Update: The Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Vista SP1 replace the Adminpak.

A new Adminpak version is available now. Officially, it doesn’t support Vista, but I installed it today and, at least, some of the tools I tried worked properly. You probably know by now that the Adminpak tool will be replaced by RSAT, which most likely will come out soon after Service Pack 1 for Vista is released.

The old Adminpak version also worked more or less with this trick and after installing this update. But some reported that they still have problems. The new version might solve some problems, but not all. The three most important tools seem to work: Active Directory and Users and Computers, DNS, and DHCP. Terminal Services Manager crashed in my test.

Notice that I just opened some of the tools and played a little with them. I didn’t really run a complete test. Since Microsoft doesn’t officially support the Adminpak tools for Vista, it is certainly better to wait for SP1 and RSAT. One cannot rule out the possibility that you break something on your servers if you use them on Vista.

If you run the Adminpak tools on Windows XP, then it probably makes sense to update them, especially if you are managing Windows Server 2003 SP2 with them. I recommend skimming over this knowledge base article before you install it. It is important to note that you have to uninstall the old version first. Don’t just click on “reinstall” when you install the new version.

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