PiqueABoo

PRFs definitely can be used to configure Outlook to connect to an Exchange mailbox (and a lot more). With normal user profiles you do X, Y and Z, the exchange config is triggered the first time a user runs it and that connection info is saved back to HKCU for next time. But with Mandatory profiles I can't see how this would work unless you're happy for it to repeatedly run the PRF setup the first time they start Outlook 2003 in a given Windows logon session.

Not quite.. unlesss I've missed some enhancement, you apply them to users and|or groups. They're a bit of a pain (MS have you make them with ADSIEdit etc.), but there are a few 3rd party freebie GUIs to get around that.

Never tried it, but the deal is that you run this stuff on *a* domain controller and I can't think why the prep wouldn't work on and happily replicate from a 32 bit DC. Well given that you're logged on as an admin who is schema admin etc. and you've already fixed anything bad that shows up having run netdiag, dcdiag on every DC. Oh and factor in replication delays or force replication.

Probably swine flu, but all the figures I've seen thrown about have been about confirmed cases and I haven't seen anything about negative results for people's flu like symptoms (or how good that test is in the first place e.g. false negatives, positives) Interestingly the "influenza consultation rate" bell curve is at it's peak for the 5-14 yr olds and gets less with age i.e. flu symptoms appear to be hitting under 25 yr olds at 5 times the rate. And pressure just turned up in the Lancet on not discounting schools closures: "'prolonged' closures could reduce the scale of the outbreak by 13-17% and at the pandemic's peak shutting schools could bring down the number of cases by 38-45%. [That's media quoting, so those stats may not have carried over sufficient context form the Lancet paper]

It's not that obvious, because that's a symptom of most non-swine flu and other things besides. My daughter was radiating heat from every inch of her body, went up to at least 39.4C (a bit more than Mr Burhams "38C" which interestingly is only 0.2C above the top of the normal range for 3-10yrs) complained of feeling freezing and had the goose-bumps to prove that i.e. a fever. But by the time we saw the Dr., it was about 6 hours from the start, she'd spent a lot of time naked, had two rounds of (max-permitted dose) Calpol and a trip in a car with the air-con on full.. and was just back in normal range again! Was it wasn't it? Pass.

E2K7 needs a lot of RAM (tried it with a 1GB VM once and it was dreadful). For me: E2K3 is OK in a 512MB W2K3 VM. E2K7 is OK in a 1.5GB W2K3 R2 X64 VM. I think I can see what Ken is getting at .. E2K3 does more in the GUI or ADUC, whereas with E2K7 (although it has an easier GUI) I inevitably end up typing 400+ character lines into powershell... ..but, I wouldn't spend too much time on E2K3 if you intend to get E2K7 coz you'll have to learn how to do quite a lot of things all over again.

I always vote for BartPE but it can take a little while getting your head around making one. However there is a BartPE friendly mass storage driver pack available from driverpacks.net, which integrates itself into your bartPE automagically, and because it contains drivers for pretty much every mass storage gadget that wasn't released recently (including the ones linked above) it makes that bit simple. In the unlikely event that a driver isn't in the driver pack you can also do the traditional F6 thing when booting a bartPE.

My 6 yr-old had recently been to what was then a "hotspot", got a sudden proper fever, major lethargy, headache, stomach pain.. wasn't too bad the next couple of days, but then was sick, coughing and had her trademark ear-infection etc. Still on ABs for the latter but was all over after five days. Called the NHS-Direct line within hours of that fever kicking in (very abruptly), ended up being asked to go to an out-of-hours GP at the hospital. "May or may not be swine flu.. blah blah.. takes a week to get results.. only give tamiflu to people with existing health issues, under 5s and over 65s.. keep her at home and give her Calpol". Don't know, maybe it was maybe it wasn't swine flu. Do know there appears to be a post-code lottery at work yet again e.g. someone on our street who works in the NHS elsewhere says in that area, when in doubt they're handing it out to everyone regardless of risk group.

Do you know about the Exhange 2007 SP1 evaluation VM (VHD)?

For info: Exchange 2007 per se isn't, but 32bit Exchange Management Tools ARE supported. You actually need the 32bit version to do some things e.g. PST import/export. -- Meanwhile are you trying to install Exchange 2007 RTM? I believe you need Exchange 2007 SP1 to install on 2008.

That's Windows NT 3.1. Interested, but everyone was in my world. I had a version of the NT4 GUI on 3.51 for a while (IIRC it had issues so I took it off again though) For me one significant moment was MS pulling their finger out and delivering Wolverine (what you had to do before that with 3rd party stuff was a bit of a pain). Apart from a deployment job (the week before 95 release using a genuine "gold" CD) I managed to avoid Windows 9x in favour of NT family. PS: I miss the Easter Eggs.

Given how useless our elected representatives are at it these days in what is an increasingly control-freakish society, I'm all for people questioning things whether I agree with them or not. How do you know any of these "something"s will deliver what they claim? Or be an improvement on the existing "somethings"? Factor in how many other gov initiatives have delivered the (originally promised) results during your lifetime.

Thanks for suggesting, but no. I 've done a *lot* of googling since and eventually turned up two comments from different MS folk saying that you need to make a custom agent just for the outbound half of what I want. So I've made a custom agent and it's working so far(!) on the lab bench, but is still being tested. Should anyone else be faced with this problem: a) If you've got a single Exchange 2K7 doing everything you must make a custom "routing agent". Most of the few examples you can find are for an "SMTP receive agent" but for a single Exchange 2K7, they won't catch outbound messages. b) I haven't found a quick way to decide that a message is from a user with a mailbox in a given store (or addressed to a user with...). Given that they're interfering with every message I reckon agents need to be quick, but fortunately there is a strict naming convention for accounts and mail addresses, so I'm able to use simple checks based on mail addresses instead. c) Took some thought, but it wasn't too bad to write @ 200 lines of code (includes getting all the config from the registry). It's been a bit tedious to test it though.

There's a bunch of younger users with mailboxes in their own storage group/store. I want to be able to stop them sending external mails anywhere besides some permitted domains, in fact ideally that would include permitted wildcards e.g. *.sch.uk. And vice versa for receiving. I'm struggling to find a way that doesn't involve writing a little "transport agent" and I'm not convinced that will be ideal e.g. can you figure out that an outbound mail is from someone with a mailbox in a particular store, and vice versa for inbound? Anyone got any clues on how to do this with minimum effort?

24GB sounds like an ample size for a pure DC VM, but factor in memory/page file size if that's on C:, and how willing you are to keep it clean and tidy during it's lifetime. I've got a 2K8 DC FR "lab bench" VM here with SP2 and a 2GB page file which is using 13GB. I have run the SP2 cleanup util that gives you no way back, but C: also has the big WAIK, WSUS (DBs etc. on another drive), dotNet 3.5SP1. I can't see disk usage getting past 16GB unless I do decide to throw some serious bloatware on there. Should MS ever release a 10GB SP or something, with a pure DC it's not like it will be that much trouble to make a new one with a bigger C:

Akshully.. it's just "malware" which: a) Keeps literacy pedants off your back b) Keeps tech pedants off your back ("..strictly speaking that one is a worm/trojan/blah/blah"). c) Is good enough.

Might not help, but see if the attached version works (in a limited test). That is the current Dec 2008 version, that I modified so it would work when there's a space character in the key. It's also a good idea to put quotes around the command line option like this: "/NetworkKey:Top Secret" [if it does work now, please let me/us know] WifiCfg_XP.7z

Exactly, I've got a serious problem with anyone equating fans doing their thing over this with people mourning the death of someone with whom they had a real reciprocal relationship. Ok it's the media, sorry, but Janice Turner was spot on in the Times today: [unlike a mother] "fans have no investment in a star’s fate. It is win-win either way. If he lives, it means, perhaps, another album, a few more weekly mag exclusives of his loucheness, pet collection, addled decline. But if he dies, they have conspiracies to tweet about, a myth, a shrine to visit and vandalise with tea lights and kisses, like Jim Morrison’s raddled grave at Père Lachaise."

Private Eye has something on the same PAC stuff this week (it's taken a few shots at BSF now). PE doesn't limit their report to the consultant bit and includes: "Waste on the program so far includes an average £10m bill to arrange and design each project and £20m annual central running cost at PfS and in Whitehall. All of which is manna for the consultants: £11m from PfS alone up to last March (plus unknown amounts from the local education partnerships). .. Partnerships UK, whose owners include Barclays, Serco, Prudential and other financiers, takes a 15% return on the investment it puts into the local education partnerships via its part-ownership of PfS. The MPs said this was 'too much' given that the body is supposed to have a 'public sector mission'... .. Despite the damning PAC verdict, PfS continues to expand. Just five days later schools minister Vernon Coaker announced that all school building work, including on primary schools, would henceforth be run by the agency. Once again nothing succeeds like failure"

They seem to be giving up now. Couple of schools in the county where I lived closed this week but a third did not: "However, the school has opted to stay open on the advice of the Health Protection Unit. "

That date is for on the shelves in PC World etc. The RTM is expected to be available for download from "MSDN, Technet and Volume Licensing download sites" quite soon after the apparent RTM date of 13th July. See the bink.nu link in the thread in the 2008 forum.

Ditto for Windows 7. Bink.nu link

2K8 R2 RTMs on 13th July which, for me, makes thinking about doing any 2K8 installs from now on a teensy bit bit hard. 2K8 R2 obviously only comes as 64bit - so if you are installing plain 2K8 I'd take that as a hint for using 64-bit (unless of course some prized app simply won't cope).

Did you fix it? There's a post out there somewhere saying "me too" several times and eventually (after someone opened an MS support call) that this is an SP2 bug MS are debugging. See here [Will be installing a few times soon myself, so was interested in any solutions for potential problems]

These days responding to pings isn't seen as a priority for a lot of net routers i.e. if they've got better things to do with their time, they'll just drop them (and five minutes later and a bit less stressed maybe they'll respond).