The free program is a limited version of the commercial software from the same developer. It requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2, the Microsoft Management Console and PowerShell. The interface of the application makes it less time consuming to configure password policies for specific user groups in Windows Server 2008. It basically centers around creating, configuring and managing password policies.

The following parameters can be defined for each password policy:

A Password Settings object (PSO) has attributes for all the settings that can be defined in the Default Domain Policy (except Kerberos settings). These settings include attributes for the following password settings:

• Enforce password history
• Maximum password age
• Minimum password age
• Minimum password length
• Passwords must meet complexity requirements
• Store passwords using reversible encryption
• Account lockout duration
• Account lockout threshold
• Reset account lockout after

User groups can be added to newly created policies. It has to be noted that user groups cannot be empty as empty user groups cannot be added to password policies. The program displays an overview of all password policies on the computer system. The order can be changed which is important if users are members of multiple user groups.

Specops Password Policy Basic can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage.

While this works as intended in the 32-bit edition of Windows Vista it does not in the 64-bit edition as it is still possible for users to access Internet Explorer from the Windows start menu. The hotfix corrects the issue so that the function is working as intended on 64-bit editions of Windows Vista as well.

The second problem affects the 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. Microsoft describes the problem the following way:

The Image Delivery server that runs the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2008 or of Windows Server 2003 stops delivering images when you deploy an operating system by using an image-based installation method

The hotfix can also be downloaded directly by visiting the Microsoft Knowledge Base article.

Users who are interested in download Windows Vista SP2 RC or Windows Server 2008 SP2 RC can do so either at the Customer Preview Program site or by using the Windows Update Experience Kit. The difference is that users can download an iso containing the service packs if they access the Customer Preview Program while they download the service packs from Windows Update if they install the Windows Update Experience Kit.

The release candidate builds are available for all supported languages of both Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and available for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating systems. Users who are interested in the release notes can take a look at the most notable changes here.

There is however no need anymore to fire up your P2P application as you can download both service packs directly and officially from Microsoft. Two ways are provided by Microsoft. The first is a direct download of both service packs which is definitely the easier and probably also the faster method to download the service packs.

The second method would be to download a small script that adds an entry to the Windows Registry upon execution which will make the service packs available in Windows Update.

Please note that the service packs are only available in the languages English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.

It is also important to note that this is still a beta version of the upcoming service pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and as such should not be installed on computer systems that you need to work with. The release is intended to be tested by a larger audience.The beta of the service pack will expire in May 2009.

Server Core is a bare bones installation of Windows Server 2008 without Windows Explorer which means that configuration is done through a command line interface or by remotely connecting to the Windows 2008 Server.

Server Cores can be configured for several basic rules like DNS Server, DHPC Server or Hyper-V virtual server. The Windows 2008 Server Core Configurator aids the system administrator in configuring certain tasks like activating the system, adding or removing drivers, setting user and group permissions or configuring networking features.

The Core Configurator comes as a cab file which has to be unpacked before the configurator can be run. To expand the cab archive run the following command:

expand CoreConfigurator.cab -f:*

The Windows 2008 Server Core Configurator can be run by executing Setup-Core.wsf afterwards.