Home - Bob Fox's SharePoint Blog

5/5/2009

I have moved my site to SPFOXHOLE and you can also link to me via FeedBurner

Thanks.

There will be no more active posting here. All content has been moved to the new site as well.

Posted at 9:18 PM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

5/3/2009

New in SP2 Get/Setsitelock Whodathunkit!

In the last post (New In SP2 Changes in Backup Operations) I went over how you can use GetSiteLock and SetSiteLock when you are working with backups. Thinking a bit further on these new extensions to the STSADM.exe family i decided to do some more testing on some scenarios. Thanks to my good friend Marianne van Wanrooij for additional feedback and suggestions about these additions.

So Marianne asked me if the setsitelock could be used for other purposes besides during backup operations. For instance for site archive as an example. YES!! This set some of my remaining brain cells to motion thinking up how this would be leveraged in a companies environment.

Example

A company has multiple organizations that it owns and for some reason one of those companies goes under. The information that was listed on that companies site is still something that other employees want to consume but we don't want any more data being posted to this or have any changes made. Couple fixes come to mind to solve this. We can change the sites security permissions giving everyone read access. This, depending on the complexity of the sites security, can take a great deal of time. We could also archive the data someplace else (perhaps on another portal thats being used for Archive or DR purposes)….both take time and are not alot of fun. OR we can run a simple command and in one sweep render the site in 3 different states using the new command line tool setsitelock.

stsadm.exe –o setsitelock –url http://portal2.sharepoint.com/sites/companya –lock (see below examples)

Noadditions: Permits changes that reduce the size of the data.
For example, if you had an announcement list item whose body consisted of 50 characters, you could successfully edit the list item so that the body was reduced to 25 characters. However, if you tried to edit the list item so that they body was increased to 100 characters, that would be blocked.

# On my testing of this switch I set my site collection to –lock Noadditions and tried to add some content to an existing announcement. I got an access denied message. If however i wanted to modify what was already in the announcement without adding additional characters this worked fine. So you can modify but you cant add is what this switch is doing

Readonly: Sets the site collection to read-only.
Noaccess: Sets the site collection unavailable to all users.

* Above explanations of parameters copied from Technet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262811.aspx

So in this scenario I want to just allow employees to read what is already on the site.

stsadm.exe –o setsitelock –url http://portal2.sharepoint.com/sites/companya –lock readonly

So what are the affects of running this and then looking at a site? My user account on this particular site collection is SCA. Normally i can do anything i want to this site. Now look at what i can do:

As opposed to me opening this site without the –lock readonly applied:

This switch doesn't just stop at your libraries and such. Its a collection wide change. You can enter into Site Actions and view to your hearts content but no changes will be allowed.

Hope you found something useful in this post :)

Cheers

Technorati Tags: SP2,sharepoint,mvp,stsadm

Posted at 12:28 PM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

5/2/2009

New In SP2 Changes in Backup Operations

New additions that come with Service Pack 2 for SharePoint (WSS and MOSS) is a new function built into the stsadm.exe –o backup tool that allows you to set your databases to read only. If you run this command on a working environment there will always be a chance for the job to fail if users are adding content to the sites. To prevent this we now have a new feature that allows us to lock the DB and make it read only.

I want you to notice in the above screenshot that im running a very basic command that is no different than you have normally done. Nothing additional was added to the command but notice the output. By default now when you run stsadm.exe –o backup your sites that are being backed up are set to read-only. Once the operation completes it will return the state to normal.

Lets dive a bit deeper and see how you can leverage the additional commands related to backups

Lets first go over some of the command run above. In the second command I want to evaluate the site I want to back up to see its status (locked or unlocked) Running the command

stsadm.exe –o getsitelock –url http//blahblahblah returns a value of none…. not alot to get excited about yet.

In the third command I want to see my available options

stsadm.exe –o setsitelock –url (url) –lock | –noadditions |-readonly | –noaccess

None: Sets the site collection to unlock.
Noadditions: Permits changes that reduce the size of the data.
For example, if you had an announcement list item whose body consisted of 50 characters, you could successfully edit the list item so that the body was reduced to 25 characters. However, if you tried to edit the list item so that they body was increased to 100 characters, that would be blocked.
Readonly: Sets the site collection to read-only.
Noaccess: Sets the site collection unavailable to all users.

* Above explanations of parameters copied from Technet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262811.aspx

In the forth command im simply setting the collection im backing up to read-only and running the 5th command shows the status.

So say you dont want to be bothered with this and you are going to be backing up your system during off hours. Well as you have to make it known to the backup operation. Refer to the first screenshot. Remember by default with nothing added it will set it to read-only. I want to just toss caution to the wind and remove the site lock altogether.

Notice in the above command i added the –nositelock tag at the end of my command. Run this at your own risk leaving the site open to write backs.

Cool stuff. Enjoy

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,MVP,Backups,SP2

Posted at 1:47 AM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

New in SP2 PreUpgradeCheck

The lads and lasses in Redmond while busy hammering away at the next version of SharePoint ( SharePoint Server 2010) tossed in a nice little tool in SP2 to help us to ensure our environments are ready for the upgrade. The PreUpgradeCheck utility is a simple to use tool that is run from the command line

stsadm –o preupgradecheck

I ran this on my test lab and was happy to see the following result:

Guess i am ready to upgrade :)

This tool goes one step deeper and after the completion of this tool a nice output page is displayed that further dives into your FARM and outputs some decent information. If there are failures or issues it will be deeply highlighted in this output. Luckily or perhaps due to some sort of skill i have built up over the years I have a pretty clean environment.

There is some more info that I didnt capture but you should get the idea.

So what can you take from reading this? You have time to make ready your environments for SharePoint Server 2010…. run the tool. See where you need to focus your attention and let this tool help you become better prepared.

*** Follow up*** thanks to Jeffery Dalton for this reminder

If your running 32Bit or Windows Server 2003 you will FAIL when running this checker :) Reminder…. You MUST UPDATE YOUR ENVIORNMENTS TO 64BIT if you want to move to the next version of SharePoint 32Bit will no longer be supported. You will see the following message in your log which explains this.

Further information can be found at:

For MOSS http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd793609.aspx

For WSS http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd793607.aspx

Cheers

Technorati Tags: SP2,SharePoint,MVP

Posted at 12:42 AM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/27/2009

Great FAST Search Posts

My buddy and colleague Natalya Voskresenskaya has been doing some kick ass posts recently on FAST Search. If your not familiar with this technology I would highly advise you pay attention to this in the coming months as it will soon become a common term used by your enterprise clients.

Natalya is doing some decent spin ups on this. Some of the posts published recently are:

Part 1 and 2

FAST search engine for SharePoint PART 2 (Overview of FAST)

Why Fast

FAST search engine for SharePoint PART 1 (Dictionaries)

FAST as SharePoint search engine

Enjoy

Posted at 10:53 PM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

4/13/2009

European SharePoint BestPractices Wrap Up

Last week I had the privilege to head to the United Kingdom for the first time to attend the European SharePoint Best Practices Conference in London. This event was run brilliantly by the crew at Combined Knowledge. Special hats off to Steve Smith and especially Zoe Watson who did a fantastic job organizing this event and raising the bar for other BP Confs going forward. Every detail was covered and it reminded me of a SPC event. In other words it was very professional.

I presented 2 sessions with my mate Spence Harbar on Kerberos. Part one was an overview on how to set up your SPN’s (Service Principle Names) along with how to set up delegation and why sometimes its not really needed. We also dispelled some myths such as a classic one where Kerberos is faster than NTLM. Its just not true… truth be told due to its ticketing mechanism and longer sessions… meaning users are active on the portal for longer periods…. then yes you will see some performance increase with regards to the RPS (Requests Per Second) Kerberos is also much more efficient with regards to making requests to a web application as it cuts down the amount of chatter to the DC’s.

Part 2 dealt with Shared Service Providers and Excel Services and how Kerberos delegation ties in with this. The Decks can be found on Spence's Blog under the US Best Practices post.

I had the opportunity to also chair two ITPRO Ask the Experts Sessions with an incredible lineup of people. Probably one of the best I have worked with to date. Among the experts were Neil Hodgkinson, Brian Wilson, Spence Harbar, Martin Kearn, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, and Steve Smith

As for the events and goings on outside of the event…. where do i start… It was my first time to London and really looked forward to seeing the city which i did every night. It was amazing. The only downside to the whole trip was the time that pubs close… 11:30 or so. Lights come on… a bell rings and they start ushering folks out of the pub….. some of us were just getting started at that time. We learned how to drink early and drink fast and drink alot so the 11:30 issue didnt affect us very much :) Oh and i am a huge fan of Real Ales. I did an occasional Guinness (for Irish Sanity) but man the beers i had over there just made me want to find some gigs in the UK so i can come over more. Any companies out there in the UK looking for some help feel free to ping me :)

After the event I moved over to the Paddington area with my buddy Eric Shupps and a few other folks and we played the role of tourist. Special thanks to Eric for playing such a great tour guide…… he also got alot of looks when running round in his full cowboy outfit.

Met alot of great folks during the conference and alot of twitter followers :) All in all it was a lovely time and I cant wait to come over again

Posted at 12:41 PM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (2)

2/22/2009

Setting Up a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V

My Introduction to Hyper-V
So i was feeling a bit behind the times with everyone chanting the virtues of Hyper-V. After reading Andrew Connell's posts about his new home rig and how he is now running Hype-V in place of VMware (which for a long time he swore by) I started feeling … wait a sec… Connell is one of those Dev types… and he has this up and running…. why don’t I? So Andrew my old friend…. Thank you for the kick in the butt.
I was looking at Connells set up and was pretty impressed …. not only with the hardware but also with how he got clearance to purchase all the toys with his wife (who we will simply refer to as M for now). So I have been planning on reacquiring some hardware and attempt a proper build for myself… mainly to test farms with than one image running SharePoint (with my current laptop having more than one image run would just be painful) and to be honest… in the field how many one server instances do you really find out there…. Ok i have run into a few but I always preach the high availability sermon to them. Really though allot of my clients are mid to large implementations so having this type of lab allows me the ability to recreate issues that pop up in environments to provide fixes, properly test Kerberos (cause having Kerberos run on a single image is just silly right?) also let’s not forget that the 014 bits are going to start making their way out sometime this year (hopefully) so what better playground than my brand new rig.
I call it a Rig. I can lie and tell you that i have a similar set up to Andrews and I would be doing this simply to make him want to go out and buy more toys (and possibly get in trouble with “M”) but hey what are friends for. But it would be a lie. Let me fill you in on a little secret. Although labs such as this are very desirable.. You can get away with something similar with a simple desktop that you can get from Circuit City (who are going out of business so get shopping) That’s what i did.. I have a HP Pavilion that came with allot of really neat and “not so productive” applications on its own cheesy little Vista Build but more importantly it had almost 800GB of Disk space and 8 GB or RAM.
So home i go with my brand new shiny desktop and proceed to format the drives and then load Windows Server 2008.. Sure i could have gone with the new craze and loaded Windows 7 but TBH its the same kernel as we have now with Vista and a somewhat prettier interface. I can wait till this goes to RTM. I want stability and I want HYPER-V I want to know what all the talk is about this. I want to know what caused Connell to make that switch.
SO the journey begins....
Define the purpose of your lab
When I build out my labs I generally have a purpose in mind for what I want to use it for. In my case I may have a bunch of individual labs sitting inactive. Some of the purposes for building out labs are to
· Demonstrate a farm that has multiple servers which will simulate a normal true to life environment.
· Demonstrate authentication methods such as Kerberos which cannot be truly tested on one single server (AD, SQL, MOSS etc)
· Test failover using NLB within a farm. (Do it here and not in your production environment)
· Test solution deployments
· Test Service Packs and Security rollups.
· Many more purposes (add yours here)
Define your topology
One of the benefits or working with Hyper-V or VMware of this is that you can spin up as many servers as your host can hold. Memory and space are the only limitations.
So for the main set up I kept the host running in its own Workgroup. I could have run DCPROMO and set up a domain to run all my images off of but I felt that would just cause trouble down the line. Having the ability to build multiple virtual farms each having its own Active Directory and SQL Servers makes more sense when i am giving a presentation to a client and trying to impress them by displaying that companies domain name and mimicking there set up as much as possible.
Server Topology
For one of my personal environments I have the following:
DC1 - This is exactly what it is named for. This box is my domain controller for FUBAR.com This server is running Windows Server 2008 and I am also running SQL Server 2008. I set this up in this manner simply to consolidate services. Would I recommend this in a real world environment? NO, and during the SQL install it will alert you that this is not recommended but it works in a lab environment You could however take this setup further and add a SQL server or even two in a clustered setup. Like I mentioned it all depends on what your environment can handle
MOSS1 - This box is the WFE for the farm.
MOSS2 - This box would function as the second WFE and if i want to test NLB I will join this server to the farm but for most of my testing this isn’t a requirement so why waste resources :) but its there and very simple to add to the farm if i need to.
MOSS3 - This is the Application Tier Server and its running Indexing and all the fun stuff.. Again going back to MOSS2 i can simply add that box into the mix and move my indexing to simulate what I would do in most circumstances.
WS1 - Simple Vista Workstation running Office and some diagnostic tools such as Fiddler and Netmon which i use when I’m validating Kerberos authentication. Remember if you want to test Kerberos you won’t do it on the actual Farm Servers... do it from the client side.
WS2 - Windows 7 workstation.

For those interested in Kerberos I have started doing talks on the circuit with my buddy Spence Harbar so I am planning on doing a Kerberos screencast in the near future.
Invoking the SysPrep Tool (to make life easier)
Make it easier on yourself. Build an image and load all the necessities on it. So in this case were talking about building SharePoint servers so it makes sense to load the Required fun stuff.
What i load on my reusable image is the following:
IIS
PowerShell
I also load the SharePoint bits and these days I have already slipstreamed the October Updates so its a pretty up to date image when i build it. I do NOT run the Configuration Wizard on this box. If you are unfamiliar with the process of slipstreaming you can refer to this screencast that I did last year.
I will also install the latest Windows Updates onto the box.
Once this exercise is complete i run sysprep. For those not in the know sysprep has been around for years. What it does is allow me to reuse an image over and over and when i create a new image i simply point to that Imaged Virtual Hard Disk when i am doing the build. Let me explain this a bit more
When you run SysPrep the default settings are generally all you need to keep. The only one to change is the area where it says to reboot machine when complete or Shut down the box. You want to make sure you shut down the box. Once this is complete i will name the SysPrep'd drive GOLD or something that will remind you not to use this. When you want to spin up new boxes simply make a copy of the "GOLD" disk and then give that copied file a proper name. I tend to make it easy and call it the same name as the server I am about to spin up.
For a better idea of the end result have a look at this Demo <<Click for DEMO>>
Issues found with Hyper-V
In the very beginning of my testing Hyper-V I was a bit disappointed in a couple things which in the end really didn’t amount to much of a problem
1. Server Builds via RDP – I found it a bit of a nuisance that I was unable to perform fresh image builds via RDP session. To explain this better the Host machine (the desktop) in a perfect scenario runs headless and I can remote in to do all the work. For some reason Hyper-V did not like this. More to the point it would not allow Mouse interaction via RDP which unfortunately is needed unless your scripting your server builds. There is a Hyper-V MMC that can be used but it requires you to be connecting into a Domain. My host is not part of any domain nor is my laptop so this was useless…. If your using Hyper-V within your company this is pretty sharp though. All in all it wasn’t a big deal and for the occasional build I can live with this.
2. Networking can be problematic. Like VMware and VPC you have option to add hardware. If you want to network your system make sure you add the Legacy Network Adaptor as shown below.

Conclusion
Hyper-V doesn’t suck. Virtual PC (Sucked) Virtual Server was a bit better but just a little bit. Ok im being harsh here but in reality it all came down to you got what you paid for. These being free blah blah blah. A lot of us turned to VMware and I will probably continue to use it and VPC (on occasion when I have to) for presentations but for now I’m liking what I am getting out of Hyper-V. Give it a try.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Hyper-V,Screencast

Posted at 5:15 PM by Bob Fox | Category: SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

Setting Up a Virtual Lab with Hyper-V

My Introduction to Hyper-V

So i was feeling a bit behind the times with everyone chanting the virtues of Hyper-V. After reading Andrew Connell's posts about his new home rig and how he is now running Hype-V in place of VMware (which for a long time he swore by) I started feeling … wait a sec… Connell is one of those Dev types… and he has this up and running…. why don’t I? So Andrew my old friend…. Thank you for the kick in the butt.

I was looking at Connells set up and was pretty impressed …. not only with the hardware but also with how he got clearance to purchase all the toys with his wife (who we will simply refer to as M for now). So I have been planning on reacquiring some hardware and attempt a proper build for myself… mainly to test farms with than one image running SharePoint (with my current laptop having more than one image run would just be painful) and to be honest… in the field how many one server instances do you really find out there…. Ok i have run into a few but I always preach the high availability sermon to them. Really though allot of my clients are mid to large implementations so having this type of lab allows me the ability to recreate issues that pop up in environments to provide fixes, properly test Kerberos (cause having Kerberos run on a single image is just silly right?) also let’s not forget that the 014 bits are going to start making their way out sometime this year (hopefully) so what better playground than my brand new rig.

I call it a Rig. I can lie and tell you that i have a similar set up to Andrews and I would be doing this simply to make him want to go out and buy more toys (and possibly get in trouble with “M”) but hey what are friends for. But it would be a lie. Let me fill you in on a little secret. Although labs such as this are very desirable.. You can get away with something similar with a simple desktop that you can get from Circuit City (who are going out of business so get shopping) That’s what i did.. I have a HP Pavilion that came with allot of really neat and “not so productive” applications on its own cheesy little Vista Build but more importantly it had almost 800GB of Disk space and 8 GB or RAM.

So home i go with my brand new shiny desktop and proceed to format the drives and then load Windows Server 2008.. Sure i could have gone with the new craze and loaded Windows 7 but TBH its the same kernel as we have now with Vista and a somewhat prettier interface. I can wait till this goes to RTM. I want stability and I want HYPER-V I want to know what all the talk is about this. I want to know what caused Connell to make that switch.

SO the journey begins....

Define the purpose of your lab

When I build out my labs I generally have a purpose in mind for what I want to use it for. In my case I may have a bunch of individual labs sitting inactive. Some of the purposes for building out labs are to

· Demonstrate a farm that has multiple servers which will simulate a normal true to life environment.

· Demonstrate authentication methods such as Kerberos which cannot be truly tested on one single server (AD, SQL, MOSS etc)

· Test failover using NLB within a farm. (Do it here and not in your production environment)

· Test solution deployments

· Test Service Packs and Security rollups.

· Many more purposes (add yours here)

Define your topology

One of the benefits or working with Hyper-V or VMware of this is that you can spin up as many servers as your host can hold. Memory and space are the only limitations.

So for the main set up I kept the host running in its own Workgroup. I could have run DCPROMO and set up a domain to run all my images off of but I felt that would just cause trouble down the line. Having the ability to build multiple virtual farms each having its own Active Directory and SQL Servers makes more sense when i am giving a presentation to a client and trying to impress them by displaying that companies domain name and mimicking there set up as much as possible.

Server Topology

For one of my personal environments I have the following:

DC1 - This is exactly what it is named for. This box is my domain controller for FUBAR.com This server is running Windows Server 2008 and I am also running SQL Server 2008. I set this up in this manner simply to consolidate services. Would I recommend this in a real world environment? NO, and during the SQL install it will alert you that this is not recommended but it works in a lab environment You could however take this setup further and add a SQL server or even two in a clustered setup. Like I mentioned it all depends on what your environment can handle

MOSS1 - This box is the WFE for the farm.

MOSS2 - This box would function as the second WFE and if i want to test NLB I will join this server to the farm but for most of my testing this isn’t a requirement so why waste resources :) but its there and very simple to add to the farm if i need to.

MOSS3 - This is the Application Tier Server and its running Indexing and all the fun stuff.. Again going back to MOSS2 i can simply add that box into the mix and move my indexing to simulate what I would do in most circumstances.

WS1 - Simple Vista Workstation running Office and some diagnostic tools such as Fiddler and Netmon which i use when I’m validating Kerberos authentication. Remember if you want to test Kerberos you won’t do it on the actual Farm Servers... do it from the client side.

WS2 - Windows 7 workstation.

For those interested in Kerberos I have started doing talks on the circuit with my buddy Spence Harbar so I am planning on doing a Kerberos screencast in the near future.

Invoking the SysPrep Tool (to make life easier)

Make it easier on yourself. Build an image and load all the necessities on it. So in this case were talking about building SharePoint servers so it makes sense to load the Required fun stuff.

What i load on my reusable image is the following:

IIS

PowerShell

I also load the SharePoint bits and these days I have already slipstreamed the October Updates so its a pretty up to date image when i build it. I do NOT run the Configuration Wizard on this box. If you are unfamiliar with the process of slipstreaming you can refer to this screencast that I did last year.

I will also install the latest Windows Updates onto the box.

Once this exercise is complete i run sysprep. For those not in the know sysprep has been around for years. What it does is allow me to reuse an image over and over and when i create a new image i simply point to that Imaged Virtual Hard Disk when i am doing the build. Let me explain this a bit more

When you run SysPrep the default settings are generally all you need to keep. The only one to change is the area where it says to reboot machine when complete or Shut down the box. You want to make sure you shut down the box. Once this is complete i will name the SysPrep'd drive GOLD or something that will remind you not to use this. When you want to spin up new boxes simply make a copy of the "GOLD" disk and then give that copied file a proper name. I tend to make it easy and call it the same name as the server I am about to spin up.

For a better idea of the end result have a look at this Demo <<Click for DEMO>>

Issues found with Hyper-V

In the very beginning of my testing Hyper-V I was a bit disappointed in a couple things which in the end really didn’t amount to much of a problem

1. Server Builds via RDP – I found it a bit of a nuisance that I was unable to perform fresh image builds via RDP session. To explain this better the Host machine (the desktop) in a perfect scenario runs headless and I can remote in to do all the work. For some reason Hyper-V did not like this. More to the point it would not allow Mouse interaction via RDP which unfortunately is needed unless your scripting your server builds. There is a Hyper-V MMC that can be used but it requires you to be connecting into a Domain. My host is not part of any domain nor is my laptop so this was useless…. If your using Hyper-V within your company this is pretty sharp though. All in all it wasn’t a big deal and for the occasional build I can live with this.

2. Networking can be problematic. Like VMware and VPC you have option to add hardware. If you want to network your system make sure you add the Legacy Network Adaptor as shown below.

Conclusion

Hyper-V doesn’t suck. Virtual PC (Sucked) Virtual Server was a bit better but just a little bit. Ok im being harsh here but in reality it all came down to you got what you paid for. These being free blah blah blah. A lot of us turned to VMware and I will probably continue to use it and VPC (on occasion when I have to) for presentations but for now I’m liking what I am getting out of Hyper-V. Give it a try.

Technorati Tags: SharePoint,Hyper-V,Screencast

Posted at 2:29 PM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (3)

2/6/2009

SPDiag Tool Released

Just found this today

http://blogs.technet.com/tothesharepoint/archive/2009/02/05/3197739.aspx

Ran it in my test environment with no issues… still going through everything but it does provide a nice overview of your environment.

Running a report was fairly straightforward

Click File / New Project – Name the DB Server and give the Project a name then hit create.

Allow a couple min for the report to run and then you have the following generated

Some nice data returned huh? Wait you can also Trend your data

Want to package it off and send it to someone? Yep… Your covered :)

Want some more? I see they also added a Replication Engine in the installation so I will investigate this and report back the findings….

What? You didnt go download this yet? Get busy

http://blogs.technet.com/tothesharepoint/archive/2009/02/05/3197739.aspx

Enjoy

Posted at 10:17 PM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/20/2009

Downadup Warning

On occasion we in the SharePoint MVP group are given little warnings from the MSFT teams to pass along to the community. In the case that you are not receiving emails on security updates from MSFT here is something we are told that is starting to spread. Please be advised

Actions Requested:

Win32/Conficker.B/Downadup infections

Please offer these links and resources to members of your community to help mitigate this threat.

MS08-067

Malicious Software Removal tool

History: Win32/Conficker.B

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract:

Based on feedback from MVPs and other sources, we are concerned about the rise in reported infections due to the worm Win32/Conficker.B also known as “Downadup.” Though systems which have already applied the out-of-band released MS08-067 in October 2008 are protected, unpatched system user have experienced system lockout and other problems.

Last week, we released a version of the Malicious Software Removal tool (MSRT) that can help remove variants of Win32/Conficker and other resources. Please share this information in your communities to help address this threat.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Background

Win32/Conficker.B exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Server service (SVCHOST.EXE) for Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, and Windows 2008. While Microsoft addressed this issue in October with Microsoft Security Bulletin MS08-067, and Forefront antivirus and OneCare (as well as other vendor’s anit-virus products) helped protect against infections, many systems that have not been patched manually through Server Update Services and Microsoft/Windows Update or through Automatic Updates have recently come under attack by this worm. Attacked systems may lock out users, disable our update services and block access to security-related Web sites:

In response to this threat, Microsoft has:

· Updated the January version of the MSFT to detect and remove variants of Win32/Conficker.B. You can download this version from the MSRT from either the Microsoft Update site or through its associated Knowledge Base article.

· Created the KB article 962007 “Virus alert about the Win32/Conficker.B worm” to provide public details on the symptoms and removal methods available to address this issue.

· Announced the release of the items and the virus threat itself on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog.

It is our hope that these resources can assist you in resolving issues with unpatched, infected systems and that you can apply MS08-067 to any other unpatched systems as soon as possible to avoid this threat.

Posted at 6:31 AM by Bob Fox | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

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