donderdag 29 maart 2007

How to run Vista legally without activation ... for at least a year

March 15, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Windows Vista can be run for at least a year without being activated, a serious end run around one of Microsoft Corp.'s key antipiracy measures, Windows expert Brian Livingston said today.

Livingston, who publishes the Windows Secrets newsletter, said that a single change to Vista's registry lets users put off the operating system's product activation requirement an additional eight times beyond the three disclosed last month. With more research, said Livingston, it may even be possible to find a way to postpone activation indefinitely.

"The [activation] demands that Vista puts on corporate buyers is much more than on XP," said Livingston. "Vista developers have [apparently] programmed in back doors to get around time restrictions for Vista activation."

Microsoft promptly labeled the registry change a "hack," a loaded word that is usually synonymous with "illegal."

"Recently it has been reported that an activation hack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system has been identified," said David Lazar, the director of the company's Genuine Windows program, in an e-mail. "Although these reports are purely speculative at the moment, we are actively monitoring attempts to steal Microsoft intellectual property."

"This is not a hack," Livingston shot back when Lazar's e-mail was read to him. "This is a documented feature of the operating system." To back up his view, Livingston pointed out links to online support documents where Microsoft spells out the pertinent registry key. Nor is it speculative; Livingston demonstrated the procedure live via a Web conference session today and claimed "we have run this dozens of times."

Livingston last month revealed that a one-line command lets users postpone Vista activation up to three times. Combined with Vista's initial 30-day grace period, that meant users could run Vista for as long as 120 days before they had to activate the OS. At the time, Microsoft seemed unconcerned with the disclosure and flatly stated that using it would not violate the Vista End User License Agreement (EULA).

"The feature that I'm revealing today shows that Microsoft has built into Vista a function that allows anyone to extend the operating system's activation deadline not just three times, but many times," Livingston said.


Microsoft documented the key on its support site in a description of what it calls "SkipRearm". In it, Microsoft explains that "rearming a computer restores the Windows system to the original licensing state. All licensing and registry data related to activation is either removed or reset. Any grace period timers are reset as well."

By changing the SkipRearm key's value from the default "0" to "1," said Livingston, the earlier-revealed "slmgr -rearm" command can be used over and over.

In tests with several editions of Vista purchased at different times, Livingston found that copies of Vista Ultimate and Vista Home Premium obtained at the end of January would accept the SkipRearm change only eight times. Together with the three postponements made possible with slmgr -rearm and the opening 30-day grace period, that would give users nearly a year (360 days) of activation-free use. A copy of Vista Home Basic bought March 14, however, ignored the SkipRearm registry change.

"Microsoft has slipstreamed something into Home Basic and Home Premium," Livingston said. "But from my reading of the support documents, Microsoft needs to keep this feature in its business editions, Vista Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. It seems that Microsoft is sympathetic to enterprises' difficulty in rolling out Vista within the activation deadlines."

Lazar did not answer several questions e-mailed to him today, including one that asked why Microsoft had included the SkipRearm feature in the first place. However, he indicated that the feature could be blocked if Microsoft desired. "It is important to note that these hacks are, at best, temporary. Microsoft has systems in place to detect and block piracy."

"This is somewhat of a threat to Microsoft," Livingston said. "But the extent to what it can retroactively patch, I don't know. Maybe they will want to change this. But that would only call more attention to activation and perhaps reveal the mechanism Vista is using to count SkipRearm."

Livingston has not been able to find where Vista stores the SkipRearm count; conceivably, that count is what restricts its use to a maximum of eight. If someone was to find the count location, however, and manage to change that as well as the SkipRearm registry key, users might be able to postpone activation forever, said Livingston.


"The problem I see with this is that unscrupulous system builders will use it [to install counterfeit copies of Vista], but that Vista will start demanding activation a year or more out, when the guy is long gone with your money," said Livingston. "And then the activation key wouldn't work because he would have used it on hundreds or even thousands of systems and Microsoft would have blocked it."

Microsoft introduced product activation in 2001's Office XP and also used it in that year's Windows XP. Activation was toughened up for Vista, however. After the grace period, nonactivated PCs running Vista drop into what Microsoft calls "reduced functionality" mode. In reduced mode, users can only browse the Web with Internet Explorer, and then only for an hour before being forced to again log on.

Livingston's work-around, however, may do away with activation altogether. "[Activation] has become so convoluted, the way Microsoft has implemented it, that it's more of an irritation to legitimate users than a worthwhile antipiracy measure," Livingston concluded.

Naturally, Microsoft's Lazar sees it differently. "The new antipiracy technologies in Windows Vista are designed to protect customers and prevent the software from working correctly when it is not genuine and properly licensed," he said. "Systems utilizing these hacks will not provide the benefits of genuine Windows, nor will they work as expected."

woensdag 28 maart 2007

In Windows Vista, You cannot access any resources on a Remote VPN after you switch a net

Verschillen VMWare Server vs Workstation


Even snel gegoogled naar de verschillen:


 VMware Workstations offers the following (this list is not necessarily complete):
* Multiple snapshots
* Cloning
* Teams + PVNs
* Movie recording

VMware Server provides:
* Remote administration capabilities (via UI consoles and a web interface)
* The ability to run VMs as services after the host powers on


_____________


Correct, though there are other differences.

VMware Server does not support multiple snapshots, cloning, teams, or movie capture. These are things that Workstation handles but Server does not.

It's really a matter of what you want to do. Server is useful if you want to host services (a server VM of some kind containing, say, a web server, database, etc.), leave them headless, and connect to them remotely.

If you just want to run a Windows VM or Linux VM on your desktop or laptop for development purposes, playing a game, using Office, etc., then Workstation would suffice. Certainly if you're using a Windows VM and want to ensure that you have a mostly crash-free, virus-free, spyware-free environment, multiple snapshots would be beneficial, as you could take a snapshot after installing each program you want to try and always jump back if something gets screwed up.

2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS

dinsdag 27 maart 2007

IE7 in IE6 mode gebruiken


User Agent String Utility version 2 


Brief Description


A utility that opens an Internet Explorer 7.0 window that is configured


to report its identity to websites as being Internet Explorer 6.0.


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9517db9c-3c0d-47fe-bd04-fad82a9aac9f&displaylang=en#QuickInfoContainer


vrijdag 23 maart 2007

A tool to migrate anti-spam settings from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007

 

All those Exchange administrators who wondered how they will migrate their huge list of allow/deny addresses, block list providers and blocked senders and domains - now you have a reason to smile. Exchange team has just released a tool that allows you to migrate anti-spam settings from Exchange 2003 environment to Exchange 2007 in a two step fashion.

System requirements:

This tool can be run on

  • Windows Server 2003
  • Windows Server 2000

Prerequisites:

  1. .NET Framework 1.1 or higher
  2. The account under which this tool is run needs to have read rights to AD configuration container and read access to MSExchange.UCEContentFilter.xml. It can be run on all Exchange 2003 environments

Commonly seen error:

Make sure that account under which the tool is run has read access to MSExchange.UCEContentFilter.xml. Otherwise you will see the following error:

ERROR: Access to the path "D:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin\MSCFV2\MSExchange.UCEContentFilter.xml" is denied.

After you met the above, you should do this:

  1. Download and install the tool on your Exchange 2003 system from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=805EAF35-EBB3-43D4-83E4-A4CCC7D88C10&displaylang=en
  2. Go to the folder where the files have been placed as part of the install; by default this will be under C:\Program Files\Exchange2007AntiSpamMigration\Exchange2007AntiSpamMigration.exe
  3. Run the tool which outputs a Power Shell script "MigratedSettings.ps1" by default
  4. Run the Power Shell script produced in step 1 on your Exchange 2007 Edge/Hub Transport roles and you are done

The tool (Exchange2007AntiSpamMigration.exe) reads anti-spam related settings from Active Directory, converts them to equivalent Exchange 2007 tasks and writes them to a Power Shell script. Please read the document that accompanies the tool to know which settings are migrated. It's usage is as follows

Exchange2007AntiSpamMigration [/f:<full path to custom words file>] [/o:<outputfile name>] [/?]

/f: Optional full path to MSExchange.UCEContentFilter.xml file. If not specified, custom words or phrases are not migrated.

/o: Optional output file name. If not specified, output is written to MigratedSettings.ps1 in current directory.

/? Displays usage

One thing to note is that for certain settings, there is no direct one to one mapping from 2003 to 2007. In that case, the tool emits a warning or tries to keep the migration as close as possible to the original settings (Example : Administrators cannot assign specific weights to custom words and phrases in 2007, but in 2003 they could. So, when migrating if a custom word has positive weight, it is converted to Influence of "BadWord" and if it has a negative weight, it is converted to Influence of "GoodWord")

In order to run this tool, you will need .NET Framework 1.1 or higher. The account under which it is run needs to have read permissions to AD configuration container and to the MSExchange.UCEContentFilter.xml file.

- Bhavin Shah

maandag 12 maart 2007

VirtualBox

InnoTek VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction; see "InnoTek" for more about our company.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows and Linux 32-bit hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while InnoTek ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

On this site, you can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox. If you are interested in VirtualBox (both as a user, or possibly as a contributor), this website is for you.

Understanding the Linux File System

Once you have migrated from Windows to Linux you may notice that the file system is not what your accustomed to. Of the first things the average user needs to understand is the inner workings of the root file system and Linux core directory structure. To help you understand this structure, we have listed each directory explaining what it is commonly used for.

bin - contains the vital tools necessary to diagnose, repair and or get the system running

boot - houses the boot loader programs and configuration files

cdrom - shortcut to the CD/DVD drive

devbootstrap - contains files generated during the install of Ubuntu

dev - contains virtual files representing the hardware on your system

etc - central location for configuration files

home - where each users personal directory and files are located

initrd.img - symbolic link to ramdisk used to boot Linux

lib - shared system files

lost+found - where salvaged files get saved upon improper shutdown

media - directories that represent storage devices are found here

mnt - temporarily mounted external filesystems are located here

opt - optional additional software that is not a vital part of the system

proc - contains data about your system and current status

root - root users directory

sbin - administration programs are stored here

srv - network server configuration files go here

sys - Sysfs mount point used by the Linux kernel to administer your system hardware

tmp - temporary files are stored here

usr - shared files and data go here

var - constantly changing data is placed here

vmlinuz - symbolic link to the kernel file used at boot

USB Ubuntu 6.10


USB XUbuntu 6.10 This tutorial enables a user to install, boot and run Ubuntu from a USB flash thumb drive. By utilizing multiple partitions, the user can save changes and settings back to the flash thumb drive. Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux and is one of the more user friendly and stable releases. Ubuntu’s slogan is (it should “Just Work”, TM)

USB XUbuntu 6.10 Linux Screenshot:

Kubuntu Screenshot


Basic essentials:

  • 1GB or larger USB flash drive
  • Bootable Ubuntu Live CD
  • USBubuntu.zip

Warning: DO NOT run makeboot.exe from your local hard drive!! It is intended to be run from your USB device. This tutorial requires you to reformat and partition your USB device. Please backup any information that may be on your USB device before proceeding.

The tutorial:

  1. Download the Ubuntu 6.10 ISO and burn it to CD
  2. Download the USBubuntu.zip
  3. Insert the XUbuntu Live CD and reboot your computer (boot from XUbuntu)
  4. Insert a 1GB or larger USB flash drive
  5. Open a terminal window and type sudo su
  6. Now type fdisk -l to list available drives/partitions (note which device is your flash drive typically /dev/sda)
    • type umount /dev/sda1 (replacing sda1 with your flash drive partition)
    • type fdisk /dev/sda (again replacing sda with your device)
    • type p to show the existing partition and d to delete it
    • type p again to show any remaining partitions (if partitions exist, repeat step 3)
    • type n to make a new partition
    • type p for primary partition
      • type 1 to make this the first partition
      • hit enter to use the default 1st cylinder
      • type +700M to set the partition size
      • type a to make this partition active
      • type 1 to select partition 1
      • type t to change the partition filesystem
      • type 6 to select the fat16 file system
    • type n to make another new partition
      • type p for primary partition
      • type 2 to make this the second partition
      • hit enter to use the default cylinder
      • hit enter again to use the default last cylinder
      • type w to write the new partition table
  7. Type umount /dev/sda1 (replacing with your partition) to unmount the partition
  8. Type mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n USB /dev/sda1 to format the first partition (replace sda1 with your partiton)
    • “Alternately you can try mkfs.vfat -F 32 -n USB /dev/sda1 (doesn’t always work)”
  9. Type mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/sda2 to format the second partition (replace sda2 if necessary)
  10. Reboot your computer (boot back into Windows)”make sure to remove the XUbuntu CD”
  11. Extract the contents of the USBubuntu.zip to your “flash drive”.
  12. Browse to your “flash drive” and click the Makeboot.exe
  13. follow the on screen instructions.
  14. Reboot your computer and set your system BIOS to boot from USB-HDD or USB-ZIP. Also set the boot priority if necessary.

Ubuntu is notoriously much slower to boot than other linux versions. Once Ubuntu is up and running, it is stable and snappy.

Please note: This tutorial has been tested to work from a Windows XP computer. The .Net framework is required in order to run the Makeboot.exe application. You can download .Net framework Here