Mike Bazarewsky: Stuff I want to post

findstr - a big problem with Unicode

I very often use the "findstr" command-line command to act as a poor-mans text searching tool in 2000/XP/2003.  However, something I have long suspected, I have now confirmed, after doing some web searching.  Findstr does not support Unicode!  Now, this may not mean anything to you, but Win32 in NT and CE use Unicode as their native text format.  This means that modern text files (such as Virtual PC .vmc files, which is what I was trying to search) cannot be searched using findstr!  Back to "find" or some version of grep for me!  See also this blog entry at asp.net.

Better late than never - 2003 SBS SP1 released

Although I'm late to the table in saying so (four days!), Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP1 has been released, including the very important ability to go to ISA 2004.  This was a major sore point for SBS, that it came with the now absolutely ancient and not as functional ISA Server 2000.   (Not that ISA Server 2000 is that bad, it's just nowhere near as good as ISA Server 2004!)

Microsoft discusses Virtual Earth

Hmm... Google Maps is pretty spiffy, but Microsoft has decided to go one better with their new Virtual Earth service, currently under development.  It looks like it is going to do some truly amazing things, including linking with overhead views of buildings at 45 degree shots.  Very spiffy.  But we'll need to see if it is really better than Google Maps; in particular, Google Maps does some very amazing DHTML work.

History of PDAs

Slashdot had a posting today linking to the history of the PDA.  As someone who owned three (!) Tandy/Radio Shack pocket computers through time, as well as several different PDA devices, it was a very interesting read.  Note however, it only goes to the release of the PalmPilot, and then stops....  Don't know what's up with that.

FreeTextBox.COM - a free cross-platform browser-based HTML editor

I just came across freetextbox.com, which offers a freely-available ASP.NET web component to allow cross-platform browser-based editing of HTML content.  This obviously has many useful applications in day-to-day application development.  (In fact, the blog software this is being written in uses said component for its content editing functionality...)  Nice stuff.

x64 day-to-day - Mark Russinovich

Mark Russinovich has published a blog entry on running x64 Windows XP Professional as his primary day-to-day operating system, including problems with some SysInternals utilities and some other issues and discussion.  Very nice, if short, post.

SQL Server 2000 SP4 Released

The subject says it all - SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 4 has been released!

Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit

Dealing with the server migration mentioned Monday, I came across a nifty tool - the Microsoft File Server Migration Toolkit.  This tool brings over file shares from a source server (NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows 2003) to a destination server, including potential DFS mappings to allow the old server name to be used still in paths.  It's pretty nifty - it even handles ACLs.  Very nice for file server migration tasks like copying files and shares from one file server to another.

Microsoft Print Migrator 3.1

Have you ever had to migrate printers from an old print server to a new one?  I have, although never on a very large scale.  I will be doing this at a client site (migrating from an old Windows 2000 Server machine to a new Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition machine), and was hoping to automate the process.

It turns out, Microsoft has a tool I had never heard of before, the Microsoft Print Migrator 3.1.  This tool reads the configuration off of an old print server, creates a CAB file with the settings, and allows you to restore those settings on a new server.  This includes converting non-standard TCP/IP port monitors (e. g. Lexmark MarkVision) to standard TCP/IP port monitors. 

If it doesn't work, I'll post that fact.  Otherwise, a nice tool.