Cuball's WebLog

August 2004 - Posts

MBSA 1.2.1 Released

The new MBSA has relased in conjunction with XP SP2

MBSA 1.2.1 includes all the great scanning abilities of 1.2 and adds these additional features:

Support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 security enhancements

Clear guidance for locating updates and necessary actions

Prioritize results more easily by showing summary counts for each score

MBSA runs on:

Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 systems

MBSA will scan for common system misconfigurations in the following products:

Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003

Internet Information Server (IIS), SQL Server, Internet Explorer, Office

MBSA will also scan for missing security updates for the following products:

Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003

IIS, SQL Server, Internet Explorer, Office, Exchange Server, Windows Media Player, Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), MSXML, Microsoft Virtual Machine, Commerce Server, Content Management Server, BizTalk Server, Host Integration Server

MBSA can scan for security updates in the following products:

Microsoft Office (local scans only; see list of products)

Exchange Server 2003

MDAC 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8

Microsoft Virtual Machine

MSXML 2.5, 2.6, 3.0, and 4.0

BizTalk Server 2000, 2002, and 2004

Commerce Server 2000 and 2002

Content Management Server 2001 and 2002

Host Integration Server 2000, 2004, and SNA Server 4.0

MBSA white paper More details can be found from http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/tools/mbsahome.mspx page and can be downloaded from here.

Posted: Aug 17 2004, 01:43 PM by Cuball | with no comments
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Windows XP Performance Tweak

You need a minimum of 256MB of RAM before you make these changes.

Open your favorite registry editor and navigate to the following key:
HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Areas to change are as follows

  1. DisablePagingExecutive - Double click it and in the decimal value field, put a 1. This will allow XP to keep data in memory instead of paging sections of RAM to the hard drive.
  2. LargeSystemCache - Double click it and change the decimal value to 1. This will allow the XP Kernel to Run in memory.
  3. Create a new DWORD value and name it IOPageLockLimit - Double click it and set the value in hex to 4000 if you have 128MB of RAM, 10000 if you have 256MB or 40000 if you have more than 512MB of RAM.
Posted: Aug 10 2004, 04:36 PM by Cuball | with 8 comment(s)
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