Tag: Windows Vista

Add users to local groups on the Windows clients easily

If you want to add domain users or groups to a local group on a Windows client machine automatically, this can be done using group policies. One reason could be to easily put groups or users to the local group Remote Desktop Users to allow them to log on via RDP. To control which users or groups you want to add create a new GPO in the domain and go to Computer configuration > (Policies) > Windows settings > Security settings > Restricted groups.

Once there choose to add a group and in my example find the “Remote Desktop Users” group and after that add the user or group you want to add to the local machines which that particular group policy object applies to. More information about restricted groups can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=810076

Control compatibility settings in IE8 using GPOs

As Internet Explorer 8 render web pages in a new way than previous versions of Internet Explorer there is a good chance that one or more web pages you or your users regularly visit are broken or not displaying properly in IE8. Fortunately there is a compatibility mode in IE8 that makes web pages render as though they were displayed in IE7. This action is normally a manual one and the main problem here is that very few users are aware of this compatibility mode. To alleviate problems for the end users you can control the settings and compatibility list of web sites using group policy objects.

Start the Group Policy manager and go to Computer configuration > Administrative templates > Windows Components > Internet Explorer > Compatibility view and there look for “Use Policy List of Internet Explorer 7 sites”. Add the URLs for the web sites that you want IE 8 to always render in IE7 mode.

HOW TO: Clean out Windows\Installer folder correctly

When disk space is running out on a system disk, may it be on a server or a client, there are certain things to clean out. One of them being the %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Windows\Installer folder. You cannot under any circumstances delete files from this folder manually as this not only may but most likely will break software that is installed using MSI files, or Windows Installer files.

The %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Windows\Installer folder is a cache for installation files and patches (MSP files) and removing those will cause you to not being able to repair or uninstall applications, and in some cases not removing patches or applying new patches to software. In the event when you actually did delete this cache you can rebuild the files you need manually by extracting the files from original installation media, from patch packages etc but this is a time consuming and not that easy task to accomplish.

But let me get to the point. If you do want to free disk space you can clean out the %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Windows\Installer folder by downloading Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (NOTE: This tool has been retired and is no longer available from Microsoft) and then running the command

msizap.exe G!

When running this, the installer and patch packages are enumerated and unreferenced packages are considered to be safe to delete and are thereby also deleted. Depending on the age of the system and the number of applications installed, this action can free a significant amount of disk space.

Prepare for Windows Vista service pack 2

The beta testing of service pack 2 for Windows Vista is about to end and SP2 will soon be released for download. Unlike service packs for previous Windows client operating systems SP2 is not cumulative which means that you will have to install service pack 1 before you can apply service pack 2.

So if you for some odd reason still aren’t running service pack 1 on your Windows Vista machines now is the time to install it to make sure you are ready for service pack 2.

Help improve app compatibility in Windows 7

Microsoft is working more active than ever to improve application compatibility in Windows 7. Recently two Swedes announced Microsoft’s willingness to help improve application compatibility in general but also for non-English applications.

First Jesper Holmberg, working with localization at Microsoft in Redmond, announced the face that Microsoft actively wants applications in non-English languages to test with Windows 7. Second Danwei Tran, a new IT evangelist at Microsoft Sweden, offered everybody to send emails to a specific address to report compatibility issues with applications. Microsoft will then contact the developers to see how they can resolve the problems, to everybody’s benefit.

These two actions will of course make compatibility for Windows 7 superb, but never to forget, compatibility for Windows Vista will improve as well as a direct result of these actions.

Just a final note, Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5 got released yesterday, more about this later on.

Windows Update client in Windows 7 also coming for Windows Vista

If you have tried out Windows 7 you know that it includes some changes when it comes to Windows Update. The good news for Windows Vista users is that the Windows Update client included in Windows 7 also will be available for Windows Vista. A few days ago the beta program for the next version of the Windows Update client started on Microsoft Connect.

Some of the improvements that can be seen in Windows 7 and that will be available in Windows Vista are as follows:

  • Reduced number of UAC prompts and the option to allow all users to install any updates.
  • Much better interface and separated optional and important updates.
  • More information when errors do occur, now also with descriptions.
  • Better notification for the user telling them that the computer will be restarted at xx:xx hours and that the user need to save all open documents, if the settings are set to automatically install and restart the client that is.

If you want to try the new Windows Update client for Windows Vista, go to http://connect.microsoft.com and apply to the program called “MUv4 Beta”.

More information about setting Microsoft Update to be the default instead of Windows Update by script can be found in this post I made quite some time ago. I’ve also verified that this works in Windows 7 as well as in Windows Vista.

Installing Vista SP2 gives error hr=0x800f0a0c

For the last couple of days I have been assisting one the users in my Windows Community alltomxp.se (in Swedish) with troubleshooting the installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 2. The user just get “one or more system components that the service pack requires are missing. For more information, click the link below.”  The links leads unfortunately not to a page with any information on what is wrong.

In the CBS.log the following information can be found:

2009-03-11 20:43:11, Info                  CBS    SPI: Starting SP Compatibility\Applicability scan
2009-03-11 20:43:11, Error                 CBS    SPI: (CSPInstall::CompatibilityApplicabilityScan:993)Detected missing components, aborting SP install hr=0x800f0a0c
2009-03-11 20:43:11, Info                  CBS    SPI: Ending Compatibility\Applicability scan
2009-03-11 20:43:11, Error                 CBS    SPI: (PerformSPInstallation:764)Failed to install SP using UI hr=0x800f0a0c
2009-03-11 20:43:11, Error                 CBS    SPI: (wmain:1034)Failed to perform SP installation hr=0x800f0a0c

The problem is that components are missing, most likely because the application vLite has been used to customize the installation. This can be verified by looking if the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\vLite exist and then delete it. After that the installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 should proceed, hopefully without further problems.

Updating Apple Boot Camp – not an easy task!

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 0x00000409 (1033).

Warning for using Vista Offline files with NAS devices

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.