• Supported Operating Systems: Linux; Solaris; Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2
• Java Development Kit: 1.4 or later
• SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2000

Grab a copy of the EULA for the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 JDBC Driver

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor analyzes instances of SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 in preparation for upgrading to SQL Server 2005. Upgrade Advisor identifies feature and configuration changes that might affect your upgrade, and it provides links to documentation that describes each identified issue and how to resolve it.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4; Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 2
• The Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0. This is the same version of the .NET Framework that is included with
• SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.
• SQL Server 2000 Decision Support Objects (DSO) if you are analyzing Analysis Services. You can install DSO from SQL Server 2000 Setup.
• SQL Server 2000 client components if you are analyzing Data Transformation Services. You can install the client components from SQL Server 2000 Setup.
• Pentium III-compatible processor or higher, with a processor speed of at least 500 MHz.
  15 MB of available hard disk space.

Additional Information

Download IIS Diagnostic Toolkit 

Windows "Monad" Shell Beta 3 (for .NET Framework 2.0 RTM) x86 Windows

Windows "Monad" Shell Beta 3 (for .NET Framework 2.0 RTM) x64 Windows

"Monad" Shell is a new interactive command-line and task-based scripting technology in Windows that enables administrators to more efficiently and securely automate and control system management tasks on both desktops and servers.

Windows "Monad" Shell Beta 3 Documentation Pack

Documentation on the Windows "Monad" Shell, including the "Getting Started" guide and the Hands-On Labs from PDC05.

 

Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for setup and shell-integration related functionality.

This is definitely a welcome move from Microsoft. They have done this before wherein anybody can just go to their website fill out a form and a CD containing patches & updates for a certain time will be shipped to you. IMHO they should continue to do this on a monthly basis. Every patch Tuesday perhaps? They could probably add the option somewhere saying "Download ISO Image of all patches for this month". What I would want to see is to have a more customizeable feature like... "Select Language" > "Select Release Date" > "Select Operating Systems" > "Select Microsoft Products" > "Download as Image or Download one by one". Now, wouldn't that be neat?

I know some of you will say "Why not use WSUS (Windows Software Update Services) instead. WSUS is a good solution only if you have a server running WSUS ;-). Since there are still some organizations that are still on a workgroup/peer-to-peer setup WSUS is not for everyone.

This development will benefit those who have several systems without servers and those that are not directly connected to the internet. One can just grab the image burn it on a CD then probably pass the CD around ;-)

This ISO-9660 CD image file contains all security and critical updates for Windows released on Windows Update on January 10th, 2006. When the say all... they meant 2. I wonder why the 3rd patch  Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-003 - Vulnerability in TNEF Decoding in Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Could Allow Remote Code Execution (902412) wasn't included in this release.

Anyway here are the nitty gritty details about the release...

Details about the ISO Image:

Quick Details File Name: Windows-KB913086-200601-1.iso

Version: 913086

Date Published: 1/10/2006

Language: English

Download Size: 98.7 MB

Estimated Download Time: 4 hr 1 min 56K

This ISO-9660 CD image file contains all security and critical updates for Windows released on Windows Update on January 5th and January 10th, 2006. This does not contain security updates for other Microsoft products. This CD image is intended for corporate administrators who manage large multinational organizations, who need to download multiple individual language versions of each security update, and who do not use an automated solution such as WSUS. Use this image to download multiple updates in all languages at the same time. Caution: Be sure to check the individual security bulletins at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security prior to deployment of these updates to ensure that the files have not been updated at a later date.

This CD image contains the following updates:

KB912919 (MS06-001) - Vulnerability in Graphics Rendering Engine Could Allow Remote Code Execution (912919)

Windows Server 2003 (32-bit x86) - 18 languages
Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition - 2 languages
Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems - 4 languages
Windows XP - 24 languages
Windows XP x64 Edition - 2 languages
Windows 2000 - 25 languages

 
KB908519 (MS06-002) - Vulnerability in Embedded Web Fonts Could Allow Remote Code Execution (908519)

Windows Server 2003 (32-bit x86) - 18 languages
Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition - 2 languages
Windows Server 2003 for Itanium-based Systems - 4 languages
Windows XP - 24 languages
Windows XP x64 Edition - 2 languages
Windows 2000 - 25 languages

Grab a copy of the January 2006 Security and Critical Releases ISO Image

SQL Server 2005 June CTP. Microsoft released the first public CTP for SQL Server 2005. The SQL Server 2005 June CTP is feature complete, and Microsoft encourages you to download this version as a great start your evaluation of the product. 

SQL Server 2005 benchmarks. Microsoft also announced the first TPC benchmark results for SQL Server 2005 with HP, NEC Corp. and Bull. These companies are leading the way in demonstrating the performance that SQL Server 2005 will provide. Although the tests were conducted using early builds of SQL Server 2005, the results are indicative of the scalability and cost effectiveness you can expect to experience with SQL Server 2005. In three TPC-H benchmarks, SQL Server 2005 had up to 162 percent higher performance than SQL Server 2000 and 38 percent higher performance than Oracle's best result on a 16-processor Intel® Itanium® 2 server at a cost that is 20 percent less per query. In addition, HP also posted a TPC-C result on SQL Server 2005 that is the highest TPC-C result ever for Windows, beating the one million transaction-per-minute mark. The result had 7 percent better performance and cost 37 percent less per transaction than Oracle's best result on a 64-processor Intel® Itanium® 2 server. The benchmark information is available at http://www.tpc.org/.

More info @ Microsoft

This is one of those tools no one should be living without:

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you’ll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you’ll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

What's new in Version 8.60:

• Multi-row tabs on process properties dialog
• Image signing verification on process image properties dialog
• Mini-CPU usage graph on toolbar
• Command-line option for specifying Process Explorer priority
• Manual refresh (F5) forces recheck of job and .NET process status
• Single-clicking on tray icon minimizes and restores main window

Did I mention that you can get all those features for free?

267 KB Download @ Source