A high-level overview of design changes that were made to the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems, why the design changes were made, the implications of the changes, and how to revert to the previous default settings.
Guide to Windows Server 2003 Changes in Default Behavior
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Its good to see they have released this sort of documenation, 22 years of software engineering and this is the first step.
Too bad most of the changes made in Win2k3 will not be documented, and will be fixed in future service packs, and this document will not be updated either.
I also find it comical that this document is in MS Word format. I was expecting a PDF, because the rest of the world uses PDF’s to exchange information freely, but I guess if you have a Win2k3 server, you also have Office installed as well.
For those without MS Office there is Word Viewer. I use the MS Viewers to read xls, doc and ppt files (much better interpretation than OOo, Abiword and GP3), as I don’t own Office. Same thing as the PDF Viewer.
It’s sad when one of your top 3 features is the ability to revert back to the older features so you don’t have to use the new ones. Progress.
Eugenia: How nice, I guess the rest of the world uses Windows? Because Word Viewer only works with Windows. Does Microsoft offer a way for people who don’t own Windows to read their Word documents?
http://office.microsoft.com/downloads/2000/wd97vwr32.aspx
“Filename wd97vwr32.exe”
Wow, two posts in a row, I’m feeling cynical today.
On the other hand, people who don’t use any Microsoft products anymore probably couldn’t possibly care less about the ‘advancements’ of the latest Windows version
But it shows again that Microsoft is doing absolutely no effort to be compatible with other platforms. They’re even doing the opposite to forcibly make other platforms incompatible with them.
Anyway, Eugenia, maybe a summary of the text would be nice for those of us without MS Word or Windows
Or is there an EULA that doesn’t allow this? 
It’s sad when one of your top 3 features is the ability to revert back to the older features so you don’t have to use the new ones.
In “real world” environments, the ability to rollback changes is very, very important.
When your fancy new version of $SOFTWARE locks out ten thousand users, the ability to rollback to something known to work is what we refer to as a “career saver”.
Actually, many people who dont use windows at all are likely still interested in the changes made. I hate windows. I dont use windows. I dont like microsoft. However, I am fascinated with operating systems and I’m damned curious to see what the fuss is about. I dont feel like installing openoffice which apparently sucks at interpreting the format anyways, downloading the file, and opening it. That’s far too much work to just satisfy my curiousity. If it was in PDF at least i could just click and have the PDF opened inside my browser as if it were a page on the site… but even then it would make much more sense to just have this documentation online in some variant of markup language.
Here it is in html
http://users.adelphia.net/~geek/DeltaDCR-merged.htm
>> How nice, I guess the rest of the world uses Windows? Because Word Viewer only works with Windows.<<
It also works perfectly with Linux if Wine is installed. Now get off your high horse. Do you seriously expect MS to produce a document in a format other than it’s own? Moron.
@ Anonymous (IP: —.darmstadt.army.mil)
You can open and view any Microsoft Office document with OpenOffice. And the best part about OpenOffice — it’s available for Windows, Linux, Solaris and MacOS X. And if you can get it to compile, it’s available on even more operating systems too.
How come everyone seems to be having problems viewing Miscrosft Word Documents with Openofffice or KOffice?
I mean downloaded the file and viewed it with OO and KOffice without any problems. In fact, there is no difference between how it would have appeared on a Microsoft Word template. *shrugs*
Perhaps I should be asking what versions of the apps you are using? If you are using older versions, update to the latest versions.
Maybe some of us aren’t using OpenOffice or KOffice because they don’t want to use such big, bloated programs?
Really, if you want to make a document available to a large group of readers, use PDF or Postscript. Well, better PDF, because otherwise the Windows crowd will start complaining
But then again, we of course can’t expect Microsoft to do that. Or am I the only one who’s wondering why there still is no native Postscript support in Windows…
Maybe some of us aren’t using OpenOffice or KOffice because they don’t want to use such big, bloated programs?
KOffice itself is not bloated at all, it’s one of the leanest, cleanest office suites I’ve ever seen, a little feature lacking for my tastes though.
Besides AbiWord opens Word documents decently, and anyway, even if the format is badly corrupted, the actual text should remain intact, such that you can then proceed to save the file as a text file and then view that.
I think people just want a reason to B*tch about MS, or they’re just too damn lazy to try some basic things.
And non-Windows users would be interested in this document?
Heh. I can see the amount of Slashdot Linux sysadmins downloading that document if it was in PDF-format. Not.
That document crashes my AbiWord 1.0.5 everytime, although OOWriter works. Maybe it should be submitted to the abiword bugs area as a test document.
With all this talk about viewing Word files, I think it’s important to note that lots of documents on microsoft.com are in Word format when they could simply be in HTML. Talk about not conforming to standards! This document in particular has no need for any formatting. It’s mostly one long table. I can understand using a “word processing” format like PDF or *ugh* Word when formatting is important. But if they’re just listing something on the web they should just be showing HTML. That’s reason 1,000,001 why I hate microsoft. See http://msversus.webhop.net/ for the other million