Prepared for Windows Service Packs.

New Microsoft OS Service Packs these days means tighter security. And hey! That’s good! Don’t you think?

But the new default settings can always get you in trouble. It’s not fun when your software no longer works after the customer downloaded the latest windows service pack. So make sure that you are prepared. I think it’s great with improved security, but I’m not always to happy with the documentation for their changes.

Windows 2003 SP1 RC is ready for download and has been for some time.

The changes you saw on WinXPSP2 are now implemented on the server side (and other changes as well). But the default settings are not the same as on XPSP2. Things like the RestrictRemoteClients policy is at a level that will not change the default settings like it did on XPSP2.

The have a new policy: “Restrict anonymous access to named pipes and shares”. This one is enabled by default on the Release candidate of SP1. If you use some anonymous access (in some remote callbacks or something) you will have to set this one to disabled. As on XPSP2 they have introduced the option to set a limit to DCOM security on machine level.