Sharepoint Designer 2007 is free!

As of April it's free:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA103607611033.aspx

How to delete avhd files (Hyper-v snapshots)

if you delete snapshots from hyper-v console you may still have avhd files on your server. Hmmm...Does not really help to free some space... To remove file you need to shutdown virtual enviroments or suspend - read exact procedure here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd560637.aspx

update: for Windows 2012 the merge is done online...

Sharepoint optimisation

Few links that can be helpful for those working on Sharepoint optimisation:

http://www.sharepointblogs.com/marwantarek/archive/2009/03/02/guide-to-sharepoint-performance-optimization.aspx

http://andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2008/11/15/Limiting-the-Page-Payload-with-IIS-HTTP-Compression.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms690559.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/waynemo/

Excellent tool to see what is on the wire:
http://www.fiddler2.com/fiddler2/version.asp

HP Vulnerability and patch management pack

I knew that HP has "the answer" to the problem of the patch management. However reading the details: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00267883/c00267883.pdf?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN
you can see that it covers only Microsoft and Redhat patches.
What about Adobe, Java, other 3rd party software?

The VPM is obviously only for servers.

HP OpenSSH vulnerability

HP OpenSSH (from HP Proliant pack, HP SIM)comes with C:\Program Files\OpenSSH\bin\cygwin1.dll version 1.5.4
This version is vulnerable according to http://www.nessus.org/plugins/index.php?view=single&id=28330.

to fix it download HP IS 3.0 DVD where you will get cygwin1.dll version 1.5.25.
http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=ISDVD&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

JRE silent install

Here is command for silent install:
jre-6u12-windows-i586-p-s.exe /s /v "/qn IEXPLORER=1 REBOOT=ReallySuppress JAVAUPDATE=0 WEBSTARTICON=0 /L %temp%\setup.log"

the package itself can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp

IE should not be open during install.

Scheduled tasks in Windows 2003

I was trying to replace local server administrator to less powerful account in the Sceduled Task definition. But it took some time to set the right properly. Please refer to the following article:

http://www.instant-registry-fixes.org/resolve-error-message-0x80070005-access-is-denied/

to sum up: you can use local account to run as for the task. This account should not be local administrators. Give apropriate rights to the data folders and read/execute to binary folder. Using Local security setting (admin tool) add logon locally and as as a batch. If your script is cmd, add permission to cmd.exe to be exceuted for this account.