Microsoft this week detailed an obscure command line tool for Connected Standby (now InstantGo)-based PCs and devices that will help identify which applications are causing battery drain while the machine is sleeping. Dubbed Sleep Study, the tool is part of the powercfg.exe utility in Windows 8.1/RT 8.1 and will tell you how well the system slept and how much activity it experienced during that time.
With Internet Explorer 11, we’ve done work to make signing into sites faster and more reliable as well as give users more control when saving credentials. In addition, IE11 will now roam credentials to IE11 on Windows Phone 8.1!
We are giving control back to the user when deciding to save passwords on a given site. IE11 will now prompt the user to save passwords even if the autocomplete=off attribute is set on login forms.
Source : IEBlog
Excellent post with a step-by-step procedure to create a an inbox for all your accounts in Outlook 2013.
Ref : TinkerTry
We are removing FRS from Windows Server Today I’ll talk about what this means and how to get ready. We want this to be as easy as possible and I welcome any conversations that help you move forward with migrating to DFSR for SYSVOL replication.
Source : The Storage Team at Microsoft
You may have heard about InstantGo in Windows 8.1 (known as Connected Standby in Windows 8 and Windows RT), and how it has replaced the traditional sleep or standby function in many Windows 8.1 and Windows RT 8.1 systems. What you might not know is how fundamentally different—and better—it is, and why.
Source : InstantGo: a better way to sleep
Today we’re excited to announce the release of the Internet Explorer Developer Channel, a fully functioning browser designed to give Web developers and early adopters a sneak peek at the Web platform features we’re working on. The Developer Channel is available for download today for both Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 SP1 customers running Internet Explorer 11.Source : IEBlog
IE Developer Channel can run alongside and independently of IE11, and has all of the browser features that you love in IE11, as well as the latest platform features we’re working on. As you test drive these features, make sure to give us feedback through @IEDevChat or Connect.
Installing Android on VirtualBox is a bit more complicated than with Windows. I’ll give you a few tips on how to install and configure a virtual machine for your Android lab.
Source : 4sysops
The name of the free tool Bulk Password Control is perhaps a bit misleading because the free tool enables you to automate all kinds of bulk modifications on Active Directory user objects with a fast to use GUI.
You know this popular picture of the GUI admin who clicks all day to reset user passwords after a security breach. Bulk Password Control is a nice example that proves that such tasks can be quickly done with a GUI tool without much click-click.
Source : 4sysops.com, www.wisesoft.co.uk
To reuse script samples on the Internet, the following steps seem quite familiar to IT Pros: wandering through different script galleries, forums and blogs, switching back and forth between webpages and scripting environment, and countless download, copy and paste operations. But all of these will drive one as dizzy as a goose. Need a simpler way of searching and reusing scripts? Try out the new Script Browser add-in for PowerShell ISE!
Source : Windows powershell Blog
There is a known issue which causes some PCs updated with the Windows 8.1 Update (KB 2919355) to stop scanning against Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 (WSUS 3.0 SP2 or WSUS 3.2) servers which are configured to use SSL and have not enabled TLS 1.2.
Microsoft plans to issue an update as soon as possible that will correct the issue and restore the proper behavior for Windows 8.1 Update KB 2919355 scanning against all supported WSUS configurations. Until that time, we are temporarily suspending the distribution of the Windows 8.1 Update KB 2919355 to WSUS servers.
Source : blogs.technet.com/b/wsus/
Microsoft is taking an important step towards helping businesses stay up to date with the latest software, services, and devices. Enterprise Mode for Internet Explorer 11, announced today as an update for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1, provides better compatibility for older versions of Internet Explorer and tools to manage which Web apps use it.
Source : IEBlog
Security Compliance Manager (SCM) is a great free tool for helping with deployments and environment hardening. This article explains what’s new in version 3.0 and describes how you can use SCM in your deployment process to secure builds.
Source : 4sysops.com
So, let me kick off this series in which I’ll be sharing what it feels like to virtualize and clone Active Directory Domain Controllers safely on both platforms, with a blogpost on finding out whether your virtual Domain Controllers may benefit from the VM-GenerationID on the VMware-based hypervisors and, thus, may be safely virtualized and cloned.
The rumors are true: Microsoft confirmed today that it is making a version of OneNote available for free on every major desktop and mobile computing platform, including even the Mac. Additionally, the firm has announced some new OneNote tools, OneNote Clipper and Office Lens, as well as new partner services and a new extensibility model that will make it possible for any cloud service to integrate with this amazing note-taking and thought organization solution.You can download OneNote 2013 for Windows from OneNote.com
Check out UptimeRobot. This is a free external monitoring tool that will check your site every five minutes and send you an email, text message, twitter notification, and more. What’s even better is that it will allow you to specify up to 50 monitors in total.
Source : life as a sysadmin
Good reading from Microsoft Malware Protection Center : Malicious Proxy Auto-Config redirection
Reading view is a new feature in Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 8.1 that helps you focus on the main content of the Web page you want to read. Reading view is a way to experience just the article or blog post you want to read, without the distractions of related (or unrelated) content surrounding the story. Find an article you want to read, switch to reading view, and settle into a great reading experience. When you’re done, just exit reading view to continue browsing on the site.
Source : IEBlog
Have you ever heard about IE Enhanced Protected Mode or Mark-of-the-Web (MOTW) ?
Well, if you encounter one of those problems you should :
- Opening IIS Failed Request Logs files (XML+XSL) from you local machine with IE result in a text page without formatting.
- Trying to access your local web server with the 127.0.0.1 ip (not localhost) or the real local ip of your computer with IE results in an error page.
You have to blame the IE Enhanced Protected Mode for those ‘problems’. Here’s two solutions :
1) Disable the Enhanced Protected Mode
- Open Internet Options
- click on the Advanced tab
- Unselect ‘Enable Enhanced Protected Mode’ in the Security Section
- Restart IE
2) Add you site to the Intranet Zone
- Open Internet Option
- Click on the Security tab
- Select the Intranet zone
- Click on the Sites button
- Click on the Advanced button
- Add the following address :
http://127.0.0.1 To allow access to your local web site about:internet To allow access to file with a MOTW (ex: IIS Failed Request Logs)
Personally I prefer option 2.
References :
KitKat is the latest Android release from Google with a lot of attractive changes both inside and outside. Before it hits every Android phone out there, you certainly have a new way to experience it with a very simple set up in VMware Workstation 10.
Source : VMware Workstation Zealot
A couple of weeks ago, I delivered a presentation on Work Folders deployments, and there was a slide on how Work Folders interoperates with other file server technologies. It occurred to me that it is worth writing a blog post about it.
- File classification infrastructure (FCI)
- RMS encryption
- Quotas and File screen
- DFS Replication
- Failover Clustering
- SMB
- Dynamic Access Control (DAC)
