Some days ago, I reported that we were having problems activating KMS on a Windows Server 2003. It turned out that we accidently exceeded the number of possible KMS installations. You can only activate 6 KMS hosts with one KMS key, each with up to 9 reactivations. I was quite surprised to hear that we have already 6 KMS hosts installed. Actually, I thought my test system is the first one. So how did we get 6 KMS installations?

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Today, I read two [1] [2] interesting and alarming articles from Ed Bott where he describes several cases of Vista users having serious problems with Windows validation.

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Please note that the instructions here only contain the essentials of KMS (Key Management Service) installation. In uncommon network configurations, for example, if you can’t use DNS auto-discovery, you have to consult Microsoft’s documentation.

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Update: If you are interested in improving Vista’s performance you might be interested in this post, too: 50 ways to speed up Vista

SpeedyVista has a comprehensive list of Vista’s services accompained by some explanation regarding their purpose. The list distinguishes between the different Vista editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. You can use this list to disable unnecessary services to speed up Vista and, more importantly, as reference guide.

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The final of Network Monitor 3.0 has beend available at Microsoft Connect for sometime, already. I reviewed the beta version sometime ago. I liked it enough to install it today on my PC.

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VAMT is an important tool if you plan to activate Vista using MAK keys instead of working with KMS. I just saw it now, but it has been available for three days, already. The Windows Vista Hardware Assessment solution Accelerator is an inventory, assessment, and reporting tool which allows you to determine if the computers in your network are Vista-ready.

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I already reviewed Virtual PC 2007 beta sometime ago. My overall impression was not so positive at that time. Virtual PC 2007 RTM is available for download now. Today, I installed it again on a Vista machine.

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If you’re a Windows administrator, you would certainly know already that even business customers have to activate Windows Vista. There are several ways to do it, and KMS will probably be the one that most companies will use. Microsoft’s own documentation is a bit long winded because it also covers uncommon cases. In this post, I summarized the most important facts about KMS. It will help you get an overview of the activation procedure via KMS.

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This article describes 3 ways how to disable indexing in Vista: Indexing options in the Control Panel, folder properties and disable Windows Search service.

Update: I have written a new article about turning off indexing in Windows 7 and Vista. Read this first before you proceed. If you installed Vista SP1, there are other ways to disable indexing.

Vista comes with a new indexing service which improves desktop search. It not only makes search faster, but also adds some nice features. The one I like most is that it allows you to search very fast for mails in Outlook. There are, however, cases where you might want to disable Vista’s search indexing.

Good desktop search tools index your hard disk only whenever the PC is idle. This seems to be different with Vista. I often saw the corresponding processes (SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost, SearchIndexer) active even though my computer was quite busy with other tasks. This can decrease the overall performance tremendously.

Another reason why you might want to disable Vista search indexing is, if you are using another desktop search solution. Or perhaps you only rarely search for files on your PC. If it is not the reduced performance, then it could be the constant activity of your hard disk, whenever indexing starts, that might get on your nerves. And if you install Vista in a virtual environment, for example, VMware Workstation or Virtual PC, I recommend disabling it anyway since it will slow down your VM significantly.

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Some days ago, I was complaining that VMware Workstation 5.5 runs unstably on Vista and VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta is too slow. I suspected that the main reason for the latter is due to the fact that the beta runs in debug mode. When you boot-up a VM a pop-up message informs you that debug mode can’t be turned off. But a comment on 4sysops by Raj outlined an easy way to disable the debug mode.

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You can now download WSUS 3.0 at Microsoft Connect. It looks like the final release of WSUS 3.0 (Windows Server Update Services) is just around the corner. We have been working with Microsoft’s patch management solution since the availability of SUS and were always quite satisfied with it. I never liked its user interface, though.

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You can now download KMS for Windows Server 2003 SP1 (x86 and x64). The KMS can be used to activate Vista in corporate networks that have more than 25 clients. Until now, the KMS host was only available for Vista.

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VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta 3 (build 39849) has been available for some days now. I tried it today on a Vista host because VMware Workstation 5.5 runs quite unstable there. Since version 6.0 promises Vista support, I was hoping that I could use the Beta instead of version 5.5.

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On Tuesday, I downloaded the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). I am not sure since when it became already available, but it was not before Monday. Now, it seems that Microsoft removed it from the Web. The reason probably is that its setup program contains a bug.

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You don't know where Documents and Settings in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is? Here you will learn how you can access Documents and Settings.

You probably know that the C:\Documents and Settings folder doesn’t exist anymore in Vista. It was replaced by the C:\Users and C:\ProgramData. Vista uses symbolic links pointing to these new folders for compatibility reasons. However, many guides still refer to the old folder structure. There is a simple trick for using the old folder name in Windows Explorer, though. This way you can find configuration files easier.

If you want to see the symbolic links, you have to enable first “Show hidden files and folders” in Folder Options. To access the Folder Options you must press “ALT” in Windows Explorer to make the menu visible. You’ll find them under tools.

Now, you should be able to see Documents and Settings. But if you double click on it, you’ll get an error messages. Even administrators don’t have enough NTFS rights to navigate to this folder. It is not even possible if you change the rights by taking the ownership.

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