New SBS Group Launches in Lexington 01-17-2008

Great news, especially for folks in Kentucky!

Matthew Snoddy (NetworkTherapists.com) has announced the launch of a new SBS group, and the first meeting is next week after the Microsoft TS2 event in Lexington.

Here are the details:

Lexington SBS User Group
Location: Lexington, Kentucky USA
Website: http://www.lexsbs.com
Launch date: Thursday January 17, 2008

Everyone is invited, (KYSBSUG & CiNPA, that means you too) so let’s help Matthew make this launch a great event!

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You Have Exceeded Maximum Pages for Word

Ever wonder how many pages it would take to print out the Registry in Windows XP? Really? Me too.

Well, today I was talking to a customer while making some registry changes, and the topic of just how big the registry is came up. After hours I decided to export the registry of my corporate Windows XP SP2 desktop machine to a TXT file (139 MB).  Then I tried to open that registry.txt file with Microsoft Word 2007.  The result?

image

How many pages is that? 

image

32,767 pages of plain text, and it died.

Just for giggles, I decided to try and open the same 139 MB TXT file in the PortableApps version of OpenOffice.org Writer running on a USB flash drive. 

The result?

image

Windows XP was not amused.

But you know what? Writer actually got further than Word: 

image

38,306 pages. Actually, it was 38,307 pages, but when I tried to change the  3/4" margins to 1" margins to see if it would increase the number of pages, it dropped down to 38,306 and threw the fault error in the status bar.

So, if a page is 11" long / 63,360 inches in a mile = 5,750 pages per mile.
Basically, we’re at 6.6 miles long, and that’s not even the complete registry.

Update: I actually got OpenOffice Writer to reach 39,721 pages before it ran out of virtual memory. Anyway, enough fun for now.

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Invitation – Louisville Geek Dinner – 1/24/2008

Louisville Geek Dinner - Thu Jan 24, 2008 6PM EasternIn case you haven’t heard, you’re invited to the 4th ever
Louisville Geek Dinner:

  • WHAT: A social networking event for those who love technology
  • WHEN: Thursday, January 24th 2008 @ 6:00pm EST
  • VENUE: Fox and Hound Pub and Grille – Google Map
  • ADDRESS: 302 Bullitt Ln, Louisville, KY 40222
  • COST: FREE + whatever you choose to spend on food.
  • HOST: Ben Thomas
  • ATTENDEES: Mac, PC, Linux, Unix, SBS and all other manner of geeks
  • REGISTER: http://www.louisvillegeekdinner.com 

Of course, it’ll be dark by then (6:00 PM Eastern), but here’s a daylight picture of the venue. Be sure to zoom out so you can be all, “Oh, I know where that is, yeah…”:

Fox & Hound Pub,

Feel free to copy the badge above to your blog to spread the word.
Here’s another badge (not dated) that Ben prepared:

Louisville Geek Dinner

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The Energizer SBS 4.5 Server

Spotted in the wild today – an SBS 4.5 server that hasn’t been rebooted in 1.6 YEARS!  Craziness I tell ya!

image

System Idle Process = 14,310 hours / 24 hours per day = 596.25 days = 1.6 years.

And before you ask, yes this is a single processor box without hyper-threading.  It’s hard to believe some of these boxes are still in the wild and running.
This one was at a non-profit.  Time for a TechSoup chat :-) 

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Download – Selling SBS and WSS Kit

wss_logo Title: How to Sell, Deploy, and Build Business with Microsoft Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 and SBS 2003 R2
File Name: Selling_WSS_and_SBS_Kit.zip
Version: 1.0
Date Published: 11/15/2007
Language: English
Download Size: 3.2 MB
Download URL: Click here

Description: 
A new partner enablement tool that helps you create solutions using Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2. Access the toolkit’s resources—including a process cookbook, technical documentation and marketing materials—to learn how to build your business by selling and deploying customized solutions.

Contents Include:

  • Application Templates Overview for WSS v3
  • Asking the Client to Agree to a WSS Demo Final.doc
  • Helpful Technical Resources from Microsoft.doc
  • Identifying Potential WSS Clients.doc
  • Making WSS into a Secure Extranet.doc*
  • Preparing Your Business to Sell and Support WSS.doc
  • SBS Business Benefits Highlights.doc
  • SharePointBackups.exe
  • Site Administrator Homework Sample.doc
  • Visio Windows SharePoint Process Flows 061107.pdf
  • WSS 3.0 User Training Guide.doc
  • WSS 3.0 Admin Training Guide.doc
  • WSS 3.0 Site Demonstration Script.doc
  • WSS 3.0 Site Intake Template Starter Site.doc
  • WSS 3.0 Technical Setup.doc
  • WSS Admin Training Agenda Sample.doc
  • WSS Future Opportunities.doc
  • WSS Packaged Offering StarterSite Sample.doc
  • WSS Process Flow Steps Documents Objectives Toolkit Readiness.xls
  • WSS StarterSite Intake Template.doc
  • WSS User Training Agenda Sample.doc
  • Your Ideal Pilot Client.doc

*If you’re looking for the document on creating a secure extranet using WSS v3 on top of SBS, it’s in this download.  This is the same WSS / SBS content released at Worldwide Partner Conference 2007 that everyone has been asking for over the last several months.  Basically, this stuff is a gold mine!

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Download – Daily Dilbert Web Part for SharePoint

I love SharePoint.  I love Dilbert.  Put them both together and it’s like peanut butter and chocolate.  In fact, I love SharePoint and Dilbert almost as much as I hate monkeys (that’s a lot!)

THE FRUSTRATON
And as much as I’ve always adored SharePoint (even back in the STS 1.0 days), user adoption was always sluggish.  To this day I’m still floored by how many IT Pros / SBSers and even SBSCs don’t use their own http://companyweb site.  Unlike the ‘Field of Dreams‘, if you build it, they won’t necessarily come. 🙁

THE STING
Daily Dilbert web part shown on http://companyweb WSS v2 site So for several years I’ve been sneakily using the Daily Dilbert to lure reluctant end users into SharePoint sites.  Many users have absolutely no desire to hit http://companyweb or set it as their IE homepage. But add the Daily Dilbert to your intranet, add in a traffic cam web part, a weather radar, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly and consistently users hit the site.  And once users and small business owners are in the habit of using Companyweb, it opens their eyes and they start thinking about what else they can do with SharePoint.

Customer – “Hey, can we put links to our vendors on this site? What about HR documents? What about… “

You – “Sure, we can do that. Let me show you some of these ‘Fabulous 40’ templates Microsoft has released for SharePoint… “

They start recognizing that it can drive *tremendous* business value. And you can be there to provide those value-added services. Win-win. 🙂

Daily Dilbert web part shown on Windows SharePoint Services WSS v3 siteTHE DOWNLOAD
What you’ve been waiting for, the link to download the Daily Dilbert web part:

  • Daily_Dilbert.dwp (1.66 KB)
    (Right-click and Save As)

    Note: This one web part works with both Windows SharePoint Services WSS v2 and WSS v3 sites.

THE INSTRUCTIONS
The SharePoint pros have already snagged the web part and left the building along with Elvis. But if you’re new to SharePoint, you’ve probably already tried to open the web part and didn’t know what to do with it.  So here are the step-by-step instructions to install that Daily Dilbert web part on your own SharePoint site (Note – make sure your SharePoint permissions let you upload web parts):

  1. imageRight-click the Daily_Dilbert.dwp link above, and save it to your desktop
  2. Open http://companyweb
  3. In the top-right corner, click:
    – Modify Shared Page
    – Add Web Parts
    – Import
  4. imageClick the Browse button
  5. Locate the Daily_Dilbert.dwp web part you just downloaded, click OK
  6. Back on the Add Web Parts page, click Upload
  7. You should now see the uploaded web part directly under the ‘Upload’ button you just clicked, like this:

    image 

  8. Drag the uploaded web part to the left to the location you would like to see it on your web page, and then let go.
  9. Finally, click the “X” in the top right corner next to “Add Web Parts”. You’re all done!

THE PROPS
Major thanks and shout out to Brian Ritchie for developing his mega-cool Dilbert Web Service, and for letting me link to it. Check out Brian’s site at www.dotnetpowered.com

***Bonus Material ***

THE GUTS / HOW IT WORKS
Actually, the web part is the easy part. It’s like the peanut butter and chocolate mentioned earlier. This is just a combination of my ghetto image web part and Brian’s rockin Daily Dilbert Web Service that is doing the heavy lifting of calculating the daily URL.  So basically, this is just a) an image web part that b) points to a static URL, that c) contains a picture updated daily by Brian’s web service. 

Alternately (and VERY cool), you can use the code and instructions on Brian’s site to run your own Daily Dilbert web service (sa-weet!)

Here’s the code for the Daily Dilbert web part if you want to see what it looks like inside:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<WebPart xmlns:xsd=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema” xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance” xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2″>
  <Title>Daily Dilbert</Title>
  <FrameType>Default</FrameType>
  <Description>Thanks go to Brian Ritchie for kindly providing this web part! Be sure to visit his website at: http://www.dotnetpowered.com/dailydilbert.aspx by clicking on the help button.</Description>
  <IsIncluded>true</IsIncluded>
  <ZoneID>Left</ZoneID>
  <PartOrder>2</PartOrder>
  <FrameState>Normal</FrameState>
  <Height />
  <Width />
  <AllowRemove>true</AllowRemove>
  <AllowZoneChange>true</AllowZoneChange>
  <AllowMinimize>true</AllowMinimize>
  <IsVisible>true</IsVisible>
  <DetailLink>http://www.dilbert.com</DetailLink>
  <HelpLink>http://www.dotnetpowered.com/dailydilbert.aspx</HelpLink>
  <Dir>Default</Dir>
  <PartImageSmall />
  <MissingAssembly />
  <PartImageLarge>/_layouts/images/msimagel.gif</PartImageLarge>
  <IsIncludedFilter />
  <Assembly>Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=11.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c</Assembly>
  <TypeName>Microsoft.SharePoint.WebPartPages.ImageWebPart
</TypeName>
  <ImageLink xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/Image”> http://www.dotnetpowered.com/dailydilbertservice/dailydilbert.axd
</ImageLink>
  <VerticalAlignment xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/Image”>Middle </VerticalAlignment>
  <HorizontalAlignment xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/Image”>Center </HorizontalAlignment>
  <BackgroundColor xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/WebPart/v2/Image”>transparent </BackgroundColor>
</WebPart>

***Extra Old Skool Bonus Material***

Back in the day before Brian’s Daily Dilbert web service, I used a similar WSS v2 stock image web part and linked it to a Dot Net Nuke site that hosted the Daily Dilbert.  Straightforward, but effective. 

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, you can’t use a stock image web part in WSS to link directly to the Daily Dilbert website GIF, because the image name changes every day.  For example, today (11/21/2007) the image name is dilbert2002222371121.gif.

THE END
Again, much respect to Brian for the web service. Also, props to Scott Adams, the talented creator of Dilbert. If you liked the web part, be sure and leave a comment below. And if you like the Dilbert cartoon, be sure to click the words “Daily Dilbert” at the top of the web part each day – this will take you directly to the www.dilbert.com website where Scott can get the traffic he rightly deserves for creating such an awesome cartoon. Enjoy!

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Notes from November 2007 KYSBSUG Meeting

kysbsug Thanks to everyone who attended the November 2007 Kentucky Small Business Server User Group (KYSBSUG) meeting last night on "Best Practices".

SPECIAL THANKS:

  • Thanks to all who attended, especially those traveling from Lexington.
  • Also, MAJOR thanks to Matthew Snoddy from Network Therapists for presenting!  We’re really looking forward to the Lexington SBS group launch in January!
  • And thanks to those who stayed after to attend the WHS build

GRAND PRIZE WINNER:

  • Windows Home Server Lee Johnson from Sentry Computer Systems took home the copy of Windows Home Server

    Congratulations Lee on finally winning something 😉

URLS MENTIONED LAST NIGHT:

  • SBS 2003 Best Practices Analyzer v1.3 (1.1 MB)
  • Exchange 2003 Best Practices Analyzer v2.8 (6.8 MB)
  • ISA 2004 Best Practices Analyzer v5.5 (2.8 MB)
  • WSS v3 & MOSS 2007 Best Practices Analyzer (1.4 MB)
  • Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer v2.1 – Beta 2 (1.3 MB)
  • Visio 2007 Connector for MBSA 2.1 (1.1 MB)
  • lookinmypc LookInMyPC (1.2 MB) – LookInMyPC generates a complete, comprehensive system profile that includes information on all installed hardware and software. Additionally it provides system diagnostic information such as details on running processes, installed services, startup programs, Windows updates and hot fixes, active network and Internet connections, TCP/IP port usage, event log detail, and much more. All this is provided in an easy to read, formatted report that you can view and print using your web browser.
  • AccessEnum v1.32 (51 KB) – AccessEnum gives you a full view of your file system and Registry security settings in seconds, making it the ideal tool for helping you for security holes and lock down permissions where necessary.
  • JDiskReport JDiskReport v1.3 (0.6 MB) – JDiskReport enables you to understand how much space the files and directories consume on your disk drives, and it helps you find obsolete files and folders.

    The tool analyses your disk drives and collects several statistics which you can view as overview charts and details tables.

    This is ad-free uncrippled no-charge binary multi-platform software that never expires.  (Requires Java).

  • The Dude 2.2 The Dude v2.2 (1.8 MB)  – The Dude is a network monitor that will enable you to scan all the devices within a network subnet and then draw a map of the network devices and tell you where your workstations are connected and warn you of service problems.

    Better still, your network doesn’t need to be internal. If your company has a network between offices, The Dude will enable you to map the entire network.

  • PsEXec v1.9 (1 MB) – PsExec, from Microsoft / Sysinternals is a light-weight telnet-replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems, complete with full interactivity for console applications, without having to manually install client software. PsExec’s most powerful uses include launching interactive command-prompts on remote systems and remote-enabling tools like IpConfig that otherwise do not have the ability to show information about remote systems.

    Note: some anti-virus scanners report that one or more of the tools are infected with a "remote admin" virus. None of the PsTools contain viruses, but they have been used by viruses, which is why they trigger virus notifications.

  • SIW - System Information for Windows System Information for Windows (SIW) v1.71 (1.3 MB) – SIW is an advanced System Information for Windows tool that gathers detailed information about your system properties and settings and displays it in an extremely comprehensible manner.

    This standalone utility does not require installation (Portable Freeware) – one less installed program on your PC as well the fact that you can run the program directly from an USB flash drive, from a floppy, from a network drive or from a domain login script.

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Whitepaper – Migrating SBS 2003 to New Hardware

 Microsoft has released a new whitepaper and set of worksheets entitled:

 “Migrating Windows Small Business Server 2003 to New Hardware

Sections include:

The whitepaper outlines the following steps for migrating from an existing computer running Windows SBS 2003 to new hardware:

  1. Evaluate the current status of the source server.
  2. Install Windows SBS 2003 and join the domain.
  3. Transfer Exchange Server 2003 settings and folders.
  4. Migrate shared folders and data folders.
  5. Install and configure the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).
  6. Configure Windows SBS 2003 settings.
  7. Migrate Internet Information Services (IIS) Web sites.
  8. Install and migrate Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
  9. Migrate Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server settings.
  10. Migrate Microsoft SQL Server databases.
  11. Remove the source server from the network.

This whitepaper is currently only available in HTML format, but a .DOC version will be made available.

BEST PRACTICE:  For the ultimate information regarding SBS migration, including the following scenarios…

  • SBS 2003 Redeployment
  • SBS 2000 to 2003 Upgrade
  • NT4/SBS 4.5 to 2003 Upgrade
  • SBS 2000 Redeployment

…be sure to check out Jeff Middleton’s
Swing It!! Technician Kit available at www.sbsmigration.com
We simply can’t say enough good things about the Swing IT Kit!! 

Source – Eric Ligman’s Blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2007/11/01/5822972.aspx

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What’s included in SBS 2008

image Want to know what’s in ‘Cougar’ (Windows Small Business Server 2008)?

Per Eric Ligman’s blog yesterday…

Cougar will include these technologies:

  • Windows Server 2008
  • Exchange Server 2007
  • Windows SharePoint Services 3.0
  • SQL Server 2005
  • System Center Essentials

Design considerations include:

  • Dramatically improved management, protection, and business productivity
  • Emphasis on simplicity and integration
  • Providing value for new and existing partners
  • Embracing Live Services
  • 64-bit only

Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/mssmallbiz/archive/2007/10/29/5770933.aspx

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KYSBSUG – Sept 2007 – SBS Hacks

image You are invited to attend the September 2007 Kentucky Small Business Server User Group (KYSBSUG) meeting.  This is our 43rd consecutive monthly meeting!

Title: KYSBSUG Meeting – Sept 2007
Date:  Wed Sept 19, 2007
Time:  6:30 PM Eastern
Venue:  University of Louisville – ITRC Building (Shelby Campus)
Address:  9001 Shelbyville Rd, Louisville, KY USA, 40222
Registration URL: https://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=121293

Topic:  SBS Hacks

Description: 

Share your favorite SBS Hacks, tweaks, and work-arounds that make SBS really hum, and learn what everyone else is doing. 

We’ve got a handful of specific hacks & tweaks lined up, but we plan on opening up the floor to let everyone participate.  To encourage everyone to share, each registered attendee who shares their favorite hack gets a door prize!  If you’re new to SBS, this is a great chance to learn from the pros.  And even if you’re a long-time SBSer, we’ve got still some tricks you’ve never seen before!

At the end of the evening we’ll hold a drawing for ‘Best SBS Hack’ and the winner walks away with a Microsoft Polo shirt!

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