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Exchange Connections is an event held twice a year for the purpose of learning about Exchange Server and meeting other professionals working with the technology. It is held alongside several other “Connections” events and has always been a lot of fun! For a list of sessions checkout this link: http://www.devconnections.com/conf/sessions.aspx?s=163 If you’re planning on attending, please come say hello. I will be delivering the following sessions: EXC13: Forefront TMG Client Access Publication and Edge Transport Integration ...

Microsoft has released another great poster; this time for the new Hyper-V architecture within Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. You can download it by clicking here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=93C814D0-FE4B-4D5B-B280-1B9807EC9933&displaylang=en

With Windows XP, you could set your own login background colors and/or wallpaper by modifying the values found in the following registry location: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Windows 7 no longer reads this registry key. Instead you’ve got to complete the multi-step process described in [this article](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee ostensibly). While the steps to set a login wallpaper are not complicated, one challenging limitation is the fact your background wallpaper needs to reside on the workstation’s hard drive. Interestingly, this is not true for the user’s wallpaper, as there are GPO settings to point to a network location. ...

Here’s a quick tip for running a service pack report against your Active Directory servers using PowerShell. Method 1 The first approach retrieves all computer accounts from Active Directory, then filters results: 1 Get-ADComputer -Properties OperatingSystem, OperatingSystemServicePack -Filter * | Where-Object {$_.OperatingSystem -like '*server*'} | Format-Table name, oper* -autosize This technique retrieves all computer objects before filtering. Method 2 The improved approach applies filtering at query time: 1 Get-ADComputer -Properties OperatingSystem, OperatingSystemServicePack -Filter {OperatingSystem -like '*server*'} | Format-Table name, oper* -autosize By making smarter use of the -Filter switch and filtering before retrieval, this can lead to a significant amount of time saved. ...

A while back, I complained about the difficulty in obtaining the necessary hotfixes for Exchange 2010’s Service Pack 1. Upon reviewing the “Hotfixes and Security Updates included in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1” article, I verified that all necessary hotfixes are contained within that service pack. The recommendation is straightforward: if you’re planning on installing Exchange 2010 SP1, installing Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 first may save you considerable time.

Just a quick note to remind everyone that Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 has just now become available for download on TechNet & MSDN. If you don’t have a TechNet or MSDN subscription you should see it on the Microsoft Download sites next Tuesday. [EDIT: Here is the download Link] Be sure to check with each product group before installing this. Obviously it is supported with the OS itself (clustering, Hyper-V, RDS, etc) but you should seek a direct support statement like the one the Exchange group published. ...

I realize I haven’t posted in a while. I hope I haven’t lost my place in anyone’s RSS reader! I’m working on several articles, but it’s been very busy at Planet Technologies, and I’ve struggled to find much “blog time”. We’ve actually been so busy, I’m looking for consultants to join our team and help me out! Sadly, in my search for qualified individuals, I have been amazed at how many horrible resumes I have encountered! ...

BlackBerry Desktop Software version 6.0.1.18 finally adds support for 64-bit Microsoft Outlook.

PowerShell one-liners for both the native AD module and Quest tools to identify users missing UPN attributes and assign them automatically.

Detailed installation guide for Forefront Protection Server Management Console 2010, covering restrictions, system requirements, and configuration steps.