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New Announcements in Microsoft Desktop Virtualization

Posted on March 18, 2010, by Todd, under Virtualization.

Microsoft has an announcement on their Press site with regards to new features with Desktop Virtualization. As I travel across Saskatchewan this week doing the Windows 7 Deep Dives, one of the topics is Windows XP mode within Windows 7.  Windows XP mode had required hardware virtualization to work correctly. That left me in the cold on my little Toshiba laptop. It works great but lack virtualization technology which meant that I couldn’t run Windows XP mode. As part of the release today, they have announced that you won’t need Virtualization Technology to use Windows XP mode.

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Technorati Tags: Desktop Virtualization, Microsoft, Microsoft Desktop, Toshiba, Virtualization, Virtualization Technology, Windows 7, Windows XP, XP Mode

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Setting up a KMS Server

Posted on March 2, 2010, by Todd, under Deployment, Windows.

Windows 7 Volume licensing basically has three ways to activate, MAK, MAK proxy and KMS. The first two require a key and the proxy needs to use the Volume Activation Management Tool. I won’t get into MAK today, its is somewhat straight forward. If you need information, check out the information on MAK at TechNet, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979805.aspx.

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Technorati Tags: Aspx, Computers, Deployment, Easiest Thing, Hierarchy, Host Machine, Key Management, KMS, Kms Server, Kraft Dinner, MAK, Management Service, Management Tool, Microsoft, Proxy, R2, Server Activation, Server Windows, Servers, Std, Technet, Three Ways, Window 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Activation, Windows Server

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Customizing Bootstrap.ini in MDT

Posted on February 8, 2010, by Todd, under Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.

As I showed in my last post, you can make changes to customsettings.ini to really make your deployments go easier and quicker. Another file you can make changes to is the bootstrap.ini file.

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Technorati Tags: Deployment, MDT, WDS

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Editing CustomSettings.ini in MDT

Posted on January 26, 2010, by Todd, under Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.

One of the neat things you can do with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is you can customize it to show or hide screens when running through the deployment wizard.

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Technorati Tags: Customizations, customsettings.ini, Deployment Wizard, MDT, Task Sequence

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Exchange 2007 to 2010 Migration

Posted on January 10, 2010, by Todd, under Exchange Server.

An upcoming project I have at work is to migrate our Microsoft Exchange 2007 Server to Microsoft Exchange 2010. There is no direct upgrade from 2007 to 2010, and my Exchange 2007 server is running Windows Server 2003 x64.

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Technorati Tags: Exchange Server, Migration, Upgrade

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Pause Task Sequence in MDT 2010

Posted on January 6, 2010, by Todd, under Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.

With a new year comes new images for my MDT servers. At TechDays in Ottawa, I presented the MDT session in the client track on Day 1. Afterwards, I had some great discussions with a few people from major Canadian government offices. One of my challenges has been how to add extra software to an image which doesn’t have a great silent install. What I had been doing was building the machine using MDT, then when it was done, adding unfriendly software, patches, etc. to the build after. This is a pain as you have to then Sysprep the image, boot into a Windows PE environment then capture the image using ImageX.

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Technorati Tags: Building Images, Image Boot, MDT, MDT 2010, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Task Sequence

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Microsoft TechDays Ottawa – Day 2

Posted on December 14, 2009, by Todd, under Training.

The second day of TechDays Ottawa saw better weather. Day 1 had a terrible snow storm, but despite that, turn out was quite good. I don’t have numbers on how many people came out either day.

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Technorati Tags: Brain, Demo, Deployments, Foreign Countries, Images, Internet Connection, Jack Of All Trades, MDT, Microsoft, Ottawa, Ottawa Weather, Snow Storm, SP2, TechDays_CA, Update, Windows Server, WSUS

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Blue Screen of Death Appears at TechDays Ottawa

Posted on December 10, 2009, by Todd, under Training.

The dreaded blue screen of death has appeared at TechDays here in Ottawa.

Blue Screen of Death in WINRE TechDays Demo

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Technorati Tags: ACT, Application Compatibility Toolkit, Blue Screen Of Death, Computer Boot, Demo, Deployment, DirectAccess, Exchange 2010, Great Sessions, Green Eggs And Ham, MDT 2010, Microsoft, Ottawa, TechDays_CA, Windows Recovery, Windows Server, WSUS

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Remote Connection Technology

Posted on November 4, 2009, by Todd, under Web/Tech.

With the Swine Flu H1N1 virus going around, chances are you may have staff or yourself needing to be able to work remotely. Some might be off for the flu itself, others may be off work to care for loved ones who have fallen ill. Regardless of the reason, as a network administrator one of our tasks is going to be supporting staff and allowing them to connect back into the office. Some of us who are already supporting road warriors might find we need to scale up our solution and some of us will need to design and deploy a whole new solution. Continue Reading...

Technorati Tags: DirectAccess, H1N1, Linux, pptpd, RAS, Remote Connectivity, Sonicwall, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

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Time Change Tonight – Setting the Time Source in Linux

Posted on October 31, 2009, by Todd, under Linux, Web/Tech.

Just a reminder to everyone (at least in North America) that time changes tonight. We fall back an hour and gain an hour of sleep.  Always check your systems tomorrow to ensure they changed correctly.

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Technorati Tags: freebsd, Linux, NTP, time change, Windows Server 2008

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