The Microsoft Group Policy Team has released the very useful Excel spreadsheet describing Administrative Template and Security policy settings.

Check out the GP team blog here or download the XLS/XLSX spreadsheet right here!

Enjoy… ;-)

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I started getting that message when I moved our internal SharePoint server from a physical machine to our VMWare server.

We have made lots of customizations to Sharepoint - so when ever we touch the thing it creates headaches. We were getting this message for *all* web parts, so I knew it couldn’t be a specific issue with just one of them.

After searching around for a while I found a very easy fix:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/826786

Essentially you need to give the local group named STS_WPG permission to write the the C:\Windows\Temp folder.

After I did that, I refreshed the Sharepoint website and it was working fine again.

How did it lose this permission? Well after we moved the Sharepoint server we had to run windows repair (VMWare had a different set of hardware). This resets the permission on this temp folder.

Ok this is really a significant improvement!!!
I really love the pre-boot authentication.

download links below

New features:

• Ability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts). For more information, see the chapter System Encryption in the documentation. (Windows Vista/XP/2003)
• Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100% (Windows)
• Mac OS X version
• Graphical user interface for the Linux version of TrueCrypt
• XTS mode of operation, which was designed by Phillip Rogaway in 2003 and which was recently approved as the IEEE 1619 standard for cryptographic protection of data on block-oriented storage devices. XTS is faster and more secure than LRW mode (for

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It appears the roadblock preventing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 from being made publically available when it was released to manufacturing two days ago is a deja vu of the same but less severe problem that also happened in 2004 with Windows XP Service Pack 2.

The problem then affected a very particular ATI graphics driver and Dell Bluetooth driver which resulted in loss functionality after installing XP SP2.

The problem today affects an identifiable set of drivers which too results in loss functionality after installing Vista SP1. Both of which will require driver updates prior to the service pack install.

“What happens is during the update, the sound and video components are disabled, and in the process the drivers are accidentally removed.”

At the moment there is no precise list of drivers which are affected. Some but not all audio driver(s) from Realtek, graphics driver(s) from Nvidia and network driver(s) from Intel are believed to problematic.

Over the next 30 days, Microsoft is going to work on a preemptive measure to identify which drivers are affected and prevent users with those drivers from installing SP1 until they are cleared. At the same

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Hide All Desktop Icons

You can hide all the desktop icons the easy way by right-clicking the Desktop, and uncheck Show Desktop Items.

Being the nitty, gritty guy that I am, I enjoy looking for solutions to problems or non-problems, such as looking for the registry tweak equivalent to such functions as hiding the desktop icons and here it is.

• Click The Start Orb
• On the Run or Search Field, Type Regedit
• Upon Launching Regedit, Navigate to this key

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel

• In the right-pane, create a new REG_DWORD {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
• Double-click {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} and set it’s value to 1

Boom, you’re done!

To undo the changes, repeat the steps above and change or set the value of {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000} to value of 0.

I haven’t seen a good set of Vista icons in a long time, but finally my search has come to an end with this Niome icon pack. This package includes 77 icons in all. All of the icons have a sleek Ipod like feel to them. Most icons have a white and blue minimalistic color and look great on any desktop. I love the recyling bin in this pack.
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