W2Knews[tm] (the original NTools E-News) Electronic Newsletter
Vol. 5, #44- September 25, 2000 - Issue #218
Published by sunbelt-software.com since 1996 - ISSN: 1527-3407
'Immediate Notification Of Important Windows NT/2000 Events'
*******************over 600,000 subscribers**************************
This Issue of W2Knews contains:
1. EDITORS CORNER:
* More Data on 'Swiss Cheese' OS-es
2. TECH BRIEFING:
* The Black Hat Windows 2000 Security Conference
3. NT/2000 RELATED NEWS:
* Windows Update Site Is Worth IT.
* WinME Sales Are So-So.
* Get Your Rebel MCSE Certificate Now
* Some One Out There Likes My Book
4. NT/2000 THIRD PARTY NEWS:
* Happy Users, Happy Managers, Happy Boxes, Happy LAN: How?
* Defragment Your Machines Before W2K Upgrade
5. W2Knews 'FAVE' LINKS:
* NEW: This Week's 3 Cool HotLinks
6. HINTS AND TIPS: / BOOK OF THE WEEK:
7. THE NT/2000 STOCK WATCH - Week of September 22, 2000 -
8. HOW TO USE THE MAILING LIST
Instructions on how to subscribe, sign off or change your address.
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**********************What Is W2Knews?**************************
Sunbelt W2Knews is the World's first and largest e-zine designed
for NT/2000 System Admins and Power Users that need to keep these
platform up & running. Every week we get you pragmatic, from-the-
trenches news regarding NT/2000 and 3-rd party System Management
Tools. W2Knews will help you to better understand NT/2000 and pass
your Certification Exams. You will get breaking news like new
tools, service packs, sites, or killer viruses via W2KNewsFlashes.
Sunbelt Software is THE NT/2000 e-business tools site. At the end
of this message are links to all indexed and searchable back issues.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1. "EDITORS CORNER"
* More Data on 'Swiss Cheese' OSes
Mea maxima culpa. There was a boo-boo in my last W2KnewsFlash (#43).
I said that NTBugtraq maintained the statistics dB for OS vulnera-
bilities. In fact, its done by SecurityFocus.com who owns BUGTRAQ,
unrelated to NTBugtraq in all ways but name. I confused the two.
And I got a whole bunch of feedback for which I thank all of you.
Most people wanted to know the source of my info, so let me start
out by giving that: http://www.securityfocus.com/vdb/stats.html
Next, some people said that they were way too high, that I was
scaring people out of their wits and only poured coal on the 'OS-
war' flames. Others said these numbers were way too low (in the
sense of not reflecting the full extent of the problem) and gave
me this URL: http://oliver.efri.hr/~crv/security/bugs/list.html
Let me explain that I was not trying to make any point regarding
the safety of one OS versus another. The statistics on the URLs
above should not be taken to imply that some particular operating
system or application is more or less secure than another one.
Since security is such a hot topic at the moment, I was trying to
illustrate the point in the OS space, not compare the OS-es. Hope
this clarifies.
Let's look at all the news this week!
Warm regards,
Stu.
(Email feedback to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
PS, Most of you have budgets that need to be gone before the end
of the year. I will send you a NewsFlash if I find interesting
products or services!
PPS, Have your MCSE, and want to work in Paris, France for a few
years? Check: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/techjobs.cfm
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
2. TECH BRIEFING:
* The Black Hat Windows 2000 Security Conference
How come I'm talking about a Conference in the Tech Briefing? Well,
this is the place where you can be briefed far better than I will
ever be able to do. The conference is February 14th and 15th, 2001,
in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace. They are now inviting speakers and
I thought it would be nice to make you aware of what it is all about.
The Black Hat Windows 2000 Security conference was created to focus
specifically on the security issues created in the W2K environment.
Many new technologies are included in W2K and they have security
implications that need to be understood. Because the issues re.
W2K security are so numerous, a specific Black Hat conference has
been created to explore them. Spanning two days with three separate
tracks, this conference will explore in greater detail the tools,
technologies, and techniques needed by system administrators to
stay on the cutting edge.
What makes Black Hat W2K Security different? The speakers. They
try to select speakers that are doing unique research, writing the
security tools, or finding the bugs. No vendor pitches. Just straight
talk from people who know what they are talking about. You can check
out the last briefings, and check the Call For Papers over here:
http://www.blackhat.com/
No time to go? Well, then there is always QualysGuard <grin>.
****************************************************************
3. NT/2000 RELATED NEWS:
* Windows Update Site Is Worth IT.
MS launched a new component to their Windows Update site a few weeks
ago that you are going to like. It's a section specifically designed
for corporate IT pros to assist you with finding system updates on
Windows Update. Here are the nice pieces about it:
1. Instead of an agent searching your machine to tell you only what
that one machine needs, you as an IT pro can do rich searches
based on vendor, OS, and type of devices you're looking for
updates too.
2. Instead of only installing the code as Windows Update does, you
can download these updates in self-extracting .exe's and put them
in a test bed for 'torture-testing'.
3. Track what you've downloaded by having a download history online.
Here's the URL to the Corporate Update site:
http://corporate.windowsupdate.microsoft.com
-------------------------
* WinME Sales Are So-So.
PC Data, one of the best outfits that tracks software sales reported
that about 250,000 PC owners pulled a WinME copy off the shelf. And
on the first day which was Thu Sept 14, about 75,000 were sold. The
sales are not to write home about, and PC Data did some extrapolation
that shows a rough 400K will be sold in the first month.
Compared to W95 and W95, that is 30% less, they sold 600K in their
first month, and the WinME upgrades are even cheaper than the W9x
ones. However, the wave that was created was nice for the market and
will likely create a good Q4 in retail software sales. Perhaps you do
not know, but preinstalled OEM Windows versions are selling something
like 30 times more than retail, so in just a few years there will be
over a hundred million WinME copies out there anyway.
-------------------------
* Get Your Rebel MCSE Certificate Now
Remember the August 5 issue? A new disgruntled group called NTCIP
that has broken off from the Microsoft MCSE-track created their own
certification program. They started issuing their certs last Thursday.
NTCIP stands for NT Certified Independent Professional and they are
mainly the creation of an IT training outfit called Lanop. All MCSE
certs are going to expire Dec 31, 2001 and from Dec 31, 2000 you will
no longer be able to take MCSE exams from Microsoft.
Obviously Microsoft wants every MCSE to go to W2K certification, but
quite a few people balk at that idea. NT is stable enough to be
around for a long time, and they simply do not feel it is justified
to throw away all the long evenings of study and all the (often out
of pocket) money they spent.
If you already _have_ your MCSE, you can get grandfathered into NTCIP
without another exam. All you have to show is your passing exam forms
and ask for your FREE NTCIP Cert Number. For another 30 bucks you can
get an ID card and a real Cert you can hang on your wall. I would do
that without blinking an eye.
The moment you cannot do any MCSE exams anymore, the NTCIP people
will jump in and allow you to take these via Sylvan Prometric and VUE
for the same price as MS charges now. Here's the rebel base:
http://lanop.com/ntcip/
-------------------------
* Some One Out There Likes My Book
Read this and you'll see what I mean: <grin>
I'm the author of the W2K Slipstreaming article you praised in your
last issue of W2Knews - thanks very much for the positive plug. I
was watching the hit count on the article climb like crazy and
couldn't figure out why until I got around to my e-mail and found
your recommend. :-)
I have just finished reviewing your book, the W2K Sys Admin Black
Book for Cramsession's Win2K Newsletter - you'll be happy to hear
that we think it's a great piece of work. The newsletter is going
out tonight and we've also included the article on our site at:
[LINK IS WRAPPED]
http://networking.brainbuzz.com/tutorials/tutorial.asp?t=S1TU898&tn=
The+W2K+Sys+Admin+Black+Book&pi=S1C20&pn=Product+Reviews
Thanks again and kudos on both your excellent book and newsletter!
Regards,
Sean McCormick
*****************************************************************
4. NT THIRD PARTY NEWS:
* Happy Users, Happy Managers, Happy Boxes, Happy LAN: How?
Monitors: you gotta have them! Your company relies more and more
on their IT infrastructure. That means _you_ are responsible for
the availability and performance of business-dependent apps. It
has become a critical issue for both network administrators and
business managers. You need an _intelligent_ solution to detect
and correct system conditions before they cause downtime.
One of the new products we have on line provides a great solution.
OpalisRobot gets you a powerful, smart and highly efficient system
management tool in your hands. Its got a cool visual GUI that
really simplifies keeping proactive control over your NT/W2K LANS
and improves the health of your systems and network.
OpalisRobot provides real-time monitoring of your applications,
web servers, services, email, databases and file systems. Its
in-depth filtering of event logs and performance counters gets
you immediate alerts and usable information to prevent downtime.
This power-tool goes further than other monitoring solutions. Opalis
has built-in corrective action features. It can start/stop/pause
services, reboot, ping remote hosts, launch programs, move, copy,
delete files and query an SQL/ODBC database. It also supports email,
pager and pop-up notification, event log messaging and database
logging.
Having this puppy running equips you with an essential tool to
simplify administration and improve your system performance.
Result? Happy users, happy managers, happy boxes, happy LAN. And
guess what? You might even get home early and catch that game.
The new Opalis Robot is an Award Winning, 'Best-of-Breed' tool.
30-day eval: http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=585
----------------------------
* Defragment Your Machines Before W2K Upgrade
Twenty percent of sites are in the thick of upgrading to W2K, or
already done. The other 80% are still thinking about how to do it.
Having a defragger deployed PRIOR to the upgrade can be vital to
performance both before and after your W2K roll-out.
Windows NT
It's no secret that NT's performance can suffer big time by disk
fragmentation. According to a recent report from leading IT
analysts at IDC, "Disk Defragmentation for Windows NT/2000: Hidden
Gold for the Enterprise", defragmentation improved NT performance
by as much as 80%.
If performance is improved by even half that figure, the gains are
still quite spectacular, especially when you considers the large
numbers of NT machines deployed across today's NT sites. You can
download this white paper from the Sunbelt Diskeeper Webpage in
Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
As a result of the performance boost, user productivity is greatly
improved, as well as TCO for every machine a defragger is installed
on. Site-wide deployment of a defragger like Diskeeper or a bundle
like SuperBoost-NT, where the highest impact of system performance,
reduction of TCO and increased productivity can be realized, is also
made very easy by 'volume licensing' (=big savings) these tools.
Upgrading to Windows 2000
In addition to the TCO and productivity gains available to you now
on your current Windows NT machines, you should also carefully
examine why you should have a defragger deployed in advance of your
W2K upgrade.
First, the "Disk Defragmenter" contained in W2K is ideal for sites
with one or two standalone machines -- but not for large enterprise
sites. Per Microsoft, "'Disk Defragmenter' is not intended to be a
tool for administrators to maintain networked workstations..."
(Microsoft Knowledge Base article #Q254564). This is true not only
of the W2K Disk Defragmenter, but of any manual defragmenter.
In addition to other functional limitations, such as no scheduling
or background defragmentation, these types of defragmenters require
local admin privileges to run. That's no good as we all know: bad
security and data protection. By opting to use a manual defragmenter,
you have two choices: 1. Run around and MANUALLY defragment all
boxes on a site, or 2. Risk giving out administrator privileges to
users. This is clearly not an option. In order to obtain the
substantial performance gains available on both NT and W2K
you'll schedulable, network-wide automatic defragging.
W2K benefits three times more from defragging than NT !
Second, according the IDC White Paper, W2K performance can be boosted
through defragmentation by as much as 219% -- almost three times the
gains available on Windows NT. It is obvious that you'll need a
defragger on every W2K machine in order to boost the throughput of
these boxes. It is therefore vital to performance and TCO that
you have a defragger installed on every machine prior to the upgrade.
Third, having a third-party defragger installed on every machine
means that, when Windows 2000 is installed on those machines, you'll
have the power of network-wide scheduled defragmentation right at
your fingertips. And you'll need it; testing has shown that simply
installing an OS or applications fragments a disk to a very marked
degree. Having Diskeeper or SuperBoost-NT installed on every
machine means that you can maximize performance right from day one,
and not waste a minute of productivity or a penny in TCO.
Many sites are also purchasing new hardware as part of their W2K
deployment -- and it's obvious from the data above that performance
will need to be maximized on these machines as well. Again, you can
use volume license discounts to make defraggers an inexpensive and
cost-effective part of your Windows 2000 upgrade.
Download a FREE 30-day working copy of Diskeeper from:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=455
Download a FREE 30-day working copy of SuperBoost-NT from:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/product.cfm?id=900
Both pages have a brand new comparison about the differences between
Diskeeper V5.3 and Norton Speed Disk V5.1 but here is the direct link:
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/evaluation/900/web/documents/nsdkcomp.htm
****************************************************************
5. W2Knews 'FAVE' LINKS:
==============
Looking for an NT/2000 site that has a whole bunch of good things
all in Spanish? Check out the site of Luis Alejandro Allegretti:
Recursos e Información para usuarios de tecnología Microsoft
http://www.paraisowindows.com.ar
==============
"Windows NT/2000 Tips, Tricks, Registry Hacks and More" joined
with Windows 2000 Mag and is constantly updated. find it at:
http://www.jsiinc.com/reghack.htm
==============
Need an overview of what a MS Open License is, and how they work?
http://www.microsoft.com/directaccess/rdr/2000/09/0918/seminar.asp
==============
****************************************************************
6. HINTS AND TIPS: / BOOK OF THE WEEK:
Hate to see your Menus change all the time in Office and IE?
Here's how to keep them from doing that.
MS Office: go to Tools -> Customize, Options tab to uncheck the
box for "Menus show recently used commands first". That will
get you your full menus back.
IE 5: (If you want to see all your favorite links.)
Tools | Internet Options | Advanced | Enable Personalized
Favorites Menu (uncheck). You'll need to close and re-open IE
for this to take effect.
-------------
BOOK OF THE WEEK: Windows 2000 Deployment & Desktop Management
More than a simple overview of new features and tools, this
solutions-driven book is a thorough reference to deploying W2K
Pro to corporate workstations. The expert real-world advice and
detailed exercises make this a one-stop, easy-to-use resource
for any system administrator, integrator, engineer, or other IT
professional planning rollouts of Windows 2000 clients.
With this book you will:
- Examine the business and technical benefits of automated desktop
deployment.
- Select the best combination of deployment options, including
distribution share points, Remote Installation Services (RIS),
system cloning with SYSPREP, the Windows 2000 Professional CD
-ROM, and integrating installation with Microsoft's SMS 2.0
- Learn how to use Windows 2000 Support Tools to create and
maintain unattended install answer files
- Explore using RIS and RIPREP to automate deployment of Windows
2000 Professional over a network
- Implement the IntelliMirror technology suite, including the W2K
Software Installation and Maintenance component, User Data
Management, and User Settings Management
- Find out how to use automatic repair features, how to avoid "DLL
Hell" with integrated protection, how and why to lock down desktops,
and how to prepare, install, and manage applications.
Find it at the -- http://www.sunbelt-software.com/bookclub/ --
*******************************************************************
7. THE NT/2000 STOCK WATCH - Week of September 15, 2000 -
Interesting to see who the winners and losers are this week.
52 WK 52 WK P/E WEEK
SECURITY CLOSE HIGH LOW RATIO CHNG
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Advanced Micro Devices... 25 1/4 48 1/2 8 1/4 24 -9.4%
BMC Software............. 20 5/16 86 5/8 16 1/8 21 +3.1%
BindView Development Corp 8 45 3/4 6 -3.0%
Cisco Systems............ 60 5/16 82 32 1/2 -3.8%
Citrix Systems Inc....... 18 11/16 122 5/16 14 1/4 32 -13.0%
Compaq Computer.......... 29 5/8 35 18 1/4 44 -2.0%
Computer Associates...... 26 1/2 79 7/16 23 11/16 13 -6.8%
Data Return Corporation.. 22 1/16 94 1/4 13 1/4 -9.4%
Dell Computer............ 35 15/16 59 3/4 33 1/2 54 +0.5%
EMC Corp................. 103 104 1/8 30 +8.9%
Electronic Data Systems C 44 1/8 76 11/16 38 3/8 29 -4.8%
Gateway Inc.............. 55 1/2 84 41 5/8 37 -6.4%
Hewlett Packard Co....... 104 1/4 136 3/16 52 1/4 31 -0.0%
Intel Corp............... 47 15/16 75 13/16 32 1/2 42 -16.6%
Intergraph Corp.......... 7 41/64 9 3 3/16 +13.4%
International Business Ma 124 134 15/16 89 3/4 32 -0.8%
Legato Systems Inc....... 12 1/4 82 1/2 8 1/8 -9.6%
Micron Electronics Inc... 12 1/16 20 11/16 8 3/16 35 -2.0%
Microsoft Corp........... 63 1/4 119 15/16 60 37 -1.4%
NCR Corp................. 37 11/16 47 26 11/16 11 +0.6%
NetIQ Corporation........ 61 7/8 81 1/2 21 +14.7%
Network Associates Inc... 22 1/8 37 3/16 16 1/4 63 -1.1%
Novell Inc............... 9 41/64 44 9/16 7 13/16 21 -2.5%
Oracle Corp.............. 80 23/32 93 20 1/2 +3.0%
Qualcomm Incorporated.... 73 200 45 1/8 83 +10.1%
Quest Software Inc....... 62 98 1/8 18 +12.7%
Seagate Technology....... 66 1/2 76 26 9/16 49 +11.5%
Silicon Graphics......... 3 9/16 5 3/16 2 -12.3%
Sun Microsystems Inc..... 118 129 5/16 43 3/4 +4.3%
Sybase Inc............... 23 3/4 31 10 3/16 33 -5.0%
Symantec Corp............ 43 1/16 81 5/8 31 3/8 15 -5.8%
Unisys Corp.............. 10 7/8 49 11/16 9 1/8 8 -19.0%
Veritas Software Corp.... 143 49/64 174 32 3/8 +17.2%
Dow Jones 30 Industrials. 10,847.37 -0.7%
*******************************************************************
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sign off or change your email address
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******************************************************************
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should you be unable to open any of these links.
********************************************************************
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This document is provided for informational purposes only.
The information contained in this document represents the
current view of Sunbelt Software Distribution on the issues
discussed as of the date of publication. Because Sunbelt
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