COVER STORY

Conquer 2 New DNS Exploits You understand the importance of securing your external name servers, but what about your DNS clients? Two new client-focused vulnerabilities demand your attention. Cricket Liu Tried-and-True DNS Wisdom Caroline Marwitz

FEATURES

Properly Compiling and Storing a Product Key List Is Well Worth the Effort Here are some basic, common-sense tricks you can use to help keep your Microsoft product key list usable and safe. Alex K. Angelopoulos

Your Non-Vista Option Not looking forward to migrating to Vista? It's not your only option. Readers

An Alternative to Windows Vista Readers

Another Way to Quickly Copy File Paths This file-path copying technique has been around since Windows NT, so you can use it with many Windows OSs. Readers

Open a Command Prompt Window While Installing Windows You might think that performing such tasks as checking available disk space or searching for a file while Windows is installing is impossible, but that's not the case. Apostolos Fotakelis

PowerShell 101, Lesson 3 PowerShell's comparison, logical, and arithmetic operators combined with its support for wildcards and regular expressions help put the "Pow" in PowerShell. Robert Sheldon

How to Find Out a Cmdlet's Properties Robert Sheldon

10 Steps for Physical to Virtual OS Migration Save time and server space by doing a physical to virtual (P2V) OS migration with Virtual Server Migration Toolkit (VSMT) and Mobile Automated Services (ADS). Mobile P2V gives you the flexibility to handle migrations anywhere in the organization. Robert Larson

Why VSMT 1.1 Doesn’t Support Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Robert Larson

Adding Windows Server 2003 SP2 Support to the VSMT Patch Directory Robert Larson

Windows Server 2008 Installation—It’s a Snap! Windows Server 2008 installation is a very different beast than what you’ve experienced in the past. Follow these few steps to begin using the new OS today. John Savill

What You Need to Know About In-Place Upgrades John Savill

6 New Security Features in IIS 7.0 You can sandbox applications, delegate configuration decisions, control access to all content types, and more with IIS 7.0 security features. Derek Hatchard

Customize Search Features in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Set targeted search scopes, and provide custom search forms and results pages with MOSS 2007's Advanced Search Web part and the Search Center site template. Anup Kafle

Ask the Experts Learn about automatic site coverage and how to disable it, find out how to configure how often Group Policy security settings are updated, follow along as Mark Russinovich troubleshoots a frozen sidebar gadget, and more. Various Authors

Configuring How Often to Update Group Policy Security Settings John Savill

Running a Mixed Environment of Exchange 2003 SP1 and Exchange 2003 SP2 Servers Nathan Winters

Learning About Automatic Site Coverage John Savill

Updating Your Old Hardware Various Authors

COLUMNS

Microsoft Virtualization: A Special IT Pro Perspective Report As April begins, Microsoft has big news about Xbox as a server and amazing virtualizationa nd management options. Karen Forster

The Next Wave of Microsoft Virtualization Karen Forster

What You Need to Know About WGA Changes in Windows Vista SP1 Learn why changes to Windows Genuine Advantage in Vista SP1 might send you scurrying to update. Paul Thurrott

What You Need to Know About Windows Home Server Learn why Windows Home Server is impressive and what effect it could have on small businesses. Paul Thurrott

Defrag from Windows Vista’s Command Line Every new Windows version seems to come with a new defrag tool, and Vista is no exception. But its GUI-based defragmenter leaves a lot to be desired. Here’s how you can use the OS’s Defrag command-line tool to do more. Mark Minasi

Free Virtualization Products Keep up with the fast-growing virtualization market by building your virtual machines (VMs) and managing your environment with these free products. Michael Otey

Letters@windowsitpro.com Readers benefit from Mark Minasi’s Cipher tip, respond to Robert Sheldon’s PowerShell 101 series, offer a Vista UAC workaround, and complain about too much Server 2008 and Vista coverage. Various Authors

PRODUCTS AND REVIEWS

New & Improved Check out the latest products to hit the marketplace. PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT: Microsoft Robert 2008 Jeff James

Systems Management: Automate and Simplify Windows Server 2008 Editors

SteelEye Technology LifeKeeper Protection Suite for Windows SteelEye’s clustering and disaster recovery solution, LifeKeeper Protection Suite for Windows, offers admirable support for both replicated and shared storage, easy configuration for both scenarios, and support for more complex failover scenarios. John Green

SAM Minds Your IT Assets

As software-licensing audits become more common, businesses are finding that software asset management (SAM) solutions can help ensure they're in compliance with licensing agreements as well as keep an eye on employees' software and hardware usage. Todd Erickson

Guidelines for Evaluating SAM Solutions Todd Erickson

SAM Vendors and Resources Todd Erickson

Enterprise Patch Management Software Evaluate 11 patch management products to decide which solution is right for your environment. Todd Erickson

Readers Review Hot Products Reader highlight their favorite products from Appassure, 3CX, and Google. Jeff James

Internet Search Jeff James