Sunday, November 16, 2014

Linkfest for the Weary Sysadmins

As usual, the weekend is quickly waning and work looms just on the other side of a short night’s sleep.

So, like all good sysadmins, why worry about precious sleep when linkage awaits?!

Offered with minimal (if any) comment as Lavie is looking at me sternly. Categorized for your enjoyment.

Security First

You can download EMET 5.1 from microsoft.com/emet or directly from here. Following is the list of the main changes and improvements:

  • Several application compatibility issues with Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, and Mozilla Firefox and some of the EMET mitigations have been solved.
  • Certain mitigations have been improved and hardened to make them more resilient to attacks and bypasses.
  • Added “Local Telemetry” feature that allows to locally save memory dumps when a mitigation is triggered.

All the changes in this release are listed in Microsoft KB Article 3015976.

If you are using Internet Explorer 11, either on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, and have deployed EMET 5.0, it is particularly important to install EMET 5.1 as compatibility issues were discovered with the November Internet Explorer security update and the EAF+ mitigation.

  • Adware Remover - Bitdefender Labs – new free standalone tool to scan and remove unwanted apps, adware, hijackers, toolbars, and add-ons. Finds are listed and you can select which you want to remove. spotted via Betanews.

New Performance Troubleshooting Tool PerfView (and other tips)

I used this tool just last week to quickly and simply take a performance trace on a problematic system. I’ve not had time to do an analysis yet but I must say, the capture process was super slick! Check out the videos above to get a quick review. Does require .NET to be present on the system.

In Depth Refocus on Folder Redirection Impact

I recently stumbled across the Helge Klein web site and blog. It contains a great variety of technical posts and tips for harried sysadmins. Check out this series on Folder Redirection issues by Aaron Parker, Helge Klein and Shawn Bass

Windows PowerShell 4.0 (and other tips)

IE 11 Enterprise Mode News and Tips

New and Improved Tools/Utilities

A few of the changes I implemented in this version

  • The .NET framework 4.0 is now required.  The previous version required 2.0.
  • Updated for DISM 6.3.  This version may work with older releases of DISM but some feature may not be available.
  • Added Capture and Apply tabs – This was the single most requested feature.  Requires DISM 6.2 or higher
  • Added a Read Only option to the mount control tab
  • Corrected some spelling errors

The Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel was developed by Microsoft Research and performs fuzzy matching of textual data in Microsoft Excel. It can be used to identify fuzzy duplicate rows within a single table or to fuzzy join similar rows between two different tables.

The matching is robust to a wide variety of errors including spelling mistakes, abbreviations, synonyms and added/missing data. For instance, it might detect that the rows “Mr. Andrew Hill”, “Hill, Andrew R.” and “Andy Hill” all refer to the same underlying entity, returning a similarity score along with each match. While the default configuration works well for a wide variety of textual data, such as product names or customer addresses, the matching may also be customized for specific domains or languages.

VM’s and ISO’s

Network Tips

Note: The process to get and load Plug-ins for Microsoft’s Message Analyzer packet capture application is much different from Microsoft Network Monitor (NetMon) was. It really wasn’t intuitive. To do so you need (assuming MessageAnalyzer is already installed on your system) launch it, then go to “FIle” and select “Start Page” from the list.

image

Once you do, the Start page show be showing in the top pane. From there look for and select the not-so-obvious “Downloads” hotlink which then displays the Add-On modules. click to download install just the ones you want, or if space isn’t a concern, just grab them at at once! See below.

2014-11-15 22_44_34-Office and SharePoint Plug-fest Video - MessageAnalyzer - Site Home - TechNet Bl

Security Bits for Sysadmins

“Now How Do I’s”?

“Where Do I Learn From Here?”

Good Night and Good Ops this week!

--Claus Valca

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