Service Pack 1 builds upon the impressive track record of the award winning Windows Server 2003 operating system by introducing numerous refinements in addition to supplying cumulative system updates. Deploying Service Pack 1 will help enterprises across all industries and segments enhance security, increase reliability and simplify administration through guided attack surface reduction.
Technical Overview of Windows Server 2003 SP1
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i really like the webdav redirector – until now i have to use a novell tool to map a drive letter to a windows 2003 webdav share. hopefully, this will be available soon for windows xp.
the firewalled-while-updating system is interesting. temporarily block all outside access until your system is patched against the newest security risks.
have to admit, this one from m$ looks good.
Windows server 2003 was rated the best server OS on this site and NO that was not from Microsoft. I know Microsoft has made some suck a.. products like Windows ME and all but they deserve a kudos for the good products. Frankly XP changed my opinion about MS. I have yet to see XP blue screen.
I know though that XP has its own problems with spyware related to IE and bugs but well they are tackling the issues one by one. They got the biggest issue solved of stability and performance. Give them sometime and i am sure they will do better.
Each new OS from MS is now of better quality than previous. Windows Small business server kicked a.. and i feel really positive that the way MS is now focussing on quality, they will good. Yeah we all wish they had done something like this in past but well who doesn’t make mistakes.
“guided attack surface reduction”
Is Ballmer sending these news headlines directly to OSNews.com to make sure they “sell us” and sound impressive?
MS and Windows have nothing to do with security. Never have… never will.
Why? Because Bill never wanted a OS designed for security. He wanted features. Windows can NEVER be a secure OS due to it’s design. And I’m not including 3rd party software that can tighten the perimeter, I’m talking about the OS.
Also, to make things clear. I’m not a Linux fan nor an MS hater. I’m against MS selling us “security” when they cannot. History and design prove this.
Fluff.
yes, i got bluescreen almost every day on my WinXP. that happens particularly after switching from hibernian mode to working mode. problems occur more often after installing SP2.
Windows suxs, that is the fact. get it!
This sounds very strange. I’m sure it’s a case of PEBKAC. 🙂
Windows can NEVER be a secure OS due to it’s design.
Which aspect(s) of the design ?
“yes, i got bluescreen almost every day on my WinXP. that happens particularly after switching from hibernian mode to working mode. problems occur more often after installing SP2.
Windows suxs, that is the fact. get it! ”
Yeah, this is a documented bug on Microsoft’s website. They say it has to do something with an ID ten T.
“yes, i got bluescreen almost every day on my WinXP. that happens particularly after switching from hibernian mode to working mode. problems occur more often after installing SP2.
Windows suxs, that is the fact. get it!”
LIAR! I bet you never touched a WinXP machine in your life.
Even if it was true, you can’t blame MS for it. Bluescreens were a symptom of faulty hardware and hardware requires kernel level drivers. Most drivers are written by 3rd party vendors (NVIDIA, ATI, Creative, etc…) not MS. Although MS provides vanilla drivers on the install CD, these never bluescreen.
This was part of the reason why Microsoft created the hardware quality check (signed driver check). If the driver passes the quality check, IT CANNOT CAUSE A BLUESCREEN, unless the hardware is faulty.
If the hardware is faulty, then all OSes fail (including Linux kernel panics, etc…)
Those are the facts!
Uh, sorry you need to recheck your facts! However, before you call me a liar and suggest that I have never used a Windows XP box or any version of Windows at all I’ll say this… I’ve been a Windows user since version 1.0 way back in ’85 and like then as now, it’s crap. Prettier, but still it is crap. I also happen to use W2K on my computer at work. Oh and before you call me a liar and claim I’ve never worked on a Windows XP box, over 90% of my time is spent working on Windows XP boxen. Dells, HPs, Compaqs, Gateways and it doesn’t matter who built them. As a matter of fact nearly all of the BSODs I’ve seen have something in common and the issue isn’t always a hardware problem.
Just because a person gets a BSOD on Windows DOESN’T mean that the BSOD was generated by faulty hardware. Geez, where do you people learn this nonsense from? I tell you what, why don’t you let a bunch of spyware and/or viruses install on your windows system and you’ll see what I’ve seen, mostly BSODs. Yes, it’s a known fact that faulty hardware can cause BSODs. However, of all the systems I’ve worked on this year (hundreds) I’ve only seen five to ten that had a REAL hardware problem that caused a Windows BSOD. The rest was not faulty hardware but typically due to some crap app, spyware, virus or faulty/flaky Winblows patches from M$.
In short….Yes, JoeBlowHard, having everything Microsoft software only even drivers produced by Microsoft itself you CAN STILL have BSODs. I think you’d better check your facts before you post such a scatheing reply to a fellow poster. Those “signed drivers” or “official Windows quality drivers” or whatever they want to call them typically don’t amount to a hill of beans. They’re usually just a “feel good” thing to make the user feel like he/she is getting something of “good quality”. Anyway, I’ve got to get back to work (lunch time is over). Later boys and girls!
p.s. I agree with Dave, XP is a step backwards from W2K.
When I put Linux on my father’s computer, it crashed once or twice a day. It had crashed at least that often when running Windows 98. When Windows crashed, I figured it was the OS. When Linux crashed, I knew it had to be a hardware problem. New RAM fixed the issue.
If Windows 2003, 2000 or XP crash semi-regularly, I would suspect hardware first. It’s been a long time since I have seen bad drivers take down a system.
BC you have to get the hardware of your machine checked. It seems you have a faulty hardware if you blue screen regularly. Or you have a 3rd party faulty driver. I am amazed that you are still using your system without finding out the cause of blue screen. Instead you have time to come here and bash Microsoft. Grow up man.
I wish you had fleshed out your comments a little earlier. It helps give people a better idea of where they are coming from.
My sister runs Windows XP on her computer. It doesn’t even run SP1. It has never crashed or slowed down. She uses Typing Tutor and WordPerfect. She is not connected to anything.
I put my father on Linux in part because of the spyware issue. I figured I would have fewer support calls, and need to make fewer updates if he ran Linux.
This, however is somewhat of a separate issue from an operating system’s overall stability. A guarded (daily AV updates, browse with Firefox, e-mail viewed as text only, good firewall, locks on critical system files) Windows system is a stable system.
My own experience with spyware is that I have never seen it “bluescreen” a system. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I don’t think it’s all that common (install XP, SP2 on an infected system, though, and all bets are off).
Wolf,
I am a tech, I’ve been troubleshooting computers both large mainframes and PCs for over 25 years. The one thing I’ve noticed over the years is that not all people read before they speak or post. Did you bother to READ my post, did you bother to READ the one I was replying to? (i.e. You Lie by JoeBlowHard)
I wasn’t referring to any of MY computers, nor was I “bashing” Microsoft. I was making a point that BSODs are NOT always caused by faulty hardware. Geez. Please READ the entire post and any RELATED POSTS BEFORE you bash someone.
Thanks!
“Oh and before you call me a liar and claim I’ve never worked on a Windows XP box, over 90% of my time is spent working on Windows XP boxen. Dells, HPs, Compaqs, Gateways and it doesn’t matter who built them. As a matter of fact nearly all of the BSODs I’ve seen have something in common and the issue isn’t always a hardware problem”
And that’s you? the idiot IT support guy? why do you want to install SP2? just becoz MS wants you to, and you install dumbly?
Based on your post:
>>However, of all the systems I’ve worked on this year (hundreds) I’ve only seen five to ten that had a REAL hardware problem that caused a Windows BSOD. The rest was not faulty hardware but typically due to some crap app, spyware, virus or faulty/flaky Winblows patches from M$.
You have no idea what your doing if you believe the blue screen is from the application, spyware or a virus. Sure a os patch could kill the machine, that only makes sense, but insinuating that the others mentioned caused blue screens really means you have no idea what caused it.
Maybe you should stick to mainframes!
– Microsoft Fanboy
I currently support several Windows machines here at work (along with Novell, Linux, and Solaris) and want to put my 2 cents in about what have been said about stability.
Most of the blue screens of death do seem to be caused by hardware, but not all blue screen of deaths are always hardware related.
Example case: I have a old computer at home with Windows XP installed and it runs fine. I install SP2 and when I reboot I get BSOD every time I boot. I dump the service pack and it works again. I doubt that is strickly hardware related.
Example case 2: I was getting blue screens from time to time on my Windows 2000 server box. It took me awhile to figure it out, but it was the motherboard USB casuing it. The VIA chipset had a bug in it that caused this problem. Getting a PCI USB avoided this problem (since the updated VIA drivers didn’t solve the problem).
So from the above, BSOD’s can come from both areas, and do. So to say because you don’t get BSOD, that Windows is stable is very false. I get BSOD on my laptop from time to time, and this was a approved hardware for Windows XP (pre-installed) from DELL.
So you want a stable system? If you want a stable Windows desktop, get apporved hardware drivers for all your hardware, and run Windows 2000 Pro/XP. If you run servers, I suggest Windows 2003, it is very nice. I moved a web server from Linux to Windows 2003 (PHP/MYSQL/PERL included) and it runs very well (before people dig into this, I had reasons for doing so in my enviroment, and waited until Win 2003 before making this change).
As much as people give this concept a hard time, I think the most stable systems will be from vendors that make the hardware and the OS. Case in point, MACs and SUN systems. I got a Sun system here at work (4 CPUS, 4 gig memory) that supports 1500+ Engineers, connected to 3 terabytes of data, and it is stable as can be (no crashes since we upgraded to Solaris 9 and upgraded all the service software).
So yes hardware does make a difference, but so does the OS (look at what Sun is trying to do in Solaris 10 with the self-healing and self-diagnostics to shut off bad memory segments etc, so the OS CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE).
Sorry I went long, but just wanted to put my 2 cents in from my past experience with several different OS’s and hardware setups.
But, hey, Windows Media Player and Outlook Express are *required* on a server!
Hi,
Yeah, good point about Sun/Mac, and how they make both their own hardware/software. I unfortunately haven’t had the pleasure of using Solaris on Sparc, so I can’t report on that (only x86, which is actually pretty decent), but I have used Macs (all the ways from IIs, up to G4), so I can attest that you’re probably right.
Then again, people who buy Macs seems to be people who expect things to ‘just work’ (believe I read in a Apple advertisement that the last two US presidents used macs – can somebody verify this? kinda ironic, I would think *grin*), and Sun users seem to be mostly enterprises (or those who can afford the astronomical prices for their systems), so go figure.
Bye,
Victor
Luckily, I left programming for accounting a couple of years ago. All’s I know is that when the accounting system was on a unix based system I was rarely disconnected – maybe twice. When they moved a chunk of the process to a 2k3 server running terminal services I get disconnected 2-3 times a day (better save your work every few seconds). The application I run will bomb (on my session) once or twice a week. This is the real world. The way 2k3 is being implemented by developers that should know better will be a boon to open source.
Like I said earlier, these blue screens are documented by Microsoft. They are caused by an id ten T error. The same error is known to take down Linux and Unix systems when an end user, who has no idea what a computer is, is given root access. I can’t find the article, but it said something about some fundamental flaw in computer design that all computers are susceptible to.
That is weird that the following blue screen of deaths are fundamental flaws in computer design and all computers are susceptible to them:
DIVIDE_BY_ZERO_ERROR
REGISTRY_ERROR
NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM
I have also noticed from my experience that different OS’s can handle hardware problems in different ways. The OS can detect hardware problems, and the way it handles those problems is a software OS issue (such as SCSI communication errors, etc. does it puke or does it retry or what?!? Just an example)
Just like I used the example of Solaris 10 in my pervious message and how it does things to handle problems (check out: “http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/selfheal.html“ for more information). What it will do is monitor devices (through logs or other means), and when a threshold is reached, it will disable that device if possible. So if the OS and hardware is designed correctly, it would be possible for the OS to notice one of the CPUs or memory modules is having problems, and disable only that CPU or Memory module.
Computer design is much bigger then the cheap off the self PC parts you put together. To say that it is a fundamental flaw in computer design and all computers are susceptible to those errors is wrong.
Not to mention its better improved security and stability over its siblings.
It’s still the same technology.
But for backends to businesses large investment of Windows machines and Office installs, 2003 Server has reclaimed territory that NT/2000 was losing.
Linux companies haven’t really thought about small businesses enough yet – more’s the pity. If they did Windows wouldn’t stand too much of a chance.
You can’t install more than one SBS on the same network, there’s the client access licenses, the additional pointless anti-virus software for a server and the fact that if it gets hit by a virus (which it usually always does in a small business) your business is inactive for a period of time. When you want to expand your business SBS does not scale with it simply because Windows is crap under heavy load on exactly the same hardware and you only get one SBS per network.
TCO anybody? Before you praise SBS I suggest you put it into a business first.
“(believe I read in a Apple advertisement that the last two US presidents used macs – can somebody verify this? kinda ironic, I would think *grin*),”
I can not say much about the present President because I do not know, but his predacessor was given a powerbook by John Scully at the very begining of his first term. I dooubt he ever did any thing with it. He was almost totaly computer unaware at the begining of his first term. I would assume he has become more knowlageable since then but I am sure he has some one to work things like e-mail for him.
The White House is a PC/MS haven. It is cool to buck the system and have a MAC and it gives the users a little status.
Congress has 3 mac office left. There are a few UNIX shops but it is mainly Windows/Exchange.
i got BSOD last week on 2003. and yes it was caused by a faulty driver…. ntfs.sys
yeah and a driver talks to ntfs.sys, why is this thread full of rubbish (especially since the topic is 2003 and NOT XP!), if any of you read, you would understand the microsoft HAL (hardware abstraction layer), software can only cause BSOD if it talks to a driver that has access to the HAL.
Oh and by the way I use both M$ and Linux -CentOS- (50/50 split) so I get the best of both worlds, instead of my dads bigger and better than your dad! geddit…..