Windows Experience Blog : IT Pro

TechEd Europe 2009 Kicks Off Next Week with Keynote and Post-Keynote Q&A

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:48:50 GMT

Join Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, and Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of the Server and Tools Marketing Group at Microsoft, for the TechEd Europe 2009 keynote on Monday November 9th starting at 6:30am Pacific. During the keynote, Stephen and Robert will discuss the state of IT and the new generation of business solutions from Microsoft that will help customers reach their full business potential. Following the keynote at 8:00am Pacific there will be a post-keynote Q&A with Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group, Bob Kelly, Corporate Vice President of Infrastructure Server Marketing, and Tami Reller, Corporate Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Windows and Windows Live.

You’ll be able to watch the keynote and participate in the post-keynote Q&A via the Microsoft TechEd Global Press Room. Additionally, you can follow the excitement on Twitter by using the hashtag #TEE09.

Windows 7 Activities at Gartner Symposium

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:49:48 GMT

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, the industry's largest and most important annual gathering of CIOs and their senior IT leaders is taking place this week in Orlando, Florida.

During this year’s event, which will focus on how business technology can help customers return to growth by balancing cost optimization and risk mitigation, Microsoft will be helping customers to understand how they can realize the benefits of Windows 7 through the following activities and sessions:

Windows 7 Early Adopter Customer Panel: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 12:30PM - 1:30PM ET (Moderated by Michael A. Silver - Gartner)

A panel of Windows 7 early adopters will discuss Windows 7 planning, deployment tips and rollout plans. During the panel, attendees will share their experience on planning for a successful deployment and the immediate results they received deploying Windows 7. Featured Gartner Research VP & Distinguished Analyst Michael Silver will facilitate the panel discussion. Please visit Gartner.com for a replay of this webcast on October 22nd.

Windows 7 Unplugged-- Tips From Microsoft's CIO Office: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 2:00Pm - 2:20PM ET (Rick Merrifield - Microsoft)

In this interactive session, the Chief Architect in Microsoft’s IT department will share insider tips on how to plan, pilot and rollout Windows 7. Learn how your organization can benefit from applying the Windows Optimized Desktop to increase end user productivity, enhance security and reduce costs by automating IT management.

Windows Optimized Desktop-- Windows 7 and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Wednesday, October 21st 3:30PM -4:30pm ET (Gavriella Schuster - Microsoft)

The Windows Optimized Desktop is designed to help with today’s imminent IT challenges while ensuring your future success. Come learn how Microsoft Windows 7 and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 together provide better user productivity, stronger data protection, security and PC management and automation improvements that can help you save costs and improve IT efficiency.

Mastermind Keynote with Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division Thursday, October 22nd 11:00am - 11:45am (Moderated by Neil MacDonald and Brian Gammage - Gartner)

Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald and Brian Gammage will moderate an interview with Stephen on a variety of topics top of mind for Symposium attendees. As president of the Microsoft Business Division, Stephen oversees the Information Worker, Microsoft Business Solutions and Unified Communications Groups here at Microsoft and is a member of the company's senior leadership team that sets overall strategy and direction for the company.

Windows 7 Hand On Labs— Monday, October 19th- Thursday, October 22nd Various times (Various presenters)

30 minute, proctor led, interactive sessions where attendees can experience the following features of Windows 7: Windows 7 UI features, Internet Explorer 8 & Web Slices, Problem Steps Recorder, Med-V (using Internet Explorer to launch a Med-V web site), and using BitLocker which will include a 1GB key drive to activate BitLocker as a giveaway, with pre-loaded content including the current product guide and the Microsoft Optimized Desktop datasheet.

Talking About Windows

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:24:28 GMT

I get the extreme pleasure of exclusively revealing a new Microsoft community website on Windows today specifically designed for IT Professionals: Talking About Windows.

Talking About Windows is a new website that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Windows 7 from the Microsoft engineers who helped build product as well as showcasing real IT Professionals talking candidly about their implementations and experiences in considering a more modern OS. This is done through a series of videos hosted within the Talking About Windows Website.

Through Talking About Windows, IT Professionals can listen as our engineers discuss why certain product decisions and feature trade-offs were made in Windows 7 from the likes of Mark Russinovich – a Technical Fellow here at Microsoft (and founder of Windows Sysinternals) - as well as Jon DeVaan, Senior Vice President for the Windows Core Operating System. A great line-up of videos with the people behind Windows 7 can be found at Talking About Windows to with more on the way!

I thought it would be neat to also showcase a special viral video for Talking About Windows I think you will enjoy (feel free to embed on your site!):

Talking About Windows – BitLocker to Go

Talking About Windows also features videos of IT Professionals offering real-world commentary on their Windows deployment and adoption experiences as well.

If you’re an IT Professional, you can also take part in conversations on the Talking About Windows website via the comments section for each video. After all – it’s about “talking about Windows” right? If you then want deeper information I recommend you visit probably one of the single best resources on the web for IT Professionals on Windows – the Springboard Series on TechNet.

In combination with Talking About Windows and the Springboard Series – IT Professionals have a great deal of resources to help them consider their options and learn more about Windows 7!

By the way Stephen Rose, who sits down the hall from me and is our community manager for IT Professionals, helps you to navigate the site when you get there.

TechNet Magazine Features Windows Vista Tips This Month for IT Pros

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:55:56 GMT

TechNet Magazine is showcasing Windows Vista Tips this month in a new tip-of-the-day feature. You can stay up on all the latest Windows Vista tips here – which will be updated Monday – Friday all this month with new Windows Vista tips. You can also find the latest tips at the top of the TechNet Magazine homepage. These tips are mainly focused toward the IT Pro.

Here is the list of Windows Vista tips so far:

Know the Tools You'll Need to Deploy Windows Vista
Do you know what tools you'll need to use to prepare and deploy Windows Vista to systems throughout your environment? This is an overview of the tools you'll need, and the ones you can forget about.

Use Msconfig to Disable and Enable UAC
To determine whether UAC is causing an application compatibility problem, you can temporarily disable UAC. This explains how to do it quickly.

Delete Files Permanently with SDelete
When you delete a file, Windows removes the index for the file, but the file’s contents are still on the disk until the data has been overwritten by another file. Learn how to delete files permanently so attackers can't recover this data.

New Command-Line Switches for Sc.exe
On Windows Vista, the sc.exe command has been enhanced with new command-line switches. This looks at those new command-line switches.

Create an Ad Hoc Wireless Network
If you want to share information stored on your computer with other nearby computers, you can set up an ad hoc wireless network.

Troubleshoot Slow Start Ups with Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics
Find out how you can use Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics to identify the source of startup performance problems and automatically fix issues.

High Availability Printing with the Print Management Console
When a server goes down, you can use the Windows Vista Print Management console to quickly move print queues and keep print jobs moving smoothly.

Best Practices for File Sharing in a Workgroup Environment
Want to implement file sharing for Windows Vista clients in a workgroup environment? Be sure to keep these best practices in mind.

Best Practices for File Sharing in a Domain Environment
If you plan on implementing file sharing for Windows Vista clients in a domain environment, keep these best practices in mind.

Track and Analyze System Stability and Reliability with RACAgent
Curious about system reliability? Windows Vista is already gathering this data by default. This explains how to view that data.

Troubleshoot Group Policy with GPLogView
Learn how you can use this command-line tool to perform Group Policy–related troubleshooting.

Manage Volume Shadow Copy Service from the Vssadmin Command-Line
Check out the commands you can use to manage Volume Shadow Copy service from a command-line tool.

Remove Unwanted Toolbars and Fix Settings in Internet Explorer
Problematic add-ons. Changed browser settings. A new homepage. Find out how you can troubleshoot and fix persistent, unwanted changes.

If you’ve got your own Windows Vista tips – please share them below!

PPG Industries continues IT success with Windows Vista

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:53:30 GMT

After some positive feedback from our customers about last month’s customer interview with City of Miami, we wanted to provide IT Pros with another dose of real-world, Windows Vista customer insight. Additionally, recognizing the interest in Windows 7 over the past few months, we know IT professionals are wondering whether to upgrade to Windows Vista today or wait for Windows 7. I could give you a whole bunch of reasons for investing in Windows Vista today (security, data protection, etc.), but I thought you’d like to hear from an IT professional like you who has made the move to Windows Vista and is glad he did.

I talked with Mike Calabrese, Senior IT Architect - Global Desktop Services of PPG Industries, one of the world’s leading coatings and specialty materials companies, about what keeps him up at night, and how Windows Vista helps address some of his biggest challenges. Here’s an overview of our conversation:

The Windows Blog: Hi, Mike – thanks for chatting with me. What are the biggest challenges in managing your IT environment?

Mike Calabrese: We are like any other business. We keep a close eye on our key resources: time, money and people. As an internal IT department, my biggest challenge is to be able to provide continuous value to PPG’s large and diverse set of end-users. My focus is global desktop services, so PPG employees are my customers and my work directly impacts their day-to-day productivity and ability to collaborate. I have to find the right balance between delivering the flexibility that my customers need, while doing it in a way that is secure and properly supported … and doing it all in a cost-effective way.

The Windows Blog: Finding a cost-effective way to manage all that sounds like it could be a challenge – how are you controlling it?

Mike Calabrese: Right now, we are in the process of upgrading 26,000 desktops and laptops to Windows Vista. As a global company, servicing 25 different languages in more than 60 countries, one key benefit we’ve seen upfront is the ability to create and deploy one global desktop image, rather than creating a separate built-from-scratch, localized image for each supported language or country. This alone is a huge cost and resource saver.

The Windows Blog: Are there any other benefits you’re seeing from Windows Vista?

Mike Calabrese: Management is another area where Windows Vista adds value. The vast number of group policies provides the ability to customize desktop configurations globally with just a few clicks. One example of this is the configuration of wireless profiles that define our access points globally. Any PPG Vista user can connect to our highly secured access points effortlessly.

And I would say that security is the other key reason why we moved to Windows Vista. From an end-user perspective, security is not the most exciting feature, but it is one of those critical issues for IT. We were looking at third-party products to provide additional security, but after a thorough evaluation, we’ve decided to deploy BitLocker on every machine to take advantage of this added layer of security protection available with Windows Vista, without enduring the additional cost or complexity a third-party security product would introduce into our environment.

The Windows Blog: With features that may not be immediately visible to the end-user, did you find it difficult to get your employees on board? How did you sell the value to your colleagues?

Mike Calabrese: Like you, I’ve heard and read all the criticisms of Windows Vista. In my experience, Windows Vista delivers amazing value and addresses the things I care about the most – reducing costs, empowering our users to be productive, and improving manageability and security. Microsoft has been a good partner throughout our deployment process and we expect to continue to see the business benefits with our move to Windows Vista.

The great news for PPG is that its investment in Windows Vista is paying off now and they will have a much easier upgrade path to Windows 7 when they make the decision to deploy. I’ll be sure to keep you updated as I continue to talk with Windows customers – it’s their experiences and opinions that truly tell the stories of our products.

City of Miami Moves to Windows Vista

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:58:00 GMT

I recently had the chance to talk to James Osteen, Assistant Director of the City of Miami's IT Department about their Windows Vista deployment. I thought that many of you could relate to his position and would appreciate his insight into what it takes to keep a major city like Miami up and running.

The Windows Blog: Hi James, thanks for joining us. Tell us a bit about yourself.

James Osteen: I'm James Osteen, an Assistant Director with the City of Miami's IT Department with Infrastructure responsibility. I work with all aspects of our IT infrastructure, including desktops and mainframe, networking, storage, security, and the web. The best part of my job is that it is ever changing...the pace of change in IT allows us to constantly provide more and better services to our citizens and internal clients- and at a lower cost. Let's put it this way, we certainly never get bored!

The Windows Blog: From an IT perspective, what are the top three challenges you face?

James Osteen: That's easy: First is the security of our infrastructure - this isn't something we've had issues with before, but it's always something we're thinking about. We want to be sure our system is secure...our motto is that being prepared before an issue reduces the chance of it happening.

Next would be cost effectiveness of solutions. IT departments can be the first place funding is scaled back, so when we invest in technology, it has to be top notch and show immediate value.

Finally, I'm concerned about the reliability and robustness of service. This is pretty self explanatory, but our job becomes easier if the products we're using are reliable.

The Windows Blog: How do you think Windows Vista can help advance your IT mission and address the challenges you described before?

James Osteen: The mission of the City's IT Department is "to deliver high-quality, focused, aggressive business solutions to the City of Miami by offering consumer-centric services and cost-efficient communications and information technologies."

So to break it down, the security enhancements in Windows Vista have made the operating system one of the most secure options available today, with response times to new security threats that are some of the best in the industry. For us, the deployment of Windows Vista is translating into direct savings for the City and our citizens: it's enabling us to save approximately $80K in power savings through the deployment of GPOs available in Windows Vista, and by migrating from our current mainframe environment to a Windows Server infrastructure, its helping us eliminate approximately $1M in annual costs. That's just the start...these savings are projected to grow to $190K annually within 4 years! And, we expect to see productivity gains through the use of new tools available in Windows Vista, such as desktop search and the snipping tool.

As far as reliability and robustness of service, I have been using the Windows Vista OS in a production environment for 10 months with zero reliability issues. The OS has proven to be highly stable and reliable and one of the side benefits to us from a support standpoint is the "built-in protection of system files." From a robustness of service perspective, we are migrating to a centralized storage platform for our enterprise data. The depth provided by the Offline Files implementation in Windows Vista, including the bitmap differential transfer, makes this goal achievable - it would have been more of a challenge for our clients previously.

The Windows Blog: How many desktop and mobile PCs are you deploying on Windows Vista? In what timeframe?

James Osteen: We plan on migrating approximately 900 desktops/laptops to Vista by end of August 2009.

The Windows Blog: In our current economy, what role does cost savings play in your IT strategy?

James Osteen: Cost savings are becoming increasingly important to our operations with the current economic downturn. We are constantly asked to perform higher levels of service with fewer dollars, and in today's economy this has become even more important. The $1M in mainframe cost savings plus the $80K in power savings alone make this project a no-brainer (not to mention that reducing our carbon footprint is extremely important to us in Florida).

The Windows Blog: Did knowing Microsoft is working on Windows 7 affect your choice to deploy Windows Vista?

James Osteen: The impact of Windows 7 on our decision to move forward was zero. We replace 20% of our desktop/laptop inventory on an annual basis, so that means that desktops we place in production today could have a production life of 5 years... we can't afford to stand still and be rooted in the past. In making our decision to deploy Windows Vista now, we looked more at the immediate benefits that Windows Vista can currently provide our environment - such as cost savings, security, reliability - those factors made the decision an easy one.

The Windows Blog: Would you recommend that other businesses take a look at Windows Vista and consider upgrading?

James Osteen: Absolutely! Any organization concerned with delivering cost effective, secure and reliable services to their clients would be well served taking a hard look at the benefits that Windows Vista can provide to them.

Windows Search 4.0 Released to Web

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:41:00 GMT

Not necessarily a "Windows Experience" (although it does improve the Windows Experience) - I'm making this post on behalf of the Windows Search Team. Oh and I am really excited for this release.

Today we released the final version of Windows Search 4.0 to Microsoft Download Center. Windows Search 4.0 updates search in Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. This release comes after a public Windows Search 4.0 Preview, which was a success thanks to great community participation - with around 300,000 downloads. Since the Preview was released, a number of quality improvements have been made to the product based on feedback provided by the community.

Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x86)

Download: Windows Search 4.0 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x64)

More download packages are available on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157.

So, what's new in this release?

First and foremost: we've introduced some performance and reliability improvements. Queries are faster, as is indexing - how much faster depends on your machine and your data. Improved reliability means that system failures won't get in the way of the indexer and all of your data will be scanned and available for searches.

We've also extended remote index discovery, also known as PC-to-PC searches, which allows data to be searched quickly and efficiently across machines running Windows Search 4.0. This means that Windows Vista-to-Windows XP or Windows Vista-to-Windows Server 2008 queries are now possible.

Additionally, Windows Search 4.0 offers manageability improvements that IT Pros should take note of.

For starters, we have extended Group Policy to control more aspects of search functionality and made this control more granular with per-user policies. You can use Group Policy Objects to control how desktop search accesses remote resources - such as Microsoft Exchange Server resources or file shares - to manage network utilization.

Speaking of accessing Microsoft Exchange Server - if your organization selects not to use Microsoft Office Outlook in cached mode, you can set a Group Policy to index Exchange in online mode. Windows Search 4.0 will then index with minimal impact to the server. Our internal testing of this configuration shows significant decrease in the load on the server and the network as compared to Windows Desktop Search 3.01.

IT Pros can deploy a new link that will be added to the Instant Search UI of Windows Vista (or Windows Search UI on Windows XP) on client PCs and allow the query entered in the search box to access your company's search server, by opening the search UI of the server in your browser and executing the query in it. With this functionality, users get a single launch pad for all of their searches. For more information on how to add customized links into the instant Search UI, click here.

Based on a large amount of customer feedback, we have added support for indexing files encrypted with EFS. Users in an organization can now encrypt files and still be able to search their contents. When running on Windows Vista, they also can get an additional level of data protection by using BitLocker and storing their index on the protected drive.

Today, Windows Search 4.0 can be downloaded for installation (download links from Microsoft Download Center listed above). If you need Windows Search 4.0 deployed in a large organization, you can use System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or other infrastructure solutions.

In the future, we will make Windows Search 4.0 available on Windows Update as well. At that time you will be able to install Windows Search 4.0 off the update site directly or deploy it in your organization using WSUS.

Once Windows Search 4.0 becomes available on Windows Update various Windows users will experience the following:

Windows XP users will see it as an "optional" update, which requires users to select the update for installation.
Users running Windows Vista will see the update as "recommended." By default, recommended updates are installed automatically; however, users can prevent automatic installation of Windows Search 4.0. We will publicly post specific instructions prior to publishing Windows Search 4.0 on Windows Update.
On Windows Server 2008, the update will be applicable only if the File Server Role is enabled.

More on the improvements in Windows Search 4.0 can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940157.

5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:57:00 GMT

Nicholas Rayner pointed out (via Twitter linking back to his blog) a new article available for download on Microsoft.com looking at 5 misunderstood features in Windows Vista today.

Download: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista (Link down but will be back up shortly)

Those 5 misunderstood features include:

User Account Control (UAC)
Image Management
Display Driver Model
Windows Search
64-bit architecture

The article looks to clear up some confusion IT Pros might have with these features. This article is part of the Springboard Series on TechNet offering a collection of resources, tools, and monthly articles to address your questions on Windows Vista based on community feedback and feedback from early adopters.

We blogged about a Springboard Series Live Roundtable event in February in which Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich took part of addressing Windows Vista Deployment and Adoption. You can watch the recording of the session here.

Thanks Nick (a.k.a "aussienick") for pointing this out!