Microsoft dropped the proverbial bomb on MSPs earlier this week when it revealed 49 security flaws in Windows, IE and Office. The previous record for most security fixes was 34 in October of last year. Patching PCs is time consuming because we must test the fixes before deploying them to our client’s systems. All Architel clients should be completely patched by the end of the week.

Affected Software

**Server Core installation not affected. The vulnerabilities addressed by this update do not affect supported editions of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 as indicated, when installed using the Server Core installation option. For more information on this installation option, see the MSDN articles, Server Core and Server Core for Windows Server 2008 R2. Note that the Server Core installation option does not apply to certain editions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2; see Compare Server Core Installation Options.

It is simple to access previous versions of any file or folder on your Windows 7 computer.  Simply open any Explorer window, right-click on a file or folder you wish to restore, and select “Restore Previous Versions.”  For instance, if you accidently deleted a file from a folder in My Documents, browse to that folder and open previous versions from it.  Please note that this will only appear on files and folders, not drives or Libraries.

This dialog shows all the previous copies of this folder that are available.  Here we see that there is a copy of my folder e-books from yesterday, 3 days earlier this week, and some from the week before that.  Click on the time you wish to restore from.

You can choose to either Open, Copy, or Restore the folder.  If you click Restore, you can restore the full contents of the folder as it appeared at some time in the past.

Choose copy to copy the entire contents of the folder as it appeared at that time to another location.  For instance, you could copy it to a flash drive for safe keeping.

Or, choose Open to browse the contents of the folder as it appeared at that time.  You can open, copy, or do anything you choose with the file from here.  For instance, if I deleted the Audio Books folder accidently today, I could click copy, and then past it into my normal e-books folder in my Documents folder.

When in this mode, you are directly browsing the shadow copy of your hard drive.  The path to the folder shows the date and time of the copy.

And, the great thing is, this feature is available in all editions of Windows 7, including the low-cost Starter edition often preinstalled in netbooks.

Change Shadow Copy Settings

By default, the shadow copies of your files will use up to 5% of your hard drive space.  You can change this by typing “Shadow Copy” into your Start Menu search.  Click the “Create a restore point” link.

Here you can restore your system with a restore point, create a new restore point, or configure the settings.  Click Configure to manage Shadow Copy.

You can choose to save both system settings and previous versions of files, only previous versions of files, or to turn this feature off entirely (which we do not recommend at all).  You can also choose how much space will be dedicated to these files.  The default is 5% of your hard drive, but you can choose more or less if you wish.  Finally, you can also remove all previous restore points, including the previous versions of all your files.

Summary

The Previous Versions feature is definitely a lifesaver. You can actually retrieve deleted files using Shadow Copy in Server 2003.  It has saved us many times when we accidently deleted a file or removed important information from a document only to realize what we had done minutes later. For these and many other reasons, don’t panic and just check Previous Versions if you ever lose a file.

This stuff is literally amazing. It provides an instant IT environment including servers, networking, storage, operating systems and application licenses (i.e. SAP, Oracle and Microsoft). Without CloudShare our time-to-market and cost-of-delivery would be out of sight.

Check it out for yourself:

Architel will create up 10 ‘Hot Standby’ Windows or SQL Servers for a one time fee of $5,000.  Each a complete duplicate of the primary server.  In the event the primary server fails, our engineers would ‘engage’ the ‘Hot Standby’ until the primary server can be repaired.

Microsoft Windows 32 and 64 bit AMIs are supported.  Usage charges are passed through (no mark up) starting at $.125 per hour.  If you are interested, please contact sales 214.550.2000.

Architel will create up 10 ‘Hot Standby’ Windows or SQL Servers for a one time fee of $5,000.  Each a complete duplicate of the primary server.  In the event the primary server fails, our engineers would ‘engage’ the ‘Hot Standby’ until the primary server can be repaired.

Microsoft Windows 32 and 64 bit AMIs are supported.  Usage charges are passed through (no mark up) starting at $.125 per hour.  If you are interested, please contact sales 214.550.2000.

…as popular as SharePoint has become, administrators and users don’t always like its restrictions. When you install SharePoint, you must also install Microsoft SQL Server, even if your standard database is Oracle or DB2 or MySQL, and you must install it on Microsoft Server 2003 or 2008. When you use a SharePoint site, you must also use Microsoft Internet Explorer to be able to access its full functionality, even if your standard desktop is a Macintosh or your standard browser is Firefox. Alfresco removes those restrictions, as well as being open source.

Beginning today (July 8th), Microsot is not selling Microsoft-hosted (i.e. hosted by the software giant themselves) versions of Exchange and SharePoint for $3/user/month.  OMG!!!  I know exactly what hosted providers pay Microsoft for the same service that they resell for prices ranging from $9-50/user/month and it is MORE than the new retail rate.  Of course, even if Microsoft lowers their price to $1 for resellers it won’t matter – the resellers won’t be able to recover their costs.  This is the beginning of the end for hosted Microsoft providers.  It is simply game over, blue screen of death.  Ouch…  With partners like Microsoft who needs competitors?