The Experience Blog

Move from Windows 7 RC to RTM today!

If you or someone in your organization still are running the release candidate of Windows 7 now is the time to go to RTM. In one month from now all Windows 7 RC machines will start rebooting themselves every second hour. Remember that in-place upgrades from Windows 7 RC to RTM are not supported nor recommended.

HOW TO: List performance issues with your Vista or Windows 7 machine

In Windows Vista and Windows 7 there is one feature that many does not know about that lists performance issues with your system. It can show you for instance if a driver of any kind is making “sleep mode” take longer than expected or software the make your computer start or turn off slow.

You find this more or less hidden feature by starting “Performance Information and Tools”. Then click “Advanced tools” in the left menu and then look under the first section “Performance issues” for possible causes of system performance issue.

Let your users upgrade to Windows 7 automatically

Mikael Nyström, MVP on Windows Setup and Deployment, has written a rather short but very useful guide on how to easily deploy Windows 7 to end users. Read his blog post!

HOW TO: Solve printing problems via RDP #2

Just a quick follow-up on the post on solving printing problems via RDP as I for some not so obvious reason totally forgot about it in the last post. It is very easy to find out which driver a redirected printer actually uses by choosing Properties on the printer and noting what it says under “Model”.

It will state either “Remote Desktop Easy Print” (Terminal Services Easy Print) if you are indeed using the Easy Print printer driver or it will show the real driver name for the printer if it has been mapped with the real driver.

HOW TO: Solve printing problems via RDP #1

RDS Easy Print (previously TS Easy Print) in all its glory but sometimes you may look at problems printing when using the RDS Easy Print driver. Starting with Windows Vista and specifically RDP 6.0 it is possible to connect to remote machines via RDP and automatically get the locally installed printers available in the RDP/TS/RDS session. Previously one had to match the printers drivers with being the exact same on both the local and remote machine. This is done with something called a RDS/TS Easy Print printer driver.

In a few cases I have seen that printing does not work as expected when using the RDS Easy Print printer driver making the printer for example pause, print, pause, print and so on when printing a multiple page document.

The sweet thing here is that with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 comes a new group policy setting that allows us to first try to match the local print driver with a remote (the old fashioned way) before using the RDS Easy Print driver. The setting to activate this is named Use Remote Desktop Easy Print printer driver first and is found in Computer configuration – Administrative templates – Windows Components – Remote Desktop Services – Remote Desktop Session Host – Printer Redirection. Set it to disabled to make use of the “real” print driver first.

Prepare for Office 2010 today with Office 2010 Assessment Tool

As always it is good to be prepared and plan ahead and Office 2010 is “soon” to be released so why not prepare for it now instead of later? With Office 2010 Assessment tool you can inventory one or many computers in one go and get a good view on for example which addons are in use, which applications interact with Office and potential problems when upgrading the current version to Office 2010. The tool can be found at Microsoft Download Center.

The only true “God mode” in Windows 7 is…

… that it is there by default in Windows 7 (in the start menu)! Lately there has been spreading what is called a “God mode” trick that simply what it does is to create a shortcut to all settings available for each control panel item. The trick is a nice one but to be honest I see very little use for this trick as all settings that are listed on this page is searchable in the Start menu.

A much better trick in my opinion would be to use the search box in the start menu and always search for a keyword related to what you want to do. There are shortcuts in Windows 7 to take if you just learn to use the start menu search. Let’s take an example on which I often ask students when I teach Windows 7 classes how they would process on how to install/uninstall Windows components and the answer is “I would go to Add/remove programs (Programs and features) and then click Windows components (Turn Windows features on or off)”.

Well, in Windows 7 you don’t have to do this, you can just go ahead and type “features” in the start menu search box and it will list the option “Turn Windows features on or off” and you can save mouse clicks and time!

If you still want “God mode”, create a folder and name it “GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}” and you will get the list of all options available for each control panel item.

Windows 7 exam becoming virtual lab exam

The basic exam Windows 7 Configuring (70-680) has been a plain old usual test with questions and answers, at least until now. Microsoft have announced that this is the second exam that will become a virtual lab exam (Windows 7 Configuring 70-683), the first exam being Windows Server 2008 Configuring. I think it is a great move!

Top posts of 2009

So to summarize the past year I would like to highlight the most popular posts. It is pretty clear that how-tos are without doubt the most popular posts…

#1 How to clean out the Installer directory correctly
MSI and MSP files are stored in the %SYSTEMROOT%\Windows\Installer directory and to free disk space and to clean out this folder you can use the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to remove orphaned objects.

#2 How to install Nvidia video drivers on laptops when all else fails
For instance Sony do not provide 64-bit drivers for a large range of their (older) laptops which makes Windows 7 use a Standard VGA adapter. Nvidias official mobile drivers will not install on many systems but the solution to get those drivers to install is quiet simple and makes graphics on laptops run as smooth as it should.

#3 Troubleshooting blue screen of deaths
This is simply a guide on how to manually debug what a blue screen of death is caused by. Very handy!

SBS 2008 migration, Exchange installed partially

The time has come for the first but definitely not the last post of 2010. I’ll kick off this year by writing a rather long and describing post about what seems to be a unique never the less strange problem when migrating a Small Business Server 2003 to 2008. Anyone that has done this migration know that when everything is done and the new SBS 2008 boots up to the actual desktop for the first time you want nothing but all green lights in the migration status report.

In this particular case it stated that Exchange Server 2007 did not install, which is not a good thing when it comes to SBS 2008. To my surprise I learnt that it was actually installed but only the hub transport role. The mailbox role and the client access role hadn’t been installed during the SBS 2008 installation/migration. Not good, indeed not good at all was my initial thought.

After trying to manually install the roles it instantly worked fine to install the mailbox role but the client access role kept on failing with the below error message.

Summary: 1 item(s). 0 succeeded, 1 failed.
Elapsed time: 00:00:13

Client Access Role
Failed

Error:
Exchange server "SERVERNAME
DEL:e576abbf-e823-43f2-8c4a-53ec5e551dbd" was not found. Please make sure you have typed it correctly.

So after doing some research it seems that the offline address book of the Exchange Server 2003 is the crook which has lead to the migration process not installing Exchange Server 2007 correctly on the SBS 2008. Simply deleting the offline address book was the only way I could get the client access role to install in the Exchange Server 2007 on the SBS 208 machine.

After everything eventually was installed it didn’t take long before I realized that SBS 2008 keeps OWA and TS Gateway web services in its own web site in IIS called SBS Applications which Exchange is unaware of. This meaning we still have a corrupt and not so useable Exchange OWA, ActiveSync etc as Exchange per default install the web services in the web site called Default web site.

After doing a manual move of most parts it kept on failing on the virtual directories for EWS, OBA and AutoDiscover with an error message indicating that they were already in the SBS Applications web site. After a look in the applicationHost.config (located in the %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\inetserv\config folder) file it turned out that these virtual directories were listed under SBS Applications instead of the Default Web Site, should they be there at all.

All was well after first uninstalling the client access role in the Exchange, manually deleting the lines corresponding to EWS, OAB and AutoDiscover in the applicationHost.config file and after installing the client access role again and finally running the powershell script provided by Microsoft at step3 on http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd767439(WS.10).aspx the problem was fixed.

Whatever the problem with the address book was I guess we will never know. At least I hope this little post can help someone in a similar situation when migrating to SBS 2008.