Quick Update to UAC from the Windows 7 Blog

The guys who are making Windows 7 appear to be hard at work.  Check out their latest update to UAC in Windows 7.

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/15/user-account-control-uac-quick-update.aspx

JamesNT

SSIS Execute SQL Task Error: The Statement Has Been Terminated

If an Execute SQL Task fails with this error, there are two things I recommend checking.

First, do you have a timeout specified.  If you specify a timeout other than 0, then when that time elapses the Execute SQL Task may fail with this error.  A timeout period of 0 means infinity.  You can set the timeout period by editing the Execute SQL Task.  You’ll see Timeout right under the options section.

Second, if you are inserting information into a table using the SQL INSERT command, be sure the columns in your table are big enough to hold the data.  For example, I had a column of type nvarchar(75) but the data I was trying to insert had a length of 78.  Be sure to make sure datatypes match up as well.

JamesNT

Couldn’t make it to the 2008 PDC?

Like many of you, I couldn’t make it to this year’s Professional Developer’s Conference.  However, you can still see full presentations at the Microsoft Channel 9 web site.

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/

JamesNT

Some cool posts on the MS blogs

I’ve run across some really cool posts on the various MSDN and TechNet blogs I frequent.  I thought I’d reflect them here as some may find them helpful.

From Jeff Jones’ security blog:
It appears as though Vista has had a very good first half of the year as compared to Mac and Red Hat linux.  View the blog post and statistics here.

From the Core Team at Microsoft:
This blog post talks about how to debug Kernel Mode Blue Screen’s of Death.

If you use the Microsoft Action Pack, you may seen an error when trying to upgrade a Hyper-V VM.

Changes to Professional Level (non-premier) support at Microsoft.

From the AskPerf team at Microsoft:
Five things to think about when choosing Anti-Virus software.

Getting stuck at “Applying Computer Settings.”

Installing Vista print drivers on Windows Server 2003.

The Windows 7 Blog:
Some very useful information about User Account Control.

The Directory Services Blog:
Getting a CMD prompt to run as SYSTEM.

Hope you find these posts as informative and useful as I did.  I recommend subscribing to all the blogs mentioned.

JamesNT

Why is the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Vista so large?

Returning back from yet another few weeks of merciless projects, I ran across this gem from the ASKCORE team at Microsoft.  If you are a Windows user like I am, you have no doubt noticed that the WINSXS directory in Windows 2008 and Vista is quite large. 

The Server Setup/Core Team explains why.

JamesNT

A Goth working at Microsoft!

Very interesting.  This is a video over at Channel 9 – you should check it out.

I found this courtesy of another MS blog.

JamesNT

Shared printers between XP clients sometimes disappear

I had an interesting problem in my office not long ago wherein users were complaining about printers that were intermittently no longer showing up in the Printers and Faxes folder of their computers.  All of the printers in question belonged to other users who had shared those printers to the network. 

I had been chasing this issue down for weeks until a lucky breakthrough made everything click in my mind.  One of the users called to complain again so I decided to open up Computer Management on the SBS Server we have in the office and connect to the XP workstation serving the printer.  Upon trying to connect, I got an error stating that the XP workstation could no longer accept connections. 

At this point, it is important to remember that Windows XP Professional based computers allow only 10 concurrent network connections.  Connections to file shares and printers certainly count.  Also, as far as I can tell, XP has no default setting for when a connection that is idle is forcibly dropped.  I searched around the web for a solution and found many that involved registry hacks and even ways to send those hacks out via group policy.  Well, fortunately, there is good news which involves using group policy but not hacking the registry.

Open up your group policy editor and edit the group policy container that contains the workstations experiencing the trouble we are discussing.  Navigate to the following:

COMPUTER POLICY | WINDOWS SETTINGS | SECURITY SETTINGS | LOCAL POLICIES | SECURITY OPTIONS

Look for the entry that says the following:

Microsoft Network Server:  Amount of idle time required before suspending connection.

See below screen shot (click to enlarge).

I have mine set to 2 minutes and so far so good.  We haven’t had any issues for over a week now.

Keep in mind that you may wish to set this only for workstations and not change the default for servers which is 15 minutes.  Also, if you do not have a domain, you’ll need to set this for every workstation independently.

  I hope this helps for those of you experiencing this problem

JamesNT

Visual Studio 2008 SP1 released

Already?  It seems like yesterday that VS 2008 came out!

Read the full write-up over at Bink.

JamesNT

Inaccuracy of the Press

Christopher Hoff over at the Rational Survivability blog gave a talk on virtualization over at BlackHat.  It appears that he was grossly misquoted by one of the reporters.

What Hoff said:

…virtualization security will not save you money, it will cost you more.

What the reporter cited:

…virtualization will not save you money, it will cost you more.

You can read more about the situation on Hoff’s blog here.  However, when I take this situation into account with other misquotes, misreports, and overall lack of proper grammar I am beginning to see on sites like Fox and MSNBC.com, I begin to wonder if we should not start holding the press more accountable for accuracy. 

We do, after all, rely on the press to know what’s going on.  It’s hard to know what’s going on if they screw it up.

JamesNT

Producer for Powerpoint 2007 now available

Microsoft has released Powerpoint Producer for Powerpoint 2007.  See the official release update from the Powerpoint blog.

Also, Producer 2007 also supports previous versions of Powerpoint.  Update on that note here.

JamesNT