Windows on Anything About IT

Modern Security for Legacy Systems

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 12:43:15 +0000

Despite rapid OS refresh cycles, many organizations continue to run older systems such as Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. In many cases, critical line-of-business applications only run on older frameworks, specialized production machines rely on vendor-locked drivers, or long hardware replacement cycles make immediate upgrades unrealistic. Some companies also operate regulated or validated environments where any OS change requires extensive re-certification.

Until now, these legacy endpoints posed a persistent security risk because unsupported or limited protection allowed attackers to exploit vulnerabilities with little resistance.

Monitoring Windows built-in local security Groups with Microsoft Defender XDR or Sentinel

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 21:50:36 +0000

Windows Built-in local security groups

Windows has several built-in local security groups that are designed to manage permissions and access rights on a computer. These groups are predefined by Windows, and each group has specific rights and permissions. The exact groups available can vary depending on the version of Windows you’re using or the features that are enabled, but here’s a general overview of the most commonly found built-in local security groups in Windows systems:

Microsoft Defender for Identity - Npcap driver Update

Tue, 23 Aug 2022 15:48:36 +0000

Hello everyone,

In July 2021 Microsoft announced that starting with MDI version 2.156 they included the OEM version of the Npcap executable in the Sensor deployment package. The reason for doing so is because WinPcap is no longer supported and since it’s no longer being developed, the driver cannot be optimized any longer for the Defender for Identity sensor. Additionally, if there is an issue in the future with the WinPcap driver, there are no options for a fix. More details can be found here.

How to analyze Microsoft Sentinel Daily Cap Alerts - AADNonInteractiveUserSignInLogs

Fri, 20 May 2022 20:18:50 +0000

To avoid unplanned costs for Microsoft Sentinel, it is recommended to set a daily cap and create an analytics rule that triggers an alert when the daily cap is reached. Microsoft has published general guidance for monitoring costs here.

In the past months I have deployed a number of Microsoft Sentinel instances and in many cases the root cause for reaching the daily cap was related to data ingested into the AADNonInteractiveUserSignInLogs table. When analyzing the data we often found an individual user that created an unusually high amount of events. This can happen for various reasons such as:

Defender for Endpoint – unified solution for Windows Server 2012 R2 and 2016 (Part2)

Mon, 06 Dec 2021 20:28:53 +0000

Hello everyone,

In my previous post (Part1) I provided an overview of the new Microsoft Defender for endpoint unified solution for Windows Server 2012-R2 and 2016 and how to deploy the solution manually to a new provisioned server. In this blog post I would like to walk you through the process of migrating a Windows 2016 server to the new unified solution using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager.

For this we will be using the upgrade script that Microsoft provides. But let’s go through this step by step.

Deploying Windows 11 in minutes with AutomatedLab

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 19:01:10 +0000

In this blog post I am going to show you how you can quickly (in 5 minutes) deploy Windows 11 in Hyper-V using the AutomatedLab PowerShell module. In fact the process is no different than when deploying other Windows operating systems, but just in case you haven’t heard of AutomatedLab yet and plan to install Windows 11 in a VM, this might be a good opportunity to get familiar with it.

Setting up Kali in Windows 10 WSL 2.0

Fri, 27 Dec 2019 20:19:41 +0000

Since Microsoft introduced WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) I’ve been playing with it occasionally, in the beginning however some of the tools I wanted to use like nmap and hping3 would not work due to issues with networking in WSL 1.0, however with WSL 2.0 these issues seem to be resolved so gave it another try earlier this year in June and all worked as expected.

What’s nice about running kali in WSL is that you get easy and quick access to linux tools without having to setup and start a complete virtual machine.

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection – Respond Actions Events

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 22:10:23 +0000

Hey there, to be honest I had some difficulties to find the right title for todays blog post, so if you are still wondering here’s what this is all about. I had a customer asking me “how can we see what MDATP Respond actions were taken on a particular machine both from a Console and client perspective?”. At the time of writing this blog post we have the following machine response actions that trigger a remote action available for MDATP managed devices.

Windows Defender, More than just Antivirus – Part 2

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 15:22:03 +0000

In the previous post I provided an overview of the history of Windows Defender and an overview of the various features that have the name Windows Defender in them. When then looked at Windows Defender SmartScreen and Windows Defender Cloud based protection. Today I’d like to continue with my notes from the field and personal experiences and take a look at Windows Defender Exploit guard. Again, the objective of this blog post is to inspire you getting the most out of the Defender feature set to improve your security posture.

Windows Defender, More than just Antivirus – Part 1

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 15:35:26 +0000

Due to my professional activity as a Cyber Security Consultant, I regularly speak with customers about Windows Defender and find that many are not fully aware of all the features and capabilities that Windows Defender offers. Also, when reviewing existing implementations, I’ve noticed a pattern of some common issues.

I guess the blog post title ‘Windows Defender, more than just Antivirus’ says it all. The objective of today’s blog post is to provide you with a brief overview of Windows Defender and provide some advice on how to get the most out of it.

Configuring Windows Defender Credential Guard with ConfigMgr

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 21:23:16 +0000

I’m currently engaged in multiple customer projects where Windows 10 is already in production, but unfortunately without Windows Credential Guard enabled. For those who think “Credential ….what?”

Windows Defender Credential Guard uses virtualization-based security to isolate secrets so that only privileged system software can access them. Unauthorized access to these secrets can lead to credential theft attacks, such as Pass-the-Hash or Pass-The-Ticket. More details can be found here.

Some of you might think, why wasn’t it enabled in the first place when they deployed Windows 10? From speaking to several people, here are some of the reasons.

Windows 7 Hybrid Join and MFA ramblings

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 19:36:58 +0000

Today I ran into an issue where Windows 7 would not hybrid join as expected. Before going into the details, for those who might not be aware like Windows 10 and Server 2016, you can also hybrid join down-level devices. The functionality is of course not built into Windows so you need to install the “Microsoft Workplace Join for non-Windows 10 computers” software.

One reason why you want to hybrid join Windows 7 devices is Conditional access. Let’s assume you plan to introduce Conditional access for your users where you want to enforce MFA when using a non-corporate device.

Exploring the Blockchain – Part1

Sat, 06 Jan 2018 12:10:42 +0000

A few days ago I decided that I wanted to learn more about the Blockchain. So I started reading various documentations, browsed through GitHub, watched video’s online and finally took the online training at the Microsoft Virtual Academy “Microsoft Blockchain as a Service”. I guess this is only the beginning as there is so much more to explore in this field. But today I want to share with you the first steps I took trying to understand how this all works.

Download and Install the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit with PowerShell

Tue, 07 Feb 2017 16:22:42 +0000

Back in June 2012 I posted the Automated download and Installation for the Windows Assessment and Deployment kit article. Not a lot has changed since then,i.e. you still need to first download the sources before you can install them. Nevertheless since using batch scripts isn’t really state of the art anymore these days,I decided to rewrite the script in PowerShell.

Downlload source from GitHub

PowerShell Script - Get-WinBuildInfo

Sat, 12 Nov 2016 16:19:36 +0000

Here’s a script I wrote that retrieves all the Windows 10 build information, including Insider level when enabled.

And here’s a list of sites that provide information about the builds, releases, version numbers etc.

http://changewindows.org/platform/desktop

https://buildfeed.net/

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-info.aspx

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12387/windows-10-update-history?ocid=client_wu

Windows 10 Upgrade Analytics – Notes and PowerShell snippets

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 22:55:04 +0000

I am considering using the Windows 10 upgrade analytics for our Windows 10 project that we’ve just started just recently. Below you find some random notes and references I have gathered during my exploration journey.

The Upgrade Analytics Blog

Here is where you find the latest information from the Upgrade Analytics team: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/upgradeanalytics/

Upgrade Analytics on TechNet

Information about the Architecture, deployment techniques, prerequisites and more can be found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/deploy/manage-windows-upgrades-with-upgrade-analytics

If you have concerns about data privacy, this document describes in detail what data is being collected and send to Microsoft Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 appraiser telemetry events and fields

PowerShell script to run the Windows App Certification Kit

Sat, 24 Sep 2016 19:18:21 +0000

The Windows App Certification Kit is an easy to use tool to check whether an application has potential compatibility issues when running on Windows 10. The tool can be executed in GUI mode and in command line mode. I wrote a PowerShell script that runs the Windows App Certification Kit in a more or less automated way.

I say more or less, because the application installation process of the application itself might still prompt for input. Also the final report generation of the App Cert Tool itself requires manual interaction that i was unable to suppress. , Nevertheless I hope you find the script useful and saves you a bit of time when testing applications.

ToolTip: Policy Analyzer

Sat, 30 Jan 2016 15:27:20 +0000

Aaron Margosis recently released Policy Analyzer, a utility for analyzing and comparing sets of Group Policy Objects (GPOs). Here’s a brief description on how to use the tool to compare two Domain GPOs.

I created two GPOs in my test domain, both starting with the name “Foo” and then configured some settings. The Policy Analyzer can import GPO settings based on a GPO backup so as a next step we create a GPO backup. The quickest way is to do this via PowerShell.

Group Policy Template file for Windows 10 Wi-FI Sense

Mon, 19 Oct 2015 20:20:48 +0000

Wi-FI Sense is a new feature in Windows 10 that automatically connects you to suggested open hotspots or networks shared by your skype or outlook.com contacts or facebook friends. Sounds like a nice feature, but I’m sure Enterprise Security won’t be to keen about it.

Microsoft has published a KB - How to configure Wi-Fi Sense on Windows 10 in an enterprise that describes the registry settings to configure for disabling Wi-FI sense. The recently publsihed Security Compliance Baseline for Windows 10 “ DRAFT” now also provides a custom Group Policy template for Wi-FI Sense.

The “This website needs Internet Explorer” Message

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 21:45:51 +0000

As you probably know by know, Microsoft Edge is now the default Browser on Windows 10, but IE11 can still be used. While using the Microsoft Edge browser I’ve noticed that now and then when opening a website, the following message is displayed.

So where does this message come from, and how does Microsoft Edge know that the page works best in Internet Explorer? For Enterprise users Microsoft has extended the functiionality of the Enterprise Mode Site list manager.

Group Policy Settings for Microsoft Edge Browser in Windows 10 Build 10.0.10240

Fri, 17 Jul 2015 09:00:34 +0000

Continuing exploring the Windows 10 preview builds for new Group Policy settings, I come across some new settings for the Microsoft Edge browser.

**Location** **Setting** **Description** Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Microsoft Edge Allows you to run scripts like Javascript This setting lets you decide whether to let people run scripts, like JavaScript. This setting is enabled by default.

If you enable this setting, scripting is turned on for all your computers.

Citrix Receiver 4.3 now with ADMX support for Receiver group policy, well almost

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 17:53:36 +0000

Last night Citrix released Citrix Receiver 4.3 that includes ADMX templates to manage Citrix Receiver Group Policy settings. Microsoft introduced the ADMX templates when Vista/Server 2008 was introduced in 2006, so it was about time for Citrix to come up with template files in that format instead of the old ADM based files.

After installing the Citrix Receiver 4.3 that can be downloaded from here you’ll find the new ADMX/ADML files in the following location:

Group Policy Settings in Windows 10 Build 10.0.10130

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 12:25:54 +0000

Windows 10 build 10.0.10130 brought a couple more new Group Policy settings, here they are:

 **Location** **Setting** **Description** Computer Configuration

Administrative Templates
Windows Components
Windows Update Defer Upgrade If you enable this policy setting, in Pro and Enterprise SKUs you can defer upgrades till the next upgrade period (at least a few months).
If you do not have it set you will receive upgrades once they are available that will be installed as part of your update policies.

Group Policy Settings in Windows 10 Build 10.0.10074

Sat, 16 May 2015 13:29:30 +0000

Like with every new version of the Windows operating system we can expect new Group Policy settings. Today I took a look at Windows 10 build 10.0.10074 and found the follownig settings.

 **Location**

Setting

Description

Computer Configuration Windows Components DataCollectionAndPreviewBuilds

Disable user control over preview builds

This policy setting determines whether users can access the preview build controls in the Advanced Options for Windows Update. These controls are located under “Choose how preview builds are installed,” and enable users to make their devices available for downloading and installing Windows preview software. If you enable or do not configure this policy setting, users can download and install Windows preview software on their devices. If you disable this policy setting, the item “Choose how preview builds are installed” will be unavailable.

Group Policy Management expanding into MDM

Sat, 01 Nov 2014 11:36:11 +0000

During the Channel 9 session “Windows 10 Client Goodness with Joe Belfiore” (at 12 minutes 04 of the recorded session) there was an interesting comment from Joe about Group Policy Management in Widows 10. If you’re dealing with Group Policy Management today, the following comments from Joe might be of interest.

*What we’re trying to do in Windows 10. And here’s another case where you think of a core operating system that shares among a bunch of
different devices. Today many companies are using Group Policy to manage PCs and companies are using MDM systems as they are getting from
a wide range of vendors to manage their diverse populations of tables and phones and so on. Well with Windows 10 we want to make sure that
all of our customers can have the flexibility to pick the system that makes sense for them so we are going to continue to have terrific group
policy support for PC’s as you would expect but we are also going to enable MDM systems to manage PCs as well. So if you have an MDM system that you like and you are managing phones and tablets, you can use that MDM system and now manage your PCs as well. *

New IE Group Policy Settings for blocking out-of-date ActiveX controls

Sun, 10 Aug 2014 20:26:04 +0000

As anounced by Microsoft last week on their IEBlog Internet Explorer will start blocking out of date ActiveX controls For managed environments there are updated administrative templates for Internet Explorer to control the behaviour of the ActiveX blocking feature.

Although the link brings you to a site called “Administrative Templates for Internet Explorer 11” the settings are set to work for Internet Explorer 8,9, 10 and 11. If you haven’t updated your administrative templates since a while, beware of the missing IE maintenance settings.

PowerShell Script - List Scheduled Tasks

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 14:43:55 +0000

Here’s a simple script I put together to list the scheduled tasks including the description, status and whether the task is set to hidden or not. When deploying a new operating system I find it important to understand what scheduled tasks are enabled to run, as sometimes there might be some potential to improvie the systems performance by disabling those you feel are not needed in your environment.

$schtasks = @()
$st = Get-ScheduledTask
ForEach ($SchTask in $st)
{
 $object = New-Object -TypeName PSObject
 $object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "TaskName" -Value $SchTask.TaskName
 $object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Description" -Value $SchTask.Description
 $object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "State" -Value $SchTask.State
 $object | Add-Member -MemberType NoteProperty -Name "Hidden" -Value $SchTask.Settings.Hidden
 $schtasks += $object
}
$schtasks | Sort-Object "Hidden" -Descending | Format-list

Within the Scheduled Tasks UI, by default you will not see the contents of Tasks that are set to hidden. But this can be enabled. Open the Task Scheduler with taskschd.msc and within the View Menu select “Show Hidden Tasks”.

Managing Windows Defender / System Center Endpoint Security with PowerShell

Tue, 08 Apr 2014 13:17:21 +0000

I just read a blog post from Ed Wilson (Scripting Guy) about Use PowerShell to Configure Windows Defender Preferences and wondered if there’s more here. And yes there is. If you have a default insallation of Windows 8 and have defender enabled or work in an enterprise environment and use Configuration Manager with the System Center Endpoint Security agent deployed on your clients then you the below listed cmdlets available.

Windows Defender

To get a list of all available Defender cmdlets just run the following command within a powershell console

How to export third-party driver packages using PowerShell

Fri, 04 Apr 2014 19:43:09 +0000

Windows 8.1 Update introduces a new cmdlet that allows you to export third-party drivers that are located within the driver store of a Windows client.

$ExpDrv = Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination c:\temp\3rdpartydrivers 

```powershell
The result, all drivers exported into the provided destination directory

![2014-04-04_21h36_47](images/2014-04-04_21h36_47_thumb.png)

Now we have a whole bunch of folders, but what drivers did we actually export?

```powershell
$ExpDrv | Select-Object ClassName, ProviderName, Date, Version | Sort-Object ClassName

PowerShell - Get latest Microsoft KB information

Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:36:24 +0000

I frequently visit kbupdate.info which is a great resource for finding latest KB updates, but still you have to manually click through the various lists. Now that I am learning PowerShell anyway, i thought i’ll give myself another task to further improve my PowerShell skills. So here we go, below you find a script that retrieves the latest KB update information for various products and displays them on screen so that I can quickly browse through them and directly launch the article of interest in Internet Explorer.

Windows 8.1 - Shutdown and Shutdown

Mon, 09 Dec 2013 22:00:54 +0000

Hey there, when i watched the last edition of “The Defrag Show” this week-end Gov Maharaj gave an interesting explanation about the difference in behaviour when using the Shutdown option within the charms bar or the Widnows X-menu.

To keep a long story short. When you have fast boot enabled, the shutdown option in thr charms bar will perform a so-called hybrid shutdown, but when using the shutdown option in the x-menu a full shutdown is performed meaning that the next time you turn on the machine a cold boot happens.

PowerShell Desired State Configuration - My first experiences

Sat, 16 Nov 2013 20:44:28 +0000

During the past weeks I have been reading and listening about PowerShell Desired State Configuration a new feature introduced with PowerShell 4.0 which ships with Windows 8.1 and Server 2012R2 but is also available for Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 as part of the Windows Management Framework 4.0

To keep things simple at first, I have only focused at running DSC on a local client and only used two built-in configuration resources. What i wanted to achieve was not only to get a DSC running, but also understand how things work.

PowerShell Script - Are we running as Admin?

Fri, 08 Nov 2013 20:19:16 +0000

While exploring some of the new cmdlets that come with Windows 8.1 I came across Test-NetConnection. and noticed that it has a property called IsAdmin. When running the cmdlet in an elevated PowerShell session the property returns True otherwise False. So I put together a very simple script to check whether we are running as admin or not.

<#
.Synopsis
 Checks if we run as administrator
.DESCRIPTION
 This script uses the Test-NetConnection cmdlet that contains a IsAdmin Property to check if we ar running as admin
.EXAMPLE
 Check-Admin.ps1
#>

$AmIAdmin = Test-NetConnection localhost 
 if ($AmIAdmin.IsAdmin -eq "True") {write-host "Running as Admin"} Else {write-host "NOT Running as Admin"}

Other (and probably more reliable) ways to determine whether we are running as admin are described here by Ed Wilson and here by Ben Armstrong.

PowerShell Script - Get-ComputerGeolocation

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 13:35:01 +0000

28-OCT-2013 Update: I have updated the script to retry when the status of the location provider is in initializing mode.

The below script uses the Windows Location provider and the Google Geocoding API to retrieve the geographical location of the computer. The accuracy of the information retrieved depends on the source used to determine the location which are:

Wi-Fi triangulation
IP address resolution
Cell phone tower triangulation
Global Position System (GPS)

Windows automatically uses the best source, so when accessing the Windows Location provider you don’t need to tell it which source to use.

How to build a site Windows 8.1 tile for your blog

Sun, 20 Oct 2013 10:51:24 +0000

With just a few clicks and pasting 3 lines of code you can create a Windows 8.1 live tile for your blog. Here’s what you need to do.

Navigate to http://www.buildmypinnedsite.com/en and fill in the requested information.

Copy the code.

Next copy the code into your website. I added the code to the header.php of my WordPress site. If you use another blogging platform, just add to the other meta tags of your website.

Windows 8.1 Command Prompt or PowerShell

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 22:38:04 +0000

If you have used the Windows 8.1 preview build, you will have noticed that the X-Menu by default had PowerShell enabled instead of the Command Prompt.. However within the RTM release of Windows 8.1 Microsoft changed this, so now the command prompt is the default again as it was in Windows 8.

To change the default back to PowerShell open the Taskbar and Navigation Properties and enable “Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell in the menu when I right click the lower left corner or press Win +X”

MBSA 2.3 Preview Release Available

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 13:05:08 +0000

Based on a statement made by Microsoft in the August 2012 security bulletin, I wrote a short blog post back in November 2012 that there would be no MBSA version available for Windows 8. But it looks like plans have changed as Microsoft has now released a preview version of MBSA 2.3 that does provide support for Windows 8, Windows 8.1 as well as the new server editions.

MBSA 2.3 release adds support for Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2. Windows 2000 will no longer be supported with this release. The final release of MBSA 2.3 is expected to be available in Fall 2013. Due to the remaining short product cycle, we will be unable to implement any design change requested for this release.

Some Tech Videos you might enjoy as well

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 20:16:56 +0000

Below you find some links of Tech related video’s I enjoyed watching, so thought I’d share them for those who love to go down the memory lane as well.

Enjoy!!!

Microsoft Windows 3 and NT, 1991, part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMeqcuTjSY&feature=youtube_gdata_player Microsoft Windows 3 and NT, 1991, Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eenDjMXfVBQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player DEC - Glimpse of the Future, 1994 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1l6aBgX5UY&feature=youtube_gdata_player **HAL-PC 1993 OS/2 vs NT Shootout Part 1 **http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnLmtuA42N8

1993 OS/2 vs NT Shootout Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jucRkF4kW7g

1993 OS/2 vs NT Shootout Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOKUuNg8JEg

ToolTip: ImpelLaunch

Sat, 24 Aug 2013 11:38:24 +0000

If you are using Windows Intune, this little FREE utility from Impeltec might be of interest to you. ImpelLaunch was created to overcome the following Application deployment challenges when deploying Software with Windows Intune. .

For Windows clients you can only Windows Intune - Adding Software Packages with a. EXE, MSI or .APPX file extension.
Distribute Applications which source files are already stored on a local network share
Allow the Windows Intune Agent that runs in the system context to access local network shares

Although created to work around the described challenges when using Windows Intune, the utility can be used with in any other environment such as Configuration Manager or just in standalone mode.

How to enable Group Policy Preferences Logging via the Local Group Policy Editor

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 15:54:44 +0000

When opening the local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) you will notice that on a default Windows 7 SP1 Enterprise client there is no logging and tracing node for Group Policy Preferences logging underneath the Group Policy node.

The reason for this is because Group Policy Preferences can only be managed within domain based Group Policy objects and therefore a Windows 7 SP1 client does not have the Group Policy Preferences related administrative template GroupPolicyPreferences.admx installed that also includes the logging settings.

New Integration Service “Guest Service” in Windows 8.1 Hyper-V

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 18:28:23 +0000

When opening the Virtual Machine Settings Integration Services node in Hyper-V running on Windows 8.1 Preview, you will notice that there is now an additional Integration Service listed called Guest Services. By default the service is not enabled,

With this integration service enabled, you can now directly copy a file from a remote system into the VM without utilizing a network connection. A new PowerShell cmdlet Copy-VMFile has been added for this new feature.

TechEd 2013 Hands-On Labs

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:42:41 +0000

The issue with learning new stuff is that often you have to spend a lot of time in getting a test environment up and running before you can actually start testing out things. I was therefore very pleased to see that Microsoft has made the Hands-On labs from TechEd 2013 available online.

The Hands-On labs are prepared within less than 30 seconds. Awesome!

Below a list of Hands-on labs now available for Windows Client, Access and Management. Check for updates directly on Channel 9 – TechEd North America 2013
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013#fbid=6pQTUrStsWU

How to configure system volume with PowerShell

Wed, 29 May 2013 16:53:47 +0000

Back in 2011 I wrote a blog post on how to mute Windows System Volume programmatically. This week I found another approach on GitHub using PowerShell.

The PowerShell Module WindowsAudioDevice-Powershell-Cmdlet** **provides a number of cmdlets to control the Windows System volume.

Get-DefaultAudioDevice
Get-AudioDeviceList
Set-DefaultAudioDevice [-Index]
Set-DefaultAudioDevice [-Name]
Set-DefaultAudioDevice [-InputObject]
Set-DefaultAudioDeviceVolume -Volume
Get-DefaultAudioDeviceVolume
Set-DefaultAudioDeviceMute
Write-DefaultAudioDeviceValue [-StreamValue

I wrote the below PowerShell script to solve a request to set the system volume to mute.

How to reapply a Group Policy Preference that is configured to Apply Once

Sat, 25 May 2013 11:03:43 +0000

When creating a Group Policy Preference you can configure it to only apply once. The exact wording is “Apply once and do not reapply”. But when you are implementing such a GPP you most likely want to test the setting prior moving it into production. So here’s a brief explanation how to reapply a GPP when it’s configured to apply once.

The below screen shot illustrates a GPP that is configured to write a registry key to HKLM\Software\Demo\RunIT with the value set to True.

Tip: PowerShell Script to create Shutdown/Restart/Logoff Windows 8 Tile for the Start menu

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:52:36 +0000

A PowerShell script shows how to create a Shutdown, Restart or Logoff Windows 8 tile for the Start menu.

Script source and documentation can be downloaded from here

Integrating DaRT 8.0 SP1 Remote Connection into the SCCM 2012 OSD Process

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:13:09 +0000

While preparing for an SCCM 2012 upgrade, I thought it might be a good idea to consider implementing some of the best practices that are around such as integrating the DaRT Remote Connection tool into the OSD deployment process. I’m sure it comes in handy when having to troubleshoot OSD related tings, as it allows us to access the client remotely without having to give lengthy instructions to an onsite engineer.

How to add custom registry keys to the Windows Embedded / ThinPC Registry Filter

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:55:26 +0000

When running Windows Embedded Standard 7 or Windows ThinPC with the Enhanced Write Filter (volume based protection) or File Based Write Filter (File based protection) enabled, the system returns to its original state upon every reboot. This is a good thing, but as always there are exceptions, one of them is Antivirus Software. When after a reboot a system is reset to its original state, it means that any changes such as the installation of engine updates are lost, to avoid this from happening file and registry exclusions can be set. I am going to focus on the registry filter as I made some findings I believe is worth sharing and might save you some time getting it to work. Registry Filter settings are stored within the Registry Filter Service located under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\RegFilter\Parameters\MonitoredKeys

How to generate random computer names for lab deployments using SCCM OSD

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 11:22:32 +0000

For my lab environment I use the below described approach to generate random computernames for my clients. The script does the following:

Read the Task Sequence Package Name
Based on the name set the appropriate prefix
Generate a random number between 100 and 1000
Generate the new computer name based on Prefix + random number

To implement this do the following:

Put the script listed below into a package
Add the script to the TS by adding a Run Command Line task after Partition Disk and before Apply Operating System

How to convert registry files (.reg) into XML for Group Policy Preferences import

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:50:26 +0000

Creating registry settings manually within the Group Policy Preferences editor can become a cumbersome task, especially when you need to create many of them. Although the Group Policy Management console allows you to import registry keys stored within an XML formatted file, unfortunately out of the box Microsoft doesn’t provide any tooling to export and convert registry settings into xml.

A couple of days ago I found an online “FREE” Registry to Group Policy Preferences XML converter that looks pretty promising. It’s still under development but definitely worth a try before starting a lengthy manual task.

How to create a SCCM 2012 SP1 Configuration Baseline with Security Compliance Manager (SCM) 3.0

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 12:56:59 +0000

Most enterprises take advantage of Group Policies to manage security configuration settings across their server and desktop infrastructure. Usually once tested and implemented it’s assumed they get applied correctly. But can we be 100% sure that our clients and servers do actually receive these settings?

With the help of the Microsoft Security Compliance Manager 3.0 and SCCM 2012 SP1 we can configure a security baseline to monitor security group policy settings compliance. To do so we need the following:

How to disable Java add-ons in Internet Explorer with Group Policy

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:20:58 +0000

Follow the below steps to disable Java in Internet Explorer with Group Policy.

Open Internet Explorer, then from the Tools menu select Manage Add-ons. Locate the Java add-on, select and double click on it.

Click on the Copy button to copy the content and paste it into notepad

Name: Sun Java Console

Publisher: Oracle America, Inc.

Type: Browser Extension

Architecture: 32-bit

Version: 7.0.100.18

File date: ‎Today, ‎January ‎13, ‎2013, ‏‎15 minutes ago

How to check the status of BIOS & UEFI & Secure Boot with PowerShell

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:22:06 +0000

During the past weeks I spend a bit of time deploying Windows 8 to UEFI enabled clients. With PowerShell 3.0 on Windows 8 you will find some new cmdlets that provide information about the status of your system’s BIOS/UEFI/Secure boot configuration.

The below table shows the return values depending on whether the system’s firmware is using BIOS, UEFI and if Secure boot is enabled or not.

 **BIOS / UEFI Setup**

 BIOS

 UEFI with CSM

 UEFI native

 Secure boot enabled

 UEFI native

 Secure boot

 disabled


 **PowerShell Command**

 Result

 Confirm-SecureBootUEFI

 Cmdlet not supported on this platform

 False

 True

 False

 Get-SecureBootUEFI –Name SetupMode

 Cmdlet not supported on this platform

 1

 0

 1

 Get-SecureBootUEFI –Name SecureBoot

 Cmdlet not supported on this platform

 0

 1

 0

 Executing any of these cmdlets on a Windows 8 system that uses BIOS generates an error.

The return value of the SetupMode variable tells us if the system is operating in Setup mode or in UserMode meaning that the platform key is enrolled. (For more details read the Firmware/OS Key Exchange: creating trust relationships chapter within the UEFI Specification that can be found here)

ToolTip: Windows 8 Update Notifier

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 10:35:18 +0000

With the introduction of Windows 7 Microsoft started to pay attention to remove unnecessary noise from the Windows Desktop meaning reducing the number of system notification balloons. For details read the Action Center blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

As you can see from the screenshot below, in Windows 7 the user can still receive notification messages about available Windows Updates.

But in Windows 8 this option has disappeared, meaning that in Windows 8 there are no Windows Update messages shown anymore on the desktop but only on the logon screen. The below screenshot shows the Action Center in Windows 8 and you’ll notice the Check for Updates option under Maintenance Messages is gone.

How to detect if Windows Touch is enabled

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 19:15:54 +0000

While I was actually looking for something totally different, I stumbled over the **IsTouchEnabled.exe **that is stored within the MDT 2012 \Tools\OSDResults folder. The name says it all, it detects whether the device supports Touch or not. So I copied the utility and ran it on a Samsung Tablet with Windows 7 installed, a HP Workstation with Windows 7 installed, on a HP Mobile workstation with Windows 8 installed and on the HP ElitePad with Windows 8 installed. On both the Tablet devices the utility correctly detected touch being enabled.

How to access data from your Bitlocker enabled Windows To Go Workspace

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:32:38 +0000

Yesterday we looked at How to access data from the local disk when running a Windows To Go Workspace today we’re going to do the opposite. So let’s assume you’ve been working in your Windows To Go Workspace at home and saved a document locally. Now you are back in the office but didn’t start your Windows To Go Workspace but are working on a corporate Windows 7 client and require access to that file. Now you can either boot your Windows To Go Workspace and save the file from there on a shared location or just copy the data directly from the Windows To Go drive right?

How to access data from the local disk when running a Windows To Go Workspace

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:24:24 +0000

When provisioning a Windows To Go Workspace using the Windows 8 build-in Windows To Go creator or following the step by step instructions described within the TechNet Wiki a SAN policy is applied that prevents the Windows To Go Workspace from bringing online any internally connected disks from the host system. The result is that you cannot access any data that is stored there.

There are two reasons why this SAN policy should be applied. First it prevents accidental data leakage between Windows To Go and the host system. This makes totally sense because you might run Windows To Go on someone else’s computer and you don’t want your data somehow ending up being stored on their local disk nor does the other person want you to see what they have stored locally. The second reason is that if the internal drive contains a hibernated Windows 8 OS, mounting that drive will lead to loss of the hibernation state which might also result in the loss of any unsaved data there.

How to configure and deploy local Group Policy settings for ThinKiosk

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 11:36:27 +0000

In my previous post Repurpose PCs with Windows ThinPC I used Andrew Morgan’s ThinKiosk to replace the default Windows Shell to limit the user’s access to the local machine. ThinKiosk can be configured via the command line, the Registry and via Group Policy. Now unless you like to write lengthy registry manipulation scripts, configuring the settings via Group Policy is definitely the way to go.

When clients are member of a domain we would of course use domain based group policy settings, but when not joined to a domain must use local Group Policy settings. In this blog post I describe in detail how to prepare and deploy a local GPO Pack. Note that the hereunder described process is not limited to the use of ThinKiosk but can be used for any local Group Policy configuration task for Windows ThinPC (Embedded 7), Windows 7 and Windows 8. (Note that for Windows 8 you’ll have to wait until SCM 3.0 comes out which is currently in beta).

Repurpose PCs with Windows ThinPC

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 19:50:04 +0000

Many companies nowadays take advantage of some sort of VDI type solutions. In some cases where all of the users applications are made available within this environment, there is no need for providing them with a fully loaded desktop or notebook hence the reason why companies are considering the use of Thin Clients. In the long run the use of real thin clients definitely makes sense, not only are they usually cheaper than normal desktops but also do they consume less power and require less management. However a valid option for transitioning into thin client computing can be to repurpose existing desktops.

Script for dumping DHCP subnet scope options

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:12:41 +0000

Here’s simple script I’ve put together as I was in need of one that dumps the DHCP subnet scope options into a text file.

The script first queries the DHCP servers it can find and then dumps the scope options of each subnet it finds on each DHCP server.

Copy the below code and save it as dhcpsubnetscopeoptions.cmd

@echo off

echo %date% %time% >%~dp0\dhcpsubnetscopeoptions.txt

echo —————————————————————– »%~dp0\dhcpscopeoptions.txt

Echo Dumping DHCP Subnet Scope options

Windows 8 – Script to automatically show the desktop

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:16:13 +0000

A few weeks ago I came across a blog post from Brandon where he provides a solution how to automatically show the Windows Desktop when logging on to Windows 8. The solution is actually quite straight forward, all you need to do is to add a shortcut that points to explorer.exe to the Start Menu startup folder. When a user logs on, Windows processes the items stored within the Startup folder and executing explorer.exe then causes Windows to switch to the Desktop.

Windows To Go Startup Options

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 16:26:35 +0000

Windows To Go is another new feature introduced with Windows 8 but only available to users that run Windows 8 Enterprise. With Windows To Go users can create a Windows 8 workspace that can be booted from a USB drive. So simply said with Windows To Go, there’s no need to carry around a laptop if you’re going somewhere. If you have your Windows To Go workspace stored on a compatible USB drive, you can just boot your Windows 8 from any device that meets the Windows 7/8 hardware requirements.

Windows 8 - Where Mobile Broadband will just work

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:41:04 +0000

Windows 8 comes with a number of enhancement for mobile broadband functionality. If you’re interested in the details I recommend you read the content I have referenced at the end of this blog post. But in short if your mobile broadband device meets the Mobile Broadband Interface (MBIM( specification then Windows 8 will load the inbox class driver (MBCD) so there is no need to install 3rd party drivers. If then the operator in a given country has submitted their connection information to Microsoft you can just establish a connection to the internet without the need of installing additional software or entering connection details.

Windows 8–Metered Connections

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:26:17 +0000

One of the new features in Windows 8 is that we can configure WLAN and WWAN cost settings. In the Windows UI this is called a metered connection.

Why are these settings important? Well, when a Network is configured to be a Metered Connection, Windows will make several changes to the way that it uses the network to reduce overall network traffic through that connection, including the following:

·Only Critical Windows Updates are downloaded.

The eBook every Windows Engineer should read – Deploying and Supporting Applications on Windows 64-Bit

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 09:22:01 +0000

While only a few years ago the 64-bit version of the Windows client would only be installed on special purpose systems, nowadays it has become the de facto standard for most OEM’s and Enterprises. In 2010 Microsoft published some numbers on their Windows blog indicating that in June 46% of the clients running Windows 7 and use Windows Update were running Windows 7 64-Bit. At the same time Gartner published a report saying that by 2014 75% of all business PCs will be running a 64-Bit edition of Windows. Despite doing some searches on the web, I wasn’t able to get some actual figures, but if I just take into account the various customers I have worked with in the past 3 years supporting them moving to Windows 7, I can say that nearly all of them made their decision in favor of the 64-Bit edition of Windows.

How to find latest Microsoft Knowledge Base articles for Windows 8 and Server 2012

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:00:36 +0000

A great resource I am using for years already to proactively read through the Microsoft KB’s is kbupdate.info a monitoring system that scans the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base every night. Now that Windows 8 and Server 2012 are out and Microsoft starts publishing KBs for it, you can track them easily via kbupdate.info

Below just some random KB’s I found interesting to know about.

Remote Group Policy updates are visible to users
ADM files are not present in SYSVOL in the GPMC Infrastructure Status option
Unpredictable behavior if you migrate a roaming user profile from Windows 8 to Windows 7
You can only log on as “Other user” when the “Do not display last user name” Group Policy setting is enabled in Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012
Group Policy preparation is not performed when you automatically prepare an existing domain for Windows Server 2012

Don’t forget to update your WSUS for Windows 8 and Server 2012

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:05:48 +0000

If you’re running a WSUS Server you might want to update it to support Windows 8 and Server 2012. There is Windows 8. Windows RT and Server 2012

Additional Reading:

An update for Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2 is available (KB2734608) Additional note on KB 2734608 regarding WSUS, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

Windows 8: Boot Time in BGINFO

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 11:41:22 +0000

Last week I noticed that the Boot Time shown on my BGInfo generated desktop wallpaper had a date of several days ago. This is because of the new Fast Startup feature introduced with Windows 8.

In short, when you shutdown Windows 8 the kernel session is hibernated, so the next time you power on your computer the system starts from that hibernated session. When you initiate a Restart then the system does not hibernate the kernel session but really performs a cold boot. The default boot time shown in BGInfo only shows the cold boot time.

ReadTip: PolicyPak Whitepapers

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 08:53:27 +0000

Jeremy Moskowitz, Group Policy MVP and founder of Policy Pak Software wrote up 3 Whitepapers I recommend reading.

Why Group Policy Admins need PolicyPak

Why SCCM Admins need PolicyPak

7 Dumb Things IT Pros do With Windows 7 & 8 Rollouts

Windows Server 2012 Data Deduplication–A must have

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 21:15:24 +0000

During my summer vacation I’ve watched several TechEd video’s and there were plenty of interesting things I have seen, but the Data Deduplication feature in Server 2012 definitely belongs to one of my favorite ones. There are plenty of use cases were the Data Deduplication feature can help you save storage space. To try out this feature I created a folder on my test server and created 4 folders.

The folders Source1 and Source2 contained a copy of the Windows 8 Enterprise ISO file and in folder Source3 and Source4 I copied the install.wim from the Windows 8 Enterprise client installation source.

How to prepare an Office 2013 Click-to-Run deployment

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:22:38 +0000

With the release of the Office 2013 preview Microsoft also made available the Office Deployment Tool for Click-to-Run deployments. Although we here a lot about Click-to-Run these days, it’s not something totally new. Microsoft first introduced this with Office 2010 but it didn’t get that much attention within enterprise environment. For Office 2013 I can imagine that this will change.

Microsoft describes Click-to-Run as following:

Office 2013 Preview Click-to-Run is a technology that reduces the time that is required to download and use Office 2013 Preview client products. Click-to-Run is based on core virtualization and streaming Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) technologies. The streaming technology lets you use a Click-to-Run program before the complete program is downloaded and installed on your computer.

How to setup KMS on Server 2012 for activating Office 2013 Preview

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:17:59 +0000

Hey there, it’s been a while since I wrote the last blog post, but that is because I spend 2 excellent weeks at an Italian beach with my family and enjoyed “dolce far niente”. Now and then I did read some tweets so of course got notice of the Office 2013 Preview Microsoft released earlier last week. So now that I’m back I have started reading through the various documentations and so I came across the Microsoft Office 2013 Preview Volume License Pack that Microsoft released to activate Office 2013 Preview using KMS or Active Directory based activation.

Microsoft User Experience Virtualization – Part 3: Creating and using Templates

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 20:32:52 +0000

As explained in Part 2 Setting up UE-V out of the box UE-V has build-in support for various Windows Settings and the Office 2010 suite. But to take full advantage of UE-V you will most likely want to have you other applications roam their settings as well. For that you will have to create so called UE-V Templates.

Once you have created an application template you store it into the settings template catalogue, in the example I described in Part 2 this would be \SRV010\DATA\UEVTEMPLATES that I have configured using the UE-V Group Policy Setting Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / User Experience Virtualization / Settings Template Catalog path

Microsoft User Experience Virtualization – Part 2: Setting up UE-V

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:16:09 +0000

As a follow up on my earlier post Microsoft User Experience Virtualization – Part 1: The Road to UE-V in todays’ post I am going to describe how to get UE-V up and running in just a few steps.

To conduct this mini proof of concept, you need the following:

Access to Active Directory (Group Policy Management and the Users and Computers Console)
Access to a File Server to create 2 shares

Microsoft User Experience Virtualization – Part 1: The Road to UE-V

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 16:03:16 +0000

Many IT Administrators will agree that managing Windows user profiles can be somewhat of a challenge especially when using roaming user profiles where data and settings can follow the user across multiple Windows Clients. The term roaming profiles was introduced in Windows NT 4.0 but my experience is that roaming profiles weren’t used much then because in these days most users just had their own dedicated desktop anyway and if roaming profiles were used then it was more for backup reasons. User data was typically stored on a home or group share and most applications were still using INI files instead of using the Windows registry. Some of you might remember the fun with mapping INI files into the Registry. Furthermore in these days many applications would not separate user data from application data hence the benefits of using a roaming profile were pretty limited.

The Group Policy Setting “Verbose vs normal status messages” has a new name in Windows 8

Sun, 24 Jun 2012 15:45:04 +0000

If you want to show your users more details of what is going on during start, logon, logoff and shutdown of a system you can enable a Group Policy setting that is called “Verbose vs normal status messages’ in Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows, but in Windows 8 the setting has a new name and is now called “Display highly detailed messages”.

You can find the setting under Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / System.

How to RDP from a Mac to Windows

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 19:34:09 +0000

A friend of mine, an ultimate Mac user had recently bought a Windows PC to run an application not available on Mac. He asked me how he could remotely connect from his Mac to a Windows PC. I have little experience with Mac computers, but being interested in anything about IT, I remembered having seen something about a Remote Desktop client on the Office for Mac website.

Once installed you can easily connect to a remote Windows client.

TechEd North America 2012 Sessions available now

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 13:09:42 +0000

Last week TechEd 2012 North America took place in Orlando so now there’s a wealth of webcasts available on the TechEd 2012 website where you can register yourself to get access to all content (even if you didn’t attend the event) or if you like to download the sessions and watch them offline I recommend reading TechEd 2012 Orlando Download Sessions – Offline Viewing posted by Stefan Roth who blogs at SCOMfaq.ch.

How to run TechNet Virtual Labs on Windows 8 with IE10 and get around the “Cookie” error

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 20:34:43 +0000

A few weeks ago I wanted to run a TechNet Virtual Lab, but ran into an issue where I would get an error message saying “This site requires that your browser can accept cookies”. So tried to change the settings within Internet Explorer settings, but with no luck, so gave up to do this on Windows 8 CP with IE10 assuming that’s one of the side effects of using Beta software. Now today having loaded the Release Preview I gave it another try, but again same error.

How to use Group Policy to configure default Library definition files in Windows 8

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 14:52:23 +0000

There is a new Group Policy setting for Windows 8 and Server 2012 called “Location where all default Library definition files for users/machines reside”. The policy can be found under Computer or User Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Explorer.

If you enable this policy setting, administrators can specify a path where all default Library definition files for users reside. The user will not be allowed to make changes to these Libraries from the UI. On every logon, the policy settings are verified and Libraries for the user are updated or changed according to the path defined.

How to upload content from an IPad to Microsoft SkyDrive

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:14:58 +0000

Most of the time I use my IPad (Until I get a Windows 8 Tablet) for reading manuals, whitepapers etc. but then I often used to e-mail the links to myself so I could download the content on my PC later as well. But now that there’s SkyDrive for the IPad this has an end. So far I had only used SkyDrive on the IPad to access content I had uploaded form my PC, but yesterday I actually figured out how I can also easily upload content from my IPad. So just in case you had not figured that one out yet, here’s how it goes.

Automated Download and Installation for the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK)

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 17:13:55 +0000

Since I am going install the ADK on several clients and servers, I decided to automate that process based on the information found in the MSDN article Installing the Windows ADK

Because downloading all the ADK sources from the Microsoft web can take a while, the first task is to only download them and save the locally.

Create a folder on your local drive, let’s say C:\DATA\ADKSETUP
Then download the ADKSETUP.EXE from the Microsoft download page here and store it into C:\DATA\ADKSETUP (Note that this link will change once the RTM version is released).
Create a batch file called ADK_Download.cmd that has the following content:

@ ECHO OFF
cd %~dp0 adksetup.exe /quiet /installpath %~dp0 /layout %~dp0
Pause

Group Policy setting's behavior related to reboots, logoffs and schema extensions

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 20:33:40 +0000

The Group Policy Settings Reference for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 now includes 3 additional columns providing additional information about each policy setting’s behavior related to reboots, logoffs, and schema extensions.

Reboot Required: A “Yes” in this column means Windows requires a restart before it applies the described policy setting.
Logoff Required: A “Yes” in this column means Windows requires the user to log off and log on again before it applies the described policy setting.

Windows 8 – Script for customizing WinPE 4.0 – Part 2 - Customizing the Wallpaper

Mon, 28 May 2012 22:09:35 +0000

As a follow up on my earlier post Windows 8 – Script for customizing WinPE 4.0 – Part 1 I want to share with you how to customize the WinPE wallpaper. Credits go to blog reader “Max” who responded on a question from reader Carl H.

In WinPE 4.0 the wallpaper is not called winpe.bmp as in previous versions of WinPE but winpe.jpg. Also the winpe.jpg has special permissions so overwriting the file would require changing them. An easier approach is to add your custom WinPE wallpaper file to the WinPE sources and change the appropriate registry value in WinPE.

Windows 8 - Troubleshooting Licensing with licensingdiag.exe

Mon, 14 May 2012 19:32:05 +0000

Should you encounter problems with activating Windows 8 or Server 2012 then have a look at the new added command-line tool licensingdiag.exe.

To run licensingdiag.exe open a command prompt and enter the following command:

licensingdiag.exe -report c:\data\licensing\licenserep.xml -log c:\data\licensing\license.cab

This will create a log file and a CAB file. The log file is an XML type file that contains various information about the client, the OS and its licensing status. The CAB file contains a copy of the log file, a file called tokenstore.dat (I was unable to find any information about its purpose) and a Diagevents.evtx that contains a dump of License related events and can be opened using Eventviewer.

Windows 8 the Comeback of 3rd Party DVD Player Software?

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:00:09 +0000

Microsoft recently confirmed that Windows Media Center will not be included by default within Windows 8 but will be available as an economical “media pack” add-on to Windows 8 Pro. One of the reasons for not including it anymore as a build-in feature is because according to the data Microsoft has collected via it’s Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) only a small percentage of users are actively using Media Center on Windows 7. Another reason is that nowadays more users are streaming video content over the internet instead of playing a local DVD. And finally, I guess that in just a few years the same will happen with DVD players as happened with the floppy drives, they will disappear.

Windows 8 - File History Feature replaces “Previous Versions” and Backup and Restore

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:36:33 +0000

While reading the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and Windows Server “8” Beta Compatibility Cookbook I came across the topic Volume Shadow Copy Service UI Removed. Due to the fact that this feature was obviously rarely used by end users and it’s negative impact on Windows performance, Microsoft decided to removed this feature from Windows 8. In addition Microsoft also decided to deprecate the Windows 7 Backup and Restore feature, again because this functionality appears to be rarely used.

Saturday morning ramblings with Windows 8 Hyper-V and Sun VirtualBox

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 08:43:56 +0000

Yesterday I prepared a new system with Windows 8 CP that has the latest Intel I7 processor and 8GB of RAM. My initial plan was to use Hyper-V which is now also included as a feature on the Client.

So on this beautiful Saturday morning I continued with the setup of this HP 8760w Elitebook. But because I ran into several network related issues, others have also reported about on the Microsoft forums, I decided to switch back to Sun VirtualBox for now as that has worked fine on Windows 8 so far.

Windows Services, what changed from Windows 7 to Windows 8

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 20:02:48 +0000

Nearly 3 years ago I wrote a blog post about the Windows Services changes between Windows Vista and Windows 7. Assuming that we won’t see any big changes with regard to Services when Windows 8 will be released I repeated the exercise by looking at what has changed between Windows 7 Enterprise and the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Build.

To obtain the services data from each system, i executed the following PowerShell command:

How to register a custom Assessment Job within the Windows Assessment Console

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:00:26 +0000

In the Scaling And Extending Windows Assessments To Improve System Quality (Part I & II) presentation shown at the //BUILD conference in September Jason Cohen a Senior Software Development Engineer at Microsoft demonstrated how to create a custom Assessment job using a Ping test as example.

Excited about the idea of extending the Windows Assessment Console with self-defined tests, I have since spend quite some time reading the related documentation on MSDN. I can imagine that one day I would be able to automate a large amount of system validation and certification tests that nowadays are performed manually or with individual scripts can be fully integrated into the Assessment Console that not only takes care of the automation but also provides a nice reporting interface.

GPO Template for UE-V SettingsTemplateCatalogPath configuration

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:58:35 +0000

To simplify my testing activities with Microsoft’s User Experience Virtualization (UE-V( Beta, I created a Group Policy template that configures the User’s SettingsTemplateCatalogPath. The SettingsTemplateCatalogPath is the location where UE-V looks for new or updated templates once a day.

The SettingsTemplateCatalogPath setting is stored within the Windows Registry under
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\UEV\Agent\Configuration

To get the GPO working I had to create another “custom” registry value called GP_SettingsTemplateCatalogPath_Set which defines whether the setting is enabled or disabled. (Well possible that this workaround isn’t required, but I couldn’t find another way to get my home-brew policy working).

Copying command-line tools from Windows into WinPE, don’t forget the localization files

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 20:43:07 +0000

To keep the footprint of WinPE as small as possible many services or tools usually found within a full Windows installation are not available within WinPE. So if you need a command-line tool from Windows such as icacls.exe you just copy the executable into your WinPE sources and you’re done.

But hey, when booting into WinPE and executing icacls.exe, nothing is displayed, the command itself however works.

Unfortunately just copying the the executable alone isn’t enough since it is language neutral, you must also copy the corresponding localization file. These can be found under C;\Windows\System32<locale> so for English C;\Windows\System32\en-US. For icacls.exe we would copy the file ICacls.exe.mui into the WinPE’s \Windows\System32\en-US folder.

Windows 8 ADK Assessments OS and Architecture Support Overview

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 18:11:49 +0000

Along with Windows 8 Microsoft also provides a new tool for System Builders and IT Professionals called the Windows Assessment Toolkit. The Windows Assessment Toolkit allows to determine the quality of a running operating system or a set of components with regard to performance, reliability, and functionality.

Now since I’m sure Windows 7 will be around for a while, I wondered whether some of these Assessments would also run Windows 7 so I started reviewing each Job and Individual Assessment listed within the Assessment Console. My findings are listed below.I have also indicated whether the Assessment is designed to run on the x86,x64 and/or ARM architecture.

Microsoft releases DaRT 8 Beta

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:20:32 +0000

Microsoft has released a Beta for DaRT 8. You find more details in the articles listed below. I’ve only been looking at it shortly, but here’s what I liked most:

DaRT 8 now comes with full PowerShell support and some of the cmdlets added can also be used beyond DaRT.
A complete new version of the DaRT image build wizard.
UEFI support

MDOP: DaRTing to the Future

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/business/archive/2012/03/28/mdop-darting-to-the-future.aspx

Microsoft DaRT 8 Beta Q&A

Windows recommends PowerPoint Viewer 2007 though there is a 2010 version

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:42:35 +0000

While working on my Windows 8 test client, I downloaded a PowerPoint file and because I don’t have Office installed Windows prompts me how I would like to open this file. Knowing that it will point me to the PowerPoint Viewer I choose to look for an app on the web.

But surprisingly the Windows File Association information site recommendation lists Microsoft Power Point 2007 and PowerPoint Viewer 2007.

So I start to wonder whether there might be a 2010 version as well and indeed there is one it’s just not called PowerPoint Viewer 2010 but just PowerPoint Viewer.

Windows Explorer context menu for managing WIM files

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:16:32 +0000

Mounting and un-mounting Windows Images (wim files) is a simple task using dism.exe or imagex.exe at the command prompt, but if you do this every day you might get annoyed by typing the same string of commands over and over again. A few years back my colleague Claude Henchoz shared a script to add some WIM management options to the Windows Explorer context menu.

I have now taken these scripts and updated them so that they use dism.exe exclusively and also added a 3rd party utility that runs the commands in elevated mode, so now we can also use the Explorer context menu options with UAC on.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview Support Bulletins Feb 29–March 13, 2012

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:26:33 +0000

Below are the Windows 8 Consumer Preview support bulletins I was able to capture since the release of the Consumer Preview build.

The BITS service crashes during the installation of Windows 8 Consumer Preview
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2680336

Windows 8 Consumer Preview language packs are available for computers that are running Windows 8 Consumer Preview
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2607607

Windows Internet Explorer 10 Consumer Preview is now available for Windows 8 Consumer Preview
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2650043

An update for PlayReady PC Runtime for Windows Media Center on a Windows 8 Consumer Preview-based computer is available
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2658597

Windows 8 – Script for customizing WinPE 4.0 – Part 1

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:48:55 +0000

Today I want to share with you a small script I’ve put together for customizing WinPE 4.0 that will ship with Windows 8. I’ve rewritten the script based on some existing script code we already use today, but wanted by purpose a small independent script that I can hook in between the standard scripts provided within the ADK sources, mainly for familiarizing myself with anything new within WinPE 4.0.

When you install the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK) on a 64 bit system, you will find the WinPE 4.0 sources stored under C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Assessment and Deployment Kit\Windows Preinstallation Environment.

ToolTip: Portable WinCDEmu

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 19:32:22 +0000

One of the first things I usually do when setting up a new system that I plan to use for longer is to install an ISO mount tool. My favorite FREE tool for that is still Virtual CloneDrive. Today I came across another utility that does the same thing, but is portable, meaning there is no need to really install the software, this might come in handy when you can’t or don’t feel like you want to leave behind a system with all of your tools installed.

Windows 8 – Scheduled Maintenance Task won’t delete Desktop Shortcuts anymore

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 20:28:04 +0000

On Windows 7 many users suffer from disappearing shortcuts on their desktop. I wrote about this in Control Windows 7 Scheduled Maintenance Behavior Through Group Policy. On Windows 8 this shouldn’t happen anymore, since Microsoft has removed the related scripts and Tasks from the Diagnosis troubleshooting pack (DiagPackage.diagpkg)

The following files have been removed from the C:\Windows\diagnostics\scheduled\Maintenance folder:

RS_RemoveShortcuts.ps1
RS_RemoveUnusedDesktopIcons.ps1
TS_BrokenShortcuts.ps1
TS_UnusedDesktopIcons.ps1

How to add drivers to the Windows Defender Offline Tool

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 22:39:40 +0000

Back in January I wrote a post about how the Windows Defender Offline Beta Tool works and mentioned that the preparation wizard does not have an option to inject drivers. This can be a problem when WinPE does not recognize the disk or when you wish to have network connectivity. I had promised to explain how to add drivers to the Windows Defender Offline Beta tool, but actually forgot about writing a follow up post until I was kindly reminded by a blog reader to do so.

Windows 8 – AutoPlay Configuration

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:31:11 +0000

While continuing my journey through Windows 8 I noticed some changes in the AutoPlay configuration. Compared to Windows 7, the AutoPlay configuration in Windows 8 is now clearly categorized by device / media type. A separate configuration option is now available for Camera storage and an additional option was added for blank blue-ray discs.

(don’t be surprised about the two separate scrollbars in the above picture, I just pasted two screenshots together).

Running Windows 8 To Go on a Thin Client Device

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:46:52 +0000

Yesterday I tried out the Windows 8 To Go feature which allows you to run Windows 8 form a USB drive or USB stick. If you’re looking for a step by step guide, I suggest you look at the Microsoft TechNet Wiki here.

Having booted Windows 8 To Go on nearly every desktop and notebook device I have at home I wondered whether this would work as smoothly on a Thin Client. And yes it does. Below you see a picture of Windows 8 32 Bit booted from USB on a HP Thin Client T5740e that normally runs Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Windows 8 – Closing Metro Style Apps

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:03:13 +0000

Back in September 2011 I wrote a blog post called Windows 8–Why you don’t close a Metro Style application. Well with the Consumer preview things have changed because now you can directly close a running Metro Style app without going through the task manager.

In the below example I have started a few Metro Style apps and have just switched back to the Task manager,

On the Metro Start screen or Windows Desktop when pointing the mouse to the upper left corner it will first display the last used app, when moving the mouse down (keep the pointer at the edge of the screen) any other running app will appear as well.

ToolTip: GPO Deny Finder

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:11:17 +0000

GPO Deny Finder is a FREE tool from sdmsoftware that helps you to find GPOs that have deny ACEs. The below video explains how to use the tool.

More details about the tool can be found here or just download the tool directly from here

How to prevent a Metro App from running using Applocker

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:12:22 +0000

In Windows 8 the Applocker feature has been extended to support management of metro style apps. Enterprise administrators can define a Packaged app Rule to allow or deny the installation and/or use of a particular metro style app. When opening the Group Policy editor under Computer Configuration / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Application Control Settings / Applocker there is a new node called Packaged app Rules.

To create a new rule, right click on the Packaged app Rules and select Create New Rule…

New Group Policy Settings in Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:45:24 +0000

Today, oh that was yesterday already, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, so I did what I always do when there is a new Windows Operating system and that is looking for any new Group Policy settings. I do that by simply opening the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) select the Administrative Templates node and then go to All Settings, sort them alphabetically by Setting name and just go down the list and look for any policies where the requirement is defined to “At least Windows 8”. And this is what I have been doing for the last 3 hours. The task might look boring but I can tell you this is a good way to learn about new things.

Roadmap for Windows Embedded v.Next

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:49:27 +0000

While talking about Windows Embedded with a customer last week, a question came up about the next major release of the Windows Embedded operating system. From past experience we know that usually the Embedded version is released a few months after the release of the full version of the operating system. Looking at the current release of the Embedded operating system, Windows 7 was formally released on 22.10.2009, and Windows Embedded Standard 7 was released on 29.07.2010 so nearly 9 months later.

Managing Windows 8 Metro Style Apps with DISM

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 21:55:52 +0000

As mentioned in my earlier post Windows 8 – What’s new in the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool (DISM) the DISM tool now also contains commands for managing metro style applications. When running dism.exe /online /? we find the following APPX servicing commands.

/Remove-ProvisionedAppxPackage - Removes AppX packages from the image. AppX packages will not be installed when new user accounts are created.
/Add-ProvisionedAppxPackage - Adds AppX packages to the image and sets them to install for each new user.

How to avoid KMS becoming a challenge in your Windows 7 deployment project

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:44:30 +0000

I’ve been involved in Windows 7 deployments since the Beta came out in 2009 and before Windows 7 there was Vista, XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT and even Windows 3.11 and although over time the technology has changed the basic challenges of every migration remained the same.

If today someone asks me what I consider as being one of the top 10 challenges I’ve seen in Windows 7 deployment projects I must mention KMS. Yes despite the fact that in theory this is nothing more than just a service you install on one or two servers in your datacenter and publish an SRV resource record in DNS, this is something that keeps people busy in nearly any project I’ve been involved so far.

Windows 8 – What’s new in the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool (DISM)

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:43:03 +0000

On my journey discovering the new features within Windows 8 I’ve come across a bunch of new options within the Deployment Image Servicing and Management Tool aka DISM. When running launching the DISM command we get an overview of all the commands and options. The blue coloured commands and options below are the new ones added compared to Windows 7. At first we see a whole new command group being added called “Generic Imaging Commands. While the Windows 7 DISM command is used to service the current running operating system or WIM images, in Windows 8 the DISM tool has been extended with commands to service VHD type images.

How to Reset Windows 8 without external media

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:46:21 +0000

Yesterday I’ve talked about the Windows 8 Refresh Your PC feature, today I’d like to show how you can reset Windows 8 without using external media. When performing a Reset on a Windows 8 client, you are going to run a complete fresh installation of Windows 8 without preserving any user data or settings. You would use this option before you give back your system to anyone else and want to make sure that there is no personal data or settings left on the system.

The Windows 8 Refresh Your PC Feature

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:30:13 +0000

As recently illustrated on the Windows 8 Build blog Windows 8 comes with new features to Reset or Refresh your PC. The Reset Feature basically triggers a complete new installation of Windows 8 without taking care of any personal data hence this option should only be used when you have your data backed up already or when you intend to hand-out the system to someone else and you want to ensure that the system doesn’t have any personal data or settings stored. The Refresh option allows you to re-install Windows 8 but it will take care of your personal data, settings and Metro Style applications e.g. once the Windows 8 operating system installation has completed the user will still have access to his data and personalization settings. Furthermore the Refresh Your PC feature allows you not just to install a clean version of Windows 8 but one that does already include some of your self-installed applications so that you don’t have to install them all from scratch again.

How to prevent pending updates from installing when shutting down Windows

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:03:16 +0000

The meeting should have finished since 10 minutes but they keep on talking, you look at your watch and notice that you only have a few minutes until you need to leave the office so that you catch your train. Finally the call ended and you shutdown your machine, but then you get that message “Please do not power off or unplug your machine. Installing update 1 of 5”.

Skype Group Policy Settings

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:26:34 +0000

Just recently one of our customers requested the Skype (Business version) Application to be packaged for software distribution, so I wondered what the status is these days with regard to locking down Skype with Group Policy. Well the results are sobering. Despite the fact that Skype is part of Microsoft since a while, there has not been much progress in making Skype more Group Policy aware.

The settings that can be configured using Group Policy are documented within the Skype IT Administrators Guide but note that this document relates to Skype version 4.2 and there isn’t a newer version for Skype version 5.x. Also note that the number of settings is rather limited, in fact the only setting I consider as useful for Enterprise Administrators is to disable the Check for Updates setting that prevents Skype form automatically checking for new versions and updates.

Reducing Energy Costs and Carbon Footprint with SCCM 2007 R3

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:59:02 +0000

Almost all companies I know do have some sort of a Green-IT policy in place but in my view this should go beyond just putting an e-mail footnote like “Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail”. Many companies use Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R3, but don’t bail out its Power Management capabilities whereas it could help save energy costs and carbon footprint with just a few clicks.

The Internet Explorer Compatibility List

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:47:18 +0000

In today’s blog post I’d like to share some basic information I gathered today about the Internet Explorer Compatibility list option that is available within the Compatibility View Settings in Internet Explorer 8 and 9. By default this setting is enabled and causes websites that are listed within the Compatibility list to render properly in newer versions of Internet Explorer.

When you have the Include updated website lists from Microsoft option enabled, you should have a file called IECompatData.xml stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\IECompatData\

ReadTip: Group Policy Central Access Policies Extension Specification

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 00:50:06 +0000

If you are interested in Group Policy stuff, here’s a new Open Specifications Documentation for Group Policy: Central Access Policies Extension that appears to be something new coming with Windows 8. To be honest with you, I guess I need to read this doc a few more times, until I could really explain in detail what this is all about, Some other articles mentioning this are Exploring Windows Server 8: Dynamic Access Control and Windows Server 8 Gets Serious about Security.

The Windows SKU’s with a 7

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:06:41 +0000

I was listening to a podcast from RunAs Radio today and someone mentioned wondering about how many Windows SKU’s with a “7” there are. Well here we go.

Windows 7 Starter
Windows 7 Home Basic
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Enterprise
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows Thin PC (is based on Embedded Standard 7)
Windows Embedded Standard 7
Windows Embedded POSReady 7
Windows Embedded Automotive 7

 Windows 7 Professional SP1 for Embedded Systems

 Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 for Embedded Systems

Windows Embedded Compact 7

Enable Windows Remote Management through Group Policy

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:43:21 +0000

In today’s post I am going to show you how to enable Windows Remote Management through Group Policy.If you haven’t heard of Windows Remote Management yet I recommend you read the articles I have referenced below. When enabled and configured Windows Remote Management provides an easy way for IT Administrators to remotely access and manage Windows Clients and Servers. If you have used the Microsoft Sysinternals PSTools suite, you’re going to like this one as well.

Are my Windows Power Settings Energy Star compliant?

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 12:45:42 +0000

I am often asked by customers whether their Windows 7 Power Settings are Energy Star compliant.

The recommendations for Windows clients are:

Computers must enter system standby or hibernate after 30 to 60 minutes of inactivity.
Monitors must enter sleep mode after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity

Windows 7 by default comes with 3 Power Plans. High Performance, Balanced (default) and Power Saver. If you have enabled the Balanced or Power Saver power plan then you are using the recommended Energy Star power settings.

Windows 8 Active Directory based volume activation

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 14:25:52 +0000

Windows Server 8 comes with a new role called Volume Activation Services. The Volume Activation Service allows IT administrators to enable volume activation for domain joined systems using a Key Management Service Host (KMS) or Active Directory based Activation. This means in theory that going forward there is no need anymore to install and manage a separate infrastructure for volume activation of Windows clients, servers and office, but according to the article “What’s new in Windows Server 8 Active Directory” from the Windows IT Pro magazine KMS will still be required for a while to support everything that uses KMS today, unless Microsoft would provide an update to enable current systems and applications to activate via Active Directory.

Performing a Windows Performance Assessment with the Windows ADK

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 23:43:46 +0000

By now most of you have probably looked at the Windows 8 client or server preview build and unfortunately the most attention is given to the new Metro look, but hey there’s more than that coming, in fact there’s some awesome stuff coming I’d like you to know about. With Windows Vista and Windows 7 Microsoft also released the Windows Automated Installation Kit known as WAIK. For Windows 8 this is now being rebranded into Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit in short ADK. Now don’t get confused by the word Assessment here as it has nothing to do with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) that is used to assess your current infrastructure.

Windows 8 Support for eDrives

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:39:49 +0000

I have just installed the Windows 8 Assessment and Deployment Kit and came across some information about Windows 8 support for eDrive also known as the Encrypted Hard Disk Drive..

The Windows Setup Reference mentions a new setting called Microsoft-Windows-EnhancedStorage-Adm / TCGSecurityActivationDisabled. By default, when Windows is installed on an eDrive, Windows automatically encrypts the drive by using TCG and IEEE 1667 transport standards.

More information:
eDrive Device Guide
Almost All Future Drives Will Self Encrypt, Says Tom Coughlin, in Industry’s First Forecast on SEDs
Building hardware-accelerated encrypted devices (eDrives) in Windows 8

Update for Google Toolbar available (fixes issues with Internet Explorer 8 and 9

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:54:53 +0000

If you’re using the Google Toolbar and Internet Explorer 8/9 you might have experienced bad browser performance (I did). There is an update from Google that seems to solve these issues. It did for me so far. The Microsoft KB can be found here but since that article only refers to the Google site, you can get the update directly from here

New Defrag options in Windows 8

Sun, 13 Nov 2011 16:53:46 +0000

Looks like Windows 8 introduces some additional DEFRAG options.

 **Option** **Description** **Option Available** **Windows 7** **Windows 8** /A Perform analysis on the specified volumes Yes Yes /C Perform the operation on all volumes Yes Yes **/D** **Perform traditional defrag (this is the default)** No **Yes** /E Perform the operation on all volumes except those specified Yes Yes /H Run the operation at normal priority (default is low) Yes Yes **/K** **Perform slab consolidation on the specified volumes** No **Yes** **/L** **Perform retrim on the specified volumes** No **Yes** /M Run the operation on each volume in parallel in the background Yes Yes **/O** **Perform the proper optimization for each media type** No **Yes** /T Track an operation already in progress on the specified volume Yes Yes /U Print the progress of the operation on the screen Yes Yes /V Print verbose output containing the fragmentation statistics Yes Yes /X Perform free space consolidation on the specified volumes Yes Yes

There is little information yet about these options but I assume that they might have to do with the rumored new “protogon” file system and that there is more support for SSD included.

Windows 7 – MFU (Most Frequent Used Programs)

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:59:23 +0000

This week I found an interesting tool called UserAssist.exe written by Didier Stevens. The UserAssist tool lists the UserAssist registry keys stored under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\UserAssist. This is the location where Windows 7 (and earlier versions of Windows) retrieves the information about the execution frequency of applications started by users. If you are interested about the details of the UserAssist registry keys I recommend that you read some of Didier Stevens blog posts and his article he wrote for the Digital Forensics and Incident Response Magazine.

ReadTip: Life After Windows XP: Windows Vista and Windows 7

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:54:01 +0000

A nice presentation highlighting the key technology and feature improvements from XP to Windows 7. Download the presentation from here

Microsoft Product Lifecycle – The year 2014 is not that far away anymore

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 17:19:07 +0000

The countdown has started in less than 1000 days Windows XP will definitely go end of life. However note that not only Windows XP reaches its end soon, Office 2003, Windows Server 2003, Exchange 2003, SCCM 2003 and some other products are about to reach their end of life within the same timeframe.

For my personal reference and yours if you like, I have put together a short overview of the end of life dates for the products we deal with mostly in a typical Windows SMB or Enterprise environment.

Windows 8 – How to check if your system can run Hyper-V

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 10:49:19 +0000

Many articles refer to the Sysinternals Coreinfo utility to check whether your system can run Hyper-V on Windows 8 or not. But just this morning I found out that the systeminfo command that is included in Windows provides some additional Hyper-V related information.

More Information about Hyper-V on Windows 8
Bringing Hyper-V to “Windows 8”
How to Check if Your CPU Supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)

Windows 8–Why you don’t close a Metro Style application

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 08:33:17 +0000

One of the first things I noticed when playing with the Windows 8 preview build was that you can’t close metro style applications. Almost instinctively I pressed the Alt+F4 keys when I wanted to close a running application but nothing happened, I then tried to find an option within the application to close it but couldn’t find an exit button there neither.

Well after some reading and watching the Fundamentals of Metro style apps: how and when your app will run presentation things became clear. You don’t close a metro style application.

Windows 8 – New GPO stuff

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 20:53:16 +0000

I have just compared the C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions folder on the Widows 8 preview build with a Windows 7 Enterprise build. And unless I missed one, the below ADMX/ADML files are new.

AppxPackageManager.admx
dam.admx
DeviceCompat.admx
EAIME.admx
EarlyLaunchAM.admx
EdgeUI.admx
ExternalBoot.admx
msched.admx
ProximityCommon.admx
srm-fci.admx
UserState.admx
WindowsHistoryVault.admx
WinStoreUI.admx
wlansvc.admx
WPN.admx
WPN.Provider.admx
wwansvc.admx

When you open the related ADML files stored under C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US you will find some interesting hints about what these new policies are supposed to do. You will find stuff about Windows to Go, the App Store, Profiles and more.

Windows 8 – How to disable the Metro logon screen

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:28:23 +0000

When starting Windows 8 you’ll see the Metro logon screen as shown in the picture below.

The user logon then looks like this.

If you prefer to get the Windows 7 style logon screen back, set RPEnabled to 0 the key is stored under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer

The next time you logon the Metro style will be gone and you get back the classic logon screen.

By the way if you want the classic start menu back I suggest you read How to Enable Good Old Windows Vista and 7 Style Start Menu and Disable Metro UI in Windows 8 Developer Preview?

Group Policy Settings for Microsoft Lync 2010 Client

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 21:57:40 +0000

Just in case you missed this one, Microsoft released documentation and an ADM template for the Microsoft Lync 2010 client. The following settings can be configured.

Specify transport and server
Enable strict DNS naming for server name
Configure SIP security mode
Configure SIP compression mode
Prevent users from running Microsoft Lync
Allow storage of user passwords
Require logon credentials
Disable HTTP fallback for SIP connection
Disable server version check
Additional server versions supported

ReadTip: Resources for Windows and Office license activation with XenDesktop

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:59:42 +0000

Below just a few resources I have collected related to Windows and Office license activation with XenDesktop. Licensing is not an exciting topic but we have to deal with it anyway.

KMS Configuration using Citrix Provisioning Services

Citrix Managing Microsoft KMS Volume Licensing

Citrix Configuring Microsoft MAK Volume Licensing

Citrix XenDesktop 5 Support Statement for Microsoft KMS activation with Machine Creation Services (MCS)

Licensing Windows for VDI environments

What is Microsoft VDA Licensing?

ToolTip: HIDECALC – Hiding Drives in Windows

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 18:00:28 +0000

Want to make a drive disappear in Windows or prevent users from accessing it? then here’s the tool you need. HIDECALC allows you to define the drives to hide or prevent access to. HIDECALC does not apply the change on the system itself, but provides various options for exporting the settings into the following formats:

Group Policy ADMX or ADM format
Registry File
Kix Script
PowerShell Script

So here’s how this works.

Taking Group Policy beyond what’s in the box – Part2

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 10:01:29 +0000

In my previous post I provided a brief overview of how PolicyPak can take you beyond default Group Policy management. In today’s post I am going to show you how easy it is to get PolicyPak up and running in your test environment.

You can test PolicyPak on a local computer or within an Active Directory environment.

Now beside the awesome things PolicyPak can do, what I really like about this solution is that it just sits on top of what you already have, there is no need for any additional infrastructure to get PolicyPak going.

Using OpenSSH to access your Data @ Home

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:25:49 +0000

Today I want to show you one of the many possibilities to access your data remotely that you have stored on your home PC or Server using OpenSSH. Before going into the details let’s have a short look at my setup.

The Remote Network is can be at a friends place, in the office or a public hotspot where my notebook has either a public or private network IP address. Within the Home network we have an internet router that has a public and internal IP Address, the Home Server also has an internal IP address. So here’s what we need to get this up and running:

Taking Group Policy beyond what’s in the box – Part1

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:15:03 +0000

Group Policy is a fundamental part of a managed Windows infrastructure. Using Group Policy Objects (GPO) allows IT administrators to configure and lock down clients and servers providing a standardized and secure environment. But despite the fact that Group Policy technology is around since the introduction of Windows 2000 its use seems to be limited to the Windows operating system and Microsoft Application product suite. Unfortunately not many 3rd party software vendors provide built-in Group Policy based configuration support for their applications. If an application doesn’t provide native Group Policy support, the only possibility for IT administrators to configure and deliver application configuration settings is either by creating a custom ADM/ADMX template or use Group Policy Preferences. Here are the main problems with ADM/ADMX solutions:

All you need to know about Group Policy versioning

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:52:21 +0000

Ever wondered how the Group Policy versioning works? Below you find a number of articles and resources that provide a good insight how GPO versioning works.

Group Policy Team Blog – Understanding the Domain based GPO version number

TechNet - Displaying Version Properties of a Group Policy Object

MSDN - Group Policy: Core Protocol Specification (Details in section 3.3.5)

Get the latest version of the GPOTool.exe

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:49:13 +0000

The latest version of the GPOtool is the one that is included within the Microsoft Windows 2003 Resource kit. That’s what we all used to know. BUT hey I just figured out a few days ago that there is actually an official newer version around it’s included within the Microsoft Product Reports Utility.

Here’s how to get it. When launching the mpsreports_x86.exe or mpsreports_x64.exe the utility extracts the files into the temp folder.

Have you checked your Group Policy Health lately?

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:19:35 +0000

Group Policies are an essential part of every Windows Client infrastructure and it’s therefore critical to regularly spend some effort to ensure that things are in a healthy state. I would define a healthy Group Policy infrastructure as following:

All Group Policies are correctly synched across all domain controllers
There are no unlinked Group Policies (unless it’s by purpose because we use them only ad-hoc for testing purposes)
There are no Group Policies that are completely disabled (unless it’s by purpose because we use them only ad-hoc for testing purposes)

ToolTip: Xperf123 simplify Windows Performance Data Collection

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:26:06 +0000

Those of you who have been using the Windows Performance Analysis Toolkit know of the many command line options xperf provides. Xperf123 solves that challenge by providing an intuitive user interface to configure and start a trace.

Xperf123 provides the following trace options:

General Base
Disk I/O
High CPU
Paged/Non Paged Pool
Working Set
Heap Leaks
Virtual Allocations (Memory Leak)
Wait Analysis
Shutdown
Reboot
Startup
Hibernation

Note that the Xperf123 download package has the 64 bit version included of the following tools. XPerf.exe, perfctrl.dll, xbootmgr.exe,
xbootmgrSleep.exe and xperf.exe. If you are running a 32 bit version of Windows 7 you must download the appropriate binaries from here

ToolTip: PwrTest (Testing Windows Power Management)

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:23:26 +0000

While reading the Microsoft Whitepaper Diagnosing Application Compatibility Issues Affecting Windows Power Management I came across a utility called PwrTest that can be used to diagnose sleep reliability issues and more… The below list shows the various options the tool provides.

 **Scenario**

 **Description**

 sleep

 for sleep/resume transition testing 

 battery

 for battery information testing 

 info

 for system capabilities information 

 es

 for thread execution state changes 

 idle

 for power idle statistics 

 ppm

 for processor power management testing 

 timer

 for system timer resolution statistics 

 disk

 for disk idle statistics 

 device

 for device idle statistics 

 monitor

 for monitor dimming and blanking statistics 

 requests

 for showing power requests 

 thermal

 for ACPI thermal zone monitoring 

 processidle

 for forcing idle/background tasks to be run 

 PwrTest.exe is part of the Windows Driver Kit that can be downloaded from [here](http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/confirmation.aspx?id=11800). You will need to download an ISO file that is approx. 620 MB, but no worries, no need to install the Full Driver Kit to get this utility. When launching the installer, just select the Tools.

The GatherNetworkinfo.vbs Script

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:17:37 +0000

I recently read the whitepaper“Using Windows Script Host and COM to Hack Windows” that is mentioning the GatherNetworkinfo.vbs script I hadn’t paid attention to yet. The gathernetworkinfo.vbs script comes by default with every Windows 7 installation and is located within the C:\Windows\System32\ folder.

The script does collect various networking information about the Windows 7 system and its configuration and dumps the information into the C:\Windows\System32\Config folder.

On a system where the script hasn’t been executed yet the Config folder looks as following:

Group Policy Settings for Silverlight 4 – FIXED

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 13:29:23 +0000

On the Microsoft Silverlight website you will find a page that describes the available Group Policy Settings for Silverlight as well as the content for the ADMX and ADML file. But… it doesn’t work because the code on the web contains a bug and a section is missing.

Within the silverlight.admx there is an unnecessary space and within the silverlight.amdl the section for SET_ALLOW_MAXIMUM_ISOLATED_STORAGE and ALLOW_MAXIMUM_ISOLATED_STORAGE_HELP is completely missing.

To get the Silverlight GPO working remove the space from ALLOW_MAXIMUM_ISOLATED_STORAGE_HELP and add the following section to the silverlight.adml file.

Windows 7 Search Connector for Citrix eDocs

Tue, 24 May 2011 20:33:58 +0000

Here’s another Search Connector for Windows 7 I’ve just created. Start your Citrix eDocs search directly from the Windows Explorer.

Installing the Search Connector for Citrix eDocs

Download the citrixedocs.zip from here.
Extract the citrixedocs.osdx from the ZIP file
Double click on the osdx file
Click Add to install the Search Connector

To remove the Search Connector simply click on the Citrix eDocs Search Connector in Windows Explorer and select Remove. Then open windows explorer and navigate to C:\Users<user>\Searches (where is your username) and delete the file Citrix eDocs.searchConnector-ms

BGInfo Template for XenDesktop 5

Sun, 22 May 2011 22:48:26 +0000

During the past weeks I have spend a bit of time with Citrix XenDesktop 5 and while I was busy creating Desktop Groups, updating Master images, I thought i t could be helpful to see some information directly on the desktop. Show things on the desktop?, okay that’s a no-brainer, BGInfo from Sysinternals is what we need.

So I created a template for BGInfo that just shows the information I need when using XenDesktop.

ReadTip: AppLocker Technical Documentation for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Sat, 21 May 2011 11:18:16 +0000

The AppLocker Technical Documentation for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 provides technical guidance about understanding how AppLocker works and how to effectively plan and deploy AppLocker policies.

Download the documents from here

ToolTip: HDX Monitor for XenDesktop

Thu, 19 May 2011 23:00:07 +0000

If you experience poor performance using a XenDesktop session, video and audio is not playing nicely, the Windows Event log is showing messages as shown below, it’s time to take a closer look at what’s going on.

Network latency is above the level supported by HDX MediaStream for Flash. Server-side Flash rendering will be used if available.

Measured latency (milliseconds): 86

Citrix has a FREE tool available to validate the operation of HDX. The Tool is called HDX Monitor for XenDesktop and can be downloaded from here

Retrieve Windows Boot Time Script

Thu, 19 May 2011 00:42:14 +0000

Here’s a small batch script to get the Windows 7 Boot time shown in milliseconds.

@echo off
FOR /F “Tokens=4” %%a IN (’%windir%\system32\wevtutil.exe qe Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational /rd:true /f:Text /c:1 /q:"*[System[(EventID = 100)]]" /e:Events ^| FIND “Duration”’) DO SET BTIME=%%a
ECHO Boot Time is : %BTIME%

Inspiration for this script came from the article Monitor System Startup Performance in Windows 7 written by Sean Wheeler for WindowsITPro.

Remote access to the XenServer Configuration Console GUI

Sat, 14 May 2011 13:07:04 +0000

The XenServer Configuration Console GUI can be accessed remotely by entering the following command at the prompt

xsconsole

Group Policy Settings to control BITS Bandwidth usage

Wed, 11 May 2011 23:32:59 +0000

I just read the article BITS – More Flexible Bandwidth Limit Policies on the Windows Management Infrastructure Blog which describes how BITS bandwidth usage can be configured through Group Policy settings. For Windows 7 (or computers with BITS 3.5 installed) there are 2 Group Policies that provide more granular control of BITS bandwidth usage during working / non-working days/hours and during scheduled maintenance days/hours.

The 2 GPOs can be found under Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Network -> Background Intelligent Transfer Service

ReadTip: Group Policy for Beginners

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:41:23 +0000

Microsoft has released a document called Group Policy for Beginners which provides an overview of what you can do with Group Policies, the essential concepts and some step by step instructions to get you going. If you haven’t done anything with GPOs before and are just about to learn how this all works, this document is for you. I also recommend this document for project managers that haven’t done anything with GPOs in the past.

WatchTip: Dynamic Memory in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:37:17 +0000

There has been a lot of talk about Dynamic Memory in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. In this video Jeff Alexander provides an excellent 14 minute overview. Watch the video here

Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART) Remote Connection Tool

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:07:58 +0000

Just a few weeks ago Microsoft released a public Beta version of the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART) 7. One of the new features of DART7 is the Remote Connection Tool. Okay, I agree this is not rocked science, actually I’ve written about this before using a VNC client, but now that it is included within the tool suite, it’s just there and ready to use.

Let’s have a look how this works. On the client side we boot the client into DART, this can be either from a DVD, USB, from the local disk or PXE boot. Note that when creating the DART media you must include additional network drivers for the clients you use, unless already supported by the out-of-the-box drivers included within PE.

Windows 7 and Multilanguage Packs

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:34:43 +0000

Most of you actively dealing with Windows 7 deployments probably know about the Multilanguage Packs for Windows 7 , but since I do still get questions about this every now and then, I thought it’s worth to do a brief recap on this subject.

For the sake of simplicity I’ve created a Q&A based summary.

**Q: What is the default language of Windows 7
**A: The Windows 7 (as Vista) core operating system is language agnostic. In terms of licensing and language support Microsoft has the following definitions:

Group Policy Settings for Windows Games

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 15:05:56 +0000

In Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise the Windows Games are not enabled by default. But if you have decided to include them in your corporate standard image or users with administrative rights enable them by themselves, you should consider using the following Group Policy settings.

 **Location** **Location** **Setting** **Description** Computer Configuration Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Game Explorer Turn off downloading of game information Manages download of game box art and ratings from the Windows Metadata Services.

 If you enable this setting, game information including box art and ratings will not be downloaded. 

 If you disable or do not configure this setting, game information will be downloaded from Windows Metadata Services.

 Computer Configuration Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Game Explorer Turn off game updates Manages download of game update information from Windows Metadata Services.

 If you enable this setting, game update information will not be downloaded. 

 If you disable or do not configure this setting, game update information will be downloaded from Windows Metadata Services.

 Computer Configuration Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Game Explorer Turn off tracking of last play time of games in the games folder Tracks the last play time of games in the Games folder.

 If you enable this setting the last played time of games will not be recorded in Games folder. This setting only affects the Games folder. 

 If you disable or do not configure this setting, the last played time will be displayed to the user.

Scheduled Tasks for Windows Games

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:05:55 +0000

When opening the Windows Task Scheduler you might see a Task called “UpdateCheck_” located within the Games folder of the Task Scheduler Library.

To enable or disable this Task open the “Game Explorer” within Windows and then select options.

When selecting “Automatically check online for updates and news, then notify me when the’re available” a scheduled Task is automatically being created. When selecting “Never check online for updates or news, I’ll do it manually” the task if existed before is removed.

Custom GPO Template for Start Menu–Highlight newly installed programs

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:18:49 +0000

This morning at the GP Answers community forum someone asked how to configure the Start Menu option “Highlight newly installed programs” via GPO. As it turns out this setting is not included within the out of the box GPO templates. Since I have a few days off I thought let’s give a little help here.

But before jumping into the custom ADMX template, let’s quickly look at the configuration setting itself. When installing an application the new created shortcut within the Start Menu is highlighted.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program–Part 2

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:14:08 +0000

In Part 1 I explained the history, benefits and configuration of the CEIP. In part 2 we take a closer look at the SQM data processing and the involvement of the Windows Task Scheduler.

SQM Data processing

The following diagram was taken from the Corporate Customer Experience Improvement Program Client-to-Server Protocol Specification document and illustrates the CEIP data flow.

Once CEIP is enabled simply run a dir *.sqm /s command and you will see files with an SQM extension being stored in several locations. I haven’t been able to see the files while being processed, but according to the documentation, it should all go through the following folder before it gets uploaded to Microsoft.

Why a double click in the upper left corner closes the Window

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:02:36 +0000

Ever wondered why a double click in the upper left corner closes the Window although there is no close icon?

Well I have no proof for this, but assume that this is because in the early days of Windows, the only way to close a Window with the mouse was to DoubleClick on the Window Menu icon in the upper left corner as on the upper right side of the Window there were only buttons to minimize and maximize the Window.

The Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program–Part 1

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:53:38 +0000

The Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) collects information about how people use Microsoft products. The primary objective of this program is to solve problems and improve Microsoft’s products and features. During the past two days I have tried to get a better insight into what CEIP is really about, how it works and how it can be configured.

History

According to a blog post from Jensen Harris until the year 2003 the software design decisions at Microsoft were mostly supported by guesswork and that is not a shame because when looking around in these days, there are still many companies that make decisions based on a guess or an assumption. The MSN product group at Microsoft were the first that used the CEIP to collect data about the performance and usage of the MSN Client. Internally at Microsoft the CEIP is called SQM. Initially SQM was an acronym for Service Quality Monitoring but was later redefined as Software Quality Metrics. While SQM already existed in many Microsoft Applications, Windows Vista was the first Operating System where SQM was shipped as an OS component.

Windows 7–Windows System Assessment Tests (WinSAT)

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 23:04:02 +0000

Hey there, today I am going to share some information I have gathered about the Windows System Assessment Tests aka as WinSAT. When WinSAT runs, various performance tests are executed for the following system components:

CPU
Memory
Graphics
Disk

Upon completion of the assessment tests, each component is given a score that is based on the Windows Experience Index. The overall score called “Base Score” is based on the lowest subscore of an individual hardware component. So what does the Base Score mean? Well Microsoft defines it as following:

Keep track of Global and Regional Windows 7 deployment status

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:54:18 +0000

During this week there have been various reports about Windows 7 passing Windows XP in the U.S. The numbers used come from StatCounter a web analytics service. While Windows 7 has passed Windows XP in the U.S, we’re not yet there globally.

Worldwide Windows 7 Deployment Status

Source: Global Stats

If you’re interested finding out how Windows 7 does in your region, simply go to StatCounter and select your region. Beside the operating system, you can also get statistics about Browser, Screen Resolution, Mobile Browser, Browser Version usage and a few more.

ReadTip: BranchCache Learning Roadmap

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:30:34 +0000

Microsoft has published a BranchCache Learning Roadmap document. Download the document from here

This learning roadmap provides you with links to prerequisite information you need to understand and deploy BranchCache, and also provides links to BranchCache information from level 100 to level 300. In addition there are links to optional information that will enhance your ability to expand and manage your BranchCache deployment.

Online Windows Crash Dump Analysis

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 14:50:04 +0000

if you ever need to analyze a Windows Dump file but don’t have the Windows Debugging Tools available here’s a handy way of doing an online analysis of the dump file.

Get the Windows Crash Dump file from C:\Windows\Minidump, then ZIP the dump file and upload it on the OSR Online website via the Instant Online Crash Analysis Service.

http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=analyze

After a while you get an online analysis report.

Using the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool with custom ISO files

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 15:51:32 +0000

Most of you are probably familiar with the Microsoft Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool which allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file on a USB or a DVD. Now the Tool works great with the original Microsoft Windows 7 ISO files, but when you want to use the tool for your own customized Windows 7 installation ISO files you might get an error as shown below.

Using the Windows 7 Event log to check WLAN Link Quality

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 20:56:59 +0000

When using WLAN on a day to day basis we can see the WLAN signal strength via the Windows User Interface as shown in the screenshot below.

But there are other ways, and yes the approach might appear a bit inconvenient, but basically I want to demonstrate the Power of the Windows Event log. First open the Windows Event viewer (eventvwr.msc) and then within the View Menu enable the Show Analytic and Debug Logs option.

Observations for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Error 0x800f0a12

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:02:38 +0000

During the past days I have been manually updating a few Windows 7 clients and on two of them I received the error 0x800fa12.

When clicking on the Go online link Microsoft mentions the several reasons that could lead to this error.

 The system partition isn’t automatically mounted, or made accessible to Windows, during startup.

 A hard disk containing the system partition was removed prior to beginning SP1 installation.

 Windows is running on a storage area network (SAN), and access to the system partition has been disabled.

```
 A disk management tool from another software manufacturer was used to copy (or clone) the disk or partition on which you’re trying to install SP1
```
Knowing my systems I could immediately exclude cause 2,3 and 4, so took a closer look at cause 1. Running the command MOUNTVOL /L showed the following result:

Microsoft Open Specifications Documentation for Group Policy

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 18:51:10 +0000

If you want to learn more about Group Policies then I suggest that you download and read the following documents:

MS-GPSOD]: Group Policy System Overview Document
http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/6/C/C6C3C6F1-E84A-44EF-82A9-49BD3AAD8F58/%5bMS-GPSOD%5d.pdf

MS-GPOL]: Group Policy: Core Protocol Specification
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232478(v=PROT.13).aspx

MS-GPDPC]: Group Policy: Deployed Printer Connections Extension
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232156(v=PROT.13).aspx

MS-GPEF]: Group Policy: Encrypting File System Extension
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232218(PROT.10).aspx

MS-GPFR]: Group Policy: Folder Redirection Protocol Extension
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232290(v=PROT.13).aspx

MS-GPIE]: Group Policy: Internet Explorer Maintenance Extension
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232356(v=PROT.13).aspx

MS-GPIPSEC]: Group Policy: IP Security (IPsec) Protocol Extension
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232415(v=PROT.13).aspx

MS-GPPREF]: Group Policy: Preferences Extension Data Structure
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232587(v=PROT.13).aspx

Removing Backup Files Created during Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Installation

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:24:06 +0000

For the Windows Vista Service Packs there was vsp1cln.exe (SP1) and compcln.exe (SP2) to cleanup the backup files created during the Service Pack installation. For Windows 7 Microsoft did not provide a separate cleanup tool, but instead leverages the windows-build-in DISM tool.

To remove the backup files created during the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 installation run the following command from an elevated command prompt.

dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

After successful completion you should get some disk space back.

Exporting Windows Driver Store Information into Excel

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 21:16:51 +0000

To obtain detailed information about a particular driver that is prestaged within the Windows 7 driver store, you can run the following command.

Dism /online /get-driverinfo /driver: <path to driver inf file>

Now there is quite a lot of interesting information in here, imagine you are working on a Windows 7 project and you want to know if a particular device is supported by the Windows 7 build in drivers. Of course you can do a bulk export of all the drivers into text files (as explained in this earlier post) but wouldn’t it be nice if we could just have all the information consolidated in one Excel file or database?

Managing Wireless Configuration with NETSH

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:34:16 +0000

Today when I was using the netsh command to configure some firewall settings, I noticed that it also has options for WLAN. (Yes you never stop learning). When opening a command prompt and executing NETSH Wlan Help you get the following options.

add            - Adds a configuration entry to a table.
connect        - Connects to a wireless network.
delete         - Deletes a configuration entry from a table.
disconnect     - Disconnects from a wireless network.
dump           - Displays a configuration script.
export         - Saves WLAN profiles to XML files.
help           - Displays a list of commands.
refresh        - Refresh hosted network settings.
reportissues   - Generate WLAN smart trace report.
set            - Sets configuration information.
show           - Displays information.
start          - Start hosted network.
stop           - Stop hosted network.

Retrieve Group Policy size in SYSVOL folder with PowerShell

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:07:28 +0000

Needless to say that there are quite some benefits in using a central store for Group Policies, one of them is that you can prevent the so-called SYSVOL bloat. A good description of the SYSVOL bloat is described here. So how much size do my GPOs currently consume within the SYSVOL folder? I asked myself that question a few days ago and ended up with let’s say my first version of the GetGPOSize PowerShell script.

BITSAdmin is deprecated in Windows 7 and 2008 R2

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 23:38:07 +0000

Just recently when I created a script using BITSAdmin, I noticed the following text when running the BITSAdmin executable: BITSADMIN is deprecated and is not guaranteed to be available in future versions of Windows. Administrative tools for the BITS service are now provided by BITS PowerShell cmdlets.

So BITS with PowerShell landed on my to-look-at list, but just today I came across Ashley McGlone’s Blog – Big Downloads With Powershell which contains a sample script for BITS downloads using PowerShell. With all respect to PowerShell, I do hope Microsoft is not considering replacing all the handy command line tools with PowerShell cmdlets :-)

Restricting the use of Windows Virtual PC

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 18:38:34 +0000

Windows Virtual PC is a great feature of Windows 7, but unfortunately Microsoft did not consider to provide any Group Policy settings to control the use of it. In an enterprise or small business environment you might want to do the following:

Completely restrict the use of Windows Virtual PC (even if users have local administrative rights and can enable the feature)
Prevent the creation of additional Virtual machines other than the one you prepared for them such as an XPMode VM

ToolTip: Soluto–Improve your Windows Boot Performance

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 10:27:58 +0000

Hey here’s another cool application that can help improving Windows startup boot times. The Application is called Soluto and can be downloaded from here.

Using Soluto is a no-brainer, just install it, and reboot. Soluto will show you the applications that are executed during the Windows Boot process and then allows you to either pause or delay the application during future boots.

Mute Windows System Volume

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:46:36 +0000

I came across a forum post where someone asked how to programmatically mute the Windows System volume. So this is what I have found:

NirCmd

NirCmd from NirSoft is a small command-line utility that contains many smart functions like muting and unmuting the system volume.

To mute the system volume, simply run the following command

nircmd.exe mutesysvolume 1

and to unmute you run

nircmd.exe mutesysvolume 0

With VBScript

Another option is to use a VBscript, the following code I found here will mute or unmute the system volume

ReadTip: General (Windows) activation concepts (KMS/MAK)

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 23:37:38 +0000

A great article from Kevin Ledman - Microsoft Platforms Support, covering the following topics around Windows activation:

What is KMS?
What is MAK?
What do you consider your ‘current operating systems?
How do I know what I have available to me?
I see both keys on the volume website, so I guess I have both options. Now what?
I don’t have enough machines to use KMS, so I’ll use MAK. What do I do now?

Inside the Windows 7 Driver Store–Part 2

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:03:03 +0000

Since I wrote my previous post Inside the Windows 7 Driver Store, I continued exploring the content of the Driver Store. The results are as following:

Classes & Unique Hardware IDs

 **Windows 7 Enterprise 32 Bit** **Windows 7 Enterprise 64 Bit** **Class Description** **Hardware Ids** **Class Description** **Hardware Ids** 61883 Device Class 4 61883 Device Class 4 AVC Devices 15 AVC Devices 15 Batteries 11 Batteries 11 Bluetooth Radios 69 Bluetooth Radios 69 Computer 2 Computer 1 Disk drives 31 Disk drives 31 Display adapters 499 Display adapters 500 DVD/CD-ROM drives 5 DVD/CD-ROM drives 5 Floppy disk drives 12 Floppy disk drives 12 Floppy drive controllers 1 Floppy drive controllers 1 Human Interface Devices 204 Human Interface Devices 205 IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers 87 IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers 87 IEEE 1284.4 compatible printer 100 IEEE 1284.4 compatible printer 100 IEEE 1284.4 devices 118 IEEE 1284.4 devices 118 IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers 17 IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers 17 Imaging devices 594 Imaging devices 594 Keyboards 136 Keyboards 136 Media Center Extender 4 Media Center Extender 4 Medium Changer devices 225 Medium Changer devices 225 Memory devices 1 Memory devices 1 Mice and other pointing devices 104 Mice and other pointing devices 104 Microsoft Common Controller For Windows Class 6 Microsoft Common Controller For Windows Class 6 Modems 3935 Modems 2695 Monitors 1797 Monitors 1797 Multifunction adapters 52 Multifunction adapters 52 Network adapters 3903 Network adapters 3641 Network Protocol 6 Network Protocol 6 Other devices 2 Other devices 2 PCMCIA adapters 98 PCMCIA adapters 98 Portable Devices 64 Portable Devices 64 Ports (COM & LPT) 100 Ports (COM & LPT) 92 Printers 2151 Printers 2151 Processors 55 Processors 55 SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices 1 SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices 1 SD host adapters 12 SD host adapters 12 Security Devices 4 Security Devices 4 Sensors 1 Sensors 1 Smart Card Filter 1 Smart Card Filter 1 Smart card readers 22 Smart card readers 22 Smart cards 4 Smart cards 4 Sound, video and game controllers 437 Sound, video and game controllers 413 Storage controllers 2085 Storage controllers 2086 Storage volume shadow copies 1 Storage volume shadow copies 1 Storage Volumes 1 Storage Volumes 1 System devices 1479 System devices 1448 Tape drives 303 Tape drives 303 Transfer Cable Devices 40 Transfer Cable Devices 40 Universal Serial Bus controllers 530 Universal Serial Bus controllers 530 Unknown device class 17 Unknown device class 17 Windows SideShow 6 Windows SideShow 6 **Total** **19'352** **Total** **17'789**

Manufacturers

The below table shows those Manufacturers that have the most unique Hardware IDs within the Driver Store. I had to do some data consolidation, as some vendors seem to use several ways for writing their company name within the INF file. (Some room for improvement here).

Windows 7 Device Installation Without Administrative Rights

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 02:00:07 +0000

This year I have had the opportunity to speak with many customers about Windows 7. One topic that came up in almost every discussion was about how mobile users can install their local devices without having to grant them local administrator rights. With previous versions of Windows (NT 4, Windows 2000 and XP) many companies ended up in granting their mobile users local administrator or power user rights, just because they needed to have the flexibility of installing drivers for their local devices. While in the past the need for installing a local device was primarily for local printers, nowadays where people use multiple devices there is also a demand to support mobile phones, headsets and cameras.

Inside the Windows 7 Driver Store

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:37:19 +0000

The driver store is a trusted location of inbox and third-party driver packages. This means that before a driver can be installed it must first be injected into the driver store, this process is called staging. Today I want to take a closer look at what is inside the driver store specifically the drivers that are included within Windows 7. The driver store is located under C:\Windows\System32\Driverstore.

To get list of all drivers installed (staged) within the driver store, open an elevated command prompt and enter the following command:

Prevent the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from formatting the USB flash drive

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:28:06 +0000

If you want to install Windows 7 from USB you can use Microsoft’s Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool which you can download from here. By default the tool requires that the USB disk is being erased before copying the Windows 7 installation media, hence you get the following messages.

This is a bit laborious, because sometimes you might want to store some additional files on your installation media, instead of having to store it elsewhere. I came across a small comment at the bottom of the Tools website about how to prevent the tool from erasing / formatting the USB drive prior copying the installation media.

Additional Windows 7 Search Connectors

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 15:39:54 +0000

One of my favorite features of Windows 7 is Federated Search allowing users to search remote data sources from within the windows Explorer. I wrote about this feature earlier in Windows 7 Search Provider and Finding Group Policy Settings through Windows 7 Search Connector. Today I created and found some additional Search Connectors for sites and blogs that I read frequently. You can download the Win7SearchConnect_collection1.zip from here

 ![2010-12-18 16h35_46](images/2010-12-18-16h35_46_thumb.png) The following Windows 7 Search Connectors are included

```
 GPO Guy 
```
```
 GP Answers 
```
```
 Group Policy Center 
```
```
 Group Policy Team Blog 
```
```
 Microsoft TechNet Windows 7 
```
```
 Anything About IT 
```
```
 Citrix Knowledge Base
```

Adding Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DART) to your Windows 7 boot menu

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:47:26 +0000

Last weekend I went through the Microsoft TechEd 2010 presentations and one of the presentations that got my attention was “Keeping Windows Running Effeciently with the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset”. Presentation video and slides from this session can be found here (TechEd USA) or here (TechEd Europe)

The Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset is part of the MDOP Toolset. If you’re not familiar I recommend watching the TechEd presentation or read more here. One interesting concept they speak about is to deploy DART to the client so that it can be started through the Windows 7 Boot menu. DART is a superset of the Windows Recovery Environment which is installed by default with Windows 7. Today I am going to show you how you can install DART on your local system and add an additional boot menu option. In a later post I plan to explain how to actually replace the Windows 7 default Recovery Environment with DART.

Control Windows 7 Scheduled Maintenance Behavior Through Group Policy

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 15:35:23 +0000

This week one of my customers send me the Microsoft support article KB978980 – Desktop Shortcuts disappear in Windows 7 and the request to make sure this wouldn’t happen to his clients. In short, if a user creates a shortcut that points to a location that isn’t available at the time when the weekly scheduled system maintenance task is running, the shortcuts are considered as broken and therefore automatically deleted.

In the support article Microsoft doesn’t really provide a fix to solve this problem but rather describes 2 workarounds that don’t sound feasible to me.

There’s no reason to wait for Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 14:24:37 +0000

This week Microsoft released the Release Candidate (RC) of Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. Some companies follow the rule of not deploying a new Windows operating system before the release of the first Service Pack, however for Windows 7 there is simply no need for postponing deployments because SP1 doesn’t add any new features but only addresses some minor usability issues. On the Windows client operating system side SP1 is basically a rollup of hotfixes and security updates released since Windows 7 RTM.

Creating Group Policy Objects with PowerShell

Sat, 16 Oct 2010 16:52:03 +0000

In my previous post I wrote about how to create Group Policy reports using the Group Policy PowerShell CmdLets. Today I want to share with you my first hands-on experiences with creating a Group Policy using PowerShell.

But first, why would one use PowerShell to create Group Policies? Well here are a few use cases:

You are a Consultant and always start your Group Policy Implementation with a set of GPOs including your best practice settings.

ReadTip: Enhanced Branch Office Productivity and WAN Bandwidth Savings with Microsoft BranchCache

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:09:32 +0000

For those who are in the decision making process of using BranchCache, I strongly recommend to read the Enhanced Branch Office Productivity and WAN Bandwidth Savings with Microsoft BranchCache Report from Edison.

Microsoft commissioned the Edison Group to create and run a series of tests designed to provide quantified data to illustrate the effects of the file transfer acceleration provided by using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with BranchCache enabled. The result of the testing shows that file downloads were, on average, 69 percent faster with Windows 7 with BranchCache than for Windows XP and 66 percent faster than for Windows Vista. Bandwidth utilization averaged 58 percent less for Windows 7 with BranchCache versus Windows XP and 53 percent less than Windows Vista. This document explains the tests and presents the test results.

Creating Group Policy Reports with PowerShell

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 19:14:43 +0000

I’ve had this on my “must do some hands on” list for months, finally found some time to play a bit with the new PowerShell Group Policy CmdLets that where introduced with Windows 7. For today i decided to work with the Get-GPO and the Get-GPOReport CmdLets.

The Get-GPO CmdLet allows you to list one or all GPOs that exist in a domain. If you know the name and want to know when it was last modified, simply type Get-GPO

Creating a Steady State for Windows 7

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:20:10 +0000

For those who manage Windows XP or Windows Vista computers in a school computer lab, internet cafe or library, Microsoft provides a tool called Windows SteadyState. If you want to know more about Windows SteadyState then I recommend reading the Windows SteadyState Handbook or FAQ.

But hey, who cares about Windows XP or Vista nowadays? What about Windows 7? Well unfortunately Windows SteadyState doesn’t support Windows 7 and it appears that Microsoft has no plans to provide a newer Version that does support Windows 7. But Microsoft did recently publish some guidance on how to get a Steady State for Windows 7.

Tip: How to troubleshoot KMS Activation problems

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 14:16:43 +0000

Here are some good resources for KMS troubleshooting:

MS KB 938450 How to troubleshoot Volume Activation error codes on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista-based computers.

TechNet article How to troubleshoot the Key Management Service (KMS)

Extracting CAB files from Microsoft Update Standalone Package (MSU)

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:08:01 +0000

When manually downloading a Microsoft Security Update or hotfix for Windows 7 (Vista) you typically get a file with an MSU file extension. A file with an MSU extension is a Microsoft Update Standalone package.

Microsoft Update Standalone Packages are installed through the Windows Update Standalone Installer WUSA.EXE which is located in the C:\Windows\system32 folder. If you need to install many updates you could create a script like the one below.

Finding Group Policy Settings through Windows 7 Search Connector

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:44:18 +0000

Since the release of Windows 7 and Server 2008-R2 we have about 3000 Group Policy Settings available to centrally configure and manage Windows clients and servers. Though some among us might have worked with GPO settings from the early days on, knowing about the existence of each and every available setting is nearly impossible. It still happens to me that while I am configuring a specific GPO setting, I do come across other GPOs I didn’t knew of yet.

Windows 95 turns 15, Windows 1.0 - 25

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:17:48 +0000

There’s a lot of talk about Windows 95 in these days as it’s 15 years ago when Windows 95 was launched. Well if all are so much in “Operating System Birthday” celebration mode, then let’s not forget that soon it will be 25 years ago since Microsoft released the very first version of Windows 1.0.

More Windows Desktop OS History can be found here. What happened in 1985 here and in 1995 here.

And believe it or not, Windows 1.0 still runs :-)

XP Mode within the Enterprise

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:50:34 +0000

Last week I had a Windows 7 planning meeting with one of our clients and like in any other Windows 7 related meeting that i have had in the past months with other customers, the topic about XP Mode was brought up. It appears that when speaking about application compatibility, first thing people think of is XP Mode. To be honest I don’t blame them, because when XP Mode was first introduced in April 2009 during the Windows 7 Beta phase it was promoted as a possible workaround for Application Compatibility issues and therefore got a lot of attention. The message almost sounded like “There is no barrier to move to Windows 7 because if you run into an application compatibility issue, you can always use XP Mode”. So what’s your point? Well, while the statement as such is absolutely true, there are a few things to consider when we speak about computers that run in an enterprise environment.

WatchTip: AppTitude: Recorded Demo

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:11:07 +0000

Seeing is believing – watch this 20 minute recorded demonstration of the AppTitude application testing and application remediation platform to learn how to accelerate your Windows 7, Microsoft App-V, Citrix XenApp, 64x, Windows Server and IE8 projects. . Video here (one-time registration required).

NxTop – Managing Client Hypervisors becomes a reality

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:21:14 +0000

When I watched the VirtualComputer NxTop video on DABCC last week, I was pretty impressed about what Doug Lane was showing us there. Especially after the release of the XenClient from Citrix the bare metal client hypervisor got a lot of attention. Now while Citrix just released it’s first public version of a client hypervisor, VirtualComputer seems to be a big step ahead, especially when we take into account the management of hypervisor based clients.

Enable Wireless (Wi-Fi) in Windows Server 2008 (R2)

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 18:14:29 +0000

I was just about to drop a post on how to enable Wi-Fi in Server 2008 (R2) as I just bumped into this when installing a Server 2008 R2 on a HP 8730p notebook and found out that by default this Service isn’t enabled, which makes sense as usually Servers don’t use a Wireless connection.

But why rewrite something others did already. Read more about enabling Wi-Fi on Server 2008(R2) here.

ReadTip: Is BranchCache right for remote, serverless software distribution?

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 08:46:58 +0000

BranchCache is a new feature available in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 that reduces WAN bandwidth usage and improves application responsiveness when workstations in a remote location access content from the head office or data center by downloading and caching content on the local network as it is requested, making it immediately available to other clients that subsequently request the same content.

This paper examines the BrachCache functionality specifically in the context of software distribution using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to determine if it is an optimal solution for the deployment of software, patches and operating systems to remote, serverless branches.

ToolTip: Domain Time LMCheck

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:21:00 +0000

Refreshing my knowledge a bit on Time Synchronization, NTP etc. and came across this utility. It’s FREE and doesn’t require installation.

The Domain Time LMCheck test tool lets you assess the current time of all the Windows machines on your network quickly and easily. It uses the built-in LAN Manager NetRemote TOD (Time of Day) function to check the time on all the machines in the browse list.

LMCheck can be downloaded from here

Windows 7 Compatibility Search

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 22:52:19 +0000

Just came across the Windows 7 Compatibility Search provider, allowing you to do a quick Windows 7 compatibility check for an application or hardware. Download and install the Windows 7 Compatibility Search Provider from here

Optimizations for Virtualized Windows 7 clients

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:18:51 +0000

Just found these two blog posts that describe some Registry and Services optimizations when running Windows 7 as a virtual client.

Windows 7 Registry Optimizations for Virtual Desktops

Windows 7 Optimization – Disable Services

Thanks to Daniel Feller for sharing this

ToolTip: BootRacer

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 21:51:23 +0000

When Microsoft developed Windows 7 a dedicated team was assigned to focus on startup performance. For details, read the Engineering Windows 7 – Boot Performance blog post. So what about your startup performance? . My colleague Rudi vanden Dries has been using a utility called BootRacer since a few months which provides a simple way of measuring system startup performance.

Documentation, Download details and a short demonstration video can be found here

ToolTip: checksum

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:50:37 +0000

Today’s ToolTip is about a utility called checksum and guess what, it can create and verify checksums. But beside all the other checksum utilities i came across so far this one has some nice features that make it worth mentioning it.

First it’s fast. I created a checksum for the Windows 7 x64 ISO file and it was about 15 to 20 seconds faster than other checksum utilities. Another feature that I like is that it can not only create checksums for individual files, but also for folders and it’s entire content. Checksum fully integrates into the Windows Explorer context menu but can also be launched from the command line.

Windows Mobile 6.1 Hot Fix for Sending POP and IMAP E-mail

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:26:33 +0000

Once again, there is always a solution for every problem, it’s just that it can take a while until you find the solution.

Since months I have had issues with “sending” e-mails from my Windows Mobile 6.1 device. I have several mail accounts configured on my mobile, but the one that is configured to use IMAP simply wouldn’t work.

Today I stumbled upon a patch that fixes this. If you happen to have the same problem then download the Windows Mobile 6.1 Hot Fix for Sending POP and IMAP E-mail from here

Troubleshooting Windows Update

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:04:06 +0000

Issues with installing Windows Updates? Then have a look at the following Microsoft Support Articles:

KB971058 How do I reset Windows Update components?

KB947821 Description of the System Update Readiness Tool for Windows Vista, for Windows Server 2008, for Windows 7, and for Windows Server 2008 R2

What you should know about the Win32_Product Class

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:55:15 +0000

I just read this very interesting article “Why Win32_Product is Bad News!” and if you’re a Desktop Systems Administrator I strongly recommend to the read that article as well. To simulate what Darren is writing about, simply open an elevated command prompt (on a Test system) and type WMIC, once WMIC has started type Product and confirm with Enter.

All installed Products will be listed. Now open the Windows Event Viewer. (Eventvwr.msc) and open the Applications log. As shown in the picture below that simply query caused all installed applications to be reconfigured.

Saving on WAN Costs with BranchCache

Sat, 29 May 2010 19:48:52 +0000

In this video Oliver Rist, Technical Product Manager at the Windows Server group, talks about BranchCache, the Features, the usage modes and the benefits.

Watch the video here or download the Transcript from here

Windows 7 Search – Part2

Wed, 26 May 2010 20:43:36 +0000

Well this isn’t really the Part2 I intended to write, but I just stumbled upon some interesting content that relates to Windows 7 Search, and wanted to share this. Part3 will follow in the near future.

TechNet: Windows Browse and Organize Features
A post from Ray: Windows 7 Libraries: This network location can’t be included because it is not indexed

BranchCache Step by Step Guides

Wed, 26 May 2010 15:57:32 +0000

These two BranchCache Step by Step guides provide practical guidance for setting up BranchCache in Distributed or Hosted Cache Mode within a test network.

Download the BranchCache Hosted Cache Mode Step by Step Guide here
Download BranchCache Distributed Cache Mode Step by Step Guide here

XenApp Demos from the Cloud

Tue, 25 May 2010 11:41:54 +0000

In these days we hear a lot about Desktop Virtualization and Application Virtualization. Last week-end someone asked me what I was currently doing and I told him that beside my normal day job, I am doing a number of Citrix trainings. Now let me mention that this person is just a regular user who doesn’t know anything about managing an Enterprise IT infrastructure, leave alone he would understand what Virtualization technology is about. Heck… how to explain Application Virtualization, Streaming, VDI to an ordinary mortal?

WatchTip: Video demo of AppDNA AppTitude from MMS 2010

Mon, 24 May 2010 11:30:10 +0000

Application Compatibility in these days is a hot topic. Watch this Demo and find out how AppTitude from AppDNA can help you to speed up your Application Compatibility analysis and remediation effort.

Watch the video here Source: BrianMadden.com

Windows 7 Search - Part1

Sat, 22 May 2010 13:48:49 +0000

Federated Search is one of the new features introduced with Windows 7. A few weeks ago I wrote another post about the Windows 7 Search Provider and demonstrated how to use a search connector that allows searching web content from within the Windows Explorer. Today I want to demonstrate how to extend Windows Search to find content on a remote network location.

To allow users searching content that is stored on a remote File Server, Windows Search must be enabled. On Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 Windows Search can be configured through the File Services Role.

Windows 7 Product Activation Methods

Mon, 17 May 2010 19:44:17 +0000

Today I was asked whether Windows 7 Ultimate can be activated through KMS, since we’re primarily busy with Windows 7 Enterprise I couldn’t instantly provide an answer (I prefer to first check out things instead of providing an incorrect answer). So unless I have overlooked something…… only Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise can be activated using a KMS Infrastructure.

Source: Windows Partner Activation Guide

Support for Windows XP 64 Bit

Mon, 17 May 2010 17:11:25 +0000

As most of you probably know by now, support for Windows XP SP2 ends on July 13, 2010. Well that’s for the 32 bit version of Windows XP, but what about Windows XP 64 bit, knowing that there isn’t an SP3 for that one?

I found the answer within the End of Support FAQ where it states:

*Q: If I have 64-bit Windows XP, do I also need to apply Service Pack 3?
A: *No, you don’t. There is no Service Pack 3 for the 64-bit version of Windows XP. If you are running the 64-bit Windows XP with Service Pack 2, you are on the latest service pack and will continue to be eligible for support and receive updates until April 8, 2014

ToolTip: Win7 Library Tool

Sun, 16 May 2010 13:51:02 +0000

A nice FREE Tool to manage Windows 7 Libraries. Download from here

I also recommend reading Administratively Create and Modify Windows 7 Libraries.

Office 2010 KMS Server Requirements

Wed, 12 May 2010 21:54:12 +0000

Although I have been working with Office 2010 for a while, I wasn’t aware of the KMS Server specific requirements until today when we were asked to load the Office 2010 KMS key into one of our customers KMS servers.

A dedicated server is not needed to run KMS for Office 2010. A KMS host is a lightweight service, and you can co-host an Office 2010 and Windows KMS host. However, only Windows Server 2003, volume editions of Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 R2 are supported as Office 2010 KMS hosts

What you should know about Office 2010 64-bit

Thu, 06 May 2010 20:13:00 +0000

If you are in the process of deciding whether to deploy Office 2010 32-bit or 64-bit, I recommend to read through the following content. Note that Microsoft recommends installing Office 32 Bit even on Windows 7 64 bit.

TechNet - 64-bit editions of Office 2010
Understanding 64-Bit Office
Compatibility Between the 32-bit and 64-bit Versions of Office 2010
64-bit Client Installation of Microsoft Office 2010
Office Resource Kit Blog - Office 2010 64-bit editions
4SysOps - Office 2010 – 64-bit vs. 32-bit – Part 1: Installation
Microsoft Office 2010 Technology Guarantee: FAQ

Choosing the right Server Edition for your BranchCache deployment

Mon, 03 May 2010 21:01:53 +0000

Windows Server 2008 R2 is available in multiple editions. If you’re planning to deploy BranchCache it’s important to consider installing the right server edition as there is a difference in the provided functionality between the different server editions.

**Windows Server 2008 R2 BranchCache Features
** Source: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/r2-differentiated-features.aspx

BranchCache Content Server
Source repository, located at the main office, for the content that is accessed by client computers in branch offices. Content may reside on either a file server with the BranchCache for Network Files role service of the File Services server role installed, or on a Web server or BITS-based application server with the BranchCache feature installed. Content servers transmit content to branch offices using the BranchCache-compatible protocols.

Migrating to Internet Explorer 8

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:12:44 +0000

Companies that are in the process of planning a Windows 7 migration, will be required to pay some attention to Internet Explorer 8 and web site compatibility. Chris Johnson aka “The App Compat Guy” put together two video’s about how to migrate from Internet Explorer 6 to 8. The videos talk about the potential challenges , testing methods, workarounds and solutions to support companies with a smooth migration. Thrive Live! Migrating from IE6 to IE8 (Part 1 of 2) and Thrive Live! Migrating from IE6 to IE8 (Part 2 of 2)

Windows 7 – User Account Control

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:08:36 +0000

Today I spend a bit of time in refreshing my UAC knowledge, below a listing of the content I’ve been reading and watching.

Reading (Blogs & TechNet)
User Account Control in Windows 7 Best Practices
UAC Architecture
Inside Windows 7 User Account Control
The Windows 7 UAC Slider, and What You Can Do on Windows Vista Today
Engineering Windows 7 - User Account Control
UAC Prompt From Java: CreateProcess error=740, The requested operation requires elevation (ShellExecuteEx Runas Example)

Windows 7 Enterprise Training

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:46:15 +0000

One of the objectives of deploying a new operating system within an Enterprise is to provide end users with a state of the art Operating System that builds the foundation for adopting new technologies and to increase end user productivity.

IT departments usually spend months in preparing an enterprise wide desktop deployment and by doing so they automatically get familiar with all the new functionality and features of the new Operating System. But what about the end users? Most end users are not involved in all the preparation and planning activities, hence they will only see the new Operating System on the day their PC is being migrated.

Using Hard Links – Part Two

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:40:38 +0000

In my previous post Using hard Links – Part One I explained how Hard Links work. Today’s post is about using hard links with USMT 4.0 in a Windows XP to Windows 7 migration scenario.

A typical client migration scenario for an end user usually consists of the following processes:

User Data and Settings backup
Operating System Migration
Application Installation
User Data and Settings Restore

When migrating to previous versions of Windows in most cases IT support personnel first had to copy the users data of the machine to an external USB device or network drive, this depending on the volume of data could consume quite some time, then when the new OS was installed that same data had to be restored back to the local device. With the release of USMT 4.0 IT Engineers can now design a migration process that leverages hard link functionality, which means that there is no need anymore to copy the data off the device that is being migrated. You can imagine that this will significantly speed up the overall duration of migrating a client to Windows 7.

MED-V Trim Transfer

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 23:19:17 +0000

Today I have spend some time in taking a look at MED-V. I reviewed MED-V already about a year ago, but had not touched it since then. Microsoft just recently released an updated version of MED-V as part of the MDOP suite. While configuring a Workspace, my attention was caught by the “Clients should use Trim Transfer when downloading images for this Workspace” setting that is shown within the Virtual Machine Tab.

Windows 7 Search Provider

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:57:53 +0000

Inspired by the Windows 7 Federated Search blog post I created a Search Extender for my Anything about IT blog. You can download the Anything About IT Search Provider from here

Once you have downloaded the ZIP file, unpack aait.osdx and double click to install. You will see the following message. Click Add to install the Anything about IT Search Provider.

Once installed you can directly search for content on Anything about IT from your Windows Explorer.

End of Support for Windows XP SP2 – Deploy XP SP3

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:27:24 +0000

On July 12, 2010 Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack will reach end of support, for most companies this shouldn’t come as a surprise as this has been widely communicated when Microsoft released Windows XP Service Pack 3. however it appears that some companies didn’t took these message too serious then, but now suddenly realize that July 12, 2010 is just a few months ahead of them.

Many people have still in memory the challenges they faced with Windows XP Service Pack 2, this because this in fact was more than what people knew as being a Service Pack. Windows XP Service Pack 2 was not just a rollup of security and product fixes, but also contained various technology updates (Network protection, Memory Protection, Web Browsing security and Computer Maintenance). In these days the famous word was Trustworthy Computing and this was what Windows XP Service Pack 2 was about. From a technical and security perspective Windows XP Service Pack 2 was definitely a big step forward, but many companies faced quite some challenges in deploying it especially with regard to application compatibility.

Using Hard Links – Part One

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:28:45 +0000

Nowadays we often hear the term Hard link in conjunction with Windows 7 deployments, this because the User State Migration Tool 4.0 aka USMT now provides support for hard links. The advantage of using hard links is that there is no explicit need to copy the data away from the machine before installing Windows 7. I plan to write about USMT 4.0 and the use of hard links in another post. The purpose of this article is to provide a practical understanding of what hard links are and how to create them.

Windows ActiveX Installer Service

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:55:01 +0000

Managing ActiveX Components within an enterprise sometimes can be a pain. Users with standard user privileges by default can’t install ActiveX components, hence whenever a larger group of users require an ActiveX component you usually end up creating a software package and distribute it via Software Distribution or you provide them with temporary Administrative rights. But if the clients are running Windows Vista or Windows 7 there is another solution available I noticed many people aren’t aware of, hence that’s why I am writing this article.

ReadTip: Optimizing Group Policy Performance

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 16:48:57 +0000

This is an excellent article written by Darren Mar-Elia author of gpoguy.com and founder of sdmsoftware. The article provides guidance for optimizing Group Policy Performance. Read the entire article here

ReadTip: What's New in Folder Redirection and User Profiles

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:31:46 +0000

Windows 7 introduces some improvements for Folder Redirection and User Profiles. If you are planning to use these technologies make sure to read the What’s New in Folder Redirection and User Profiles document.

Windows 7 Service Triggers

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:46:22 +0000

When taking a closer look at the Services in Windows 7 you will notice that many of them are configured to start manually but will be started when needed. For more details read my earlier posts Windows Services, what changed from Vista to Windows7 Part1 and Windows Services, What changed from Vista to Windows7 – Part2.

The technology behind starting Services when needed is called Service Triggers that were introduced with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. If you want the full inside scoop on Service Triggers I recommend that you read through the content listed below.

Windows XP Mode no longer requires Hardware Virtualization Technology

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:43:14 +0000

Microsoft has released an updated version to run XP Mode on clients that do not have Hardware Virtualization Technology. Read the details here

SQL Server 2008 Express Setup Challenge

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:46:58 +0000

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: 0x84C4001E
03/09/2010 23:22:49.579 ======================================================================

ReadTip: Making Applications Compatible with Windows 7 in a Virtualized Environment

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:14:13 +0000

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

The Argument against Disabling IPv6

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:09:54 +0000

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.

Compatibility pack for SMS 2003 SP3 adds Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as supported clients

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:50:40 +0000

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.

Configuring App-V Standalone Mode through Group Policy

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:17:58 +0000

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.

Collect BranchCache Bandwidth data using PowerShell

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:49:12 +0000

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

End of Support for Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista (with no service packs installed)

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:14:58 +0000

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

Windows 7 RC Expiration dates

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:55:02 +0000

if you are still running Windows 7 RC you might have noticed the expiration notification, if not then be aware that as of March 1st 2010 your client will automatically reboot every 2 hours. Conclusion, it’s about time to move to RTM. More information here

Engineering Windows 7 still alive - Windows 7 Battery Notification Messages

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:01:54 +0000

After months of silence (last post was on August 10, 2009) a new blog post was added on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Looks like there is something to say about Batteries. Read the full story about “Windows 7 Battery Notification Messages” here

Related articles:
ToolTip: Power Plan Assistant for Windows 7

Citrix XenClient a bare metal client hypervisor

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:26:42 +0000

Today Hypervisors are classified into two types. Type 1 is the so-called native bare metal hypervisor and type 2 the hosted hypervisor. Within the server based computing world there are various products available based on Type 1 (VMWare ESX Server, Citrix XEN Server) or Type 2 (Microsoft Hyper-V, VMWare Server).

Within the Desktop computing space most of us have rather been using Type2 based solutions such as VMWare Workstation or Microsoft VirtualPC.

End-to-End WAN Optimization with BranchCache (External)

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:54:09 +0000

If you have an interest in Windows 7 BrachCache Technology I recommend reading the TechNet Magazine article “End-to-End WAN Optimization with BranchCache”.

ToolTip: Power Plan Assistant for Windows 7

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 14:43:37 +0000

Microsoft has spend a great effort on optimizing the power consumption for Windows 7, But here’s another FREE tool that I consider as a nice enhancement over the build in features in Windows 7. Power Plan Assistant for Windows 7 can be downloaded from here. For a brief feature overview read this.

My favorite feature is the instant “Power off the Display” option that can be invoked with just a double click on the tool’s tray icon.

ToolTip: No sleep for Windows

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 07:56:07 +0000

Assume that for whatever reason occasionally you do not want your system to enter the sleep mode, but you also do not want to change your power plan ? Then have a look at insomnia a free tool to temporarily prevent a machine from going to sleep.

The Tool can be downloaded from here:

Remote Management of AMT/vPro machine with WinPE and VNC

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 15:36:37 +0000

Intel vPro/AMT enabled systems allow you to remotely reboot a system from a redirected CD-ROM aka as IDE-R. So if one of your users devices doesn’t boot its OS properly anymore, you can remotely boot that system with a diagnostics CD that you have stored on your local disk drive.

As long as that recovery CD has a text based interface such as the SystemRescueCD the system can be remotely managed through the remote VT100 terminal, but unfortunately that doesn’t work for graphical interfaces such as WinPE. So we need an alternative method to remotely manage that device. Since Microsoft’s own remote desktop (RDP) does not work under Windows PE, we are going to use VNC which is small and FREE.

Windows Home Server – A must have

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:03:45 +0000

This week I bought a HP MediaSmart Server EX490 which runs Windows Home Server. The primary reason for buying a Windows Home Server was to get an easy to use solution in place that allows us to perform automated backups and share the data across the multiple devices.

The most important computer at home is my wife’s notebook, as this has become a kind of the primary access point for the family to store pictures, music and documents.

Deploying Windows 7 RSAT (external)

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:04:50 +0000

Just found this post on Trevor Sullivan’s Tech Room blog which explains how to automate the Windows 7 Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) installation. Read the entire article here

ToolTip: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:21:55 +0000

The Windows 7 USB / DVD Download Tool allows you to transfer the content of the Windows 7 installation sources to a USB device or DVD media. The tool is FREE and can be downloaded from here If you use Windows XP you must have at least the .NET Framework 2.0 or higher installed and you must install the Image Mastering API v2.0 prior installing the Tool.

**Additional Information:
**Microsoft Store: Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool
CodePlex: Windows 7 USB / DVD Download Tool

Finding unused User Accounts in Active Directory

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:05:17 +0000

As we move towards the end of the year I thought it’s a good time to do some housekeeping activities within the lab infrastructure in which we work on a daily basis. Throughout the year we often create test user and computer objects within Active Directory and of course sometimes we forget to delete them.

As I don’t want to reinvent a wheel again I searched the web and soon found a whole bunch of tools and scripts that would help me identifying unused user accounts. I decided that I wanted to use a script. I first found the Last Logon Dates scripts from Richard L. Mueller which are written in WSH. But then I found the Managing AD User Accounts with PowerShell article on WindowsITPro and decided to use the opportunity of using PowerShell to accomplish my task.

Updating the Central Store for Windows 7 Group Policy Administrative Templates

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:21:52 +0000

One of the things to consider when deploying Windows 7 clients is to update the Central Store on your domain controllers. If you haven’t created a Central Store yet, I recommend you watch the video or read the documentation I have listed at the end of this post.

If you do have a Central Store already, updating it with the Windows 7 Group Policy Administrative templates is very straight forward. You simply copy the templates that are stored under C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions on your Windows 7 client to the Central Store which is located at \FQDN\SYSVOL\FQDN\policies\PolicyDefinitions (FQDN = fully qualified domain name)

Windows 7 Application Compatibility List

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:28:00 +0000

Some of you are probably involved in some sort of Windows 7 migration preparation activities and like with any operating system migration, application compatibility is one of the most important topics you will need to focus on. If you need to do a first pre-study on your application compatibility status, then I suggest you download the Windows 7 Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals and compare the content with the applications your company or client is using, this might allow you to do a first estimate on how much effort you will need to spend on Application Compatibility related tasks.

Windows XP Mode Deployment Sample Scripts

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:56:37 +0000

if you have watched the Windows XP Mode IT Pro Deployment Video, you might be interested in the scripts they’ve used to automatically install XP Mode and create virtual machines. You can download them from here

Windows Licensing Fact Sheet

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:46:19 +0000

Has your organization ever acquired PCs without operating systems preinstalled, and then used its Volume Licensing agreement to install the full operating system on those PCs? Download the Windows Licensing Fact Sheet to learn more about Windows Licensing.

Windows XP Mode IT Pro Deployment Video

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:33:21 +0000

If you consider using XP Mode, then I recommend watching this video. This video contains a good tutorial on how to install and configure XP mode including a lot of additional hints. Furthermore the video explains how to create a customized XP Mode VHD for deployment on multiple clients.

The video can be downloaded from here

VMware Workstation 7 RC available

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:10:04 +0000

Finally, after a long waiting time, VMware has released a release candidate for VMware Workstation 7.

Aero support for Windows 7 and Vista Guests!
Windows 7 support (as a Host and Guest OS)
OpenGL and Shader Model 3.0 support for Windows guests
Create guests with Multi-core or 4-way CPUs and up to 32GB of Memory
Download VMware vSphere 4 and install ESX as a guest OS to try out the latest features.

Windows 7 support for HP desktops, notebooks and workstations

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:31:44 +0000

HP has started publishing device drivers and software for Windows 7 for their desktops, notebooks and workstations. A complete overview of Windows 7 eligible models can be found here

Business Desktops

Business Workstations

HP Z400 Workstation

HP Z600 Workstation

HP Z800 Workstation

HP xw8600 Workstation

HP xw6600 Workstation

HP xw4600 Workstation

Business Notebooks

HP EliteBook 2730p Notebook PC

HP EliteBook 6930p Notebook PC

Windows 7 Mobile Broadband

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:20:19 +0000

Windows 7’s Mobile Broadband enhancements give people a more reliable way to connect to the Internet using a wireless modem. Taking advantage of this feature is just like connecting to any other wireless network, and is done using the View Available Networks feature.

This week there have been some questions around the use of mobile broadband with Windows 7, so I’ve started searching the web for information. and came across the Mobile Broadband Team Blog.

Accessing the BIOS in Windows Virtual PC

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:05:37 +0000

When setting up a Virtual Machine in Windows Virtual PC, You will see the following progress window when the VM is started. This indicates that the VM is running in Enhanced Mode which is the default. To better understand the different modes of Windows Virtual PC I recommend reading the “Three Modes of Windows XP Mode” article.

The progress windows is being displayed until the OS running in the VM has started up, so you have no chance to interrupt the boot process to access the BIOS. To get access to the VM BIOS, you must run the VM in Basic Mode. Running a VM in Basic Mode means that you must disable the integration features.

Getting your OS Restore DVD to work with large image files

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:10:07 +0000

This week, we completed the Windows 7 x64 build for our internal Tech Community. During the testing of the OS Restore DVD we ran into a problem when attempting to restore the image from DVD.

Our custom Windows 7 64 bit image has a size of approx. 4.8 GB. This because the 64 bit version of Windows7 has a larger footprint than the 32 bit version and because we had included some applications like Office 2010 CTP and some drivers for a limited number of hardware. Since we did not want to split the content across multiple DVD’s, we had decided that we would create just one ISO with OSCDIMG.EXE life that people would need to burn on a Dual Layer DVD which provides enough capacity.

The confusion around Hyper-V

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:58:18 +0000

When talking about Hyper-V with customers or colleagues, I notice that there is quite some confusion around the definition of Hyper-V Server and Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

**Hyper-V Server 2008 / 2008-R2
**The Hyper-V Server is a stand-alone product, which contains only the Windows Hypervisor, Windows Server driver model and virtualization components. What’s important to know, the Hyper-V Server comes for FREE!.

No, Hyper-V Server is not just Windows Server Core + Hyper-V, the only thing this server is designed for is virtualization and therefore does not contain any other server roles.

Windows 7 Commercial

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:15:22 +0000

Here’s one of the first official Windows 7 Commercial video’s. Nice.

Installing Branded IE7 on Windows XP Service Pack 3

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:56:41 +0000

I’ve spend nearly 3 hours in troubleshooting today to find out the reason why a custom IE7 package, that worked fine on Windows XP SP2 would not work on Windows XP SP3.

If you are using a custom Internet Explorer 7 package (created with the Internet Explorer Administration Toolkit) and plan to rebuild your enterprise image with Windows XP SP3, you might be interested in this article.

Microsoft Silverlight 3 Silent Installation

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 13:17:43 +0000

This morning I integrated Microsoft Silverlight 3 into our Windows 7 build. Since we use an automated image build process, i prepared the Silverlight package for a silent install.

Here’s what you need to do to run a silent Silverlight 3 installation:

Download the latest Silverlight installation package from the Silverlight website.
You will get a silverlight.exe. Run silverlight.exe /x to extract the content
Now extract the silverlight.msp from the silverlight.7z file (you can use the free 7-Zip tool to do that).

Windows Server 2008-R2 Multilanguage Packs

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:57:23 +0000

When I recently browsed through the Windows Download Center I noticed that there is a download for “Windows Server 2008 R2 Multilingual User Interface Language Packs”. Having worked with Multilanguage Packs for the Windows Client operating system since these were introduced with Windows 2000, I was astonished to see these in the public download center, because for Windows Clients you must have a Software Assurance or other Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft to use Multilanguage Packs. So why are these made available for free for the Server operating system?

What you should know about Windows 7 and using the WAIK

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:45:13 +0000

Many of you have probably already considered installing the 64 bit version of Windows 7 if not done already. I just found a “must read” article on the Deployment Guys blog about the WAIK and creating unattends for x32 and x64 images. Click here to read the entire article.

XP Mode vs. Med-V

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:39:54 +0000

Here’s another great article from Stephen Rose, explaining XP Mode vs. MED-V. Read the entire article here

Upgrade your existing KMS Service to support Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:08:53 +0000

If you are already running an existing KMS Service within your environment, and you do not plan to install a new KMS Service, the following information might be of interest if you have plans for deploying Windows 7 or Server 2008-R2 systems.

Update for Windows Server 2003 (KB968915)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=f3a0d90c-b7fd-44cf-bf81-11587adc599f&displaylang=en

Update for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition (KB968915)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1678151b-b577-476f-87da-df54024b98e2&displaylang=en

An update is available that installs Key Management Service (KMS) 1.2 for Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and for later versions of Windows Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=968915

Fundamentals of Volume Activation

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:38:49 +0000

If you are looking for a very easy 5 minute video that explains Volume Activation for Windows 7, then click here

Additional sources

TechNet Volume Activation

Volume Activation changes in Windows7

Windows 7 Activation Improvements

Adding Games on Windows 7 Enterprise

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:35:35 +0000

When you run a default Windows 7 Enterprise installation, you will notice that by default no games are being installed. System administrators using the Windows Automated Installation Toolkit can use the image manager to enable games within their customized Windows 7 Enterprise installation, but here’s another trick how you can get the games enabled.

Open a command prompt with elevated Administrative privileges and execute the following command:

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:InboxGames

Windows Logo'd Products List Updated for Windows 7

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 22:23:58 +0000

The Windows Hardware Compatibility list (HCL) has been updated for Windows 7. So far there are no entries form the major hardware manufacturers, but I’m sure that will change within the next couple of weeks as they continue submitting their drivers for WHQL testing.

Note that you can also check the hardware manufacturers Windows 7 pages to find out if they will provide Windows 7 support for your device. HP for example has the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program. All models that are eligible for Windows 7 are listed here (US site, select your country for other localized products).

Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM Dates

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:20:04 +0000

Now that Windows7 RTM is available on MSDN, some might wonder when the 2008-R2 bits are being made available. Then read this article on the Windows Server Division WebLog.

Windows 7 versus Vista and XP

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:03:35 +0000

Kai Schmerer from ZDNet Germany has done some benchmarking with Windows 7 , Vista and XP. The full article can be found here

Virtual Hard Disk Getting Started Guide

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:55:08 +0000

Microsoft recently published the “Virtual Hard Disk Getting Started Guide”. This paper provides you with all the information you need around VHD.

Download the Guide here

Updated Plans for Windows7 in Europe

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:51:45 +0000

Although we have seen many creative ways on how to get a browser on Windows 7 E, it looks like the plans for Windows7 E have changed. Read the entire article here

Another way to get a browser installed on Windows7 E

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:49:33 +0000

In my earlier post “How to download a browser on Windows7 E” I explained how to create a simple script to download a browser. I just came across another blog article that might be useful for those that do not want or can’t use a script. The article “Downloading a browser in E, without a browser, in 3 steps” explains how you can get access to a browser through Windows Media Player.

The “MZ” header in EXE files

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:01:12 +0000

When you open an executable in notepad, you might have noticed that every executable starts with the letters MZ

These story behind these two letters is that these are the initials of Mark Zbikowski the designer of the DOS executable file format. These two letters are basically telling the system that this is an executable file.

It must be a funny idea when going to sleep and knowing that your initials are spread on billions of systems.

Windows7 signed-off for RTM

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:04:01 +0000

Windows7 has been signed-off and now goes into RTM. See the video below where contributing development teams give their go to release Windows7.

Windows Engineering blog – RTM announcement
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/07/22/our-next-engineering-milestone-rtm.aspx

Windows 7 Team blog – When will you get Windows 7
http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/21/when-will-you-get-windows-7-rtm.aspx

Windows7 BranchCache test results

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:19:59 +0000

Back in April I was playing with BranchCache in my home lab environment to get an idea about how things are supposed to work but simulating a real world WAN network isn’t that easy, unless you have access to some expensive software or you can simulate a network on a Linux box, but unfortunately my knowledge with Linux is near zero. So to see how BranchCache really works out in a real environment, I asked a colleague to setup a Windows 2008-R2 system with BranchCache enabled within a remote location that could be accessed through our corporate WAN. Once that system was setup BranchCache configuration was applied and Group Policies were prepared, as described within the BranchCache Early Adopter’s Guide.

How to download a browser on Windows7 E

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:56:20 +0000

As a response to the European Antitrust Commission, Microsoft will strip the Internet Explorer from Windows7 SKUs aimed for European markets. For end users this means that unless the hardware vendor has a browser pre-installed, which is going to be very unlikely, users must install a browser themselves.

So how to download and install a browser if you don’t have a browser to access the internet? The geeks among us would probably use an ftp command and download the browser binaries from some ftp server hosting the browser installation sources. But for regular users, the only options available are to download the browser installation sources upfront on another system that has a browser with internet access and store the installation sources on a USB drive or order the installation media at Microsoft. For access to Internet Explorer 8 click here

Windows7 Enterprise Videos

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:58:13 +0000

The Windows7 Enterprise videos provide a great high-level overview for the following features:

DirectAccess
BranchCache
Enterprise Search Scopes
BitLocker
AppLocker
Virtual Desktop Enhancements
Language Packs

Click here to access the videos

Reduce software installation time

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:39:40 +0000

Windows7 comes with Windows Installer 5.0 that has a new installation property called MSIFASTINSTALL. Using the MSIFASTINSTALL property can help reduce time required to install a windows installer package.

The trick behind MSIFASTINSTALL is quite simple, it just skips things that consume time like creating a system restore point or calculating the space requirements (File Costing). So if you do not need system restore points and know that your clients have enough disk space anyway, you could consider using the MSIFASTINSTALL property to speed up application installations.

Understanding XP Mode

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:52:28 +0000

Here is an excellent post that explains Windows7 XP Mode. The article describes clearly who should use XP Mode standalone or MED-V which is the product designed for enterprises.

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/springboard/archive/2009/06/16/understanding-xp-mode.aspx

I also recommend reading “How MED-V v2 helps you manage Windows XP Mode”

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/business/archive/2009/04/28/how-med-v-v2-helps-you-manage-windows-xp-mode.aspx

Microsoft My Phone Beta

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:13:55 +0000

Yesterday I received my new mobile phone. Everyone that has switched mobile phones once, knows the pain of getting all the data transferred to the new device.

I had heard about the My Phone service from Microsoft, a web based solution that allows you to backup and restore your mobile phone data to a secured web site.

So I signed up to http://myphone.microsoft.com. I had all my data synched from my old device to the new device within 15 minutes. This is what i did.

Volume Activation changes in Windows7

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 12:37:29 +0000

Here is another video from TechnetEdge talking about the changes in volume activation for Windows7. What I found interesting to hear is that there will be a patch available for your current KMS server running on Windows Server 2003 or 2008 that will allow your current KMS system recognizing Windows7 clients.

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Volume-Activation-changes-in-Windows-7/

Reimaging Macintosh Computers

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:30:42 +0000

Most of us desktop management consultants focus on the Windows Operating System, so I thought it’s about time to see how things work with other operating systems. I kind of know in theory how a LINUX installation works but Mac computers thus far has been unknown land for me. During my journey of collecting information I came across this video which demonstrates how to re-image a MAC computer.

Another great information source I found is the Mac Admin Corner blog.

Do not slipstream Windows XP sources on Windows Vista

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:05:45 +0000

Today one of my colleagues ran into an issue after having slipstreamed Service Pack 3 into Windows XP. During the Windows XP unattended installation process the provided product key within the unattend.txt file was not accepted, which caused the system to prompt for the product key.

This turned out to be a known issue as documented within the following Microsoft support article. After you create Windows XP Service Pack 3 slipstreamed media, your product key is not accepted.

Is this Windows in the Cloud?

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:36:57 +0000

Just took a look on CodePlex to see if there’s any new interesting projects and came across the Windows4all.com project. Windows4all.com is a silverlight based website simulating an operating system inside your web browser.

By the way, if you’re interested in these type of solutions, there’s also Wiki-OS or continue reading the WEB OS article on Mashable.

ToolTip - RegFromApp

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:44:05 +0000

Most Windows Operating System and Application settings are stored within the Windows Registry, so if you want to create a script that automates customized settings, but don’t know the exact registry key location or value, you usually end up creating a so-called registry snapshot that records the changes made to the Windows registry when applying a system or application change.

Creating registry snapshots can be done with almost every application packaging software like InstallShield, or Wise Package Studio, but requires that you have that software available and installed, which may not be always the case. Furthermore when creating an entire system snapshot you usually still end up with searching through the recorded changes to identify the changed registry key.

What's New in the Windows User State Migration Tool

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:44:48 +0000

Read about what’s new in USMT (User State Migration Tool), download the whitepaper here

Windows Server 2008 R2 Documentation & Resources

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 10:40:16 +0000

Learn more about Windows Server 2008 R2. All documents can be downloaded from here

Windows7 RTM and GA communication from Microsoft

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:54:00 +0000

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM and General Availability dates were confirmed today by Microsoft.

http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2009/06/02/windows-server-2008-r2-rtm-and-general-availability.aspx

Windows7 Application Compatibility Center

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:32:01 +0000

Source: ars technica

Microsoft currently has a placeholder page for the Windows 7 Compatibility Center, which will be launching at the same time as Windows 7. Read entire article here

Windows Vista Application Compatibility List

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:35:56 +0000

Is your application vista compatible ? The Windows Vista Application Compatibility List for IT professionals might give you the answer. The list contains all applications that have the status “Certified for Windows Vista” or “Works with Windows Vista”.

This list might be helpful as well in planning for Windows7, since “most” applications that work for Windows Vista are supposed to work on Windows7 as well.

Windows “Copenhagen”

Fri, 29 May 2009 19:50:33 +0000

Interesting concept from Cullen Dudas. An Interview with Cullen can be found here

](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jy0jZ0PddIs&feature=related)

Windows 7 HD and SSD Performance Analyzed

Fri, 29 May 2009 19:24:04 +0000

Just found this article about Windows7 HD and SSD performance.

ToolTip – PowerPlan Switcher for Windows

Sun, 24 May 2009 17:08:48 +0000

Just came across this very nice utility called the Smart Power Plan Switcher for Windows. The utility allows you to configure the power scheme to be used based on the current power status. So once your system runs on battery it will automatically switch to the preferred power scheme.

the Software can be downloaded from the MSDN Code Gallery

Who’s hosting me ?

Fri, 22 May 2009 11:35:40 +0000

This morning i had an issue with a fileserver that is running as a guest on a Hyper-V server, far away from my location, in fact I did not even know what Hyper-V system is hosting that Fileserver. I wanted to see within Hyper-V manager how the system is doing, but without knowing the Hyper-V server host name, you can’t connect (kind of logic) :-)

So what’s the name of the underlying server that is hosting my virtual server ? A friend within my team found the answer.

Windows Client Feature Comparison

Wed, 20 May 2009 12:36:56 +0000

Source Microsoft: This chart compares features of interest to IT professionals across three versions of the Windows client operating system: Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=fa0177cc-7e82-4993-b0d6-fec84216dd9c

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta

Thu, 07 May 2009 21:08:41 +0000

Today Microsoft released the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor Beta. The tools scans your system and checks if its able to run Winodws7.

Download here

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 cleanup

Thu, 07 May 2009 07:08:04 +0000

Note that once you have installed Windows Vista Service Pack 2 you can run the compcln.exe utility to make your installation permanent and remove any sources from the previous state.

After you have executed compcln.exe, you will notice that you get some free disk space back.

Windows Logo Program

Wed, 06 May 2009 17:55:56 +0000

In the past days Microsoft has released additional information around the Windows Logo program for Windows7. For most users the logo on hardware and software is an important symbol indicating compatibility and reliability on Windows.

for Windows Vista there are multiple logos indicating different levels of compatibility. For Windows7, there are two main logo initiatives. Systems, Hardware and Software. Additionally four optional additional qualifications (AQs) are being introduced. The purpose of these AQs is indicate enhanced user experience for a product. Currently these four AQs consist of Device Stage, Windows Media Center, Windows Touch and HD imaging.

Windows Virtual PC – first experiences

Tue, 05 May 2009 00:08:53 +0000

With the release of the Windows7 RC0 build, Microsoft also published a first Beta for Windows Virtual PC that provides the underlying technology for XP Mode feature. Windows Virtual PC cannot only run Windows XP but does also allow running virtualized Windows Vista and Windows 7 clients.

After having installed a Windows Vista guest, it’s important to install both the integration features as well as the rail_qfe_beta_for_vista_sp1_x86_343758.msu. If you don’t install the last, you won’t be able to publish applications installed in Vista to your Windows 7 Start Menu.

Intel Virtualization introduction

Mon, 04 May 2009 21:48:01 +0000

With the launch of Windows Virtual PC for Windows7, there is a lot of talk about the Virtualization Technology again. I found this introduction video from Intel that provides an overview on VT.

[videofile]http://cache-www.intel.com/cd/00/00/24/59/245966_245966.swf[/videofile]

Windows 7 VHD Boot demonstration video

Fri, 01 May 2009 12:32:59 +0000

This is an excellent video explaining how to prepare and configure your machine to boot from a VHD drive.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/0/F/70FE9C38-08D1-4FCC-BEF8-42B47DD968FE/Windows7VHDBoot.wmv

What's New in Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) Video

Fri, 01 May 2009 12:04:43 +0000

This video walks you through some of the new and updated features in the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/9/3/293FCBA7-E0F2-4ACC-BE30-854B018F8559/WhatsNewWindows7RC.wmv

What you should know about Win7 XP Mode and MED-V

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:41:54 +0000

Windows XP Mode on Windows7 with Windows Virtual PC is designed for small business users, For Enterprise customers, MED-V is the way to go.

More information:

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/business/archive/2009/04/28/how-med-v-v2-helps-you-manage-windows-xp-mode.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/Apr09/04-28Win7QA.mspx

What’s new in Windows Server 2008 R2 Active Directory

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:08:55 +0000

In the video below Brian Desmond and Laura talk about the new things that come with Windows Server 2008 R2 AD.

Going beyond the standard Group Policy Preferences

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:40:36 +0000

Group Policies and Group Policy Preferences are great technologies to manage your enterprise desktops. But what if you want to go beyond the features Microsoft has build into the Group Policy Management Console?

With PolicyPak you can consistently manage ANY application’s settings using the Windows native Group Policy technology. have a look at the PolicyPak introduction video below to learn what PolicyPak can do and how it works.

Learn more about PolicyPak and watch the video tutorials.

Walkthrough to Get Your Applications Ready for Windows 7

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:40:42 +0000

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/04/25/walkthrough-to-get-your-applications-ready-for-windows-7.aspx

Windows 7 – Learning Portal

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:38:10 +0000

https://www.microsoft.com/learning/windows-7/default.mspx

Windows Services, What changed from Vista to Windows7 - Part2

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:45:18 +0000

In part one of “Windows Services, What changed from Vista to Windows7” I highlighted the new, renamed and removed services that come with Windows7.

Some Services are not quite new, but are now just installed by default. One example is the ActiveX Installer Service.

The below table lists those Services where the startup mode was changed from Automatic (Vista) to manual (Win7).

Note that the “Status” for some Services on your system might be different. The list was produced right after having installed both the Windows Vista and Windows7 client within Hyper-V guest machines.

Another Windows7 article from Gartner

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 08:59:09 +0000

This article discusses some thoughts around Windows 7 and Service Pack 1.

Windows 7 Won’t Need SP1, but Will Still Need 12 to 18 Months Before Deployment Begins

Windows Services, what changed from Vista to Windows7 Part1

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:34:52 +0000

Today I took a closer look at the Windows Services running on Windows7. A lot of the performance improvements with Windows7 are related to the way how and when services are being loaded so i thought it’s worth to see what’s happening there.

I first installed a Windows 7 build 7077 and a Windows Vista SP1 client on my Hyper-V server. Because I am primarily interested in what’s happening in an enterprise environment, both clients were joined to a domain.

Playing with BranchCache

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:23:13 +0000

During the past 2 days I have been looking at the Windows 7 BranchCache feature. After hearing, reading and talking about this for months, it was about time to do some hands-on stuff.

I used the BranchCache Early Adopter’s Guide from Microsoft. If you would have a perfect test environment, the implementation would probably be done in 2-3 hours. For me it took a little bit longer……. but once again, I’ve learned a lot more.

MED-V Screencasts on TechnetEdge

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:40:10 +0000

The first out of four screen casts about MED-V has been published today on TechnetEdge.

Part 1, Concept and Architecture
Part 2, User Experience
Part 3, Configuring Workspace Policy
Part 4, Creating Deployment Package

Windows7 – Application Compatibility – ACT 5.5

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:02:02 +0000

Microsoft has released ACT 5.5 (Application Compatibility Toolkit). ACT 5.5 provides support for pre-RTM version of Windows7.

To learn more about ACT 5.5 I recommend reading “Windows 7 Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5: Interview with Jeremy Chapman”.

ACT 5.5. can be downloaded here

Another great information source is the Application Compatibility and User Account Control site on Microsoft TechNet.

And finally I came across the blog from Chris Jackson -the App Compat Guy” that is worth a visit as well.

Verifying your file downloads

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:40:59 +0000

Today we once more ran into an issue caused by a corrupted file transfer. I mention “once more” because this is something I see happening all the time. So let me drop a couple of words on this.

When putting content on an FTP site consider creating a checksum file as this will allow others to validate their file downloads. Just comparing file size is not enough (examples follow).

There are many freeware tools that can create and verify checksum files. One of the tools we are using is QuickSFV. What is nice about QuickSFV is that it is fast and can be fully integrated into the Windows Explorer context menu, allowing you to just select a file and create or verify a checksum file of it.

Nice article about Win7 and devices

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:45:08 +0000

Captured this article on Twitter “Will my device work on Windows7 ?” It’s worth reading as it gives a good insight on the device related changes.

Some thoughts about moving away from XP from Gartner

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:56:16 +0000

Although I don’t agree with everything Gartner writes the “Getting Off Windows XP Is More Important Than Windows Vista vs. Windows 7” article describes some thoughts to be made when planning the move from Windows XP to the next OS.

Windows7 – Device Stage

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:02:15 +0000

Another great feature that will come with Windows7 is Device Stage.

Watch the video below and read the “Device Stage – A New Way of Interacting with Devices in Windows 7” on the Windows Blog to learn more about device stage.

](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U84k7riZiAk)

Personally I am interested how device stage can be used within an enterprise environment. I hope Microsoft is going to add some manageability functions for Device Stage.

Windows7 - DirectAccess video

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:50:12 +0000

For those who just can’t get enough, there is a new vide on TechNet Edge where Keith Combs demonstrates the DirectAccess.

[videofile]http://msinetpub.vo.llnwd.net/d1/keithcombs/screencasts/Windows7/DirectAccess/DirectAccess.wmv[/videofile]

Windows 7 Walkthroughs - Updated

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:03:24 +0000

Microsoft has published additional Windows7 Walkthroughs on Microsoft TechNet. The Walkthroughs provide you with a high-level overview on the various features and enhancements that come with Windows7.

User State Migration Tool

BranchCache

DirectAccess

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization v1.0 Beta Demo Kit

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:11:57 +0000

Microsoft has made available a Demo Kit for their Enterprise Desktop Virtualization Beta aka MED-V. For more details read my earlier blog post “Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization aka MED-V”.

The Demo Kit contains everything you need to get first hands-on experience. The Demo Kit can be downloaded from here.

Group Policy - How to Configure the Central ADMX Store

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:32:01 +0000

Well as you might notice Group Policy management currently is my favorite topic. I’ve been doing GPOs since the year 2000, then for a long while due to my job role I haven’t been doing a lot with GPOs, but that didn’t matter since there wasn’t too much changing in that space except that with each OS release the number of GPO settings has been growing.

But since the introduction of Windows Vista, there have been some bigger changes around GPO management. One of these changes is the use of the Central ADMX Store. The Central ADMX Store plays an important role, so it is important understanding the concept.

Group Policy Management Videos from GPanswers.com

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:43:35 +0000

Jeremy Moskowitz from GPanswers.com has posted 2 free GPUniversity videos.

Default Group Policy Objects

](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-9huZgxOSI&hl=en&fs=1)

Group Policy Backup and Restore

](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKoTLGPHZIU&hl=en&fs=1)

Interested in more ? Check out the Group Policy Online University.

Windows 7 IT Pro Guides

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:28:39 +0000

Microsoft has published Windows 7 IT Pro Guides.

These documents include: 1) A What’s New in Windows 7 Guide, covering many new and changed Windows 7 features of interest to IT professionals, including DirectAccess, BranchCache and other networking technologies, VHD boot and other deployment technologies, and AppLocker, Biometrics, and other security technologies, and 2) A Windows 7 Manageability Overview Guide, covering the manageability improvements that can reduce total cost of ownership by helping to increase automation, improve user productivity, and provide flexible administrative control to meet compliance requirements.management technologies.

Windows 7 Theme Packs

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:27:04 +0000

Just found a nice article on Mike Swanson’s blog about Windows 7 Theme Packs. Windows 7 introduces theme packs, which are .cab files that contain all of the necessary assets to implement a theme, including sound files and images.

Download the official Microsoft Theme Packs here

Download the Theme Packs from Mike Swanson here

While in Windows XP it was rather a pain to create your own Themes, it looks like in Windows 7 things have been simplified a bit. Definitely interesting for companies as well to apply their corporate design to their clients.

Something got mixed up

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:14:08 +0000

I just checked the Microsoft download site to see if there is anything new. On the top of the list (sorted by release date) I found the Windows 2000 Service Pack 4. Something must have got mixed up there.

Windows Vista SP2 Release Candidate

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:59:15 +0000

It looks like the folks in Redmond have a busy time, after Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft now announces that the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 has reached RC status. I suggest they keep up the speed and bring us Windows 7 soon as well.

More information is available here:

Announcing the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 RC

Notable Changes in SP2 RC for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008

Some thoughts on IPv6

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:52:54 +0000

About 3 years ago when Windows Vista was on the horizon there has been a lot of talk around IPv6. But since then, at least in the environment I work in, it has become quiet around this topic. On Wikipedia we can read that based on a study from Google, penetration is still less than one percent of Internet traffic in any country

But nowadays we more often hear about the IPv4 Address exhaustion meaning that soon we will run out of IPv4 addresses. An interesting resource for this topic is the “IPv4 Address Report”.

IPv4 vs IPv6 Song

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:43:19 +0000

In my next blog post i will address the IP version 6 topic, but let me first share this amusing video I found while I was collecting information around IPv6. It’s really worth listening.

Dust can bring your PC down

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:45:09 +0000

Yesterday I helped out a friend to move into his new apartment. Once we had completed moving the heavy parts he asked me if I could connect his PC and while i would do that maybe also do a quick system check.

So I connected back all the cables and powered up the machine and noticed that it was incredibly loud, but did not pay any further notice to that. I checked if the system was configured for automatic windows updates, and it was and had all the latest and greatest patches installed, so far so good. I then checked the Antivirus application, that one seemed to be expired since a while, so I uninstalled it and installed AVAST Home that is free for home users.

Boot from VHD in Windows 7 video

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 06:16:43 +0000

In this video Jeremy Chapman senior product manager from the Microsoft enterprise product management team talks about booting from VHD as well as some of the new imaging features.

By the way, note that when booting Windows 7 from a VHD file you cannot use Windows Bitlocker or the Advanced Power Management features. Hibernation mode is also not supported.

The Boot from VHD in Win7 video is published here.

Additional information around native VHD support in Windows 7 can be found in this blog post.

DirectAccess in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:25:26 +0000

Microsoft published a Technical Overview document that covers the functional and architectural aspects of DirectAccess, a technology introduced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to enable mobile workers to seamlessly connect to enterprise network resources when connected to the Internet.

Download the document here

An Executive overview document is also available here

Windows 7: Application Compatibility

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:29:54 +0000

I’ve just spend an hour in gathering some additional information around Windows 7 Application Compatibility. Till now when we moved to a new operating system version a significant amount of effort was required with regard to application compatibility. So will companies that invested in Windows Vista Application compatibility have to do all that work again for Windows 7 ?

Unfortunately not, on almost any Microsoft source i found around Application Compatibility, the following statements are being made:

Windows 7 Manageability Overview

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:55:03 +0000

Windows 7 introduces a number of manageability improvements that can reduce total cost of ownership by helping to increase automation, improve user productivity, and provide flexible administrative control to meet compliance requirements. This paper provides an overview of each of these improvements.

Download the document here

Windows 7 Deployment Changes

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:07:13 +0000

Those looking at Windows 7 deployment read the “Windows 7 Deployment Changes” article on the Windows System Deployment Blog.

TCP/IP Registry values for Vista and Server 2008

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:42:26 +0000

Microsoft has updated the TCP/IP Registry Values for Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 whitepaper that describes how to modify the TCP/IP behavior by making registry edits.

The document can be downloaded from here

Converting WIM to VHD

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:35:12 +0000

Today I’ve tested the WIM2VHD script provided by Mike Kolitz a Software Design Engineer from the Hyper-V Team at Microsoft.

In short, the script allows you to create a bootable VHD file directly from Windows 7 installation media, so you don’t need to go through the whole Windows Installation process. Once the VHD is completed, you can move it directly into your Hyper-V System and boot the operating system.

Detailed information about the script can found on the MSDN Code Gallery - Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter. Note that you must have the Windows 7 AIK installed to run this script. The script provides a lot of optional command line options, the shortest with using all default settings is as following:

Windows 7 hands-on videos

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:34:56 +0000

Just came back from vacation and cleaning up my mailbox. One had send a link that contains a number of nice short hands-on videos about Windows 7. Don’t expect any level 500 deep technical insight from these videos, but they are good enough to get a general overview on what’s new around the following topics:

Installation Changes
New Desktop Features
New Superbar and Aero Features
Application Enhancements
The Action Center and UAC Settings

Windows Update Explained

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:01:00 +0000

Just found a document called Windows Update Explained on the Microsoft Update Team Blog. The document provides a good insight on how Windows Update works.

Windows 7 SKUs

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:14:30 +0000

In Windows 7 each SKU is a superset of the previous SKU. Read more about the Windows 7 SKUs on the Windows Blog “A closer look at the Windows 7 SKUs”

Windows Volume Activation Demystified

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:50:15 +0000

Read the “Windows Volume Activation Demystified” article on TechNet Edge and get a complete overview and insight into Windows Volume Activation.

For those that don’t like reading watch the Volume Activation Demo

Windows Multilanguage Packs explained

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:36:43 +0000

Speaking with various people I often notice that some do not understand in detail the concepts and benefits around the Windows Multilanguage Packs. The video below provides an in depth overview around the concepts and use of Windows MUI Packs. Hope it’s usefull.

[videofile]http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/enterprise/mui.wmv[/videofile]

Windows 7 - Driverstore size

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:38:51 +0000

When it comes to OS deployment the size of the image to some extend does matter. Windows by default comes with a large set of plug and play device drivers that are included within the operating system installation sources.

Prestaged drivers in Windows Vista and Windows 7 are located under C:\Windows\system32\Driverstore.

If you run the following command against your mounted Windows 7 image file, you get a list of all PnPdrivers included within the Driverstore.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V Live Migration Overview

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:15:05 +0000

With the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V will also support “Live Migration”. Today Hyper-V provides “Quick Migration” which still means a short downtime, with Live Migration a move from one to another Hyper-V system can be performed without any system downtime.

A feature overview document can be found here. And a step by step guide can be found on TechNet here.

IE8 Group Policy Settings and more

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:29:12 +0000

Yesterday Microsoft released the Release Candidate for Internet Explorer 8 that of course contains a lot of new features that I am not going to rewrite here again, as others did so already.

Reading the IE8 product group blog 100 additional group policy settings are being introduced to extend manageability of IE8 through Group Policy Management. The updated Group Policy Reference including the new IE8 settings can be downloaded here and updated Group Policy Settings ADM files can be found here. Also worth reading is the IE8 Deployment Guide.

Shutting down or Reboot Vista when remotely connected

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:10:21 +0000

When you are logged on to a Vista Client through a remote desktop connection, you don’t see the option to shutdown or reboot the system within the Start Menu.

But if you are within the remote session and press CTRL+ALT+END you get the following screen

allowing you to Restart, shutdown or putting into sleep the system.

Another option is to enter the shutdown command at command prompt like shutdown /s that will shutdown the system.

Windows 7 secrets

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:07:34 +0000

Tim Sneath has written a must read article on his blog called “the bumper list of Windows 7 secrets". The article describes many new handy features included within Windows 7.

I take the freedom of copying one Secret into this post as it works well on Windows Vista too, and is really a must know for those that often use the command prompt.

***Command Junkies Only. *One of the most popular power toys in Windows XP was “Open Command Prompt Here”, which enabled you to use the graphical shell to browse around the file system and then use the context menu to open a command prompt at the current working directory. In Windows 7 (and in Windows Vista, incidentally – although not many folk knew about it), you can simply hold the Shift key down while selecting the context menu to get exactly the same effect. If the current working directory is a network location, it will automatically map a drive letter for you.

Windows 7 - Applocker needs a 2008 R2 DC

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:10:46 +0000

Yesterday evening I looked at some of the new features within Windows 7. So at some stage I wanted to see Applocker running. I spend about an hour reviewing my settings, checking GPO processing until I went back to the documentation, just to find out that little sentence at the very bottom of that page….. “At least one Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller is required to host the Applocker rules”.

Expanded Control with Group Policy Preferences article from TechNet Magazine

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 21:02:00 +0000

For those interested in Group Policy Preferences I recommend reading the “Expanded Control with Group Policy Preferences” that is published in the January 2009 issue on TechNet Magazine.

And as always the full January 2009 help file version can be downloaded here.

GPO Survival guide

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:04:35 +0000

Just came across this handy document from Microsoft called the “[Group Policy Documentation Survival Guide](http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/1/2/212db64c-3e9c-44d3-b822-b2508e0eccf3/Group Policy Survival Guide.pdf)”.

The guide contains all the links to the resources you need when dealing with Group Policies.

The document can be downloaded here

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization aka MED-V

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) is Microsoft’s new product offering for so-called local virtualization or client based virtualization. The solution itself originates from Kidaro that was acquired by Microsoft last year.

With local desktop virtualization a complete OS is executed on top of the operating system that is installed on the users physical device. Using a client based virtualization solution such as MED-V can help with application compatibility issues when migrating to a new operating system. With MED-V you can continue providing applications to your users in a seamless way without having the user notice that that application runs on another virtualized OS.

TechNet - Windows 7 Forums

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 17:20:56 +0000

Looking for answers on Windows 7 ? have a look on the Microsoft Technet Forums for Windows 7 Beta.

Reducing size of WinPE

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:23:35 +0000

Today I have been looking into the new “Profiling” options for Windows PE 3.0. Using the profiling options allow you to reduce the content of Windows PE to an absolute minimum without removing any boot critical content.

I am not going to re-write a step by step process here, as it is all described within the Windows PE User Guide for Windows 7 but here are the basic things

First build your PE boot.wim the way you have been doing it so far, but before unmounting it run the following command as well: dism /image:C:\PE\mount /Enable-profiling

Technet Magazine - Automating Virtual Machine Host Deployment

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:23:39 +0000

Great article i just finished reading about automating virtual machine host deployment on Hyper-V.

Download the complete Technet Magazine January 2009 edition here. When having trouble reading the CHM file, read this.

WDS - Multicast Transmission to Deploy Multiple Clients

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:04:46 +0000

The below video is from Technet where Gordon Ryan explains how to use multicast transmission to deploy multiple clients.

[videofile]http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/E/1/BE16009B-E44D-474F-896C-0E43162D47D8/winvideo-ITPro-WDSMulticast.wmv[/videofile]

Windows 7 - Walkthroughs

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:32:29 +0000

Learn more about Windows 7, watch the Walkthroughs.

Windows 7 Walkthrough - AppLocker Windows 7 Walkthrough - User State Migration Tool Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows 7 Beta) Windows 7 Walkthrough - Problem Steps Recorder Windows 7 Walkthrough - Deployment Image Servicing and Management Windows 7 Walkthrough - Enterprise Application Compatibility Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7

Windows 7 Bitlocker

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:17:27 +0000

Bitlocker is the build-in disc encryption solution that was first shipped with Windows Vista. The deployment of Bitlocker with Windows Vista wasn’t a straight forward process both in deployment and configuration. Reading and watching the current content that is provided around Windows 7 it looks that we can expect a number of improvements for Bitlocker.

Bitlocker now also supports encryption of removable media,
Additional Group Policy settings to manage Bitlocker

I have changed my mind

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:58:27 +0000

In October 2008 I dropped a post called Don’t wait for Windows 7. Well during the past days I have changed my mind and I guess many others did as well concerning waiting for Windows 7.

When Windows 7 came up on the horizon last year, we heard statements like “it isn’t expected to begin for Windows 7 until at least mid-2011” also at that time, nobody expected Microsoft to provide a public Beta of Windows 7 that early. So far Microsoft seems to receive a lot of positive feedback, first because they made it look like “Hey guys we know you’re all waiting for it, here it is, Surprise !!!” and secondly because what they gave us seems to be quite stable. But now that they have made us all happy in providing us something we can put our hands on, to me it looks like we are now entering into the second phase of speculations about when Windows 7 will go RTM.

ToolTip – Clipname

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:20:04 +0000

Today I was writing an email that contained a couple of file name references, as i was writing the first 2 file names I remembered that in the past when I used WinBatch there was a nice explorer context menu enhancement that allowed copying file names and paths into the windows clipboard.

By searching the web for filename to clipboard utilities, i actually found quite a lot of them. Because i prefer small, lean and FREE I finally ended up with Clipname provided by MainSoft.

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Networking Enhancements for Enterprises

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:26:10 +0000

A document that describes the networking enhancements available in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and their benefit to enterprise networks.

Download here

Win7 - GP Features

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:01:09 +0000

Jeremy Moskowitz from GPanswers.com just uploaded 2 videos on YouTube demonstrating some of the new GP features in Windows 7.

ToolTip - Unlocker

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:18:39 +0000

When trying out the Beta AIK for Windows 7 I got into a situation where some files got locked by the system, probably due to a not properly unmounted WIM file. A tool that has become most handy to unlock files is UNLOCKER. Unlocker integrates itself into the context menu, so that you can easily select a folder or file that you want to unlock.

Unlocker can be downloaded directly from the developers website.

Typo in PE 3.0 Users guide

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:02:05 +0000

I’ve just found a typo in the Windows PE 3.0 Users guide.

dism /image:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:“C:\Program Files\Windows OPK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_OCs\winpe-wmi.cab”

dism /image:C:\winpe_x86\mount /Add-Package /PackagePath:“C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\x86\WinPE_OCs\winpe-wmi.cab”

“OPK” should be replaced with “AIK” otherwise if you copy paste the sample commandline adding an optinonal component will not work.

Windows 7 Partner information

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:55:53 +0000

For those of you that have access to the Microsoft Partner Program website Microsoft has published a couple of Windows7 related documents today that might be of use such as a feature and deployment overview presentation.

Windows 7 Beta - Available now on MSDN

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:58:51 +0000

Although available on the various torrents since a couple of weeks, last night Microsoft has posted Windows 7 Beta on MSDN.

Enjoy testing !

Hyper-V and Dynamic discs

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:01:19 +0000

First let me avoid confusion here, I’m not talking about “dynamically expanding” discs but about the disc type e.g. Basic and Dynamic.

In the past weeks we have been migrating some of our physical servers into Hyper-V. Just before X-mas my colleague had prepared a plain Windows 2003 system for me so that i could continue with installing the necessary applications that were planned to run on that system. Two discs were created, the primary disc that contains the boot partition is connected to an IDE controller and the second disc to a SCSI controller. Note that the OS boot disc must always be connected to an IDE controller. So the disk layout looks as following:

Scripting Windows Explorer Details View

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:30:19 +0000

Those of you who are familiar with desktop engineering know the pain of scripting Windows configuration settings. While in general many settings can be configured by adding or changing a specific registry key value, there are still many things within the OS where Microsoft did not make our life as easy and provides a single registry key that can be tweaked.

Yesterday I worked on setting the Windows XP Windows Explorer View to “Details” by default for all users. The typical approach in identifying registry changes is to create a snapshot before and after manally applying the system configuration change, then in most cases the necessary registry keys are found and can be scripted. But unfortunately that wasn’t the case when changing the Windows Explorer View to Details.

Windows BCD Store

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:48:43 +0000

Before Windows Vista Boot Configuration Information was stored within the boot.inifile. With the introduction of Windows Vista Microsoft has completely reengineered the boot environment and Windows startup process. . Since then Boot Configuration information is not stored within the boot.ini anymore but within the BCD store. BCD = Boot Configuration Data.

To learn more about BCD read the following articles:

Booting Win7 from a VHD file

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:37:37 +0000

Windows7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will support booting directly from a VHD (Virtual hard disk) file. This will allow you to run multiple operating systems on a single hard disk without the need of creating multiple partitions.

I found a nice description on the blog from rasmus sjoerslev about booting Windows7 from a VHD file.

SCVMM 2008 - After 48 hours

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:15:49 +0000

It’s about 48 hours ago , that i started with setting up a System Center Virtual Machine Manager environment, No worries, i have been doinng otherthings in between, although today , uhm yesterday I spend most of the time with it. Also the hardware I have available , isn’t realy that powerfull, so it all takes a bit time, but that’s okay, while waiting I’ve just continued reading.

So for all those that plan to give SCVMM a try as well but don’t have big powerfull servers available let me encourage you, my setup is as following:

System Center - Virtual Machine Manager Demo

Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:07:32 +0000

Just recently Microsoft launched the System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Watch a demo here. For those that have a subscription to the Windows IT Pro Magazine, read the article “What You Need to Know About Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008”.

Windows7 overview from Mark Minasi

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:34:58 +0000

Mark Minasi has put together a nice overview on Windows7. “the next Windows: Lucky7?”

Reducing the Windows Vista Footprint

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:47:56 +0000

The Windows Vista footprint is quite large, so my current thoughts are “how to reduce the Windows Vista footprint ?”. I hope to come up with a complete overview at some stage, for now i have found the following interesting references:

Uninstalling Drivers and Devices in Windows Vista a Microsoft white paper primarily intended for driver developers, but why not use the same methods described in there and reduce the driver store size ?

Vista SP2 CPP anouncement

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:17:45 +0000

According to a blog post on the Windows Blog from Mike Nash, Windows Vista SP2 will be made available on TechNet Thursday December 4th.

Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) Customer Preview Program (CPP

The current plan is to ship Vista SP2 in the first half of 2009.

….. in fact it’s already available on MSDN now: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx

GPO Preferences require XMLLite

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 20:28:26 +0000

Reading the Group Policy Preferences Overview Whitepaper from SDM software, I just notice an interesting prerequisite for using GPO Preferences - XMLLite.

XmlLite Runtime Files

The XmlLite runtime file, Xmllite.dll, is integrated into the following operating systems and products:

Windows Server 2008
Windows Vista
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 or later.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and later.

The XmlLite runtime is also available as a download from the XmlLite Update Page for the following operating systems:

Enable Active Directory Services tools on Windows 2008

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:39:06 +0000

I just connected to our fresh installed Windows 2008 server that we intend to use as a remote system management console. The server is a member of our Windows 2003 Active Directory domain, not a DC itself.

I wanted to launch the Active directory users and computers console, but did not find it under the Administrative tools. Okay, this must be something similar like with Windows Vista when you install the RSAT tools I thought, and yes it is, you must first enable that feature.

Windows and Memory Limitations

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:03:08 +0000

it was the second time this week i came across the Windows RAM topic, once by reading and once by a question a colleague asked me. So enough reasons to to look for something that describes it in detail.

The Memory Limits for Windows Releases are described in detail on MSDN.

InstEd - Free Windows Installer database editor

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:51:31 +0000

For those dealing with application packaging here’s an interesting tool you should know about. For more details check out the InstEd site and read theblog.

Improve Vista Deployment time

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:17:28 +0000

I just read a blogpost from Michael Niehaus i think those deploying Windows Vista are interested to know about. The article describes how to shorten the OOBE process. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/958011

Extending User Information in AD

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:44:51 +0000

The Windows 2003 Resource Kit contains a nice extension for the Active Directory Users and Computers console showing additional User Account information.

The additional user account information can be enabled by registering the acctinfo.dll as described below.

Follow the steps below to enable the additional user account information.

Download the Windows 2003 Resource kit tools.
Unpack / Install the Windows 2003 Resource Kit
Copy the acctinfo.dll to c:\windows\system32
Register the DLL by running the following command:

VI command reference

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:11:59 +0000

VI - last time i had my very personal fight with this text editor was back in 1992 or 1993 when sitting in a Oracle Administration trainging class, and probably was the only non-UNIX guy (some time months later I was the first Windows guy that installed Oracle on NT 3.51). Now nearly 15 years later again i come across that editor and NO i have not learned how to use it since then because so far my focus was on things where VI would not be needed, but my interest in Virtualization technologies seems to drive me somehow towards learning this VI editor , or at least the basics, like how to get out of that thing !. I had just edited a vmware configuration file on ESXi, but then found myself in not being able to save that file and exiting from VI.

Don’t Wait for Windows 7

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:46:29 +0000

I just recevied an updated paper from Microsoft regarding Windows Vista and some statements why not to wait for Windows7.

There is no need to wait for Windows 7. It is a goal of the Windows 7 release to minimize application compatibility for customers who have deployed Windows Vista since there was considerable kernel and device level innovation in Windows Vista. The Windows 7 release is expected to have only minor changes in these areas. Customers who are still using Windows XP when Windows 7 releases will have a similar application compatibility experience moving to Windows 7 as exists moving to Windows Vista from Windows XP. * *

News about Vista SP2

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:56:40 +0000

Until last week we have just seen rumours around the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista. The only visible thing from Microsoft was a placeholder KB number on their Support page.

On October 24, Microsoft has droppped some more information on their Windows Vista blog about the Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista.

Don't skip Vista

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:25:55 +0000

While most people again seem to get excited about Microsoft’s next operating system and waste their time with rumours and guessing when it will be released, let me continue with promoting not to skip Vista :-)

An interesting article about “Five Reasons Why Skipping Windows Vista Could Backfire” was posted yesterday on www.cio.com

I found the arguments good enough to mention this article here.

What happens before the OS loads

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:12:02 +0000

Ever wondered what actually happens when you turn on your PC before it loads the operating system ? Watch this video with Jamie Schwartz, Development Lead, Windows Kernel Dev team, and Andrew Ritz, Development Manager, Windows Kernel Dev team.

Windows Vista PreOS Environment: What happens before the OS loads

All security updates on a DVD

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:31:19 +0000

I do periodically browse through the Microsoft Download Center (Beta) to see if there is anything new that is of interest to me. Today i came across Article 913086 which describes an alternative way of obtaining all Microsoft Security patches for all Operating systems and languages.

The ISO image files are intended for corporate administrators who:

Manage large multinational organizations.
Must download multiple individual language versions of each security update.
Do not use an automated solution such as Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).

ToolTip - chml.exe manage Windows Integrity Levels

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:02:34 +0000

To be honest i haven’t gone into the details of the Windows Integrity Levels myself but wanted to mention the chml.exe tool that can be downloaded from Mark Minasi’s web site.

More details about the Windows Vista Integrity Mechanism can be found here:

GPO Logging custom ADM

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:40:50 +0000

Last week we have been doing some GPO troubleshooting. Instead of setting all GPO logging options manually the custom GPO logging ADM(x) files found on GPOGUY.COM appeared to be very handy.

You can download the cutom ADM files here.

Multilanguage pack update for XP SP3

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:07:11 +0000

Those that deploy Windows XP Service Pack 3 English and use multilanguage packs should consider the following update that fixes some localization issues.

KB942766 and download here.

TCP/IP Fundamentals for Windows

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:39:12 +0000

Need an update on TCP/IP ? then download this paper: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c76296fd-61c9-4079-a0bb-582bca4a846f&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft Volume Licensing

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:31:50 +0000

Most recent Microsoft Volume Licensing documentation can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8798816-b0ba-4337-ba38-8fe2cf32b5d8&DisplayLang=en

Volume activation documentation

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:31:06 +0000

Microsoft recently updated their volume activation 2.0 technical guidance documents. Everything you need about volume activation when deploying Vista / Win2008 can be found here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9893f83e-c8a5-4475-b025-66c6b38b46e3&DisplayLang=en

A site worth mentioning

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:17:19 +0000

While searching for something I came across the site computer performance, why the sites is called like that, i don’t know, but it has a lot of interesting content related to windows 2008, vista, scripting etc. so that i find it worth mentioning.

ToolTip - Shadowexplorer

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:09:32 +0000

This week i found a nice little tool called ShadowExplorer.

ShadowExplorer allows you to browse the shadow copies created by the Windows® VistaTM Volume Shadow Copy Service. It’s especially thought for users of the home editions, who don’t have access to the shadow copies by default, but it’s also useful for users of the other editions.

Download from: http://www.shadowexplorer.com/downloads.html

As always, give it a try.

Wireless GPO settings for XP

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:49:48 +0000

In the last 2 days i have spend some time in getting Wireless GPO settings applied to a Windows XP client.

I was actually about to describe what i have done to get it working, but just noticed that there is already a similar article published on Technet Magazine related to Vista, so i am not going to rewrite things in detail again.

The Cable Guy Wireless Group Policy Settings for Windows Vista

Getting annoyed by the rumors

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:35:26 +0000

Instead of manually searching the web, i have created some Google Alerts. This is very useful as it does simply send me an e-mail every day with the found results.

Of course like many others i’m also interested about what is going on around Windows 7, but to be honest, i really am not interested on how “Paint” will look.

What annoys me most is all the rumors going around about the possible release date for Windows 7, first we heard 2010, then some argue 2009, but today i even see messages speaking about Summer 2009 and of course Microsoft is not commenting on any of those messages.

HP bullet proof server

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 22:09:20 +0000

No comment, just a funny video.

HP Bullet Proof

AppDeploy Repackager

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:17:12 +0000

Bob Kelly has launched a free MSI Packaging tool called the AppDeploy Repackager.

The AppDeploy Repackager is a simple freeware snapshot tool for the creation of Windows Installer (MSI) setup packages

More information about what the Repackager can do and can not do can be found in the FAQ.

Intel vPro Expert center

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:35:50 +0000

Michele from Intel was kind enough to send me the link to the Intel vPro Expert center

Another good link is the Intel vPro Expert Center. We post all of our user documentation, training, etc up there - plus we get really good dialog going between end users and the engineers.

All those being pessimistic about Vista Read this

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:20:22 +0000

All those being pessimistic about Windows Vista, book some time and carefully read this:

http://www.tweakguides.com/VA_1.html

The VistaPE project

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 20:11:45 +0000

Those of you that work within the desktop management space might be familiar with the PE Builder aka as BartPE.Since WinPE was only available to enterprise customers, BartPE was a good alternative for those that had did not have access to WinPE. the PE builder allowed building a preboot environment boot CD by just using the Windows XP or Windows 2003 sources.

With the release of the Windows Automated Installation kit (WAIK), anyone has access to WinPE 2.0, so anyone now can build his PE based boot sources.

Don't wait for Windows 7 move to Vista

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:08:56 +0000

In both work and private life moving to Vista becomes a dominating topic. Of course there are reasons to stay on XP and hold on for another 2 years and then move to Windows 7, but should Microsoft release Windows 7 as planned in early 2010, it then still takes at least a year until enterprise users will see it, as from experience, enterprises don’t adopt new operating systems quickly and there is still this myth of waiting for the first service pack, to give Windows 2008 server a boost , it was released initially with service pack 1 included (just kidding here).

Windows 7 Wallpaper preview

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:44:19 +0000

It will take a while until we see Microsoft’s next operating system Windows 7, but for those that can’t wait, some creative people have already posted some wallpapers :-). Well one thing we know for sure, it won’t be the wallpapers that will cause a potential delay of the final release.

IE 8 Beta 2 released

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 07:00:11 +0000

Earlier as planned, Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. A final release date has not been communicated yet. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/

Official blog on Windows 7

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:44:33 +0000

Looks like Microsoft has launched its first official blog that focuses on Windows 7. Read more here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/default.aspx

GP Preferences

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:58:36 +0000

In 2006 Microsoft acquired the company DesktopStandard known for its extending Group Policy products GPVault and PolicyMaker.

While GPVault has become part of Microsofts MDOP suite that is available only for Enterprise customers that have a Software Assurance contract, the Policy Maker features have been available to everyone.

The PolicyMaker GPO extensions are now called GP Preferences.

GPO Preferences can be managed directly from a Windows 2008 system that has the latest GPMC installed or through a Windows Vista client with RSAT installed. With GP Preferences you can now manage Windows 2008 server, Windows Vista, Server 2003 SP1 and Windows XP SP2.

Enable access to RSAT after installation

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:11:39 +0000

On Windows 2000/XP you used to install the adminpak.msi to get access to the various Administrator tools such as the Active Directory Users and Computers or the DHCP management interface.

With Windows Vista SP1, you must install the RSAT package, RSAT stands for Remote Server Administrator Tool.

Once installed, I wanted to access them, so as I am used to do opened the Administrative Tools in the Start menu,…. but there weren’t there……. ??? To keep the story short, you must first “enable” them before you can use them.

Windows XP reports pending activation

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:49:44 +0000

Within at least every second implementation project I work on, people get nervous about Windows XP reporting that the system is not yet activated, although their Windows XP client image was build using an enterprise volume license key.

When you run msinfo32.exe as as a standard user (without administrative rights), it does report the following:

But no worries, if you run msinfo32.exe with an administrative account, the message does not show up.

Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:48:01 +0000

Microsoft has published a Windows Vista Performance and Tuning Guide focusing on the following:

Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you use it.
Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
Making configuration changes that help a computer to start faster.
Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop problems before they get too big.

Windows XP until 2014

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:40:51 +0000

In a letter to enterprise customers Senior Vice President Bill Veghte at Microsoft informs customer about extended availability of Windows XP. Microsoft will continue to support Windows XP and release security updates until 2014.

The end of Windows 3.11

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:18:49 +0000

Remember this boot screen ?

Although retired for years now, the Embedded community could still use it.

In November 2008 it will definitely retire. Read more about the end of WFW 3.11 on John Coyne’s Embedded blog.

As this discussion started in our internal discussion forum, i started looking in my drawer and guess what….. found an old floppy.

Windows Embedded Standard

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:21:04 +0000

Today at work we talked about Windows XP embedded. It’s a bout 2 years ago that i had a look at XP embedded.

Looks like Microsoft comes up with a next generation of Windows XP embedded.

Below some links:

For those who liked Norton Commander

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:38:40 +0000

Remember this one ? Yes it’s the famous Norton Commander. I’ve been using it until we moved to Windows NT. A newer version was released that worked for Win96 and NT, but it looked a bit like they’ve had just dumped the NC in a “Window”

In the mid 90’s I was working with an external application developer, who always carried a tool called the Windows Commander with him on a floppy. The Windows Commander was a kind of a clone of the Norton Commander, but fully Window-mized. it ran perfectly on Windows 3.11.

Windows sidebar gadgets

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:29:44 +0000

Once announced as one of the great new features in Windows Vista, it has become silent around the Sidebar gadgets. To me it looks like people have ran out of ideas about what could be gadgetized.

You find tons of Vista sidebar gadgets that display the weather, latest news, stocks, clocks and a whole range of search gadgets. Then there is another set of tools and utilities where most seem to focus on displaying some system information.

Putting drive letters first

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:42:01 +0000

When launching Windows Explorer, by default the driver letters are being displayed behind the volume / share name.

Some people, like myself don’t find this very convenient and want to see the drive letters in front of the volume / share description. This can be customized by applying the following registry key:

Reg ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer /v ShowDriveLettersFirst /t REG_DWORD /d 0x4 /f

Disable System Restore through WMI

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:16:05 +0000

If you are sure about what you are doing and you want to speed up the installation of multiple security patches or applications, you can use the following WMI command to disable Windows XP system restore.

on error resume next
set sr=GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:SystemRestore")
e=sr.disable("")

To turn on System Restore again, use the following command:

on error resume next
set sr=GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\default:SystemRestore")
e=sr.enable("")

Automating regional settings configuration

Fri, 30 May 2008 12:43:00 +0000

For Windows XP, regional settings can be applied by using the following method:

Create an answer file that contains the [RegionalSettings] section items you want to modify, and then save it (for example, as c:\regopts.txt).
Create a batch file by using the following command line to apply the answer file settings:rundll32.exe shell32,Control_RunDLL intl.cpl,,/f:“c:\regopts.txt”

The layout of the RegionalSettings file is as following:

[**RegionalSettings**]
Language = locale ID
LanguageGroup = language group ID, language group ID
SystemLocale = locale ID
UserLocale = locale ID
InputLocale = locale ID:keyboard layout ID, locale ID:keyboard layout ID
UserLocale_DefaultUser = locale ID
InputLocale_DefaultUser = locale ID:keyboard layout ID

More usefull information for those dealing with Global deployments can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/default.mspx NLS Information Page for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Server 2003 http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/nlsweb/default.mspx

A GUI for Windows Server Core

Wed, 21 May 2008 18:40:00 +0000

When i first read about Windows Server core, let’s say at some time in 2006, I immediately thought of the days managing Novell 3.11 systems, although there were a couple of NLMs (loadable modules) that provided a kind of GUI interface, most system configuration commands were typed at the console prompt. The command i will never forget is “get reply to get nearest server off” :-) this to prevent clients logging on to the wrong netware server.

Grow vmware size

Sat, 10 May 2008 09:38:00 +0000

Today i ran out of diskspace on one of my systems that runs within a vmware session. The system disk only had 10 GB and I needed to add another 10 GB.

This is what i did:

Extend the disk in offline mode by running the following command: C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Workstation>vmware-vdiskmanager -x 20GB “C:\Users\Alex\Documents\Virtual Machines\Server 2003 - sysmanage\Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition-cl1.vmdk” It then takes a while until the disk is expanded.