If you’ve installed Windows 8 and the Remote Server Administration Tools, you’ve probably noticed that Server Manager loads each time you logon. I find this to be fairly annoying. Fortunately, there is an easy fix for now.
In Server Manager, click the Manage menu
Click Server Manager Properties
Check the Do not start Server Manager automatically at logon box and click OK.
Hopefully this is fixed between Beta and RC. I may bug it anyway.
This morning, Microsoft announced the release of the Windows Server “8” beta. Windows Server “8” is the successor to Windows Server 2008 R2 and is a member of the Windows 8 family.
Microsoft has four pillars around the release of Windows Server “8”:
– Windows Server “8” goes beyond virtualization – With this release, Microsoft is building an infrastructure capable of running much more than a simple virtual machine. Features are being built in that enable new public and private cloud based scenarios.
– Windows Server “8” brings the power of many servers and the simplicity of one – New features are added that enable users to take better advantage of commodity storage, provide simplification to server management, and provide uptime in a better and more cost-effective manner.
– Windows Server “8” is designed for every app and every cloud – Server “8” will enable flexibility in deploying applications on-premise or in the cloud or a combination thereof using similar tools and frameworks. Windows Server “8” will be highly scalable and elastic providing for better density and efficiency, as well as providing a better platform for hosting providers.
– Windows Server “8” enables the modern workstyle – Server “8” enables enterprises to offer access to corporate data and applications on any device while providing a secure and seamless experience no matter where users are in the world.
Microsoft’s Bill Laing has a post for more on Windows Server “8” that I highly suggest reading.
If you want to download and evaluate Windows Server “8”, click here.
In the interest of speed, here are the download links for Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server “8” Beta.
5MB ESD Download link – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download
Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISOs – http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/iso
Today at an event in Barcelona, Spain at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft have announced the availability of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview.
The consumer preview builds on the developer preview that was released last year during Microsoft’s Build conference. While the previous release was aimed at being mostly an API complete release, today’s release is about consumers and the features consumers will be using within Windows 8.
I don’t yet have an exhaustive list of what’s included in the Consumer Preview, but I wanted to touch on some of the key themes involved with Windows 8:
Metro-style interface – Continuing with the design experience as introduced with Windows Phone, Microsoft is bringing Metro to the desktop with Windows 8. This is huge. Microsoft is give Windows a radical facelift and this doesn’t even begin to include the improvements to the Windows desktop.
Touch-centric interaction – Windows 8 is designed to be touch-centric. What this means is that Microsoft is intending for touch to be the primary interaction, but they haven’t forgotten about mouse and keyboard users either. The Consumer Preview is expected to contain many improvements for mouse and keyboard users.
App Stores are all the rage – Following in the steps of the Windows Phone Marketplace as well as Apple’s Mac App Store and the Android Market, Microsoft is introducing the Windows App Store. The App Store will be used for distributing new Metro-style Apps as well as a listing service for Desktop apps.
A key word that Microsoft has used over and over again is “reimagined.” Windows 8 is exactly that. Reimagined.
For more about Windows 8 or to download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, visit http://preview.windows.com
Teachers, this one is for you.
Microsoft has announced the Kinect for Schools contest. They are giving away four (4) Xbox 360 + Kinect packages between now and May 14th, 2012.
What’s included:
Drawing schedule:
January 23 to February 14
Winner selected on February 15th, noon Pacific Time
February 15 to March 14
Winner selected on March 15th, noon Pacific Time
March 15 to April 14
Winner selected on April 15th, noon Pacific Time
April 15 to May 14
Winner selected on May 15th, noon Pacific Time
If you’re a teacher and you want an Xbox 360 for your classroom this a great opportunity to enter and win.
To enter go to http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-us/kinectsweepstakes/Pages/default.aspx
For official contest rules – http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/4/5/C45EB9D7-7685-4AFD-85B3-DC66F79277AB/Kinect_School_Sweepstakes_Official_Rules.pdf
This morning I woke up to some New Year’s cheer. Microsoft has named me a Most Valuable Professional in the Windows Home Server category for 2012.
Dear Tom Ziegmann,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Windows Home Server technical communities during the past year.
I’d like to say thank you to the Home and Small Business Server team for this award, as well as the MVP team for everything they do, as well as congratulate my fellow returning MVPs and welcome any newbies.
If you are running SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows Home Server, this post is for you.
Microsoft has released some updates for SharePoint that you may or may not have seen through Windows Update. If you have not updated, then I would advise that you do, as the base version of SharePoint Foundation can be woefully out of date.
The updates that you will want to install (as of October 26, 2011):
– SharePoint Foundation Service Pack 1 – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0F56EBFB-183F-4F4D-9D41-DF1E5ACEB893
– June 2011 Cumulative Update (must be installed after Service Pack 1 and after installation reboot before installing next update) – Click here
– August 2011 Cumulative Update – Click here
NOTE: After each update, you must re-run the SharePoint 2010 Products Configuration Wizard to apply the update to your installation. This means you must run wizard three times before your installation is fully patched.
Tonight, I have released an update to the how-to guide, Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 on Windows Home Server.
The guide can be found here. Please note even though the post says first draft, the PDF link and the Scribd document have been updated.
The following updates have been included:
– Grammatical errors have been addressed
– Corrected directions to prevent users from seeing an error message similar to the one below. When asked for credentials during the SharePoint database creation process, they must be entered in the form of servernameusername.
Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Windows,Office,Windows Home Server,Windows Home Server 2011,SharePoint
Microsoft has a really cool new promotion running that I thought I’d let everyone know about.
It’s called GO Mango!, and it’s designed for you phone developers out there to design and develop apps for Windows Phone 7.
For every app you submit, you’ll receive an entry to win a Samsung Series 7 Slate, and for every five apps you submit, you can win free advertising for one app of your choice.
If you have not developed for Windows Phone before, here’s a link to the Windows Phone SDK, http://bit.ly/GoMango.
To participate in this promotion, you need two things. The first, an app that you’ve developed, and the second is the ever important promo code. For this promotion, the code is 8UCVN.
Fill out the form located at http://bit.ly/MangoOffer, include the promo code, and submit your app today!
If you are a Small Business Server 2008 or 2011 user, you have Internet Explorer 9 installed on your server, and you try to close the Exchange Management Console, you may encounter an error similar to the one listed below.
You must close all dialog boxes before you can close Exchange Management Console
Microsoft has released a fix for this issue and I’ve included the download links below. In order to install this fix, you must have the latest updates installed from Microsoft Update as of October 11th, 2011. If you have not updated your server(s), do so before installing this patch.
If you are not experiencing this issue, it is advised that you don’t install this patch, as it has not been as thoroughly tested, and is planned to be rolled up into a future Internet Explorer update.
For Windows Server 2008 / Small Business Server 2008 systems – click here
For Windows Server 2008 R2 / Small Business Server 2011 systems – click here
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #: 2624899
Tom on Tech 