TechNet Magazine September 2007

This month we continue our in-depth discussion about what’s new in the Windows Vista kernel. In this issue, we review some advancements in how Windows Vista manages memory and explore the areas of system startup, shutdown, and power management.

Mark Russinovich

TechNet Magazine March 2007

...

Far too often, people who are not trained database administrators somehow end up responsible for a database. They lack the proper training and knowledge to maintain their database, and problems begin to develop. Here’s a primer for all those involuntary DBAs who need a crash course in database maintenance best practices.

Paul S. Randal

TechNet Magazine August 2008

...

Shared and privileged account passwords are commonplace, but far too many organizations fail to adequately manage these shared passwords. This creates a serious security issue. Explore the risks involved with shared and privileged accounts, and discover better approaches to managing more secure passwords.

Chris Stoneff

TechNet Magazine September 2008

...

While User Account Control offers an important improvement in security, the ability to elevate permissions is essential for accomplishing certain administrative tasks and functions. Here are some Elevation PowerToys that make elevation more flexible and powerful.

Michael Murgolo

TechNet Magazine June 2007

...

Many organizations rely on ISA Server 2006 to secure their environment, but few take the important step of securing ISA Server itself. Here’s a guide to using the Security Configuration Wizard and Administrative roles to limit its attack surface and secure your ISA Server 2006 implementation.

Alan Maddison

TechNet Magazine September 2008

...

Read more!

Our Blog

Hey, Scripting Guy! Probing the Depths of WMI

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the Microsoft implementation of Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM)—a technology that lets you access information about the objects in your enterprise environment that have to be managed, such as systems, applications, networks, devices, and other managed components. Not surprisingly, the information is accessible via script ...

In the era of Software-plus-Services, Web services play an important role because they decouple hosted back-end environments from on-premise front-end applications. Explore how the SharePoint platform drives online collaboration, so that Office applications and add-ins can run on local workstations while Web ...

Read more!

TechNet Magazine Toolbox

In every issue of TechNet Magazine, Greg Steen (a practicing IT professional) discusses free and relatively inexpensive tools and utilities that help him do his IT work and "getting the job done."

In the November issue, Greg looks at mapping data graphically with MapForce, creating and managing ...

"For developers, one difficult problem in SQL Server is tracking what data has changed in a database. An even greater challenge is architecting a simple solution that doesn’t heavily impact workload performance and isn't difficult to create, implement, and manage. So why go to all the trouble to track changes? Is tracking changes really worth all this effort? Two commonly cited examples are to support updates to a data warehouse and to support the synchronization of heterogeneous, occasionally connected systems." ...

The latest installment of our online-only Sustainable Computing column is now available.

Find out how you can:

Bring Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Power Management Settings into Compliance Bring Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Power Management Settings into Compliance Enforce Energy-Efficient Architectures ...

Read more!

September 2007

Windows Vista: Deploying Windows Vista with BDD 2007

Your organization is ready to migrate from Windows 2000 or Windows XP to Windows Vista, and the project is your responsibility. Don’t fret. Here’s a step-by-step guide to how you can use the Business Desktop Deployment 2007 Solution Accelerator to simplify your Windows Vista deployment. Michael Niehaus

Windows Vista: A Guide to Windows Vista Backup Technologies

Backup is something many people ignore until it’s too late. But there’s no excuse for this, especially now that the new Windows Vista Backup and Restore Center offers a variety of features that make it easy to protect your data against most forms of data loss. Find out how you can plan a complete recovery strategy with Windows Vista. Christine Fok

Windows Server: 11 Essential Tools for Managing Active Directory

In a large organization, even the most common Active Directory tasks, such as adding and modifying objects, can be tedious and time-consuming. These 11 tools can make Active Directory management a lot easier. Laura E. Hunter

Windows Server: Reanimating Active Directory Tombstone Objects

There are a few essential tricks and tools that should be included in every Active Directory disaster-recovery plan. Tombstone reanimation is one of these techniques, offering the only way to recover deleted objects without taking a domain controller off line. Here’s a guide to finding and recovering tombstones in Active Directory. Gil Kirkpatrick

Communications: Connecting Users with Office Communications Server 2007

Unified communication is here. Take a tour of the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and find out how integrated messaging, voice, video, and conferencing features can help to improve productivity and enhance long-distance collaboration in your organization. Alan Maddison

Columns

From the Editor: Pathways to Learning Joshua Trupin	Letters: Answers to Your Questions	Toolbox: New Products for IT Pros Greg Steen
SQL Q&A: CPU Bottlenecks, Restoring and Moving Databases, and More Edited by Nancy Michell	Utility Spotlight: PageDefrag The typical Windows defrag tool can optimize most of the files on your hard drive. But certain items, such the Windows page file and Registry hives, are beyond the powers of most defragging tools. This utility, created by Mark Russinovich for Sysinternals, saves the day by defragging the files that are left untouched by other tools. Lance Whitney	The Cable Guy: Strong and Weak Host Models A multihomed host provides enhanced connectivity by simultaneously connecting to multiple networks. However, services running on multihomed hosts have an increased vulnerability to being attacked. To help you prevent attack, here’s a look at the various host models of multihomed hosts and how they are supported in Windows. Joseph Davies
Windows PowerShell: Securing the Shell When designing Windows PowerShell, Microsoft gave security a leading role. And it shows. Take a look at some of the key security features and settings, such as credential handling and execution policies, that ensure Windows PowerShell won’t fall game to the same problems that VBScript enabled. Don Jones	Hey, Scripting Guy!: Can This Relationship Be Saved? Relational databases are designed to handle one-to-many relationships. This can make writing scripts that query these databases a bit tricky. But don’t worry—the Scripting Guys are here to show you everything you need to know. The Microsoft Scripting Guys	Exchange Queue & A: Setup, Message Journaling, Storage Options, and More Learn how you can use message journaling to monitor e-mail in your company, find out if Office 2003 users can use Unified Messaging, examine storage options for your Exchange 2007 implementation, get answers about connecting to Exchange 2007 with older versions of Outlook, and more. KC Lemson and Nino Billic
Security Watch: The Long-Term Impact of User Account Control For as much coverage as it gets, there are still a lot of questions and misconceptions about User Account Control. Here’s a frank discussion about what UAC is, what it is not, and how it should affect the way you manage systems. Jesper M. Johansson	The Desktop Files: PC Recovery with Windows PE Windows Vista offers some valuable tools that make system recovery quite easy. But for large, diversified organizations, out-of-the box solutions don’t usually work. If you’re in a large company that needs to build customized self-recovery solutions, don’t miss this discussion about building your own recovery solution with Windows PE. Wes Miller	Field Notes: Free Food and Training Tips Good user education is critical to keeping issues to a minimum. So don’t forget the importance of providing casual training sessions and roaming the halls to see if anyone has questions they wouldn’t bring up otherwise. Michael Dragone
Windows Confidential: The Known DLLs Balancing Act The Known DLLs feature was included in Windows as a way to improve performance. Find out how it works, and take a close look at how this feature has changed over time. Raymond Chen

Product Families

Resources

About Microsoft

Popular Places

Popular Searches

Popular Downloads