Remote Desktop Services in Windows 2008 R2 -Part 1

Posted by George Khalil in Windows 2008 R2 on Nov 12th, 2009 | 0 Comments

Windows Terminal Services has come a long way since its infancy and has improved with every version of Windows, and Windows 2008 R2 is no exception. There are even noticeable differences between Windows 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 and should be highly considered as a worthy upgrade for those currently running older versions of the Windows component. I first began working with Terminal Server technologies back in the day of WinFrame which was a “special” version of Windows NT 3.5.1 that was developed by Citrix. Since then I have worked with all versions of Terminal Server from NT4 to the most...

Exchange 2010 has arrived, What’s New?

Posted by George Khalil in Exchange 2010 on Nov 10th, 2009 | 0 Comments

So word has hit the streets and Exchange 2010 RTM is officially available for download as a 120 trial from the Microsoft Download Centre and from the Microsoft Licensing download site for all Microsoft paying customers. Microsoft Exchange 2010 introduces a number of enhancements and new features over it’s most recent predecessor Exchange 2007 and whilst many customers are still using Exchange 2003, Exchange 2010 has a lot to offer over Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007. I first blogged about Exchange 2010 when it was in beta form and you can access these articles below; Exchange 2010 Beta, First...

How to setup XP Mode on Windows 7

Posted by George Khalil in Virtualisation, Windows 7 on Oct 27th, 2009 | 0 Comments

Windows 7 was just recently released to the General Public and has been in the hands of TechNet and MSDN subscribers for a while before that, and one of the features that I have been utilising lately is “XP Mode” which is a glorified version of Virtual PC as we have known it in previous releases. Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7 (not to be confused with Windows Virtual PC 2007) is actually one of two pre-requisites for XP mode with the other being “Hardware-assisted virtualization (HAV)”. HAV are processors with the Intel VT, AMD-V or VIA VT feature which will need to be enabled in the...

SharePoint 2010 – Word has hit the streets

Posted by George Khalil in SharePoint 2010 on Oct 20th, 2009 | 0 Comments

The word is out, SharePoint 2010 NDA has been uplifted and we are being bombarded with information that is coming out of the SharePoint 2009 conference in Las Vegas and by the SharePoint Product Team Blog. All I can say is WOW! Unfortunately I was not able to attend the conference, however I have been following my fellow SharePoint tweeps who are tweeting information from various sessions being held at the conference “live”. SharePoint 2010 is marketed as the release of the decade with great new features. The SharePoint Team blog describe SharePoint in 1 sentence, “8 categories...

How to display a SharePoint List from another site using the Data View Web Part

Posted by George Khalil in SharePoint 2007 on Oct 14th, 2009 | 0 Comments

I first introduced the Data View Web Part (DVWP) in one of my articles earlier this year which you can access here and discussed a couple of scenarios in which you can utilise the DVWP. In today’s example I will elaborate on the DVWP and provide you with a step by step scenario in how you can display a SharePoint list from one site to another site. You can utilise the DVWP to connect to SharePoint Lists, Libraries, Database Connections etc within any site in a site collection and in today’s example I will replicate and display a SharePoint Calendar list from one Team Site to another Team...

Create your own SharePoint “Quote of the Day” Web Part using the CEWP – No Coding required

Posted by George Khalil in SharePoint 2007 on Oct 6th, 2009 | 0 Comments

This question pops up every now and then and that is, how do I create a “quote of the day” web part to place on the front page of my SharePoint Intranet Portal. Quite easily is my response and in today’s post I will demonstrate how you can utilise the Content Editor Web Part (CEWP) to easily achieve this. As way of background, the CEWP is an out of the box SharePoint web part allowing you to add formatted text, tables, hyperlinks and images to a Web Part page. In addition to the above, the CEWP also allows you to add HTML content which we will utilise in the below example to create our...

Windows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 4/4

Posted by George Khalil in Windows, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7 on Oct 1st, 2009 | 0 Comments

Welcome to the final article in this series on Windows Deployment Services, WAIK and Windows 7. Our first articled introduced WDS and its configuration with parts 2 and 3 focusing on our beloved WAIK tool and Windows System Image Manager and the creation of our XML answer files. We conclude the series by introducing one of the enhanced features in WDS and Windows 2008 and that’s the ability to inject driver packages and have them deployed to our client computers along with the install image. Note that this functionality is only available when you are installing images of the following...

Windows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 3/4

Posted by George Khalil in Windows, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7 on Sep 22nd, 2009 | 0 Comments

We are back again and in today’s article we will continue our efforts in automating our Windows 7 deployment via Windows Deployment Services utilising the WAIK tool and the creation of our XML Answer files. In Part 2 of this series we focused on the creation of the WDSUnattend.xml file that is required to automate the Windows Pre Execution Boot for our WDS clients and took care of the partitioning of our disks. If you missed part 2 of this series, you can access it here. Today we continue our efforts in utilising the Windows System Image Manager (WSIM) to create our ImageUnattend.xml which will...

Windows Deployment Services, WAIK & Windows 7 – Part 2/4

Posted by George Khalil in Windows, Windows 2008 R2, Windows 7 on Sep 16th, 2009 | 0 Comments

Welcome back to the second part of this series and in the next 2 article’s I will be focusing our efforts on creating the necessary xml answer files to automate the deployment of our Windows 7 image via Windows Deployment Services (WDS). In part 1, I provided you with step by step instructions on installing and configuring your WDS role on your Windows 2008 R2 machine. If you missed it, you can access part 1 here. Our focus in today’s article revolves around the creation of the WDSUnattend.xml file that is required to automate the Windows Pre Execution Boot for WDS clients. Our tool of...

iPhone 3.1 breaks Exchange ActiveSync – The fix

Posted by George Khalil in Exchange, Exchange 2007 on Sep 11th, 2009 | 0 Comments

After yesterday’s announcement made by Apple with regards to the latest iTunes version 9 and iPhone OS 3.1, I decided to update both and take advantage of the new features. After updating iTunes to version 9, I docked my iPhone which then detected that an update was available in which it then proceeded and installed successfully. However! When I decided to look at my work Exchange ActiveSync Account I received the following popup as per the below screen shot. “The account “” requires encryption which is not supported on this iPhone” My iPhone is the 3G model which apparently does not...