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Zune MarketPlace Video content pricing

This is a repost of my experience previously left on the Zune forums: 

http://forums.zune.net/546768/ShowPost.aspx#546768

I would encourage Microsoft to review the pricing of their content when compared to the market. For example, I looked at Fringe Season 1. I found the following pricing on the Zune Markeplace, Amazon and Best Buy. 

Zune MarketPlace	Amazon	Best Buy
HD $57.00	Blu-ray  $47.99	$59.99
SD $42.50	DVD $44.99	$44.99

The Zune Marketplace content is about equal to or higher than buying the physical media at either Amazon or Best Buy. The way I see it is even though the Zune MarketPlace content is easier and faster to receive than buying the physical media it comes at some potential risks. These risks include download/streaming issues, limited number of downloads, usage rights issues when watching on multiple devices (xboxs, PCs, Zunes), or the publisher pulling the content. If you weigh these risks to owning the physical media, I fell owning the physical media is a much better value. To overcome these risks, I believe the Zune MarketPlace pricing should be lowered to encourage customers to try the new digital format and then Microsoft should back that up with a rock solid experience.

Zune Marketplace – Failed Download, Unable to Purchase Song

This is a repost of my experience previously left on the Zune forums:  http://forums.zune.net/546428/ShowPost.aspx#546428

I have a song that I tried to purchase with Zune Pass credits on 10.25.09 that failed to download to my collection.  It shows up in my purchase history and now I’m unable to download the song again.  Yes, I used up one of my Zune Pass credits on 10.25.09, but didn’t make a big deal about it then.  I still do want to download the song as an mp3, but I get the following error on the “Confirm” screen when trying to buy the song,

“You’ve exhausted the number of times you can restore this item”

So, I called Zune support so they could fix their system to allow me to redownload the file.  The reference number for the case is 1117438064.  After being on the phone for 25 minutes describing the issue four times, giving them my contact information twice and being on hold twice, the Zune support solution is to give me a zune pass credit for the failed download on 10.25.09.  As for the song that I still want to purchase they said that I should just download a different song since the one that I want will not work.  When I explained that they did not fix my issue, I was told to try again in 24 hours.

I have to say when the Zune Marketplace messes up it gets real ugly and full resolution is unlikely.   This leads to a poor customer experience and negative goodwill.

Zune Marketplace DRM Problems

After reading about others having problems with their DRM content purchased from the Zune Marketplace after upgrading their PC, I thought I would re-post my experience previously left on the Zune forums.

http://forums.zune.net/511136/ShowPost.aspx

09-07-2009, 9:24 PM

This item is no longer available at Zune Marketplace – Error Code: C00D27E1

I just reformatted my PC and installed Windows 7 today (legal version from TechNet). I made sure before doing so that all my Zune content was backed up. After re-installing the Zune software and copying all of my music content back to my PC, I got the error message C00D27E1 on 12 tracks and 2 albums.

CAN’T PLAY

Summary:
This item is no longer available at Zune Marketplace. Because of this, you can no longer play it or sync it with your Zune. There might be another iteration of it available in Zune Marketplace.

Eroor Code:
C00D27E1

This is due to the content being removed from the Zune MarketPlace. Some of the content has been changed to MP3 and some of the content has just been deleted from the site.

I called Zune Support and opened a case. Case # 1111497222.

The resolution to the case by Zune Support was to say they are sorry and that I should have burned all of my protected content to CD and re-ripped it. They said that burning to CD was the only true way to backup the content. So, Microsoft’s policy is to burn everything to CD. That doesn’t make sense since we own Zune devices that play the content. Who wants to use CDs. Besides, who wants to retype all the meta data on the re-ripped CDs.

I suggested that Microsoft’s policy should be to either issue credit (Microsoft Points) or allow the download of the MP3 versions of the songs. Apple iTunes automatically notifies their customers that MP3 versions are available and gives them the option to convert their content for a minimal price. Come on Microsoft, you can do the same.

If the content has been removed from Zune MarketPlace I can understand why the content can not be purchased anymore. But, why is it hard to re-issue licenses for content that has already been purchased and downloaded. This is the real flaw in the Zune MarketPlace design or licensing arrangements with the music companies. If I own the song then I should have rights to the song and technology should not stand in the way.

Also does Microsoft not understand that people change PCs frequently. I typically reload the OS on my PC or get a new one every year. So this issue will be a problem every year for me. Is it good use of Microsoft resources to spend over an hour on the phone with each customer that has this problem to go over each and every song purchased and what the error code is? I don’t think so.

As the months and years go on all the protected content that I’ve purchased at the Zune MarketPlace will slowly disappear. I am very dissatisfied with the resolution to this case. Microsoft management needs to come up with a better answer to this issue.

I for one will not purchase anymore protected content (music, videos, movies or whatever) from the Zune MarketPlace and will make it a pratice for my XBOX video purchases as well.

Convert Global Groups to Universal Groups after implementing Exchange 2007

We’re in the process of implementing Exchange 2007 and we had a problem just show up even after testing in our lab environment.  We were seeing emails sent to global distribution groups that were just disappearing and it was not consistent.

After digging into message tracking for a couple test emails sent to distribution groups, we discovered that the Exchange 2007 server was trying to contact our “root” domain controllers for the global catalog which is in a different domain than the Exchange 2007 server.

“… in multiple-domain environments if the membership of these groups is not replicated to global catalog servers, messages may disappear.”

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/283051

 

“With Global groups, the group will replicate to all GC’s in the forest, but the group membership will only replicate to the local DC’s.  So, if for some reason Exchange can’t contact the local GC you will see this issue.”

http://blogs.technet.com/sfodel/archive/2008/08/04/need-to-convert-global-groups-to-universal-groups.aspx

 

Since my site in Active Directory Sites and Services have both root and child domain controllers in it, I had to convert my Global Distribution Groups to Universal Groups.

 

“MailEnabledNonUniversalGroup: Domain Local or Global, Security or Global, Distribution Group that can receive mail, which are created in Exchange 2000/2003. It is recommended to convert any groups of this type to Universal groups to prevent member expansion problems in multi-domain environments.”

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/09/18/428950.aspx

 

Another fix could be to bust up my Active Directory sites and put root and child DCs in separate sites to prevent Exchange 2007 from looking at non-local Global Catalogs.

It’s funny the issues that show up after starting implementation even with lab testing.

DFSR Event ID:5014 Error:1726

For the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to successfully replicate 100GB of data using Windows Server 2008 DFSR from our corporate office site to our branch site for disaster recovery purposes.   The initial replication will work for a while and then I get the following 5014 error repeatedly in the event log.

Restarting the DFSR service would jump start replication for a while, but it would hang up again. 

I found the following Microsoft KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948496 that seems to help  with the root cause being a networking issue with TCP Offload on my Broadcom BCM5708C NetXtreme II GigE network adapter.  Review the options under workaround in the KB article.

Windows Virtual PC Beta on Windows 7

Windows 7 RC was released today on TechNet and MSDN along with Windows Virtual PC Beta for Windows 7.  As soon as I started messing around with Virtual PC, I ran into a problem with an error message that said hardware assisted virtualization was not enabled.

This is a known issue  with Windows Virtual PC Beta as described in the release notes:

“On computers that have an Intel® processor with Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) enabled in the BIOS, you may encounter an error message when starting a virtual machine, stating that hardware assisted virtualization (HAV) is not enabled, even though the HAV setting is actually ON in the BIOS.

Possible Workaround: Try turning off the TXT setting in the BIOS of the computer.“

The system that I’m using is a Dell Optiplex 755 with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.00Ghz processor which does have the Intel VT technology.

To fix this issue, I booted the computer and pressed F2 to enter the BIOS.

In the BIOS I verified the following settings:

• Security – Execute Disable (set to On)
• Performance – Virtualization (set to On)
• Performance – VT for Direct I/O Access (set to On)
• Performance – Trusted Execution (set to Off)

In my case Trusted Execution option was turned ON.  So, I turned it OFF, Saved the BIOS settings and restarted the PC.

Windows Virtual PC Beta works like a champ now!

NTFS Rights Issue with UAC, logged on with Domain Admin Account

Error: “You don’t currently have permission to access this folder.  Click Continue to get access to this folder.”

If you click continue the currently logged in user id will be granted security permissions to the folder.  This is not a good idea and the folder permissions will get messy quick if very many domain admin accounts are accessing the folders on the server.  So, what is really going on?

Here’s how to recreate the issue:

1. Create a new account in Active Directory and add it to the Domain Admins security group.
2. Create a Windows Server 2008 server and join it to the domain.
3. By default the Domain Admins security group is added to the local Administrators group when the server is added to the domain.
4. User Account Control (UAC) must be left enabled.
5. Login to the server with the account created in step 1 (Not the default built-in Administrator account for the domain).
6. Create a new folder on the hard drive.
7. Edit the security permissions by removing inheritable permissions from the parent object and adding the local Administrators group and SYSTEM giving them Full Control permission.
8. When trying to access the folder an error will display that says you do not have permission to access this folder.
9. Click Cancel.  If the Continue button is clicked the currently logged in user id will be granted security permissions to the folder, which will gain access to the folder, but will cause folder permissions to get messy.
10. There is NOT an option to elevate privilege to gain access to the folder with the rights that were granted in step 7 which should be sufficient (i.e. full control).

This issue is the result of User Account Control (UAC).  UAC is the feature in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 that is designed to apply the principle of least privilege.

If UAC is turned OFF this issue goes away.   Also, if you login with the built-in Administrator account for the domain the issue also goes away.

After digging into UAC a little further, I found that by default UAC applies to all interactive users with the exception of the built-in administrator account.  This is because the group policy Admin Approval mode is on for the built-in administrator account is disabled by default which means the built-in administrator account will logon in XP compatible mode and run all application by default with full administrator privilege with out a filtered access token.  This would seem to explain why the built-in administrator is not affected by the issue created by having UAC turned ON.

Note: If the group policy Admin Approval mode is on for the built-in administrator account is enabled this issue also effects the built-in administrator account in the same way.

All other admin accounts are subject to UAC and the filtered access token.  The group policy Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode is set to Prompt for Consent by default.  There is not a policy to disable Admin Approval mode for non-built-in administrator accounts.

Check out the Security Policy Settings and User Account Control blog post for more details.

At this point it looks like there are two choices to get around this issue:

1) Leave UAC turn ON and use the built-in Administrator account for the domain and let everyone share the same account which is a bad security practice or

2) Turn UAC OFF and use any user account that is a member of the domain administrators group.  This might not be a bad idea since UAC is really a client feature anyway.

I would consider this issue a bug.  Hopefully, Microsoft will come out with a fix that will allow UAC to be left enabled.

Hyper-V RC1 Hypervisor Failed to Start

There is a known problem in Hyper-V RC1 in which after you upgrade a perfectly working RC0 server the Hypervisor will not start.

You will see the following error in the event log:

Source: Hyper-V Hypervisor

Event ID: 48

“Hyper-V launch failed; Processor 0×4 does not provide the features necessary to run Hyper-V (leaf 0×80000008, register 0×0: features needed 0×24, features supported 0×26).”

Hyper-V RC1 apparently has issues with my processors which are Intel Quad Core Xeon 2.33Ghz E5345.  This server did have an additional processor added after it was purchased.  Both processors are E5345, but Dell OpenManage Server Administrator is reporting one processor as Model 15 Stepping 7 and the other one as Model 15 Stepping 11.

John Howard, Microsoft Senior Program Manager on the Hyper-V Team reported on his blog the following:

“Yes, we are aware of a bug in RC1 which affects the Hypervisor from launching correctly on a small number machines. The class of machine is where there is more than one physical socket containing processors, and the processors are reporting mismatching capabilities. However, that fix will not be available until a future release.”

There is a temporary solution that will allow Hypervisor to start after a reboot.   

1. Open MSCONFIG
2. Select the Boot tab and click Advanced Options.
3. Select the Number of Processors check box and set the number of processors to 4.
4. Click OK twice.
5. Click Restart.

The bad news is that I’m losing the benefit of one of my processors, but at least Hyper-V is functional.  I’ll have to remember to set the processors back after Hyper-V RTM has come out.

Digital Cable Tuner Resources

CableCARD™ and Digital Cable FAQ

Digital Cable Tuner Setup for Windows Media Center in Windows Vista – A Set-by-Step Guide for Professional Technicians (pdf)

Dell XPS Desktop Forum

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