About: Kurt Dillard
Website: http://www.kurtdillard.com
Profile: Kurt recently left Microsoft after many years of helping the company to develop and implement network security best practices in order to relocate his family to Corrientes, Argentina. He continues to write books, articles, and other documents on the challenges of information security for a variety of organizations including Microsoft and the U.S. Federal Government. He has collaborated on many of the solutions published by Microsoft such as "Windows Server 2008 Security Guide," "Windows 7 Security Guide," and "Security Compliance Management Toolkit." He has also co-authored several books on computer software and operating systems and served as technical editor for many other titles. He has experience as a system administrator, architect, and consultant focused on Microsoft technologies where he specialized in the design and deployment of secure, scalable systems. Kurt has presented at numerous conferences including RSA, TechEd, Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, and Microsoft Federal Security Summit. Current industry certifications include CISSP, ISSAP, CISM, MCITP: EA and MCSE + Security.
Posts by Kurt Dillard:
Microsoft offers several no-cost tools for burning DVDs and CDs. For example, if you insert a blank, writable disc AutoPlay will display a menu with options for burning audio or data discs. Windows Media Player can also be used for burning discs, click the Burn tab on the right as shown in the image below. Then drag audio or video files from the center pane to the list on the right. Click Start burn to burn the disc.
After the jump, more CD and DVD burning tools, including Movie Maker and ways to burn ISOs.
Ever have a friend ask you to help them repair their computer only to find that its so bloated with malware that you think they should just nuke the site from orbit? Some recent malware can be quite difficult to remove. In these sorts of situations you might try an alternative approach: boot from a CD-ROM or DVD and run the repair tools while the virus-laden operating system (OS) is offline. There are other recovery tasks most easily performed while the OS is offline, but I spend more time helping people with malware than doing anything else for them.
How to create a bootable disc? You could do it with Linux, but then you’d have to learn another OS, I prefer to stick with Windows. Besides, there are a lot of useful tools already available for Windows. You may have heard of the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE or simply PE) that has been available to computer vendors for years. Microsoft made it available to everyone a few years ago, and I’ve found it to be extremely useful. There are several ways to create a customized Windows PE disc, the simplest approach is to use the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) that some colleagues of mine in the Solutions Accelerators Team (SAT) at Microsoft created. You’ll need several gigs of storage space to download and use everything described below, make sure you have enough room before you start!
Ever have trouble remembering where to find specific Control Panel applets? How about the one for configuring Windows Defender in Windows 7? Its not on the Start menu. By default its not visible in Control Panel either. There are two ways you can get to those hidden or misplaced applets: