Author: Andreas Stenhall

Microsoft introduced a totally new servicing mechanism in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 which is totally component based. Sometimes information in the servicing store becomes corrupt and inconsistent. This state can cause hotfixes, service packs, security updates and other types of updates to fail.

To solve this problem you can use the System Update Readiness Tool which just have been updated to work with Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 Sp2 (it also works for previous service pack levels).

The guys over at TrueSec will be hosting a live online webinar (for free) about Windows 7 on October 7th. The speakers are no less than Marcus Murray, Christoffer Andersson, Johan Arwidmark, Mikael Nyström and Hasain Alshakarti. More info and registration at  http://www.windows7summit.com.

If you have renamed a Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2 domain controller you should be aware of  a problem. The problem is that a DFSR object is not renamed to the new name. This does not cause any problems until you remove the domain controller in question and after doing a demote or cleaning it up with metadata cleanup the object will become orphaned. So if you have renamed 2008 or 2008 R2 DCs you should follow the steps in KB2001271 to fix this.

Microsoft have announced the beta exam opportunity for taking the 71-685: PRO: Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician and 71-686: PRO: Windows 7, Enterprise Desktop Administrator exams. More information at TechNet Betaexams. The live exams will go public in mid-November it seems.

How many times have you created a new profile in Outlook for the sile purpose to try another Exchange account in your Outlook? Well, starting with Outlook 2010 you will be able to have up to three Exchange accounts in one profile in Outlook.

Speaking of Office 2010, having used the technical preview of Office 2010 for quite some time now I am really looking forward to the beta version as it will contain quite a few improvements over the technical preview. Hopefully it will be here soon!

A serious problem exists with Windows Vista when using F-Secure product, a problem which a lot of users experience. The problem is that when specific versions of F-Secure products are installed Windows enters a continuous boot-loop when installing Windows Update. This issue appears as

Configuring updates stage 3 of 3. 0% complete

after which the computer reboots and reboots and reboots…

The last few weeks I have seen this issue being asked almost every day in the forums over at www.alltomxp.se/forum. Anyway, for the solution have a look at the F-Secure guide or take a look at the MS KB article.

Many users are frustrated to receive the below error message when trying to add network shares or mapped network drives to a Library in Windows 7.

This network location can't be included because it is not indexed.

The error message clearly state what the problem is but it is harder to find out how to solve the problem. You have two options to include the network drive or network share in a Library.

1. Make the network drive available offline by right clicking it and choose “always available offline”. If you cannot control the remote file server as suggested in solution 2 this is the option to use.

2. Make sure that Windows Search 4.0 is installed on the remote file server and make sure that the share or network drive you are adding is indexed on that server. This is the preferred method I would say.

Once either of these two solutions are in place you will be able to successfully add the network share or mapped network drive to your libraries.

Microsoft has just released the group policy reference Excel sheet for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The Excel sheet contain all group policy settings that exist and you can easily search and filter which settings are available for which operating system. Download the reference files here.

Just wanted to post a quickie about the fact that a Windows 7 driver with support for multi-touch for the HP TouchSmart range of PC:s is available at http://www.nextwindow.com/windriver/index.html. After installing Windows 7 on it I just got “single-touch” but with the driver found at the link above my HP TouchSmart becomes a full featured multi-touch machine. Sweet!

When I installed Windows 7 RTM on my Sony VAIO laptop I discovered the same problem as when beta testing WindowsVista some years ago. The problem is that drivers for the video card for Nvidia mobile graphics chipsets is missing which means running with the feature lacking and slow Standard VGA driver.

In all releases of Windows 7 up to RTM there has been a driver available via Windows Update for the Nvidia mobile card but this driver seems to be pulled from Windows Update (and Microsoft Update Catalog). If you did not already know it Nvidia offers drivers for many of its mobile graphics chipsets on www.nvidia.com, but unfortunately these drivers do specifically not work on SonyVAIO machines.

The solution to install the Nvidia driver anyway is to download and unpack the driver from www.nvidia.com and then modify one of the INF files to make it support your video card. May I mention that this solution is not support in any way, but the important thing is that it works.

In my case I looked up the hardware ID for my Nvidia GeForce 8400M GT in device manager and found out that is has the hardware ID “PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_9005104D”. Then I went to C:\NVIDIA\DisplayDriver\186.03\International\Display (the path might differ when using a newer driver) which is where the files are unpacked when you run the downloaded driver. Then I opened nvam.inf and added the below two lines where there are similar rows in the INF file.

Note that the “0426” part in the beginning of the first and second line is derived from “DEV_0426” part in the hardwareID which is unique depending on what graphics card it is. In my example the lines I am adding looks like:

NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01 = "NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GT (Sony Vaio FZ38M)"

%NVIDIA_DEV.0426.01% = Section012, PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0426&SUBSYS_9005104D

If you look in the INF file it will be quite obvious how to proceed. Then run setup.exe or install the driver manually. It should work like a charm ;)