From the official Windows Vista Blog: Hi, Mike Nash here from the Windows Product Management group at Microsoft. Today we are excited to announce that we have released Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista to manufacturing (RTM) for our first set of languages (English, French, Spanish, German and Japanese). Service Pack 1 is a very important milestone because it addresses many of the key issues that our customers have identified with Windows Vista over the last year both, directly and through programs like the Customer Experience Improvement Program. With Service Pack 1, we have made great progress in performance, reliability and compatibility. One of the great things about my job is that I get to play with the latest builds of our products -- I've personally been running Windows Vista SP1 pretty exclusively for a few months and I've noticed that my systems run faster and more reliably than they did with the "Gold" release of Windows Vista. When we first released Windows Vista last year, there were lots of customers who had great experiences, but some had issues finding applications that worked well on Windows Vista; others had problems finding the right device drivers for some of the hardware devices that they used. The reason for these issues is that in order to improve the reliability and security of Windows Vista, we made some important architectural changes to the system. While this caused some issues in the short term, in the long term we know that these investments will improve both the reliability and security of the customer experience on Windows. Check out this blog post about the first year of Windows Vista security to see how some of these changes are paying off. The good news is that this last year has been a great year of progress for Windows Vista in terms of improving application and device compatibility. For example, 98 out of the top-selling 100 applications have versions available for Windows Vista. And through the great work of our hardw
Congratulations!!! Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing according to Windows Server Division WebLog: As I write this, I'm in the room where it all happens; in building 26, better known as the ship room. Ten minutes ago Windows Server 2008 officially RTM'd. Also in here with me are my colleagues who have been working on Windows Vista SP1, also RTM'ing today. We've all been working towards this day for the past 3 years and over 5,000 people have contributed to this release. It's an exciting day for us and an exciting day for our partners, and customers. As one of the guys responsible for getting Windows Server 2008 out the door, I thought I'd pull back the curtain a bit and let everyone know what it's like to be here as we ship Windows Server 2008. In the final days leading up to RTM, the tone in the war room meetings was calm, almost too calm because there were minimal bugs to resolve and final testing went very smoothly. We focused on testing of the code changes made in Nov/Dec to make sure nothing regressed. Hundreds of system component teams across the Windows division and Microsoft performed their escrow test passes and signed off. The last important step was to ensure our deployment customers, OEMs, and Microsoft IT were satisfied and had no major issues. For the past two years we have run performance benchmarks against Windows Server 2003, the Lone Server, and saw significant performance benefits with IIS7, File transfer using SMB2, and across multiple networking scenarios. I expect that customers will see significant improvements running Windows Server 2008 because we only install the binaries and services required for the specific role they deploy. This means a small server footprint, easier management, and less servicing. With server core, you can even install a GUI-free server. I am extremely proud of the Windows Server development team who worked hard to ensure that Windows Server 2008 is a world-class operating system. E
Hey everyone, I have some great news! An RSS feed for the WindowsNetworking.com Admin Knowledgebase has been added to the site. Now all you admins out there will be able to get instant updates when new tips are added to the KB section. New content is added multiple times throughout the week and contains great tips and shortcuts that will help reduce the stress in any admin's life! I really recommend you check it out. A comprehensive list of our RSS feeds can be found here: http://www.techgenix.com/content-rss.htm
The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assessment Configuration Pack for Federal Information Security Management Act was developed in conjunction with Brabeion Software, and contains suggested system configurations that map best practices and standards to the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act. This configuration pack defines recommended configurations based on a number of settings-based configuration items, and assesses your system against the desired configuration. Once imported into SCCM 2007, this configuration pack and its included configuration items can be targeted to collections of systems which are then audited for compliance with the recommended configurations. When settings are detected to be out of compliance, events will be generated and sent to the Configuration Manager server where the data is available for reporting. Please note that the configuration items, settings, and values included in this configuration pack do not necessarily represent every configuration required for Federal Information Security Management Act compliance. The administrator should verify that the rules being evaluated meet the unique requirements for their specific environment. If desired, the administrator can also modify the configuration pack by adding, modifying, and deleting configuration items, settings, and values through the Desired Configuration Management user interface within the SCCM 2007 console. Feature Bullet Summary: The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assessment Configuration Pack for Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) includes configuration items for the following: • Member Server • Domain Controllers To understand in detail what each configuration item will be evaluating please review the properties of that configuration item in the context of the server role being addressed. Configuration Pack Release History: 11/12/2007 - Version 1.0 - Original release of the English version Download URL: http://www.microsoft.com
The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assessment Configuration Pack for European Union Data Protection Directive was developed in conjunction with Brabeion Software, and contains suggested system configurations that map best practices and standards to the requirements of the European Union Data Protection Directive. This configuration pack defines recommended configurations based on a number of settings-based configuration items, and assesses your system against the desired configuration. Once imported into SCCM 2007, this configuration pack and its included configuration items can be targeted to collections of systems which are then audited for compliance with the recommended configurations. When settings are detected to be out of compliance, events will be generated and sent to the Configuration Manager server where the data is available for reporting. Please note that the configuration items, settings, and values included in this configuration pack do not necessarily represent every configuration required for European Union Data Protection Directive compliance. The administrator should verify that the rules being evaluated meet the unique requirements for their specific environment. If desired, the administrator can also modify the configuration pack by adding, modifying, and deleting configuration items, settings, and values through the Desired Configuration Management user interface within the SCCM 2007 console. Feature Bullet Summary: The Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Assessment Configuration Pack for European Union Data Protection Directive (EUDPD) includes configuration items for the following: • Member Server • Domain Controllers To understand in detail what each configuration item will be evaluating please review the properties of that configuration item in the context of the server role being addressed. Configuration Pack Release History: 11/12/2007 - Version 1.0 - Original release of the English version Download URL: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/i