Microsoft Windows 7 is Vista?

Installation was easy

Windows 7 Welcome Screen

Windows 7 Desktop

Windows 7 Control Panel

I’m playing around with VMware and I created a Windows Server 2003 virtual machine. When I tried to activate windows over the net it failed (the web security appliance it blocking the connection). Microsoft gives the option to activate windows by phone, which I’ve never tried. I read this post about how to activate windows in less than five minutes: http://www.command-tab.com/2007/03/17/windows-xp-activation-in-5-minutes-or-less/ and I called thinking I was going to have to read an extremely long number to someone in a call center in India. To my surprise it was completely automated and didn’t take very long at all. I entered the extremely long longer on the keypad and the automated system read back to me the activation code. The code worked perfect and now my server is activated!

Linux was fun… I’ve moved back to Windows XP.  I’ve reinstalled Windows XP on both my work computer and home computer.  On my work computer I lost my Active Directory tools, and googled on how to get them back.  Most of the results I found talked about running “regsvr32 schmmgmt.dll” and then “mmc /a” to add the snap-in (seemed like too many steps to get something so simple).  I wanted my Active Directory tools to show up in Administrative Tools.  I found the file “adminpak.msi” in the “C:\WINDOWS\system32\” directory on a Windows 2003 server.  Running this file installed everything I wanted in the correct location (now wasn’t that easy?).