I joined a session “Deep Dive into Microsoft Windows Vista Group Policy Changes and Troubleshooting” with Jeremy Moskowitz here in Orlando - and he was very good. He’s a funny guy and it seemed like everybody in the room just loved him. Thanx for the inspiration Jeremy - you put on a nice show.

After the session I joined him at the SpecOps booth (#914) and spoke to some of the other Group Policy Gurus, like Darren Mar-Elia, J. Peter Bruzzese and the SpecOps employees. SpecOps were really focused on sharing info on their SpecOps Deploy product - so why not help them here ;-)

Tomorrow I hope to catch Derek Melber - a ‘colleague’ from www.windowsecurity.com - he was busy preparing for his upcoming Group Policy sessions so he didn’t show today… I’ll try to get back with a report from those sessions when possible.

I have to mention that it turned out Peter Bruzzese not only mentions me, but also quotes me, in his new book “Tricks of the Microsoft Windows Vista Master” * - as a “Vista Master” - thanx for the honor!

* Book…

This great article come from Michael Khanin (MCP, MCP+I, CNA, CNE, MCSE) who also blogs on his blog site http://TheSystemAdministrator.com 

Recently there was a necessity to install a Virtual CD/DVD on many computers on the same network. And it was necessary, that the virtual CD/DVD would be set to a special letter in the system. Right now there are a lot of programs which emulate CD/DVD and can mount any CDs/DVD images, as I wished to make all installation and configuration run remotely (well laziness by me, not wanting to run from computer to computer) It was necessary for the program to install in silent mode. After a quick search I chose ÐœagicDisc.

I’ve selected this program for several reasons:

1. The program is free-of-charge (but not all options work in the free-of-charge version, but what is necessary for me, works)

2. There is opportunity to run setup in silent mode.

3. It is possible to operate all necessary functions from a command line.

For a more satisfiying management experience from the command line one more file, Miso.exe is required.

The given file can be found on the ÐœagicDisc site.

For the installation I have written a script, INSTALL-V-CD.bat.

INSTALL-V-CD.bat is very simple and contains just one line:

setup_magicdisc.exe /S

To start the script on a remote system I

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I was reading a recent blog entry by Eric Sink, and he made some comments that I thought I would take the time to share. Nothing profound on my end, mind you… ;)

In “In defense of Petzold’s WPF book“, the founder of SourceGear writes about a recent trend in books and tools for developers that focus on “quick results”, and the trade off that goes along with this trend - loss of “deep understanding”. I too have noticed this in working with various developers. While it is admirable that one is able to produce results quickly and ship a product in record time, or add some features in the blink of an eye, it seems that much of the productivity is lost when problems crop up - problems that are at least partially a lack of - you guessed it - deep understanding. As I’m one who likes to have Deep Understanding, I’m probably biased. That said, I can fully appreciate Eric’s statement that “When I hire a software developer, I look for deep understanding”. I think that it is important to understand how something works so you are able to use…