Anything about IT

On march 4th Microsoft communicated on their Office 2010 Engineering blog that they are on Schedule with Office 2010 and will release it to manufacturing next month. For Enterprise customers Office 2010 will be available as of May 12th, consumers will get Office 2010 in June.

Microsoft Office 2010 Site

Planning, configuration, deployment and compatibility guides can be found here

Microsoft Office ONRAMP Site

Office OnRamp is the BPIO execution package that launches Office 2010 to the Enterprise business. Office OnRamp helps you drive the conversations you need to have with TDMs, ITPros and end users to renew EAs, drive Office 2010 deployment and win new EA business. OnRamp provides a complete set of orchestrated activities and marketing materials that give you the tools you need to demonstrate the value of Office 2010 in the BPIO framework and WIN!

Office OnRamp for TDMs:
Office 2010 Brochure for TDMs
Office 2010 TDM Pitch Deck for Office OnRamp
Office 2010 Client and Server Integration Whitepaper
Office 2010 Client and Server Integration Customer Ready Deck
Top New Capabilities for TDMs in Office 2010
Office 2010 End User and TDM Value Prop

Office OnRamp for IT Pros
Overview of 2010 for IT Pros
Tools for Planning Office 2010 Deployment
Security & Compliance
Application Compatibility for Office 2010
Office 2010 Deployment Considerations
Volume Activation for Office 2010
Web App Architecture & Deployment for Office 2010

I’ve spend about 2 hours tonight getting SQL Server 2008 Express installed on a Windows Server 2008 system…….. Launched the installation package, it started extracting it’s content, it made an attempt to launch the embedded setup.exe and then…..Nothing.

The temporary folder that holds the extracted installation files got deleted and all that was left was the below error log.

03/09/2010 23:22:48.079 ======================================================================
03/09/2010 23:22:48.235 Setup launched
03/09/2010 23:22:48.282 Attempting to determine media source
03/09/2010 23:22:48.329 Media source value not specified on command line argument.
03/09/2010 23:22:48.360 Setup is launched from media directly so default the value to the current folder.
03/09/2010 23:22:48.407 Media source: c:\3c583b87cb85226328b6ae0c9d\
03/09/2010 23:22:48.454 Attempt to determine media layout based on file ‘c:\3c583b87cb85226328b6ae0c9d\mediainfo.xml’.
03/09/2010 23:22:49.454 The folder ‘c:\3c583b87cb85226328b6ae0c9d\’ does not contain a valid media info file ‘mediainfo.xml’.
03/09/2010 23:22:49.517 Setup closed with exit code: 0×84C4001E
03/09/2010 23:22:49.579 ======================================================================

Solution !

I had to find out that for whatever reason the “Format” within the Regional Settings was not set to English. After setting this to English the installation executed and completed successfully.

If you ever experience an issue where clients don’t get correct IP addresses or your PXE Service might not work or respond, then before knocking on the Network guy’s door, you might want to run the RogueChecker utility. The RogueChecker utility is a nice little FREE tool that can help detecting rogue (misconfigured or unauthorized) DHCP servers in your network.

To get the tool reporting a rogue server I enabled both the Microsoft DHCP server and the integrated DHCP Service on our Wireless Access point. 

The tool provides the following features:

• The tool can be run one time or can be scheduled to run at specified interval.
• Can be run on a specified interface by selecting one of the discovered interfaces.
• Retrieves all the authorized DHCP servers in the forest and displays them.
• Ability to validate (not Authorize in AD) a DHCP server which is not rogue and persist this information
• Minimize the tool, which makes it invisible. A tray icon will be present which would display the status.

The tool can be downloaded from the Microsoft Windows DHCP Team Blog.

Often people think that App-V is is an Application Compatibility Solution, it’s not. Chris Jackson has written an excellent article where he explains this in detail. Read the entire article here

Last Friday I met with some friends I used to work with in the past and we had some talk about Windows 7 and IPv6. One had mentioned that they would explicitly disable the IPv6 on the client systems, this because they would not use it and they wanted to avoid unnecessary network traffic on their LAN/WAN.

Back home I did some searches on the internet and found the below statement in the Support for IPv6 in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 Microsoft TechNet Magazine article.

It is unfortunate that some organizations disable IPv6 on their computers running Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, where it is installed and enabled by default. Many disable IPv6-based on the assumption that they are not running any applications or services that use it. Others might disable it because of a misperception that having both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled effectively doubles their DNS and Web traffic. This is not true.

From Microsoft’s perspective, IPv6 is a mandatory part of the Windows operating system and it is enabled and included in standard Windows service and application testing during the operating system development process. Because Windows was designed specifically with IPv6 present, Microsoft does not perform any testing to determine the effects of disabling IPv6. If IPv6 is disabled on Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, or later versions, some components will not function. Moreover, applications that you might not think are using IPv6—such as Remote Assistance, HomeGroup, DirectAccess, and Windows Mail—could be.

Therefore, Microsoft recommends that you leave IPv6 enabled, even if you do not have an IPv6-enabled network, either native or tunneled. By leaving IPv6 enabled, you do not disable IPv6-only applications and services (for example, HomeGroup in Windows 7 and DirectAccess in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are IPv6-only) and your hosts can take advantage of IPv6-enhanced connectivity.

I must admit that I haven’t looked at this in more detail myself, but for now I guess I would follow the advice above and leave IPv6 on, especially taking into account that some of our customers are considering using DirectAccess at some stage.

Another interesting article I recommend reading is IPv6 Autoconfiguration in Windows Vista which explains the IPv6 Autoconfiguration behavior in more detail.

Just found a nice Visio Stencil for App-V on Kirx.org. Well done ! Get the stencil from kirx.org

I got a bit confused by all the different SQL Server 2008 Express downloads that exist, so spend a little time in getting some insight. If you want to download SQL Server 2008 Express you have the following options:

Then I recommend reading the following blog posts. What’s up with SQL Server 2008 Express editions provides an overview of the supported feature of each distribution. The SQL Express 2008 family is getting bigger gives a good insight what the different installation packages do contain.

If you’re planning on deploying App-V, but still busy with thinking of how you will get the virtualized applications to your end users I strongly recommend that you read the whitepaper “Choosing the right App-V Delivery Model” from Ment van der Plas.

The document provides an excellent overview of the different App-V delivery scenarios and their pros and cons.

Looks like the statement “SMS 2003 does not support Windows 7” isn’t valid anymore. Through an internal e-mail I learned that Microsoft has released a Compatibility Pack for SMS 2003 that adds Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 as supported clients. However don’t get too excited, if you want to benefit from OS deployment features, you still need SCCM 2007. Also note that that Mainstream support for SMS 2003 ended on January 12,2010.

During the past weeks we have seen quite some messages about the MS10-015 security update which can cause bluescreens after being installed. According to a recent post on the Microsoft Security Response Center blog there is a revised installation package for MS10-015 that prevents the update from installing if abnormal conditions exist such as an infection of a computer virus as the Alureon rootkit. More details about the updated MS10-015 security update can be found here

In addition Microsoft today also released the Kernel Update Compatibility Assessment Tool that allows systems administrators who are concerned about deploying MS10-015 throughout their enterprise to perform an upfront assessment to identify clients that could have a compatibility issue with MS10-015.

Beside the Compatibility Tool mpsyschk.exe itself Microsoft has also added a sample batch file that could be added to a corporate logon or startup script. The script executes mpsyschk.exe and reports the status into a log file that can be stored on a central share. In a very large environment you also want to consider to write the status into a local log file and collect the results through a custom inventory on your Systems Management system.

If you plan to use the Microsoft App-V Stand-Alone Mode some Registry Settings are required for the Application Virtualization Client as described in detail on this App-V site here. But instead of setting these registry keys manually or through a custom script, you can also manage these settings through Group Policy.

First download the Microsoft Application Virtualization Administrative Template (ADM Template). The ADM Template provides configuration options for the App-V 4.5/4.6 Client settings such as Client Permissions, Client Interface behavior and Client Communication Settings.

Once you have added the ADM Template to your GPO object you can find them under the “Classic Administrative Templates (ADM)” branch as shown in the picture below.

Then configure the Group Policy Settings as shown below.   

Once the GPO is enabled run the command  gpupdate /force on the client to ensure that all GPO settings get applied. Then open the Registry Editor and validate that all settings are configured as described here

Now install your previously sequenced application through the generated MSI installation package. If all goes well, you should be able to launch your Virtual Application in Stand-Alone mode now.

Additional Resources:
Microsoft App-V 4.5 Client in Stand Alone Mode Whitepaper by Tim Mangan
App-V 4.6 Release Q & A
TechNet Virtual Lab: Learning to Configure App-V for Standalone Client Mode

Just found another nice FREE Utility. As the name says SoftPerfect Network Scanner allows you to scan your network and allows you to find any IP, NetBIOS or SNMP enabled devices. The tool also supports Remote WMI, Registry and Service access that can be customized to your own needs.

The Tool does not require installation. Download SoftPerfect Network Scanner from here

If you have BranchCache deployed within your enterprise environment you might be interested in the
BranchCache Bandwidth Saving Calculation PowerShell Script for the SMB Protocol which allows you to collect and measure the amount of WAN bandwidth that is saved by your BranchCache deployment.

Get the documentation and script from here

Be aware of the upcoming End of Support for Windows Vista (RTM) and Windows XP SP2. More details here. Also read End of support for Windows 2000 and Extended Support phase transition for Windows Server 2003 here

I had thought that by now this is something everybody knows, but unfortunately that is not the case, so that is why I post this one today.

By default, Windows Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions limit the number of files that you can download at one time to two. Windows Internet Explorer 8 limits the number of files that you can download at one time to six. More details here