After installing the RC0 of the IIS7 FTP service on Server 2008, I had some local Windows Firewall issues.

Abstract
This post is the first one from the mini-series on firewall configuration for FTP7 (full product name: Microsoft FTP Publishing Service for IIS 7.0). The goal of this post if to provide instructions on how to setup local Windows Firewall to enable access to FTP over non-secure or secure connections. This post does NOT address IP address translation related issues and other issues that apply when there is an external firewall (such as ISA server) between client and server.

Background
It is often a challenge to setup firewall rules for FTP server to work correctly. The root cause for this challenge lies in the FTP protocol architecture.
Each FTP client requires 2 connections to be maintained between client and server.
FTP commands are transferred over connection called control channel. That is the one that typically connects to well known FTP port 21.
Any data transfer, such as directory listing, upload and download happen on secondary connection called data channel.

To open port 21 on firewall is an easy task. But having port 21 opened ONLY means that clients will be able to connect to FTP server, authenticate successfully, create, delete directories but will NOT be able to see directory listings or be able to upload/download files. It is because data connections for FTP server are not allowed to pass through the firewall.

Many firewalls simplify the challenge with data connections by scanning FTP traffic and dynamically allowing data connections through. Some firewalls enable such filters by default but it is not always the case. These firewall filters are able to detect what ports are going to be used for data transfers and temporarily open them on firewall so that clients can open data connections. Windows Firewall has such filter. It is called StatefulFtp.

Guide

http://blogs.iis.net/jaroslad/archive/2007/09/29/windows-firewall-setup-for-microsoft-ftp-publishing-service-for-iis-7-0.aspx

I've also created a PDF, here.  3 pages, nicely formatted for printing.

doPDF installs itself as a virtual PDF printer driver so after a successful installation will appear in your Printers and Faxes list. To convert to PDF, you just have to print the document to the doPDF free pdf converter. Open a document (with Microsoft Word, WordPad, NotePad or any other software), choose Print and select doPDF. It will ask you where to save the PDF file and when finished, the PDF file will be automatically opened in your default PDF viewer.

http://www.dopdf.com/
Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista (32 and 64-bit)

Download: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/doPDF/1171636577/1

I had blogged about this a few months back: http://blog.justinho.com/2007/08/10/JunkInThePreload.aspx

But it seems like someone's gone to the trouble of making them look silly as well.

December 12, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Nearly two-dozen different laptop models sold by Hewlett-Packard Co. ship with software plagued with multiple zero-day vulnerabilities, security researchers said today.

The bugs are in an ActiveX control included with the HP Info Center software preinstalled on both HP- and Compaq-branded laptops running Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003 and Vista, Symantec Corp. said in a note to clients of its DeepSight threat network. Info Center is a part of HP's Quick Launch Buttons application, which gives users one-click access to information and configuration details on the portables.

"One of its ActiveX controls deployed by default by the vendor has three insecure methods that allow a malicious person to target the HP notebook machines for a remote code execution- and remote registry manipulation-based attacks," said a researcher using the alias "porkythepig" in posts to both milw0rm.com and the Bugtraq security mailing list.

Affected: HP 510 and 530; the Compaq 2710, 2510, 6120, 6220, 6230, 6325, 6510, 6715, 6910, 7300, 8220, 8230, 8440, 8510, 8710 and 9440; and the NC, NW and NX series notebooks.

More: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9052758&source=rss_news10

Have a WD2500SD-01KCB0 drive hooked up to an Adaptec HostRAID SATA2 1420 controller.  Drive is still in warranty.

Log Name:      System
Source:        disk
Event ID:      11
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
Description:
The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\DR2.

Log Name:      System
Source:        aar81xx
Event ID:      15
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
Description:
The device, \Device\Scsi\aar81xx1, is not ready for access yet.

Replaced cable and put another drive in this system.  Put drive into another machine, and running diagnostics now.  SMART tests are fine... but when are they not? =)

More later...

I filed a bug a few weeks ago about a problem with Vista SP1.  The beta code caused a "black screen with mouse cursor" when the display driver came out of standby or hibernation.  The fix made it into the codebase yesterday, apparently, so the RC1 release has this problem.

Any time you resume from hibernation or standby with a multi-display configuration, or connect via TS/RDP (which causes a display driver resolution change) this appears to happen.  Starting/closing Media Center fullscreen is also a trigger for this problem.

Time to wait for the next build to show up on Connect...