June 2009The Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) lets users know whether applications are compatible with a new version of Windows before deployment and can also help them determine how an operating system update will impact these applications. By …

June 2009It seems almost inevitable that the Default Management Pack will become cluttered over time, and that can build a dependency for this MP on any MP it references. In this column, Jonathan Almquist gives you a sample script and Management Pack t…

June 2009Paul Randal answers your SQL questions: How does removing index fragmentation affect statistics? Does data compression interfere with backups? Can you explain database mirroring states? And more!

June 2009In this first part of a two part series, security expert Jesper Johansson delves into the concept of identity – What defines an identity? Who gets to control the information, and how do we ensure it is properly secured?

June 2009Greg Steen highlights new tools and utilities for the IT Professional.

June 2009Windows Server Backup is a quick, easy, and inexpensive way to back up computers running the Windows Server 2008. Greg Shields explains some of the design decisions that went into this tool, an why it may be useful in small environments.

June 2009From the Editor: It’s All Gotta Work

June 2009Storing unstructured data in SharePoint content databases is not always ideal. This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using an external storage solution; extending the SharePoint storage architecture using the ISPExternalBi…

June 2009Although Web technology provides an elegant architecture of Web farms and load balancers for ASP.NET applications, data storage technologies have not kept pace, so the applications are unable to scale effectively. The solution is an in-memory …

June 2009Raymond Chen discusses how to handle unexpected trouble with the Windows Audio Engine (AudioDG).

June 2009In an ideal world, users are directed to the appropriate domain controller for Active Directory authentication, but this is not necessarily what happens in most organizations due to IP subnet information not being properly defined in Active Di…

June 2009In this article, the Microsoft Scripting Guys develop a script that will gather comments from other scripts (providing those comments follow a certain pattern) and then save the comments in a text file.

June 2009Group Policy is used in almost every environment and relied on by many to secure and their Windows environment. Surprisingly few have introduced automation into the process, however. This article explains how to take advantage of the GPMC API…

June 2009You can’t move, rename or delete a file that’s in use—but sometimes you have to. Luckily, two free utilities called PendMoves and MoveFile let you handle these tasks with ease.

June 2009One of the biggest obstacles that hinder operating system upgrades is application compatibility, so it makes sense to design a project that will reveal the applications you have and figure out what will work or how to fix things ahead of time….

June 2009Don Jones concludes his four-part series on automating user provision with Windows PowerShell. In this final edition, Don discusses adding users to domain groups and modifying directory attributes.

June 2009IT organizations today face challenges whose complexities rival those of advanced software development projects and, to boot, require doing a lot more with substantially less. Certain practices, however, can help to ensure the success of a pro…