Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 – Group Policy Reference Spreadsheet

Microsoft as recently released it’s traditional spreadsheet with information for Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 group policies.

This Excel document has all the group policies available to configure Windows 7/2008 R2 and additionally also have information about Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2 and earlier service packs, Windows XP Professional with SP2 and earlier service packs, and Windows 2000 with SP4 and earlier service packs.

You can download it at:

Windows 7/Windows Server 2008 R2 Group Policy ADMX Spreadsheet

MS Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Released

Without a lot of noise, the most recent update to Windows Vista was released yesterday.

SP2 like always, has security and performance improvement fixes and also announces some new things:

: Native Blu-ray recording
: Support for Bluetooth 2.1
: Better WiFi performance when resuming from Sleep mode

IE8 isn’t bundled with SP2 and has a last note, please remember you’ll need to have SP1 previously installed.

You can find more info at Technet:

Technet – Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista

Now, here the files:

MS Windows Vista SP2 32bit Vista & Server 2008

MS Windows Vista SP2 64bit Vista & Server 2008

Windows 2008: Accepting Incoming Ping Requests

By default, when Windows 2008 is installed you cannot use the ping command from another machine to the new one.

This happens because the Echo Request on the Windows 2008 it’s disabled by default.
To enable this feature you need to do the following steps:

- Go to Control Panel -> Adminstrative Tools -> Windows Firewall with Advanced Security
- Click on the option “Inbound Rules”
- Find the rule named “File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request – ICMPv4-In)
- Right-click on it and select “Enable Rule”

If you’re using Windows Server Core, use the following command:
- netsh firewall set icmpsetting 8

And that’s it.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) 2008: Now Available

Microsoft makes available a new version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.

MDT 2008 extends existing functionality to deploy Windows Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 for both LTI and ZTI deployments.

This new version also support Windows AIK 1.1.

You can download it at:
Microsoft Download Center