AcessEnum from Microsoft’s Sysinternals tool collection enables you to list user accesses to a tree of directories or registry keys. With Windows Explorer or a registry editor you can only view access rights for a particular object, a certain folder, for example. If a directory has many subfolders it is difficult to figure out if access rights have been configured properly.

AccessEnum only lists the users and groups who have read or write access and where the deny attribute has been set. In most cases that should be enough though. What I like most about the tool is that it allows you to compare the current configuration with saved settings. This way you can easily find out if someone manipulated access permissions on a certain directory structure. If you right click on a column you can access the folder’s properties and you can also exclude a folder with its subfolders from the list.

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Okay, this is the last post in my series about the 32-bit or 64-bit question. I don’t expect this poll to be generally valid since 4sysops readers are probably more adventurous when it comes to adopting new technologies. IT pros are used to fighting with computer-related problems all day. So they are not that much frightened of theoretical troubles that a new operating might pose.

Usually, that also applies to me. I am still a bit hesitant to make the 64-bit move, though. I will buy a new laptop soon and I am considering of equipping it with 4GB because I want to run VMware Workstation on it. So I am curious to know your view. You might have read my posts on Vista x64 or have made up your mind already. Perhaps, you even have experiences of your own. Some of you already shared your opinion in my original post about that issue.

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This is the third post in my series about the Vista x64 vs. Vista x86 issue. In my first article, I claimed that CPU performance is not really a good reason to jump on the 64-bit bandwagon at the moment. In my last article, I wrote that software compatibility is only a theoretical problem now, and today, I want to discuss hardware compatibility.

Availability of 64-bit device drivers

The fundamental difference between software and hardware compatibility is that most 32-bit apps work flawlessly on Vista x64, whereas 32-bit device drivers are usually useless on a 64-bit Windows. Hence unlike software vendors, hardware vendors have no other choice than to offer 32-bit drivers and 64-bit drivers for their devices. Additionally, only drivers signed by Microsoft will work on Vista x64. This certainly improves security because kernel mode drivers are an attractive target for malware.

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Microsoft’s Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 is mostly for bigger companies that have to evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying Vista. I have downloaded it before, but I found it too complex for a quick look. Some days ago, I stumbled across a post in the vista4beginners blog that seemed to have a solution for a UAC problem I had before. It describes how to disable UAC prompts for certain applications only. Unfortunately, it did not really work as I expected. But, at least, it made me play with the Compatibility Administrator which belongs to the Compatibility Toolkit.

This tool is quite interesting and it might be helpful if you have an application that is not running properly under Vista. Basically, you use the tool to configure how Vista treats a certain legacy application. For example, you can tell Vista not to use its virtualization mechanism when a legacy app tries to write in forbidden areas. There are countless other settings.

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A few days ago, I blogged about a Neowin article that published a “secret” time table for the release of Windows XP SP3. I was a bit skeptical because I learned from the past that such information is usually not very reliable. On Monday, many news sites reported that XP SP3 indeed RTMed. I was quite surprised to read that volume licensing customers have access to the pack, but Technet and MSDN subscribers don’t. So I logged on to Microsoft’s volume licensing site to see if SP3 is really there.

Well, it wasn’t. Then I read that Microsoft’s release date acrobats changed their mind again and published XP SP3 for Technet and MSDN customers. So I logged on with our MSDN account. Guess what? No Windows XP SP3 far and wide. And now I read in this Computerworld article that it will only be available in June for volume licensing customers. So what now? Please, let me know if you were able to spot SP3 on MSDN or Technet.

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In my last post in this series, I discussed the question whether the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista is faster than its 32-bit version. I came to the conclusion that working with Vista x64 only makes sense if you need more than 3GB memory. The other interesting topic is if compatibility to the 32-bit world is still an issue 16 months after Vista’s release. Today I discuss software compatibility, in my next post in this series I’ll write about hardware compatbilty.

When I wrote about this subject shortly after Vista came out, I more or less voted against installing Vista x64. My main point was that Vista will already cause enough compatibility problems. So it is certainly better to limit the number of possible culprits. At that time, I didn’t imagine that Vista adoption would be this slow, though. So I decided to wait for a year or so until most of Vista’s general problems are solved. I hoped that software and hardware vendors would start embracing Vista x64 as soon as they got the 32-bit version under control.

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Submitted by Jeffrey Botts

From the developers website:

What is NTop-XTRA?

When all is said and done, network traffic is a collection of computers talking to each other. ntop will show you – in an easy to digest form – a detailed breakdown of the conversations.

You’ll be able to see which computer is talking to which other computer, and what protocol(s) they are using. If you want to know who is utilizing your server the most then ntop is perfect for you. Do you have a WAN link that is full up and you don’t know why? Use ntop to break the traffic down so that you will see instantly where the bandwith is going.

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NETWORKWORLD has an interesting article about a new study from Forrester. In a document for “only” $279, Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray recommends not to skip Vista. I didn’t read the study myself because I usually don’t buy papers with unknown length for $279 even if it is from a well-known research company. So I can only rely on what NETWORKWORLD wrote about it.

Here are the five arguments that speak for upgrading to Vista in your organization according to Forrester:

1. Switching thousands of users from Windows to another platform (Mac OS, Linux) is not a workable solution for the majority of companies.
2. Users need to stay current on Microsoft and independent-software-vendor (ISV) support of Windows operating systems.
3. Probable unavailability of Windows XP after June 30, 2008
4. Uncertainty around the availability and feature set of Windows 7
5. Valuable Vista features: security and user enhancements

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Submitted by Petar Weigand

Find out what is using your file system in a pie-chart display. To me it’s much easier to surf through pie charts to find out what is using the most of my free disk space. I’ve also deployed this utility to my end users because it’s so easy, free and platform independant.

From the publisher’s website:

JDiskReport provides different perspectives about your disk drives: absolute and relative sizes, size distribution, distribution of modification dates, and distribution of types.

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According to a ZDNet article, the average downtime of Windows Server 2003 was increased by 25% in 2007 whereas the downtime of major Linux distros such as Red Hat and Novell decreased by about 75%. The downtime of Windows Server 2003 is nine hours per server, RHEL average downtime is only 1.75 hours.

These are certainly interesting numbers. The article also explains why the downtime of Windows Server 2003 went up. It seems as if there were more Windows updates in 2007 requiring reboots. Hence, one cannot conclude that Windows Server 2003 systems are crashing more often than Linux systems.

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Neowin.net claims to “have managed to get hands on the internal schedule for the release” of Windows XP SP3. According to their information, Service Pack 3 will be available for volume license customers and on TechNet and MSDN on April 21. After the usual respectful time gap of a week, SP3 will show up at the Download Center and Windows Update so ordinary people can get it, too.

Neowin doesn’t say anything about its source. Usually, such information comes from employees who don’t belong to the HRDC (Holy Release Date Circle). I didn’t count the number of release dates that were published for Vistas SP1 this way. So I am not yet convinced that this information about XP SP3 is really correct.

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TCPView is a free Sysinternals tool from Microsoft allowing you to monitor TCP and UDP endpoints. It has the same purpose as the command line tool netstat that comes with Windows. Contrary to netstat, TCPView is a GUI tool. Usually, it is the first tool I use if strange things are happening on a computer, i.e. if I think that it might have been infected by spyware or other malware.

TCPView lists the process, the local TCP port, the remote address and the state of the TCP connection. If you want to get more details about the program, for example where the exe file is located, you just have to right click and select “Process Properties”. You can also terminate a connection or end the process.
There is a command line version of TCPView (Tcpvcon) which is similar to netstat. TCPView runs Windows Server 2008/Vista/NT/2000/XP and Windows 98/Me.

TCPView

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I already discussed the Vista x64 vs. Vista x86 question a year ago. Vista was just released and for the early adopters, the first decision to be made was which edition, i.e. 32-bit or 64-bit, would be the better choice. At this time, I was skeptical regarding Vista x64, mostly because the advantages didn’t outweigh the downsides. It is time now to reconsider this question since the main disadvantages of the 64-bit version (hardware and software compatibility) might not be such an issue anymore.

I was planning to do some research already for some time, but fortunately the German print magazine C’t (8/2008) just published a couple of comprehensive reports about this topic. So I will summarize some of their findings garnished with my own views. Today, I will focus on performance and in my next posts in this series, I will discuss software compatibility and hardware compatibility.

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Wireshark 1.0 is available for download. Wireshark, formerly Ethereal, is in third place on the 4sysops list of free admin tools. Obviously, it is a popular tool although the ranking is not really representative because not enough of you found time to rate the tools. Wireshark 1.0 fixes some security holes, so I suggest upgrading it even though it doesn’t really bring new features. Well, okay there are new features. The first one mentioned in the release notes is that the “About” box finally displays version 1.0. I’ll leave it to you to decide if this really counts as a new feature.

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Some days ago, when I was thumbing through the RSAT (Remote Server Administration Tools) help file I found a somewhat disturbing sentence:

You can install the Administration Tools pack on computers running the Windows Vista with SP1 operating system, and use the Administration Tools pack to manage specific technologies on computers running either Windows Server 2008, or, in some cases, Windows Server 2003.

So in “some cases” we can use RSAT also for Windows Server 2003? Well, how many Windows Server 2008 machines do you already have in your organization? We’ve only a few test servers. So, of course RSAT will mostly be used to manage Windows Server 2003 for quite some time. Unfortunately, the help file doesn’t get more specific about the RSAT tools that do support Windows Server 2003.

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