December 24, 2008 4:26 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
.WIM,
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
Vista deployment,
WAIK,
Windows Automated Installation Kit,
Windows Imaging Format,
Windows Preinstallation Environment,
Windows Vista,
WinPEThe Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) 2.0 delivers a basic, no-frills operating system with limited services and no GUI capabilities that's built upon the Windows Vista kernel. You can use it to prep a PC for Vista installation, to copy disk images from a network file server to a...
December 22, 2008 5:47 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
Revo Uninstaller,
Total Uninstaller 5,
Windows Installer Cleanup Utility,
Windows Vista SP1,
Windows Vista troubleshooting,
Windows Vista uninstallerOn October 15, I wrote a blog called "Toward a more positive Vista uninstall experience," in which I mentioned Revo...
December 17, 2008 9:11 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
CVE-2008-4844,
MS08-078,
Security,
vulnerability scanner,
Windows Update,
Windows Vista,
Windows Vista SP1,
Windows Vista SP2When Secunia calls a Windows security update "extremely critical" you know a serious vulnerability is being patched. The Windows security community has been abuzz since last week when a number of remote code execution vulnerabilities originally thought limited only to IE 7 turned out to affect...
December 17, 2008 4:15 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
Vista deployment,
Vista slipstreaming,
WAIK,
Windows Automated Installation Kit,
Windows VistaBy itself, Vista does a pretty good job of fitting itself to the platforms on which it's installed. But savvy administrators can do a lot more to construct custom Vista install images with a bit of time and effort, and the right tools and approaches. To get a good sense of what kinds of...
December 14, 2008 9:37 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
crash dumps,
Desktops,
Dumpchk.exe,
Enterprise desktop,
Windbg.exe,
Windows Vista,
Windows Vista SP1,
Windows Vista troubleshootingThere's no question that the Windows Debugger (windbg.exe) is a nonpareil tool when it comes to troubleshooting source code or digging into Vista crashdumps. But with the program's requirement for current debug symbols, complex syntax (the downside of amazing functionality is detailed and demanding...
December 12, 2008 6:52 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
paging file size,
physical memory,
Process Explorer,
Russinovich,
Sysinternals,
virtual memory,
Windows Vista,
Windows Vista troubleshootingSometimes, the information I come across on Vista internals is just too good not to pass along. And when it comes to Vista internals nobody knows (or does) them better than Mark Russinovich, formerly a principal at SysInternals, now a Microsoft Fellow. In discussing paging file sizes in the context...
December 10, 2008 5:27 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
MS08-70,
MS08-71,
MS08-72,
MS08-73,
MS08-74,
MS08-75,
MS08-76,
MS08-77,
Patch Tuesday,
Security,
Windows Update,
Windows VistaThe second Tuesday in each month is when Microsoft schedules its patches, fixes, and security updates. Recently, Microsoft has begun to offer Advance Notification for its Security Bulletins, which makes it a lot easier to...
December 8, 2008 8:07 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
green power,
notebook energy conservation,
Vista Notebook PC,
Vista power plan,
Windows VistaIn the process of compiling data for a review on notebook PC coolers recently, I had my face slapped by some dramatically different data from the selfsame notebook PCs as I sought to document the influence of an added external cooler when it came to running a notebook. This phenomenon might be...
December 5, 2008 6:55 PM
Posted by: Ed Tittel
Desktops,
Enterprise desktop,
Secunia,
Secunia Network Inspector (NSI),
vulnerability scanner,
Windows Update,
Windows Vista,
Windows Vista SP1,
Windows Vista SP2,
Windows Vista troubleshootingLast week I blogged about Danish information security firm Secunia's outstanding Network Software Inspector. In that capsule summary I neglected to mention that Secunia sends out e-mail...
