Author: Andreas Stenhall

This blog post was updated April 6th 2010 with an additional screenshot showing the evolving Device Stage experience.

 Windows 7 contain a feature called Device Stage. It is a way for hardware manufacturers’ to provide more value related to their products and it can be anything from providing shortcuts to drivers, firmware, manuals to processing of digital photographs online or to provide links to purchasing printer accessories.

The good thing about this is that the hardware manufacturers can provide this functionality for older hardware and not just new hardware, as well as provide updates to the Device Stage experience for each device whenever applicable. This is achieved by using the same feature as the one which in Windows Media Player download album cover art automatically. Note that the Device Stage information can be supplied in the driver from the factory but as this only applies to new hardware it’s best to let Windows 7 update this kind of information from the internet.

Below I provide a couple of screenshots where you can see a Device Stage example for a Lenovo X300 laptop. As you can see the icon is a real image of how the machine looks in real life. The second shot shows you how Lenovo has customized Device Stage for this particular machine. The only Lenovo specific tool as of this date is the link to ThinkVantage Tools, but this can easily be adjusted by Lenovo to contain manuals, important information, ordering parts or upgrades etc.

 
Above: As seen on August 16th 2009, Below: As seend on April 6th 2010.

I would say that the imagination of the hardware manufacturer is the only obstacle when it comes to Device Stage. It will be interesting to see how the manufacturers can take advantage of this feature and I am really looking forward to seeing more use of Device Stage!

Last Friday I passed the last exam in the MCITP certification for becoming Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Administrator. Cause for celebration! But that was not why I started writing this. Today I met with a client of mine and he asked if it was worth taking a certification. My answer is definitely “yes”!

Why? Many reasons. You get a broader perspective of things which certainly helps you make better decisions in your daily work. You also get a broader set of technical skills and by that I mean that you gain (at least) basic knowledge of the available features of the specific product which in the future might prove to be very valuable. Taking these exams are if nothing else very good for keeping up with new technology.

Want to become certified? Look for appropriate certifications at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-overview.aspx and then register at https://www.register.prometric.com.

A significant change in Windows 7 volume activation is that you must have 25 physical or virtual machines for the KMS (Key Management Service) to become active. This is different than with windows Vista where you needed 25 phsyical machines for the KMS to start activating your machines.

If you already have a KMS you need to install a patch for it, a patch that will be available soon. You also need a Windows 7 license and also to activate it. Read more about the KMS patch at this blog.

Starting with Office 2010 the new version of the KMS will also serve activations for Office for the first time. Office 2010 will be released some time in the first half next year.

So I’ve started the preparations for deploying Windows 7 RTM in my home and I discovered an intriguing problem when injecting the latest Nvidia Geforce graphics driver into my offline Windows 7 image using DISM (deployment image servicing and management tool). The error was:

C:\Windows\system32>dism /image:e:\tempwim /add-driver /driver:”e:\Documents\Windows 7\Drivers\x64″ /recurse

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool

Searching for driver packages to install…
Found 1 driver package(s) to install.

Installing 1 of 1 – e:\Documents\Windows 7\Drivers\x64\Nvidia Forceware v190.38 WHQL (Nvidia.com)\NV_DISP.INF: Error – An error occurred. The driver package could not be installed.
For more information, check for log files in the <windir>\inf folder of the target image.

Error: 30

The command completed with errors. For more information, refer to the log file.

The DISM log file can be found at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM\dism.log 

The problem was that the Nvidia driver wasn’t totally unpacked as it requested files not there. To solve this one has to extract all the files from the Nvidia driver, the most easy was to do this is to put all the files from the original Nvidia installation and then run “expand *.* c:\target” to unpack all files in the driver. After doing this you will have no problems injecting the driver into your Windows 7 wim image.

Note that the problem exist for both the Microsoft Update Catalog driver as well as the one which is available directly from Nvidia. Also note that this problem does not exist if you’re using Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010.

EDIT: Corrected the command from “extract” to “expand”. Thanks for the comment!

The other day I got an email from a blog reader which contained the information of a successful analyze of a memory dump file which is generated when an infamous blue screen of death occur. The reader wanted me to give him the solution or point him in the direction of a solution. This got me into thinking. When is it worth putting time on doing blue screen analyzes?

The content of the crash dump is maybe not that relevant after all. What is more important is how often and when the blue screen of death occurs. If the crash occurred just once or very seldom and randomly I would say that it might not be worth finding out exactly what caused the crash. Keep in mind that a blue screen could indicate a hardware failure, although driver problems are the most common cause for crashes.

However if the crashes occur often or at when doing specific tasks you have all the reasons in the world to get to the bottom of the problem. In these cases I recommend following the guide for troubleshooting blue screen crashes.

An interesting thing to note about blue screens that start occurring after for instance upgrading the OS from Windows XP to Windows Vista or Windows 7 is that the new memory management in the later operating systems might reveal problems in the memory modules that did not show when using Windows XP.

Finally, whenever having problem with blue screens of death I would recommend upgrading the machine BIOS. Often there are compatibility and stability fixes which solves problems with hardware which might be causing you the problems you are experiencing.

Now all dates for when Windows 7 will be available to the various customer groups are out in the open. TechNet availability August 6th, volume licensing availability August 7th. For all dates and info see http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/21/when-will-you-get-windows-7-rtm.aspx

Back from a relaxing vacation. Apparently Windows 7 has not RTM:ed yet but it’s getting really close. Looking forward to get hold of the bits of both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to be able to wipe all my machines, clients and servers, and upgrade my domain to Windows Server 2008 R2. In the meantime I’m writing a few words about blue screens, it wil be out later this week. Stay tuned!

I guess you’re wondering what the heck “WEBSPAPW” stands for and it is nothing but “Windows Essential Business Server Preparation and Planning Wizards”. Microsoft has now come to the conclusion that this tool as I’ve written before was not only used for EBS migrations but also for general health checks in Active Directory environments. This has resulted in the name change to “Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner” which is built from the previous EBS tool.

When running the Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner you may find problems related to AD, DNS, replication and many other things and for everyone in charge of or controlling the IT environment this tool is strongly recommended. Read more on the EBS Blog.

Download: Microsoft IT Environment Health Scanner

Most problems with Windows Update can be solved by the simply renaming the folder SoftwareDistribution from the Windows directory. To be able to do so you are required to stop the service Automatic Updates (if you’re on Windows XP or Server 2003 or earlier) or the Windows Update service if you are on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 and later.

The SoftwareDistribution folder is automatically recreated when you start the service again. Bear in mind that you will lose the update history when performing this trick, something you can get back of course if you change the name of the SoftwareDistribution folder instead of just deleting it.

Also keep in mind that deleting the SoftwareDistribution folder is for fixing problems with searching for updates or contacting a WSUS server for instance, you will not solve problems installing various hotfixes or updates using this method. To troubleshoot problems related to Windows Update or Automatic Updates look in the WindowsUpdate.log located in the root of thew Windows directory for clues. For problametic hotfix installations see the hotfix log file.

I’m extremely glad to have received the email from Microsoft which states that I have been awarded the MVP Award in the area of Windows Desktop Experience. Many years of hard work and dedication to the community has payed off :) Thanks to everyone that has supported me, especially I would like to thank my wife who has stood out with me and my computers for all these years. I will most certainly continue to contribute to the community in many ways. Stay tuned!

I would also like to congratulate fellow Swedes that received the reward for the first time as well as those that got it renewed: http://gerver.blogspot.com/2009/07/new-mvps-announced-july-2009.html