't something that I'm holding my breath for. I do have some hope though , because the article says:

We also intend to deliver additional Extras in the future. In addition to Windows DreamScene and the remaining Language Packs, we plan to ship a collection of additional Windows Ultimate Extras over the next couple years that we are confident will delight our passionate Windows Vista Ultimate customers.

So maybe they will include something cool, like a backup utility that lets you specify what you want backed up. Kind of like every version of Windows since NT has had. (I know that you can copy the backup utility from XP over to Vista, look in the more reading section).

More Reading:

Windows Ultimate team provides an update on Extras - Nick White on the Windows Vista Team Blog.

Installing Windows XP Ntbackup on Windows Vista - Petri IT Knowledgebase

Restoring NTBACKUP files to Windows Vista - SearchWinComputing.com

Vista Ultimate's promised add-ons just broken promises? - NeoWin.net

Folder Navigation in Vista - Happiness is a Hyperlinked Address Bar

I almost panicked when I couldn't find the "up" button in Vista. I was never a big fan of using the back button, because when you start following shortcuts, or entering UNC paths in the address bar, it can get a little confusing.

I was pretty disappointed until I realized that all of the items in the address bar can be clicked on. I think that this is a really nice feature, and I'll explain why.

In this picture of XP's Windows Explorer, If I wanted to get back to the root of C:, I could either press "up" 2 times, or I could click in there and delete the "windows\system32" and then press enter.

The picture below is Vista's Windows Explorer, you'll notice that "Local Disk (C:)" is highlighted, and if I click on it, Explorer will jump directly to the C: drive. It gets even better. The arrow to the right of C: is a dropdown menu.

As you can see from the picture below, you can now see all of the folders available to you on the C: drive, and clicking on any of them will jump directly to that folder.

Even better, the menu to the left of "Computer" is also a drop down list which can be used to get to some other frequently used items (see image below).

Even though it's going to take a little getting used to, I think this change will really save me some time.

Rinbot.BC Worm Exploits Un-Patched Microsoft DNS Vulnerability

I heard about this vulnerability recently, and according to search security, there is now a worm, Rinbot.BC, using the exploit. I haven't heard any reports yet on how widespread the worm is, but it is probably a good idea to use the workaround mentioned in Microsoft Security Bulletin 935964.

The vulnerability was announced last week, and there is talk that Microsoft is going to issue a out of cycle patch to fix the issue. Windows Server 2000 SP4, and Windows Server 2003 SP1 and SP2 are effected. Of course clients don't run a DNS server, so Vista, XP and 2000 are not affected.

The security bulletin lists several ways to work around the vulnerability, I thought the easiest way was to use the method that uses the registry to disable remote management of the DNS server through RPC. Terminal services (including remote desktop), and the local machine will still be able to manage DNS settings.

How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database in Windows XP

Usually when I have to use this trick, it is because I was synchronizing a laptop, and I get the following error message:

“Unable to merge offline changes on “ %share_name% “the parameter is incorrect”.

Quick little warning
The fix is pretty straight forward, but don't do it if you think you have changes that haven't been synchronized to the network. If you think you may have some, then scroll down to the section of this post which reads "Finding out what files need to be synchronized". If you ignore this warning, don't blame me when someone bounces the laptop off your head because you just lost days worth of work.

The Fix (if you don't have changes that need to be synced)
After performing the following steps, the offline files cache will be cleared, and anything which was made available offline will need to be made available once again.

Now, if you are sure that you don't have any changes, just open any Windows Explorer window (my computer will work too), and click on:
Tools > Folder Options > Offline Files.

Now hold down Control and Shift, then click on "Delete Files". You will get a message letting you know that all unsynchronized changes will be lost (hence my warning above), and that afterwards, no network files or folders will be available offline. It will ask you if you wish to re-initialize the cache. Pressing OK twice will agree to this, and agree to a restart.

Bookmark this because ...
I would like to say that this fixes it forever, but I won’t say that, because it doesn’t. To be honest, I am always looking for this article, because about once every two months or so, I have the same problem and have to figure out how to do it again.

I am willing to bet that a format / reload would fix it, but the machine is some weird tablet from a small company, and I don’t feel like messing with it. The last time I called the company, they had a total of 1 support person, and he was on vacation.

How this fix can divert yet another synchronization disaster
Sometimes I have used this solution to straighten out another problem I have seen, on the same computer strangely enough, when I connect to the network, there will be thousands of files that the system thinks are modified and it wants to sync up. Unless that user is really productive, then that would probably be a bad idea (as you can imagine).

If you are having either of these problems
You may want to ask the user if they have modified anything since they were last on the network. When you reset the cache any modifications will be lost. You can also look in the Offline Files Folder and sort by date modified or Synchronization status.

To view your offline files, in a easy to sort by modified date and synchronization status, just open any Windows Explorer window (my computer will work too), and click on:
Tools > Folder Options > Offline Files, then click on the "View Files" button.

Finding out what files need to be synchronized
If you are having problems with seeing the modified / cached files, just disconnect the system from the network, then you should be able to view the files in their original location or in the Offline files Folder, copy the modified files anywhere on the local disk, then after clearing the offline files cache, you can bring the system back online and put the modified files back where they should be.

References:
How to re-initialize the offline files cache and database - Microsoft TechNet Article

Remove a Service with the Command Prompt

Sorry for the inconvenience, but there is a new and improved version of this post on my new blog.

The Joy of Scripting

Way back in the early 90’s, I found myself in the Marine Corps Computer Science School where I was being trained to be a computer operator. Evidently the Marine Corps thought I would be good at this computer thing. Their definition of a computer operator was the guy who maintained the print queues, watched and fixed production jobs, and mounted tapes on a mainframe.

There was this big debate at the time about who was better, operators or programmers. The programmers were the ones who wrote the code which did all the nice things, and the operators were the one who made sure that those jobs ran correctly, and fixed everything when they didn’t work.

When I thought about programming, I just didn’t think that it was for me. As I matured, I took some programming courses in college, and it was interesting, but it still didn’t seem like something that I wanted to do for a living.

About a year ago, I started dabbling with some scripting. This was really lucky timing for me, since Microsoft really started putting some man power into educating the public about their scripting technologies. I found the “Hey, Scripting Guy!” column, and I realized that with what I had already learned with Visual Basic, and looking at my text book (whew, I sure am glad that I didn’t sell that one), I could really do some cool stuff.

The thing that really makes me enjoy scripting is that the programs aren’t being used by everyone in the world, so I don’t have to validate everything that is entered. If I use a command line argument, I don’t need to make sure that it is only so many characters, or that it is a numeric value. I write the scripts for myself, or for a very limited audience, and if I don’t know what to expect from it, then I guess I shouldn’t be using it. Don’t think that I don’t check and double check the results of my scripts, because I do need them to be accurate.

The beauty of a script is that if you do something over and over, a script can probably do it for you, faster, sometimes better, and all you have to do is double click on it, or better yet, schedule it to run periodically. If it takes you four hours to write a script to do a task which usually takes you 10 minutes to do manually, then it will pay for itself after being used 24 times. I wrote a script called “tap” that will ping the computer I specify 1 time. It took me probably 10 minutes to write it, but now instead of typing “ping computer –n 1” I just type “tap computer”. I know that might seem a little silly, unless you ping computers 20 times a day, then you may think it is pretty useful. Heck, I have a batch file called “x” that just types “exit”, it saves me 3 keystrokes, but I use a command prompt about 100 times a day.

I write all of my scripts for Windows based computers, and you can write scripts in all sorts of languages, but I use Visual Basic Script. Visual Basic is not the same as Visual Basic Script, but it is close.

Now the bad part about being a novice is that sometimes, I really have to bang my head on stuff before I figure it out. The other side of that is every time that I really bang my head on stuff, I learn something, and I get better.

As far as actually writing the scripts, I know that the hard core scripting guys will say that all you need is a text editor like notepad, and yes, that is all you need. I have heard the same thing over and over about writing HTML. I still see a great benefit in using a nice editor. I know that there are some really nice editors out there with great features, but I don’t much like spending money on stuff if I don’t have to. The editor I use is Crimson Editor, it’s free, and I like it. If you happen to know of a better one that is free, post a comment.

Now I don’t want you to think that I am some scripting Guru, I don’t do this to make a living, I do this to make my job easier, and I thought it might be useful to make this available to others. Also, when you are looking at my scripts, I would not use them as a reference on how to write code. Let me repeat this one more time, I am not a programmer.

The first place that I would like to point you to is the Microsoft Script Center. This is one place where you will find some really good scripting resources. I love to take scripts out of the Script Center Repository, and modify them just a little tiny bit, or better yet, use them as a sub routine in another script. Another favorite thing to do is to get a wrapper template, for an example, a script that grabs all of the computers in my domain, then throw in another script, that checks them all for a particular version of office. So in just a few minutes, I can check all of the computers on my network for office.

Another terrific thing about scripting is that I will create a script for one purpose, and then the next script I write I figure out that I can use the first script again. The next thing you know, I am using that script as a sub routine in a whole slew of other scripts.

OK, I already gave you a few links, so let me pile on some more. The “Hey, Scripting Guy!” column is a great place to find solutions for problems that you didn’t even think about solving with a script yet. The Microsoft Developer Network has a bunch of resources, especially if you want to start modifying scripts or even creating your own. The Scripting section of MSDN has a huge amount of Resources, including the VBSCRIPT Language Reference and User Guide, a reference for Windows Scripting Host (WSH), The Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Reference, and of course the Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference.

That should be enough to get you started. Good luck.

Find Scripts:

- “Hey, Scripting Guy!” – Terrific Column at Microsoft Technet.

- Script Center Repository – Lots of great Scripts from Microsoft.

- ScriptingAnswers.com – Lots of good scripts.

- W32Scripting – Many more good Scripts.

Scripting Resources

- Scripting Section of MSDN

- Microsoft Script Center - Lots of Resources, and tons of tutorials and columns.

- VBSCRIPT Language Reference and User Guide

- Windows Scripting Host (WSH) Reference

- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Reference

- Active Directory Service Interfaces Reference