JaLaBlog

Note that this post is provided “as is” with no warranty nor supportability engagement. It does not engage my responsibility at all.
Nevertheless if you consider this not clear, incomplete or inadequate, please let me know !

You’ve sequenced hundreds of packages for App-V 4.x. You did it for Windows XP or Vista. And now you want to use these packages for your new client OS, for instance Windows 7… So you need to add the XML tag <OS VALUE="Win7"/> in each single OSD file…

This utility is for you!

Download

• Add_OS_to_OSD.zip

Requires .net framework 3.0
Thanks to Fabian

Note that this post is provided “as is” with no warranty nor supportability engagement. It does not engage my responsibility at all.
Nevertheless if you consider this not clear, incomplete or inadequate, please let me know !

[Back to MDT2010 TOC]

Just back from TechEd Europe in Berlin, I’m going to immediately start my new Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deployment lab with the new MDT 2010. I will document my steps here from WDS settings to multicast deployment as I did for MDT 2008, Vista and W2k3 just one year ago. I hope that these posts will encounter as much success as the previous series…. Your feedback always welcome, of course.

Along we the progress of my lab, this table of contents will grow and link you to the different posts. Be patient, I have many other projects to run beside this one….

1. New, improved, or well established variables in CustomSettings.ini
2. Setting up WDS
3. Setting up MDT2010
4. Importing MDT2008 deployment shares
5. Populating the deployment share
6. Advanced settings
7. Creating a master image
8. Deploying your master image
9. Offline servicing
10. WinRE

There is a common query across everywhere, when we add a shared mailbox in outlook profile and sending a mail from that account (using Send-As or Send On Behalf of) by specifying it in From field, mail item will be saved into ‘Sent Item’ of primary mailbox instead of ‘Sent Item’ folder of shared mailbox as per normal behaviour of Outlook.

Something like when I opened ‘Support’ mailbox in my outlook profile as an additional mailbox and sending mail from ‘Support’ mailbox by specifying it into From field. It will be saved into ‘Sent Item’ of Amit Tank’s mailbox and not in Sent Item of ‘Support’ mailbox.

Solution:

Microsoft has released an Outlook 2007 hotfix package dated June 30, 2009 to resolve certain issues and this issue is addressed in that list.

So Install this hotfix package and add a registry key to make it enable.

1. Hotfix: Description of the Outlook 2007 hotfix package (Outlook.msp): June 30, 2009
2. Set below registry key as per KB972148 to enable this functionality.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\Preferences]
"DelegateSentItemsStyle"=dword:00000001

Voila! Now all mails, sent from shared mailbox account, are being saved into ‘Sent Item’ of shared mailbox.

Source: http://exchangeshare.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/shared-mailbox-added-in-outlook-profile-but-where-will-sent-item-be-saved/

I do not know the source of the following info:

“With the version of the Windows installer that comes with Win7, there is a new file at /Sources/ei.cfg that tells the Windows installer what OS it should install. Here’s what the file looks like from the ultimate disc: [EditionID] Ultimate [Channel] Retail [VL] 0
When the Windows installer sees this file, it becomes keyed to whatever distribution the file specifies. In this case with an Ultimate disc, we cannot install Home Premium or Professional. We have not yet had a chance to test OEM and retail keys since we don’t have both, however it certainly looks like the installer is going to make a distinction there too.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of this is that the installation process itself hasn’t changed – the Windows installer still supports One Disc to Rule Them All operation, and the Windows image that comes with Ultimate for example has absolutely no problem installing lesser versions. In fact if you remove ei.cfg so that the Windows installer is not told to install a specific version, it will revert to One Disc mode. The distinction between discs is entirely trivial, dictated by a single 51 byte configuration file. You can have a One Disc installer, Microsoft just don’t want it to be the default action for some reason.”

genomics – transcriptomics – proteomics – metabolomics – phenomics – agronomics – lipomics/lipidomics – glycomics – cellomics ….

Do you have another –omics to suggest?

Recently, I sequenced the newest FlowJo 7.5. I ended with the issue that the application never ended to load. It was possible to possible to use the program for a few moments, but it evebtually crashed with the message:

The SoftGrid Client could not launch application_name.
The application took too long to be ready to interact with the User, possibly because the system was too busy. Please try again in a few minutes. If the problem persists, please report the following error code to your system administrator.
Error code: xxxxxx-xxxxxx04-0000041E

I tried the solution given under http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931112, but it did not help.

I could resolve this issue by changing the code snippet in the OSD file from:

<VM VALUE="Win32">
<SUBSYSTEM VALUE="windows"/>
</VM>

to:

<VM VALUE="Win32">
<SUBSYSTEM VALUE="console"/>
</VM>

Among the many make and models I have deploy Vista to, a specific notebook model crashed during litetouch deployment with following error:
”Windows could not parse or process unattended answer file [C:\Windows\Panther\unattended.xml] for pass [Specialize]. The answer file is invalid.”

This issue was not that easy to solve. It turned out that the error was due to the length dynamically given to the [ComputerName] by the MDT Database. I’m using the following scheme in the Detail section of the Make and Model Table: [ComputerName] = Prefix-%SERIALNUMBER%, the Prefix stating for the computer model. As most of my PCs are from Dell which uses short serial numbers, The ComputerName was always shorter than 15 chars and everything was OK with this scheme. But when deploying my image to Fujitsu-Siemens Notebooks, the generated CoomputerName turned out to be longer than 15 chars because of long serial numbers.

So the solution was simply to reduce the length of the Prefix in order to have the scheme Prefix-%SERIALNUMBER% shorten than 15. A long research for a short correction….

“Je n’ignore point la resistance qu’oppose la routine, cette ennemie aveugle et opiniâtre du bien qu’on lui présente, tant qu’il porte le caractère de la nouveauté; je sais avec quelle persévérance elle se replie sans cesse sur elle-même pour perpétuer son empire.”

“I am not unaware of resistance that the Routine opposes, this blind and obstinate enemy of the good one presents to her as long as it carries the character of the innovation; I know with which perseverance she unceasingly fold back on herself to perpetuate her empire.”(my translation)

Talleyrand, 1790 (à propos de l’introduction du système métriques décimal)

“Le mal de changer est-il toujours moins que le mal de souffrir? Et la grandeur du génie ne consisterait-elle pas mieux à savoir dans quel cas il faut l’uniformité et dans quel cas il faut des différences?”

“Is the evil to change always less than the evil to suffer? And the grandeur of the genius would not consist in better knowing in which case one needs the uniformity and in which case one needs differences” (my translation)

Montesquieu, L’Esprit des lois, 1748

All what you learned in this field can and will be used with Windows 7 and MDT 2010. This is great. And with nice improvements!. I grabbed what was most interesting to me from the Windows System Deployment blog:

• ImageX and its underlying infrastructure, which is used to manage Windows Image (WIM) format images, now allows multiple images to be modified simultaneously, supports interim saves and with a newly re-written underlying supporting architecture for mounting and manipulating images, is more robust than in Windows Vista.. The extensible infrastructure (WIMGAPI) and supporting mount capabilities are now included in every Windows edition.
• Using Diskpart, you can mount a VHD offline and service that VHD using the servicing tools (just like you can with WIM).
• · We consolidated a number of offline management tools (including pkgmgr.exe and intlcfg.exe) into a single tool, known as DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management). DISM also supports more features and functionality than it did in Windows Vista, including logging, inventory commands with parsable output, detailed help, offline INF driver package installation, direct application of MS update packages, and integration of international settings .
• WinPE support has changed in two ways:
• o PEImg functionality has been incorporated into DISM.
• o The PE feature package model has changed; instead of starting with an image containing all of the feature packages and then removing the ones that aren’t enabled, you start with a base image and add only the feature packages you want.
• The Windows Recovery Environment (RE) is now installed by default in Windows 7, reducing the time and effort required to get basic diagnostic and recovery capabilities into the system for no-boot situations. The customization options in the new Windows RE have also been expanded compared to Windows Vista.
• The User State Migration Tool (USMT) has several new features that improve its flexibility and performance.  The hard-link migration store significantly improves performance in refresh scenarios, offline migration enables user state capture from within Windows PE, and the document finder reduces the need for custom migration XML when capturing all user documents.  It is now distributed through the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK).
• Although not directly included in the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), we’ve made getting the Application Compatibility Toolkit, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkits easier by presenting links on the WAIK autorun (StartCD) page. Because these tools are often released more often, or at different times than the OS, the target pages can be updated as new versions become available.
• New features of WDS in Windows Server 2008 R2 include:

• ·Multicast with Multiple Stream Transfer allows you to set performance thresholds on multicast clients, allowing slower clients to move to slower “streams“ so that they don’t slow down your fast machines, a limitation in the original multicast feature.
• Dynamic Driver Provisioning allows drivers stored on the WDS server to be dynamically chosen at deployment time. This makes updating your images with new drivers less important (as you just add them to the store), lowering OS bloat and image maintenance costs. You can also insert drivers into boot (WinPE) images directly from the WDS driver store.
• WDS VHD Native Boot. Deploy a Windows 7-based VHD file to a machine and boot from it.

The cursor may become irritatingly slow when Track Changes is turn on and the Review ribbon is up (i.e., not minimized), but speeds up again when you leave the Review tab or the ribbon is minimized.
One work around that seems to be pretty efficient is to minimize the ribbon.
You can still access the review clicking on a tab. After you have used the tool you want, the ribbon then minimizes automatically. This not only solves the problem with slow typing, but gives you a bit more real estate on the screen.
You can minimize the ribbon by right clicking a tab and choosing "minimize ribbon." Or you can type CTRL+F1 to toggle the ribbon on or off.

Office 2007 is nice, but even with SP1, this product is just not finished!

Note that this post is provided “as is” with no warranty nor supportability engagement. It does not engage my responsibility at all.
Nevertheless if you consider this not clear, incomplete or inadequate, please let me know !

• Try to find a stand-alone installer instead of using Google Update (quite a challenge)
• Start Monitoring and just install Chrome normally
• Stay in monitoring and move the whole Google folder from the user’s AppData\Local folder to the Q: drive, e.g Q:\GChrome.010\Google
• Still in Monitoring, delete all the created Chrome shortcuts. Create a new one pointing to the Q: location.
• Edit the new chrome shortcut and add the –no-sandbox (dash dash no dash sandbox) after chrome.exe
• Launch Chrome using this shortcut.
• Close monitoring and complete your package.
• It is not necessary to create a streaming block 1 nor to configure anything, the setting will be lost.
• Save your package and publish it.

You will find detailed info on the Chromium Sandbox concept on http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/sandbox

The sequencing steps are common and straight forward. Publishing the package is easy too. But a launching on the client, PyMol stops with an error, telling that the PYMOL_PATH value could not be found in the environment nor in the registry. PyMOL installer indead creates a registry entry to store the path of the PyMOL application path in this variable. The solution is simply to reload your PyMOL project in your App-V sequencer and edit the virtual registry:

1. Go to the Virtual Registry tab
2. Under Registry\Machine\Software. create the following key hierarchy: Classes\SOFTWARE\Delano Scientific\PyMOL\PYMOL_PATH
3. Edit the Default value of the PYMOL_PATH key and enter the path to your PyMOL installation, in my case Q.\\PyMOL_1.1x\DeLano Scientific\PyMOL or %SFT_MNT%\PyMOL_1.1x\DeLano Scientific\PyMOL
4. Save your App-V PyMOL project
5. Re-publich it.

That’s it

This is probably the best place to start… Breaking news, doc white papers, best practices, links to blogs and forums, and more….

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/default.aspx

Direct link to white papers:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/appvirtualization/cc843994.aspx

I was quite curious to see what a fastest and more stable browser would look like, since IE 7 is, to my humble opinion, quite fast and stable… So I was not impressed at all by the speed and stability of Chrome. What positively surprised me is the user interface which I like very much. Rendering is good and there are plenty of good ideas, such as the various tab functions ("Close tabs to the right"; "Close tabs opened by this tab"), the peaceful file download function, incognito browsing to name just some…

Since the browser is committed to simplicity, it’s missing some cool functions other browsers are offering, but nothing which is really essential.

But there is a BUT! or even more than one….

User-only installation

First the installation. Chrome installs in the local AppData of each user profile. So any user without admin rights can install the browsers. On multi-user computers, you will end with as many Chrome installations as you have users on this PC. The advantage of not needing admin rights to install Chrome is over as soon as the user needs to install a plugin, such as Flash… At this stage, admin credentials are required. Your pleased users will soon get frustrated.

User preferences

Everything is stored under C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\ (for Vista) and C:\Documents and Settings\[YourUserName]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\  (for XP). This means that the user settings cannot roam and are bound to the machine where they have been done. So one roaming users (such as students) will have to repeat all her Chrome settings every time they are using another PC, including the bookmarks!

Stability and security

Chrome is supposed to be extremely stable. Even if a tab content is crashing, the other open tabs should be unaffected and the browser itself should resist like a rock…
Well, try to type the two characters :% in the address bar…  
Well, it’s still a beta, isn’t it?

Sept. 19, 2008: Ok, I know, the Google guys corrected this bug in the next build, so you will probably no longer experience this nice crash…

Another concern is security… Well several posts indicate the Chrome uses a not patched Apple WebKit that make it vulnerable to Java bugs… I didn’t try to test this one

Privacy

User bookmarks and user browsing history are kept together in the history file in the …\User Data\Default\ folder. This file is a SQLite v3 database which is not manageable, unless you install SQLite browsing tools. A normal user will manage his/her bookmarks using the Chrome interface. Not a big deal. But for Google, this single database file containing both the user’s browsing history and bookmarks represents probably a huge advantage, because it can easily be consolidated and deeply analyzed if you let Google get this file. So the first setting I would configure when using Chrome is this one:

My non-concluding first impression

Google pure: cool and funny for home users
A bit perverse: Ask yourself: what is Google seeking for with Chrome…
Not a revolution, but plenty of excellent ideas; not yet suitable for roaming user, nor as a company corporate browser…

I took me a while to find out why I was not able to build working sft packages with the new App-V Sequencer 4.5 RC…

I set up a virtual vista reference machine on my Hyper-V server and installed the Sequencer 4.5 RC. The only package I was able to produce was puTTY: what a performance. The name of my VM was "soft". Than I duplicate this VM, de-installed the Sequencer 4.5 and installed the old version 4.2. With Softgrid Sequencer 4.2, I was able to sequence nearly every application. The only difference in my environment was the version of the Sequencer…

Was it really the only difference? Think "out-of-the-box"! Another fatal difference was the name of the virtual machine: Soft to Soft42.

What’s happened under the cover? When intercepting all IOs during monitoring and sequencing, App-V "anonymizes" the current user’s SID with the variable %SFT-SID% and the computer name with %COMPUTERNAME%. This happens with blind general string replacement. Thus intercepted HKLM/Software/MyApp got transformed into HKLM/%COMPUTERNAME%ware/MyApp for example. It’s funny, but of course, it’s fatal!

Can you imagine what happens if you name your Sequencing machine "App" or "Win", or even "S"? I suppose, you’ll get huge packages, but I doubt that they will work So better choose a very specific name for your App-V Sequencer machine…

Notice that the adm file is a RC version. Also the adm controls preferences (not enforced policies). And it is not (yet) an admx but an "old-fashion adm template…

You will find the official information and the connect link here: http://blogs.technet.com/softgrid/archive/2008/07/17/app-v-adm-template-now-available-on-connect.aspx

I have a lot of PowerPoint 2007 slides, and I frequently need to copy some graphics I did into Word 2007. I select the group of shapes or objects I need to copy to Word and paste them onto my Word 2007 page. Unfortunately, the object get pasted as “Microsoft Office Graphic Object” that have a very poor quality and cannot longer be edited in Word as a native drowing object. Under Paste Special, in the AS: box, the “Microsoft Office Drawing Object” format is no longer available. This makes Copy and Paste from PowerPoint 2007 to
Word 2007 totaly useless if you need quality and “editability”. The only way is to paste the whole slide as “Microsoft Office PowerPoint Slide Object”, but this is a very bad workaround, because I ususally need just a part of the slide. Under Office 2003, everything was working like a charm!

The craziest thing is that it works when pasting Word 2007 objects in Powerpoint 2007!!! If you create a text box in Word 2007 and copy/paste it in Powerpoint 2007, the obect remains a text box in Powerpoint! But in 99% of the cases, you need that in the other direction: from PowerPoint to Word. Why did Microsoft removed this essential interoperability feature????

Or am I missing something???

When launching Outlook 2007 the fisrt time for new users, a dialog box pops up asking you to confirm the user’s name and initials. Problem is, the box disappears so quickly you cannot click through it. From then on, Outlook will not work, claiming an open and unfindable dialog box. A recent Outlook patch seems to be the cause af this problem, and should be re-released in the coming weeks… Until then, an easy workaround is to configure the user’s display name and initials for Office 2007 application by lauching Word or PowerPoint. Outlook will behave correctly ofter this….