Just a quick note that you can now find Andrew Drivers Windows 7 slide-deck here: http://wmug.co.uk/groups/wmug_event_material/media/p/1891.aspx

Great event, thanks all that attended and thanks to Andrew Driver for presenting on Windows 7 and Johan Arwidmark for presenting on MDT.

Went really well, we had a great turn out and hopefully everyone got something from the event, be it free pizza, chance to meet other like-minded folk, or just plain old knowledge!

We'll be putting the Windows 7 slide-deck on the site very soon, in the meantime, as promised, here is the link to Johan's site: http://deployvista.com/

The slide-deck that Johan used at the WMUG event is here: http://deployvista.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/91/language/en-US/Default.aspx

And if you are going huh what event? Here is the info: http://wmug.co.uk/groups/wmug_event_content/pages/wmug-event-18-06-09-18-30-to-21-00-cardinal-place-london.aspx

Also a small shout out for those winners who managed to get their named pulled out of the raffle hat, sorry the SWAG wasn't so hot this time, but thanks for sticking around to see if you were a winner.

Talking of SWAG Andrew Driver has volunteered to put his Porsche up for the raffle at his next event, definitely worth coming along for that eh! (obviously he hasn't, so don't get all legal on my ass and demand a Porsche please, as us System Center admin's can't afford to give you one!)

Can't wait for the next event. Talking of which, please email me if you are interested in a pure Windows 7 with a Management skew event again at Cardinal place. If we can get 15 of you interested we'll arrange it no problem.

Also if you attended and haven't registered on WMUG, please do so now as we REALLY want to put some polls up and unfortunately you can only participate in them if you are actually logged in to the site. We want to do this to get an idea of the kind of content you are after over the coming months. As we like to say this is your User Group, we just facilitate.

Again, thanks for attending folks, was cool seeing some of my old work collegues (damn isn't it a small world!), faces from previous events and people new to WMUG. I think Susan Smith (one of our resident bloggers) was there, sorry I didn't get a chance to say hi and thank you for blogging! Hopefully next time!

We've been finding a few users are experiencing problems when accessing the traditional ConfigMgr Reporting Point.

Odd, as other users are accessing the Reporting Point AOK, and no errors are appearing in the default web instance HTTP log (%WINDIR%\system32\logfiles\W3SVC1). However, a quick look in the HTTPERR logs and these error 400's show up (%WINDIR%\system32\logfiles\HTTPERR).

2009-01-15 21:32:15 x.x.x.x xxxx x.x.x.x 80 HTTP/1.1 GET /smsreporting_<YOURSITECODE>/Report.asp?ReportID=xxx&NAME=<CLIENTNAME>&SITE=<SITECODE>&STATUS=&COLLECTIONID=<COLLECTIONID> 400 - RequestLength -

I've obviously obfuscated the HTTP response from IIS, stripping out IP and other identifiying information. The important part of the response is in bold, 400 and RequestLength

If you are seeing this, most likely these users are getting bounced off the reporting point due to their Kerberos ticket being too big for IIS to handle. It seems to be due to how many groups this user is a member of (including nested groups).

Here are two interesting articles to aid you in fixing this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955585
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/820129

I won't suggest sizes for the registry keys, it's something you'll need to assess either by plucking values out of the air true jedi style, or follow the KB955585 articles procedure for determining the values.

Some notes:

• I refer to default web instance, obviously if you are using SMSWEB it's not the default instance you are looking for (that's two star wars references, I rock!)
• Paths may be different, depends where you install stuff
• The KB articles are not ConfigMgr specific, this issue will affect any IIS based application I believe
• It doesn't say in KB article KB955585 (which is unusual for MS), but tweaking your registry can lead to pain, make sure you know what you are doing and I reserve the right to call you a numptee if you complain to me that I didn't warn you enough ;-)

I've been patching myself lately.

Since Sunday, I've had Nicorette patches on. For those not in the know, they deliver nicotine in to the body to stave off the urge to have a smoke and thus help to give up smoking.

So far it's been OK, although I’ve still got nicotine coursing through my veins, I've got absolutely no desire to light up. I'm avoiding smokers like the plague, even moving away from folk who are smoking on the street. And, although it's just been a handful of days I already feel a lot fitter.

I'm on a reoccurring patch schedule, daily for 6 weeks, reducing the patches from 15mg to 10mg (which I’m on now), thereafter it's pure willpower. I think I'll cope ;-) If I ever do smoke it'll be after one of those Hollywood style moments where the world is about to explode, or, I’ve just saved thousands of people using my super human powers and need to light up after (no wait, I don't have super powers!).

Anyways, I bet my air consumption while diving is going to change :-)

Just a final reminder that WMUG is hosting another event, at Cardinal Place, covering MDT (Johan Arwidmark MVP) and Windows 7 (Viral Tarpara and Andrew Driverand, both MSFT's)

You must register to attend, do so here: http://www.wmug.eventbrite.com/

Thursday is just around the corner, we'll be shutting the registrations a day before, so now is the time to register if you are coming!

If you are attending ... See you there!

WMUG EVENT - 18/06/09 - 18:30 to 21:00 - Cardinal Place, London

We are delighted to be able to announce our next meeting on Thursday 18th June at Microsoft’s office in Cardinal Place London where this time we'll be kicking off with an in-depth look at Windows 7, courtesy of Viral Tarpara and Andrew Driver from Microsoft.

After some refreshments, Johan Arwidmark (a fellow MVP) will be presenting highlights from three of his ConfigMgr / MDT sessions from this year’s MMS.

Coupled with SWAG give always, networking opportunities, etc. this promises to be a great evening and best of all everything is FREE.

To register simply use the following links so we know how many are coming so everyone gets fed and watered:

http://www.wmug.eventbrite.com/

I've just finished dealing with the slew of Microsoft June 2009 patch set for our environment. Quite a few patches this time around, we're fully tested and no issues in our environment with the Office, IE or OS patches. All went swimmingly well.

Now time to go home as I've got a headache from looking at SUM too much :>

iPhone 3GS and o2 carrier package ... what a rip off! For what? a compass, larger capacity (who has 16GB of songs atm, many of us running out of space?), slightly faster process (but no FLASH!) and tethering? You've got to be kidding me!

Read on: http://www.t3.com/news/o2-keeps-iphone-3g-s-exclusivitiy-reveals-pricing-and-tethering-tarrifs?=39087&allCom=y

We have to pay large sums of money to get tethering with a few pitiful GB a month even though we are on an "unlimited data plan" hahaha!

MMS is pointless, as again you have to pay heavily to use it ...

As an existing iPhone 3G user I don't see ANY reason to upgrade, especially if I have to pay a hefty amount of cash to get out of my contract with o2 ... so I can get back in to a contract with o2 for another year and a half, which doesn't even sync with the hardware release cycle from Apple! What a complete joke!

As soon as my contract runs out with o2 I'll be switching to another carrier as o2 are PANTS in London, UK. Such spotty 3G it's almost pointless using it unless you are standing still underneath a cell!

Honestly, I think the iPhone won't be feature complete (version 1.0 in my eyes) until 2015! You may scoff at that but we're up to version 3.0 of their firmware and it's still not on parity with phones that have been out for years.

I really dislike it when a company reduces their phone's features and drip feeds these features in to the product over many years to maximize their profit, sacrificing being leading edge and yet still posing and acting like they are pioneering.

Hey Steve Jobs! Get over your angst with Adobe and get flash support working (now that you have a faster CPU what's holding you back now?), and tell your developers to get out of the habit of not introducing COMMON features so that you can SLOWLY introduce them under much fanfare without having to be innovative in the slightest. Stop riding the wave of vacuous marketing campaigns. This is proving that you just do not innovate anymore, your flash (arf) in the pan moment was releasing the product, we're over it already, the fancy marketing has dulled, lost it's edge, start showing us something worth buying\upgrading too and stop the nonsense with inflated prices and carrier lock-in and abuse.

The iPhone was designed as a tool for carriers to extort money out of consumers, rather than a tool for consumers to get the most out of "todays" technology.

Come on Microsoft, I've said this before, build a phone to compete with this one, make the SDK available to everyone (free download accessible to ANYONE) and build in support for Spotify so that iTunes can be removed from the equation entirely.

Pioneer and innovate, lead ;-)

Heard this yesterday, David Carradine was found in a cupboard singularly performing strange sexual rituals. What a way to go. He was one of my favorite B movie actors. Legendary indeed. I guess his blocking technique wasn't up to par, or his shaolin monk training had slipped to the wayside over the years as he managed to off himself in a rather embarrassing way.

Here's bio on David for those of you in the dark: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Carradine

Most famous for his portrayal of a wandering monk Kwai Chang Caine in the TV series Grasshopper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_(TV_series)

Who remembers the intro to Grasshopper where he tries to take the pebble from his masters hand? Classic TV.

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?
Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.
Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?
Caine: No.
Po: Do you hear the grasshopper that is at your feet?
Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?
Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

A sure sign that you are getting old when those that you use to watch as a kid on a Saturday morning, are, well, popping off like flies.

Check out Bing, a new search engine from Microsoft.

Time of this posting it's not ready for public consumption, I believe it'll be ready for us on the 1st of June 2009.

They do have a video posted, click here to view

A few words on the subject over on CNET. They say it'll take market share from Google, is a lot more "solid" than Windows Live search, guess by that they mean it answers more questions.

Search for Bing on Google

Search for Bing on Windows Live

WSUS SP2 Beta is now available for evaluation on Connect.

Here's an overview taken from the WSUS Product Team Blog:

WSUS 3.0 SP2 Beta Overview

New Windows Server and Client Version Support
·       Integration with Windows Server® 2008 R2

·       Support for Windows 7® client

·       Support for the BranchCache feature on Windows Server® 2008 R2

WSUS Beta Feature Improvements and Fixes
Auto-Approval Rules
·       New functionality lets you specify the approval deadline date and time.

·       You can now apply a rule to all computers or to specific computer groups.

Update Files and Languages
·       This release provides improved handling of language selection on downstream servers. A new warning dialog appears when you download updates only for specified languages.

Cross-Version Compatibility
·       The user interface is compatible between Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 for WSUS 3.0 on both the client and the server.

Software Updates
·       Stability and reliability fixes for the WSUS server, such as support for IPV6 addresses greater than 40 characters.

·       The approval dialog now sorts computer groups alphabetically by group name.

·       Computer status report sorting icons are now functional in x64 environments.

·       Fixed setup issues with database servers running Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008.

I am delighted to be able to announce our next meeting on Thursday 18th June at Microsoft’s office in Cardinal Place London where this time we'll be kicking off with an in-depth look at Windows 7, courtesy of Viral Tarpara and Andrew Driver from Microsoft.

After some refreshments, Johan Arwidmark (MVP) will be presenting highlights from three of his ConfigMgr / MDT sessions from this year’s MMS.

Coupled with SWAG give always, networking opportunities, etc. this promises to be a great evening and best of all everything is FREE.

To register simply use the following links so we know how many are coming so everyone gets fed and watered:

http://www.wmug.eventbrite.com/

Look forward to seeing you there.

Related to WEBDAV and the Anonymous account (IUSER_<>)

Microsoft is investigating new public reports of a possible vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in the way that the WebDAV extension for IIS handles HTTP requests. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by creating a specially crafted anonymous HTTP request to gain access to a location that typically requires authentication.

We are not aware of attacks that are trying to use this vulnerability or of customer impact at this time. Microsoft is investigating the public reports.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/971492.mspx

Was just asked to create a ConfigMgr query to show which collections a client is a member of:

Note: Collections do not replicate upwards, so running this on your Central for a Tier 2\3 client will not show anything. Either run it on the assigned site server, or from a higher up site server where all the collections are managed ...

SELECT     v_FullCollectionMembership.CollectionID, v_FullCollectionMembership.Name as [Client], v_Collection.Name AS [Collection Name],
                      v_FullCollectionMembership.SiteCode
FROM         v_FullCollectionMembership INNER JOIN
                      v_Collection ON v_FullCollectionMembership.CollectionID = v_Collection.CollectionID
WHERE V_FullCollectionMembership.Name = '<MACHINE NAME>'

This can even go in to a report, create the report, create a prompt called @ClientName, edit the above '<MACHINE NAME>' text (don't forget to strip the apostrophes out too) and replace with @ClientName, then replace the existing default query in the new report with the modified SQL statement from above.

You could even link this report to the built-in "All resources in a specific collection" report, a good idea as that report then links to another report showing you the advertisements for that client which can then be drilled in to even further to give you the "Status of a specific advertisement". Very handy if you first want to know what collections the client is a member of (for deployment troubleshooting), then go through to the advertisement information.

This will probably work on SMS2003 as well, I don't think those views changed ...

(PS ... I hate the way community server messes with formatting, gets font sizes wrong, won't let you reformat easily, and generally makes a mare of things I post ... yes I even blame CS for my typo's, factually incorrect postings and everything else, grrr, double grrr)

More from the Configuration Manager team blog, which you really should subscribe to their RSS feed, or make a habit of frequenting their website for some really good ConfigMgr info.

Brian Huneycutt has posted a super cool run down on solving WMI issues over on the Configuration Manager team blog

A good summary of the steps to get WMI back on its feet. And a word of warning about just deleting the WMI repository (which we've all done I'm sure!)

 Bhaskar Krishnan has posted a great SRS FAQ over on the Configuration Manger team blog.

Worth a read, and the team blog is worth bookmarking