External Blu-ray drive coming to the Xbox 360

And the last horse finally cross’s the finish line ….

Steve Ballmer has confirmed that an external Blu-ray drive will be coming to the Xbox 360.

Check out the article:

 http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/10/22/…

All I can say about this it’s about time, way to catch the last train out of the station on this one.

A hands-on review of Xen Desktop 4

I got my first chance to play with Xen Desktop 4 and by association the new version of Xen App that it ships with.

So first off I think we can all agree that it wouldn’t be a Citrix release without a Nomenclature change. The new citrix client is out(11.2) and now called the Citrix Online Plug-In. The Access Management Console has been renamed to the Delivery Services Console for both Xen Desktop and Xen App. The web interface functionality which used to be it’s own console and then was amalgamated into the Access Management Console has now been separated back into it’s own console again. To my understanding they split their assets 50/50 and Web interface has supervised visitation rights to the kids.

Ok, so now the good. Lots of improvements on the Virtual Desktop Agent with lots more multimedia support and USB support. There seems to be more functionality built in to make the user experience more seamless and enjoyable which is good because if there is nothing in the world that will kill desktop virtualization faster then unhappy users.

When I was publishing an application in Xen App that has been installed on the Xen App server there was a handy check box to setup an Isolation Enviroment which to my remembrance not there before.

Overall I would say good improvements so far, I am sure I barely scratched the surface on changes but I only started using it today so I will post more changes as a notice them.

AP’s not registering on Cisco Wireless controller 4400 series

I experienced this issue recently where I had a Cisco Wireless 4400 series Controller and some brand new 1140 series AP’s. The problem was this, the access points would connect to the controller, they would get IP addresses, and you would see them listed under the wireless section of the web GUI but the indicator light on them would never turn a solid green and they would not broadcast the SSID’s.

The issue as it turned out was firmware on the controller. This is a known issue with version 4 and below. We upgraded to version 6 and this resolved the issue.

Passed 1y0-a14!

I wrote and passed the Xen Desktop 3.0 (1Y0-A14) yesterday with a 98%!  Overall this was a straight forward exam, no big tricks. There were a few questions where you were told the task that you needed to preform and they listed all the steps to do it and you needed to put those steps in the right order. All the other questions were very short and if you know your stuff then it shouldn’t be too hard an exam.

My advise would be to focus heavily on studying provisioning server because that played in big in the exam that I got.

Good luck!

Forms with VBScript do not work with Terminal Services in Outlook

Ok so this is a known issue I encountered that I wanted to post about. I found a MS support article with a fix for this.

 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302003

So in situations where you are running Outlook on a TS(or Citrix) box, VBScript will not work and you will need to apply the fix in the article to get it working.

Citrix unveils Xen Desktop 4.0

You can check this out here:

 http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Virtualization/…

This is great and awesome and all that, nice job to Citrix for constantly updating their product but can they slow it down a little? I am going to be writing my cert for Xen Desktop 3 very shortly and now I haven’t even gotten the cert yet and it’s already out of date!

BES - Contacts are not sync’ing

I have had this issue twice recently with two separate users where there mail and calender items were sync’ing but not their contacts.

This first thing to always check here is that wireless sync of the contact is enabled. In the contacts area go into options, then desktop and make sure Wireless synchronization is set to on.

Assuming that it is then I have found the issue is usually corrupt service books. You can resend the service books from the BES manager. However I have found in these two cases recently that I addition to resending the service books I had to go back into the Contacts options in the blackberry and turn off wireless sync of contacts, save it, and then turn it back on and save again.

This extra step resolved my issue in both cases.

Microsoft Security Essentials - a review

Here is a great review for the new Microsoft Security Essentials products:

 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/30/…

In reading the review I was actually tentatively impressed ( I will save real positive feelings after i test it myself).

Microsoft unleashing a good product is rare enough but a good product that is free? I am pretty sure the planets must be aligning in just the right way for this to happen.

For those of you who are thinking to yourself “but HyperV is free” please note that in my previous statement I did say free AND good.

Warning message when you start Outlook 2007 and then connect to a mailbox that is hosted on an Exchange 2007: Security certificate is invalid.

I encountered this issue when setting up an Exchange 2007 environment. After I installed the SSL cert for OWA all of the users using Outlook 2007 reported that they got a certificate warning when opening Outlook internally.

A co-worker of mine found this support article which fixed the issue and saved my bacon.

SYMPTOMS
When you start Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and then connect to a mailbox that is hosted on a mailbox server that is running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, you receive the following security warning message:

The name of the security certificate is invalid or does not match the name of the site.

CAUSE
You replace the default self-signed Exchange 2007 certificate with a different certificate.

By default, the URL that is stored in these objects references the NetBIOS name of the server. For example, a URL that resembles the following URL is stored:

https://NetBIOS_name.contoso.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

This may differ from the host name that is used in the FQDN of the replacement certificate. For example, the replacement certificate may have an FQDN that resembles the following FQDN:

mail.contoso.com

This issue causes a name mismatch error to occur. Therefore, you receive the security warning message when you try to connect Outlook 2007 to the mailbox.

RESOLUTION
To resolve this issue, modify the URLs for the appropriate Exchange 2007 components. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Start the Exchange Management Shell.
2. Modify the Autodiscover URL in the Service Connection Point. The Service Connection Point is stored in the Active Directory directory service. To modify this URL, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity CAS_Server_Name -AutodiscoverServiceInternalUri https://mail.contoso.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

3. Modify the InternalUrl attribute of the EWS. To do this, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity “CAS_Server_Name\EWS (Default Web Site)” -InternalUrl https://mail.contoso.com/ews/exchange.asmx

4. Modify the InternalUrl attribute for Web-based Offline Address Book distribution. To do this, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Set-OABVirtualDirectory -Identity “CAS_Server_name\oab (Default Web Site)” -InternalUrl https://mail.contoso.com/oab

5. Modify the InternalUrl attribute of the UM Web service. To do this, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

Set-UMVirtualDirectory -Identity “CAS_Server_Name\unifiedmessaging (Default Web Site)” -InternalUrl https://mail.contoso.com/unifiedmessaging/service.asmx

6. Open IIS Manager.
7. Expand the local computer, and then expand Application Pools.
8. Right-click MSExchangeAutodiscoverAppPool, and then click Recycle.

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940726

Certificate, Exchange Server, Outlook

Training material for the BCP-610

So last month I wrote that there was no study material available for the Blackberry Solution Designer BCP-610 exam. I have since found out from Blackberry that they are working on creating the material and it should be out by November from the Element K website  http://www.elementk.com/).