Word 2007 and the "big gaps" Friday, June 6, 2008 Normally I am Mr Enthusiasm for new Microsoft apps (a change is as good as a rest!) but Office 2007 has to be a hard one to recommend. Anyway, my Chief User at home (or "wife") has finally broken and complained that she would like Word except why are all her paragraphs suddenly miles from each other? It must be said that on an environmental level the new 10pt gap between paragraphs is questionable at least. Anyway, help is at hand! To get rid of the gaps, open Word 2007 and... 1. Click the Home tab. 2. Click Change Styles in the Styles group, point to Style Set, and then click Word 2003. 3. To set the style set as the default style set in Word 2007, click Change Styles in the Styles group, and then click Set as Default. 0 Comments Adminpak in catchy rename Thursday, April 3, 2008 My life trying to manage Windows 2003 systems from a Vista SP1 machine has not all been easy. Cluster Administrator? Don't even try, you are more likely to break your cluster than manage it. Exchange System Manager? Only if you want to hack your registry to pretend you have IIS 5.1 installed. Remote bleedin' Desktop? Works fine except they changed the /console switch to /admin so you can't log into the desktop with very nice tools like VisionApp Remote Desktop 1.5. So I'm using a virtual XP machine (actually a snapshot of my old desktop) to do half my work... But apparently my life is going to be saved by the "Microsoft Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows Vista SP1 32-bit Edition". Catchy name! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9FF6E897-23CE-4A36-B7FC-D52065DE9960&displaylang=en And Cluster Administrator? Still can't be used for a 2003 system. Now where's that virtual gone? 0 Comments Exchange 2007 on a single server. Not quite... Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Over the last few nights (for kicks) I've been trying to put together a test machine to have a look at Exchange 2007. Found that a spare Pentium D I had can run Windows 2003 x64 and thought that I had already done all the hard work when I installed Windows, AD and Exchange. After all, there may be 5 roles in Exchange but you can have just one server manage to actually send and receive an email, right? Well, nearly. Nearly being another way of saying no of course. The problem is the Edge Transport server role. The ET role ("email home"? Sorry...) is the unpopular one of the group. No-one wants to be near him. He can't be on the same server as the other roles, not even on a domain machine. So, the minimum hardware for an Exchange system with all the elements installed is TWO 64 BIT SERVERS!? Am I the only one who thinks this is excessive? I only discovered this because emails could not be received as they were not authenticated - basically without the Edge Transport role your server's Hub Transport role does the donkey work, assuming you have one. Role that is, not donkey. And the Hub Transport role does not allow anonymous email by default and doesn't scan for spam unless you tell it to.. So, here are the inevitable couple of Powershell commands to make it work... Set-ReceiveConnector -Identity "" -PermissionGroups AnonymousUsers cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts install-AntispamAgents.ps1 I suspect there might be more to do to "harden" the Hub Transport role so it doesn't get an anonymous remote kicking from some spammer on the internet though... Labels: email, exchange 2007, microsoft, server 0 Comments VMware Converter Thursday, April 26, 2007 Why did no-one not tell me about this utility? Why is there not some pamphlet given to you on the first day in a new IT job saying "use VMware converter, its really good". Why does Microsoft not install it by default? Okay, they don't install it because its reason #427 why VMware kicks Microsoft's ass on virtualisation. Anyway, allow me to sum up VMware converter. Its a program which sucks physical desktop and server Windows machines into VMware, and for good measure it'll have Microsoft virtual machines too. Or older VMware machines. It'll pull them into Virtual Server or ESX if you're rich. It comes in two flavours - "Starter" and "Enterprise". Is it me or are these names a bit too extreme? The main difference appears to be that Starter works best when installed on the machine being "acquired" and really is or doing machines one at a time. Enterprise can have loads at the same time, for those who just need to turn their server room into one glowing machine NOW, dammit and have no patience for this one at a time stuff. Now will someone please put a popup or one of those annoying flash adverts or something on the VMware site shouting about this? All that messing about using Drive Image and Livestate to create images to virtualise machines last year was so unnecesary... http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ 0 Comments Ode to VMware Server Sunday, October 15, 2006 How much does the world care about my opinions on virtualisation? Probably not a great deal, but I am a reasonably new convert to the joys of virtual computers, and still get all excited by them. Like a lot of people I started off with the beloved Microsoft Virtual PC, and frankly when I first saw it last year I thought it was top banana. That means I thought it was good. Worryingly the main things I immediately thought it would be useful for were revising for my MCSE exams (yawn) and running Windows 98 without actually having a Windows 98 PC hanging around. Not that I want/need/like Win98 you understand, but you never know when you'll end up supporting one. Or needing one to make a Windows 98 Floppy Disk, which I maintain are really useful. Anyway, it never occured to me that Virtual PC would be useful for a server, and with good reason. It is, basically, a toy. Sorry, but it is. And Virtual Server just never had that same level of excitement - I don't think its especially easy to set up, its networking is pap (limited to 100mbit - that's so 1998) and where is the feeling of superiority that comes from using something good not written by Microsoft? Nowhere, that's where. So this is an ode of joy about VMware Server 1.0.1. Its free. Its a peice of piss to set up. It can be used as basically a desktop application on your XP PC without having to use a sodding web server to administer it. It looks cool. Feeling of non-M$ superiority fully there. I know its not supported on XP, but it works just fine, trust me. Anyway, we installed our first one on a quad Xeon processor, 6gb RAM ProLiant beast a couple of weeks ago and its already hoovered up a load of newly virtualised Pentium III servers without breaking into a sweat. But anyway, that's work. Its also on my home PC and can handle running Windows Server under XP without turning my PC into a Commodore 64, unlike Virtual PC. Now, where's that Windows 98 CD... 0 Comments Previous Posts Word 2007 and the "big gaps" Adminpak in catchy rename Exchange 2007 on a single server. Not quite... VMware Converter Ode to VMware Server Archives October 2006 April 2007 August 2007 April 2008 June 2008