At long last Microsoft has finally released the Vista replacement for the Admin Pack tools. So far so good on my 32 bit Vista Enterprise machine. You still don’t get the Exchange related tabs in AD Users & Computers though. I think those are gone forever now. At least I no longer have to switch to my XP machine or remote desktop to a server just to check a DHCP lease.

The download page for this requires the Windows Genuine Advantage validation. Interestingly, I could get neither the IE ActiveX control method nor the download-based "alternate validation method" to work on my Vista computer. It worked just fine on my XP machine though.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en
...or just search on KB941314.

Note: once you install this, you have to go into

Control Panel -> Programs & Features -> Turn Windows Features on or off

in order to make the tools appear in your Vista Start Menu.

 

Curious what this tool will do? I'm downloading it now...

 

It's basically the same administrative tools found in the adminpak.msi file for Windows XP and Server 2003, except these will actually install and work on Windows Vista machines. If you don't do IT work in a Windows domain environment, these probably won't be of any use to you.

 

the old admin pack works on Vista.. you just had to register a bunch of DLL's

 

The Exchange part didn't work on XP either. You actually needed to install the Exchange Admin tools from the Exchange CD.

 

Yeah, but it was a half assed work-around. Even the tools that did work had missing icons and so forth. IIRC, there were also a few that M$ said "don't touch" on Vista.

I know. The thing is though, the Exchange 2003 Admin tools either won't install or don't work on Vista. I can't recall the specifics at the moment. Essentially, E2K3 admin tools + Vista = Fail .