Alpesh Nakar's Blog

Windows Software Update Services v3 has been released.

What is WSUS?

Microsoft® Windows Server® Update Services 3.0 (WSUS 3.0) enables information technology administrators to deploy the latest Microsoft product updates to computers running Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows® XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 operating systems. By using WSUS, administrators can fully manage the distribution of updates that are released through Microsoft Update to computers in their network.

Basically WSUS, once installed on your server, connects to Microsoft Update website and downloads updates for the products it supports. In addition, a WSUS server can be the update source for other WSUS servers within the organization.

This is smart management. Instead of all the users on your network navigating to Windows Update and downloading the updates separately, just download them once, and distribute using WSUS.

What is missing here? Windows Vista. Yeah, Windows Vista Ultimate updates cannot be pushed through WSUS, as yet. That is if you are using WSUS 2.5. Erik on Windows Vista Ultimate Blog, explains this:

We’re a small team, and Ultimate was designed more as a consumer-focused edition of Windows Vista. We cut support for WSUS at launch to reduce the test burden, and because we didn’t think many WSUS environments would deploy Ultimate. We’re hearing that we were wrong, so all the Wave Zero Extras will be offered to WSUS later this year.

So there you go. Not many organisations would have installed Windows Vista, let alone Windows Vista Ultimate, so it kind of makes sense for the Windows Vista Ultimate team to work through this at a steady pace.

Interestingly Virtual Server is the newest addition to the product family in WSUS. As per Microsoft Update Team Blog

“Virtual Server” will be added in the next one or two days. This new product family allows updates to be offered to Virtual Server components. Different categories offered under “Virtual Server” may have a different range of supported platforms. Security updates can be released through this category periodically. Due to the variety of applications/components that can reside under this product family, subscribing to this product family is recommended.

That’s some news. So do you create Virtual Environments? Do you use Virtual PC or do you use VMWare? Did you know that Virtual Server is a free product?

So if you are interested in downloading WSUS and the works, head there now…

I don’t use Vista at work and at home, there isn’t enough time to check emails (family+study) let alone chat. But if you use Vista and WLM and see this error code, here is a cool fix. Will serve as a reference for me as well.

- Click start
- Type: cmd (but don’t hit Enter)
- Right-click cmd.exe when it appears under Applications
- Click Run As Administrator
- Type the following: netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
- Press enter

Then just sign into WLM; you don’t even have to reboot.

via A Matter of Degree via Donovan via Shaun via David

Microsoft KB 931621 describes the issue and has a fix for you.

You try to synchronize content from Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 to a Microsoft Windows Mobile 5-based device with AKU 2.3 or a later AKU. When you do this, the phone connects. However, only the internal storage on the phone is available in Windows Media Player as a synchronization target.

Download information

Windows Vista for x86-based computers (all languages)

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:

Download the Windows6.0-KB931621-x86.msu package now. (http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/E/2/3E24B381-2F19-49E4-8B4D-522C7EAA1F86/Windows6.0-KB931621-x86.msu)

Windows Vista for x64-based computers (all languages)

The following files are available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:

Download the Windows6.0-KB931621-x64.msu package now.

1. Windows Vista Step by Step Guides – The guides provide a good starting point for deployment and many of the other new features in Vista like User Account Control and Bitlocker Drive Encryption. Read the rest of this entry »

Read your RSS feeds and listen to podcast’s from the comfort of your couch with Media Center RSS Reader, a plug-in for Windows Media Center.

The software comes in two slightly different versions: one for Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE) and one for Vista. The former relies on a separate feed-aggregator utility that runs in the background; the latter pulls your feeds from Internet Explorer 7. But the end result is the same: You’re able to browse and view feeds using your Media Center remote. The plug-in also supports podcasts, both audio and video.

Sadly, RSS Reader strips out photos, so you’re left with only text.

Media Center RSS Reader is free. It requires Windows Vista Premium or Ultimate or Windows Media Center Edition 2005.

Media Center RSS Reader (MCE) Media Center RSS Reader (Vista)

Shout-out to LifeHacker Rick Broida

Vista keeps track of licensing details using a service called Software Licensing. Slmgr.vbs, a VBScript file included with all Vista editions, which allows you to query the current installation and see details about the installation and licensing status.

To run the script, open a Command Prompt window (click Start, type cmd in the Start Search box, and press Enter).

Two things that you can do with this script.

1. Sort out product IDs.

If you have two or more computers running the same edition of Vista, you might lose track of which product key you used for each machine. The solution? Open a Command Prompt window on each machine and type the command slmgr -dli. The -dli switch stands for “display license information” and shows the last five characters of your license ID. Assuming you have the product keys written down, you can use these details to see which key is in use on each machine.

If you want more information, use the -dlv (”display license, verbose”) switch instead.

If you choose not to enter a product ID when you install Windows Vista, the Setup program automatically supplies a default key. In that case, the information displayed by slmgr -dli or slmgr -dlv will be one of the following default keys, which cannot be activated:

• Business – MRW4W
• BusinessN – QXX44
• HomeBasic – 3V4VD
• HomeBasicN – GFJBT
• HomePremium – 76PKF
• Ultimate – RP8F7

Lost your product key? Assuming you’re running a 32-bit Vista version, you can find it using the latest beta edition of Keyfinder, from Magical Jellybean Software. Here’s a screen clip showing the results when running Keyfinder v2.0 Beta 2-1/2. That’s the default key for Windows Vista Ultimate, taken from a system where I installed Vista Ultimate without entering a product key during Setup.

2. Check your activation status.

From a command prompt, type slmgr -xpr and press Enter to see whether your installation is activated or not. The details appear in a separate information box, not in the Command Prompt window. The information you see will tell you whether your copy is activated. If it’s not, you’ll see the deadline when you’re required to activate.

Speed it up with a flash drive: I have blogged about this before VISTA RTM’ d. This is far by my favorite performance-improving tweak, using Windows Vista’s new ReadyBoost technology. Speed up your PC by simply plugging in a USB drive (or any external drive) with atleast 250mb free space on the drive. How cool is that?

Disable UAC: If you have been using Vista, you know what a pain this UAC is. If you haven’t used Vista, disable UAC before it gets annoying. Vista’s annoying “Windows needs your permission to continue” dialogs are a nuisance during initial setup, especially since they appear every time you try to install software. It is advisable to turn it back on when you’re done. It is a big part of Vista’s new security strategy.

Repartition your hard drive in Vista: Once Vista’s installed, and you decide you want to store all your data or music on a separate partition, you can create that partition on the fly right inside Vista.

Disable the Sidebar: Try out the Sidebar, explore different gadgets, and see if it all works for you. If it doesn’t? Just disable it. You will certainly speed up your system.