Microsoft Support & Discussions

By Paul Thurrott One of the quieter improvements in Apple’s iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is explicit support for Hotmail accounts via the Accounts settings panel. This means that Hotmail users can now easily integrate their email, contacts, and calendar with their iPhone and other Apple devices without having to jump through hoops as before. And the change has seen a dramatic increase in Hotmail usage on iOS: According to Microsoft, over 2 million users have configured Hotmail accounts in iOS 5 already. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Amazon is an interesting company, and its found unique ways to compete with Apple and its full-featured iOS/iTunes ecosystem. One of these ways is via its Prime shipping service, which gives subscribers free two-day shipping on virtually everything in the Amazon online store for $80 a year. A while back, it added its Netflix-like Instant Videos offering as a perk of the Prime service. And now its adding Kindle eBook lending too. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott An often irreverent look at this week’s other news, including Microsoft’s very correct decision to kill the Courier, a new version of the HP Slate, a "fun surprise" after next week’s Windows Phone event in NYC, Bing gets improved on Android and iPhone--but not on Windows Phone, iTunes Match is silently delayed, Siri gets quiet for a few hours, no truth to Linux FUD rumors about Windows 8 PCs, Tim Cook is a better person than Steve Jobs, a crazy and obvious prediction about Apple’s plans for 2012. Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft is adding a brand-new business-intelligence SKU and core-based licensing to its coming SQL Server 2012 database offering due next year. Source: All About Microsoft

Microsoft’s Bing and Hotmail teams are both doing more to improve their experiences on iOS, Android — and, oh, yeah, Windows platforms, too. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Apple on Wednesday confirmed that some users of the iPhone 4S and other devices running iOS 5 are experiencing poor battery life and attributed the problem to a software bug. The company says it will issue a software update that fixes the issue soon. Source: Win Super Site

Presently, we have a Windows Server 2008 32-bit with SP2 installed running as our Prevx Enterprise Server 3.0 Console. It is used to deploy agents and view Windows workstations which may be Windows XP/Vista and Windows 7. The problem is if a machine name is changed or if you are trying to discover the Windows desktop/laptop on the allowed network, it does not display in Windows Network Discovery. We do not run AD we have a Linux samba server running as a workgroup. The only way for it to update and display the new machine is to reboot the server, what is the command to force a clear/reload of this data. What data is being read that populate this Network discov…

The developers of Tapose, the Microsoft-like Courier app for the iPad, are considering doing versions for other tablets, including Windows 8. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott The final product completed under the aegis of Steve Jobs provides a fitting legacy for a man who valued design over practicality. Despite criticism of its year-old design, the iPhone 4S is a wonderful and desirable smart phone that fixes the problems of its predecessor while offering an amazing mix of software, services, and content that the competition will struggle to match. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott In September, I wrote a lengthy preview of Windows Server 8 for the November 2011 issue of Windows IT Pro Magazine. That article had to be cut down for space considerations and because some of the material overlapped with other Windows Server 8 content in the same issue. Here for the first time is my full Windows Server 8 preview, in unedited form. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Back in July, Google began testing a new look and feel for its excellent web-based email client, Gmail. And today, that new UI is live and available to all Gmail users. I’m still on the fence about the new UI, but Gmail remains the most productive and usable web-based email service out there. Source: Win Super Site

Hi all, I am running a trial version of 2008 R2 and I need to resolve an issue with Coldfusion 9.0.1 and IIS 7.5 on this server before I commit to buying and running 2008 long term. This is in a home network environment, not a corporate/enterprise environment. I am running a server for web, file storage and WSUS, MS Access DB and Firebird DB. It has 8GB RAM, an I5-2400 CPU and runs Windows 2008 R2 all latest patches, WSUS 3.0 Sp2, and Firebird 2.5. I'm trying to install and run Coldfusion 9.0.1 so that I can continue to develop and maintain CF apps. But when I install CF9 it kills WSUS. No client can get updates from the server, they die with a download error.…

Im very new to all this. A lot of my understanding here probably sounds really stupid, so bear with me. Im building a small virtual network using VMware. Im doing this to practice and learn about subdomains, group policy, and security. When I try to enforce group policy on clients from either the parent domain or the subdomain dcs- nothing happens. I took down all the firewalls, made sure all the accept connections settings are checked on everything, but still no group policy. When I run dcdiag from the parent domain dc I get this: Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601] Copyright 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\Users\Administrator>dcdiag D…

I am trying to expand the allotted size of the log file for scheduled tasks. I can't seem to find a configuration option, could someone point me in the right direction? Thanks schnelle02

By Paul Thurrott At Nokia World 2011, Nokia executives revealed Nokia’s plans for Windows Phone and how it will compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Source: Win Super Site

How To Set Windows 2008 Server With Active Directory Up To Be See In The Network Neighborhood Of A Windows 2003 Server With Active Directory

Pieces of Microsoft’s promised fourth-quarter Office 365 update are beginning to manifest themselves via various Microsoft products. Source: All About Microsoft

The back story over what happened to the Microsoft Courier tablet has me thinking about Microsoft’s current tablet choices (and what may result from them). Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott October has come and gone, so Microsoft is back with its monthly evaluation of how well Internet Explorer is doing in the market. As with past months, the same general themes repeat again in October: While overall IE share is down a bit, share of IE 9, particularly on Windows 7, is up. As always, the commentary is based on numbers provided by NetApplications. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott And with this, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials finally gets interesting. Microsoft announced today that a beta version of the Office 365 Integration Module (OIM) for Windows SBS 2011 Essentials is finally available, proving integration between its new SMB-focused server offering and its market-leading cloud productivity service. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Beleaguered cell phone giant Nokia is poised to reenter the US market in early 2012 with Windows Phone handsets targeting "multiple carriers," but the company’s CEO is also open to the idea of expanding Nokia’s computing horizons a bit. He says he "sees the opportunity" that Windows 8 tablets provide for hardware makers and is apparently open to the idea of pursuing such a strategy. Source: Win Super Site

Hello, I'm running Windows SBS 2008 R2 64 bit and I've set the GPO that is linked to the domain workstations to rename the local admin account and set the password. The setting I've set is Computer Configuration > Preferences > Control Panel Settings > Local users and Groups. I chose to update the Administrator (built in) account. I set the new account name and password. When I run gpupdate from any XP workstation on the domain the account is not updated, but when I run gpupdate from a win 7 workstation I see the changes have been applied. I've rebooted the XP machines 3-4 times and have run several gpupdates on them, also I've run gpupdate /force and reboote…