Recently I have had experience with a customer running Windows Vista on an Apple Macintosh computer. Quite interesting configuration setup and totally unsupported from Microsoft, and to be honest I have never seen so many errors and problems with hardware and drivers as with this machine. Anyway, trying to upgrade BootCamp to the latest version turned out to be a nightmare. Applying the latest BootCamp patch resulted in an instant error message: “Error applying transforms. Verify that the specified transform paths are valid”.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that this was caused by not using a system which is “all-American” but finding out exactly what to change took a bit longer. I soon learned that one have to edit the registry and making sure that the language code set there is changed to the US English code.

You do this by looking up the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Installera\Products \82654E0F812156845A61E8A84572A2CD and then changing the value of the REG_DWORD setting named “Language”. To be able to install Apple BootCamp update this setting must be 0×00000409 (1033).

TechRepublic has written a post on how to Extract troubleshooting info from Windows XP BSOD error messages. This is good, but I must say that extracting even more information from the memory crash dump file is even better. If you’ve missed my guide on how to do this you have it right here:

Troubleshoot and analyze Blue Screens of Death

Microsoft is now announcing some information about Windows Vistas successor with codename “Windows 7″. There wil be no all new kernel in “Windows 7″, instead Microsoft will improve the kernel from Windows Vista and make it more componentized.

Killer compatibility is something that is coming in “Windows 7″, as “all” applications and drivers that work in Windows Vista also will work in “Windows 7″ thanks to ”Windows 7″ being based on the same kernel as Windows Vista. Looking forward to the beta program for “Windows 7″!  

I have been given the opportunity to evaluate a certification test from uCertify.com. UCertify is a company that provide certification practice tests for not only Microsoft certifications but also other companies such as Sun, Oracle, Cisco and Adobe. However my area of interest and expertise is the Windows and Microsoft platform. The test I have evaluated is specfically the Windows Vista certification test “70-620: Configuring Windows Vista”. Recently I’ve spotted that they’ve also added certification tests for Windows Server 2008.

What is included?
When you purchase a test you get to download a small application file which contain the test questions together with a lot of information needed to be able to pass the test such as study notes, articles and how-tos.

Hundreds of test questions
There are several hundreds of test questions in the uCertify preparation kits, how many depend on which test it is. In the package for the 70-620 test there are no less than 350 questions all together which are divided into categories, the same categories which are tested in the real exam.

Test your skill
In the software that you download you can run practice tests where you get a good look at which areas you might need to improve your knowledge in. After completing a test you get a score based on how many correct answers you had and you are also given the opportunity to go back and see which answers were incorrect.

Try for yourself!

To test your own skill you can download free trial versions of the preparation kits which include a limited number of questions. The preparation kit for 70-620 which I have evaluated can be downloaded from here. On the website www.ucertify.com you will find all the other PrepKits available. Also, if you purchase a PrepKit you will get 10 precent discount on any test of your choice, if you supply the code “ANDREA”.

Conclusion
Although there are hundreds of questions it feels like there could be more, and especially more varying questions as many questions are very similar. On the other hand, many of the questions are really good and really test the skill needed for the exam.

But is it worth puchasing this kind of test? My answer to this questions is “it depends”. The sum is not that high compared to what you get in return as the information included in the preparation kit is a really good source of information and prepares you well for the exam.

When you install Vista Service Pack 1 the old GPMC.MSC control panel is removed. The reason for this is that there is a new and improved Group Policy management tool released in the Remote Server Administration Tool kit that was released slightly after Service Pack 1 was released to the public.

One of the new features of the new Group Policy management tool is that you can filter policy settings. Directly under “Administrative templates” for both Computer and User Configuration there is a new “All settings” category which lists all settings in “Administrative templates”. If you select “All settings” you might then right click anywhere and choose “Filter options”. It looks like the screenshot below.

By entering the information you are looking for it is very easy to find the group policy settings that you are looking for. This is becoming more and more necessary as the number of policies grows by hundreds or nearly a thousand for every new Windows version released and it is hard to find the setting one is looking for.

Download Remote Server Administration Tools (x86)
Download Remote Server Administration Tools (x64)

This is just a warning to anyone thinking about using Offline files in Windows Vista together with a NAS device. The Offline files feature is activated by default on all folders which you redirect when using Folder Redirection. The problem is that the Offline files feature is not supported by all NAS devices out there.

The Windows Storage Team posted a blog notice about this more than a year ago but this is worth mentioning again. Although they provide a solution for NAS devices using Samba (which many does) there is no guarantee at all that the NAS device has the correct version of Samba or even support making the necessary changes.

Some people for whatever reason want to turn off UAC for all or certain computers in a domain using Group Policies. This is done by setting the Computers Configuration > Windows Settings > Local Policies > Security Options > User Account Control: Run all administrators in Admin Approval Mode to disabled. As usual when turning off UAC a reboot is required for the changes to take effect.

I have had severe problems with System Image Manager crashing when trying to create the Catalog file for a Vista Enterprise SP1 image. The other day an updated version of the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Server 2008 Windows Automated Installation Kit was released and my hopes were high for a fix being included. That version crashed as well and after studying the release notes it clearly state that what I am trying to do is no longer supported, as I am running a 64-bit version of Vista and am trying to create a catalog image for a 32-bit image of Vista. Another SP1 problem it seems!

“Because of the changes in the servicing stack in Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008, Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM) cannot create catalog files for some Windows images of different architecture types. The following list describes the Image Manager architecture types and catalogs that can be created for each one.

• x86 Image Manager
  Can create catalogs for x86, x64, and Itanium-based Windows images.
• x64 Image Manager
  Can create catalogs only for x64 Windows images.
• Itanium-based Image Manager
  Can create catalogs only for Itanium-based Windows images.”

See the release notes and download the new WAIK package.

With Windows Vista Service comes a very handy tool which is called VSP1CLN.EXE, short for Vista Service Pack 1 Cleaner. The tool can be found in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 and when run it makes Windows Vista Service Pack 1 permanent on your computer. In short that means that all files that are backed up during SP1 installation are removed and you will gain several gigabytes of disk space. It also means that you cannot uninstall Service Pack 1 after you have run VSP1CLN.EXE. This tool should pass anyone by!

In Windows Vista it might at a first glance appear to be tricky to automatically enable File and Printer sharing and Network discovery. However it is actually very easy when you know what to type. The “netsh” command comes in handy here, and you can use the below strings in a script to enable it on many clients automatically.

To enable File and Printer sharing you run the command:

netsh firewall set service type=fileandprint mode=enable profile=all

To enable Network discovery you run the command:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”network discovery” new enable=yes

Please note that you can change which profile you want to apply the changes for.

EDIT: First and foremost, I accidently added the “profile=all” to the Network Discovery string which is totally incorrect, as Network discovery is enabled for all profiles when this command is run. Second, if you are using Windows in another language than English you will have to adjust “network discovery” to what it is called in your localized language. For instance on the Swedish version of Vista it would be:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule group=”nätverksidentifiering” new enable=yes

EDIT 2: The network discovery script only work with Windows Vista with Service Pack 1.