Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET™ 2003 SP1

This download installs Service Pack 1 for Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET™ 2003. Fixes in this Service Pack concern stability and security enhancements made in many areas of the product. A comprehensive list of hotfixes requested by customers since the release of Visual Studio® .NET™ 2003 and included in this Service Pack can be found by following the appropriate link under Related Resources on this page.

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Windows Live Writer (Beta)

Whether you are a full time blogger or you are just blogging as a hobby, we all have a need for the same thing: an easy to use blog editor to publish our entries from. Luckily, Microsoft recognized this need for a What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) blogging tool and delivered in the form of Windows Live Writer.

Welcome to the world of blogging indeed. Windows Live Writer makes editing and publishing blog entries so easy and user friendly that anyone can do it. When setting Writer up, there are just a few steps to get your blog rolling with the software. First, you select your type of blog from the list of available services. This is what is currently compatible with Windows Live Writer:

- Windows Live Spaces
- Blogger
- LiveJournal
- TypePad
- Wordpress
- All blogs that support RSD (Really Simple Discoverability)
- Metaweblog API
- Moveable Type API

They are working on making virtually all blog types compatible with Writer, so if you do not see your type on the list, do not despair, it may be coming soon.

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Vista Hacked At Black Hat

While Microsoft talked up Windows Vista security at Black Hat, a researcher in another room demonstrated how to hack the operating system.

Joanna Rutkowska, a Polish researcher at Singapore-based Coseinc, showed that it is possible to bypass security measures in Vista that should prevent unsigned code from running.

In the second part of her talk, Rutkowska explained how it is possible to use virtualisation technology to make malicious code undetectable, in the same way a rootkit does. She code-named this malicious software Blue Pill.

"Microsoft is investigating solutions for the final release of Windows Vista to help protect against the attacks demonstrated," a representative for the software maker said. "In addition, we are working with our hardware partners to investigate ways to help prevent the virtualisation attack used by the Blue Pill."

At Black Hat, Microsoft gave out copies of an early Vista release for attendees to test. The software maker is still soliciting feedback on the successor to Windows XP, which is slated to be broadly available in January.

Rutkowska's presentation filled a large ballroom at Caesars Palace to capacity, even though it was during the last time slot on the final day of the annual Black Hat security confab in Las Vegas. She used an early test version of Vista for her research work.

As one of the security measures in Vista, Microsoft is adding a mechanism to block unsigned driver software to run on the 64-bit version of the operating system. However, Rutkowska found a way to bypass the shield and get her code to run. Malicious drivers could pose a serious threat because they run at a low level in the operating system, security experts have said.

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For System Recovery, DOS Is Still Boss

Even with all its faults--and there are many, starting with a general industry lack of support--DOS is still the preferred operating environment for building a rescue CD to help bring up a crippled system.

In the past year alone, I've had four near-fatal drive failures, each on a different system. To alleviate some of the pain associated with recovering from these kinds of problems, I've been working on building a self-contained, multiboot rescue CD that I can use to bring up a crippled system and perform emergency surgery.

This includes tasks such as repairing a broken partition table, cloning a failing drive to a new disk before the old one dies completely, or simply changing a corrupted file that is preventing the operating system from booting.

There are actually a number of options for building these kinds of things, depending on what you are trying to do. If you just want to fix up a Windows installation, you can use the Windows XP Recovery Console and a boot CD to bring a crippled system far enough along to do rudimentary repair work.

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Microsoft Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant v1.0

The Exchange Troubleshooting Assistant programmatically executes a set of troubleshooting steps to identify the root cause of performance, mail flow, and database mounting issues. The tool automatically determines what set of data is required to troubleshoot the identified symptoms and collects configuration data, performance counters, event logs and live tracing information from an Exchange server and other appropriate sources. The tool analyzes each subsystem to determine individual bottlenecks and component failures, then aggregates the information to provide root cause analysis.

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Microsoft Research India Announces Ph.D. Fellowships

Microsoft Research India today announced its Ph.D. Fellowships in India. Instituted by Microsoft Research’s External Research & Programs Group, the Ph.D. Fellowships are aimed at encouraging students to take up research as a career, a key qualification for which is to get a doctoral degree. Each awardee will receive approximately $5,000 (U.S.) per year over four years, and also $5,000 for attending seminars and conferences during the term of the fellowship. The fellows will also have the option of a three-month to six-month internship at Microsoft Research India.

“There is plenty of world-class research talent in India, but India produces less than 50 Ph.D.s in computer science research every year. One of Microsoft Research’s objectives in India is to enhance the quantity and quality of Ph.D.s in the country, and the Ph.D. Fellowships are a step in this direction,” said P. Anandan, managing director of Microsoft Research India. “We are also providing funding for travel to conferences, because exposure to the community and the work it is doing in the subject area is critical for researchers.”

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