Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant

GPS, but without GPS

DanielOxley — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:49:10 GMT

Most modern laptops still don't have GPS receivers built into them. My HTC Snap Windows Mobile 6.5 does, although it never seems to connect to anything at all so I am starting to suspect that it is just a lie... I'd like GPS built into my laptop though, but I can't imagine I'd use it too often. GPS can actually have a suprisingly varied application, but if you want a fairly pointless one (at the moment) then read on :-).

For those who have laptops that don't have GPS but want it, there is a location virtual "device" that you can install on your computer in order for it to work out where you are just in case you wasn't aware. It works by calculating your current location based on the IP network information that your network connection has at that moment in time. It is fairly pointless if your computer never moves around and/or has a fixed network connection, but if you travel a fair bit then it might come in handy. So, head over to the GeoSense for Windows website and grab the free download. It feeds the GPS information it calculates into the new location platform that premieres with Windows 7, so if you don't have Windows 7 then this install is even more pointless than ever for you!

Now, why did I say it was fairly pointless? Basically, because the only location-aware software that seems to be available for Windows 7 at the moment is the weather gadget, but hopefully, this free software will kick-start development for other uses!

As you can see from the screenshot above, the left gadget is my current location (hence the blue icon next to "ESP"), and the right gadget is showing a manually configured location. It works pretty well on wireless networks, but something goes a bit wonky if you are using a 3G connection; I am often surprised to find out that I am actually in Valencia or Seville rather than in Madrid if I am using my 3G modem - I guess you learn something new everyday....!

Virtual PC Just Became More Accessible

DanielOxley — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:27:46 GMT

If you have tried to use XP Mode in Windows 7 in the past, then you may have seen the below error message:

This error was caused because the machine in question is trying to start a virtual computer using Virtual PC, on a computer that has a CPU that does not support hardware-based virtualisation. So, something that might be good news to the people experiencing this issue is that Virtual PC for Windows 7 no longer requires a CPU with hardware virtualisation. This means that XP Mode is now available to many more people :-)

I've had discussions several times with clients when we have talked about Windows 7 deployments and one thing that has always been an annoyance to them has been this requirement to be able to use XP Mode. Now, you can install a simple update to Windows 7 in order to unblock this restriction in Virtual PC and use XP Mode.

You can get the update here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977206

Smartcard Needing Drivers In Order To Be Smart

DanielOxley — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:57:12 GMT

My company laptop dual-boots between Windows 7 x64 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This is for the simple reason that Hyper-V is an indispensible tool for a consultant, but the comfort of a desktop OS like Windows 7 means that I don't want to do without either operating system. I keep the R2 installation fairly clean, all it has installed in fact is anti-virus software. Therfore, in order to use all the standard "office" tools such as Microsoft Office etc. I have a seperate virtual machine that runs Windows 7 with the full suite of user tools. So, when I am working in R2, I need to have an extra virtual machine running. This might seem a little excessive given that Outlook will run fine on R2 but I have 8Gb of RAM in the computer so currently I am not reaching the limits (yet) :-)

The downside to running this configuration is that, for simplicity, my neither my R2 nor guest Windows 7 VM belong to the corporate Active Directory domain, meaning that I have no quick access to internal resources. However, the other day I had a brainwave and thought I'd install our VPN software inside my Windows 7 VM in order to gain access to internal resources and live happily ever after. Given that the VPN software requires validation with a smartcard, I switched to using Remote Desktop to connect to the virtual machine, making sure to map the smartcard resource to the remote computer.

However, upon trying to establish the VPN connection, the wizard failed before even starting with the error "A smart card was detected but is not the one requried for the current operation. The smart card you are using may be missing required driver software or a required certificate".

Hmmm, I knew that the smart card was fine because it works if I boot into Windows 7. Also, if I run the VPN software in the host R2 OS, I am able to connect without problems. Consequently, something was getting mashed up along the way to the VM. After a lot of poking around on both the R2 system and the guest Windows 7 one, I wondered if I needed to install the smart card driver into the guest Windows 7 computer even though it never sees the actual physical smart card. Given that it is a plug-and-play smart card, the plug-and-play process will never work over RDP so might be a cause of the problem. So, a quick trip over to the Microsoft Catalog, using the search term "Gemalto" got me the driver I was after.

Unzipped, the driver download looks like below. Copying these files inside the VM (for some reason this step failed when trying to install the driver from a mapped drive) and then right clicking on the .inf file to install, should successfully add the driver to the system. You can confirm that the driver installed correctly by looking in the %windir%\System32 folder for the first DLL file shown in the image below.

Then, as if by magic, my guest Windows 7 virtual machine was able to use my smart card over RDP!

Family IT Nirvana

DanielOxley — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:26:35 GMT

Working in I.T. also means fixing the computers of family members, friends and neighbours. Trying to do this over the phone (especially with my father, who consistently asks "but where is the Start menu?") is pretty much impossible because they just can't follow the basic instructions you try to give... ;-)

In the past I have tried various tools, such as NetMeeting/Windows Messenger/Remote Desktop, to try and connect to the remote computer in order to fix any problem myself, but most tools have been a non-starter pretty much from the beginning. And, as ADSL routers became ubiquitous, it got harder and harder to try and initiate a connection to a remote computer hidden behind a NAT'd router.

But all is not lost! The other day I made a rather comforting (although totally unsupported by Microsoft) discovery... Using Live Mesh, I am able to connect remotely every single time to my dad's/father-in-law's/Anti-MS-VMWare Loving brother's computers! It works over 3G networks, from a corporate to home network (assuming it isn't blocked by your company), as well as with computers hidden behind routers and firewalls; it has made my out-of-office IT work considerably simpler.

"Stop waffling, and tell me how!" I can hear you say. Just follow the below steps to achieve family-IT nirvana:

Install Live Mesh on the remote computer you wish to control.
Once installed, log in to the Live Mesh console as yourself
At the "Add this computer to your mesh" screen, add a personalised name that identifies that computer. Then click "Add Device"

Once done, log out of Live Mesh and configure it to not start automatically at Windows startup. You might also need to delete off the desktop any of the non-synced ghost folders that Live Mesh creates.
On your computer you'll notice that the new device appears in your device list, similar to what is shown below.

I only actually own one computer, but have all the devices in my Live Mesh that I also support :-S

From now on, anytime you need to connect to a remote family/friend/neighbours computer, you simply ask them to start Live Mesh from the Start Menu, and then you click on the "Connect to device" option that will appear in your own Live Mesh panel next to their computer. Couldn't be simpler! And don't worry, this won't affect any usage of Live Mesh on either computer. Both users can go about using Live Mesh normally, even though you'll have their device listed in your device list.

If security is a concern, don't worry either because the remote user has to first start Live Mesh in order for you to connect, but then also explicitly grant you permission to access their computer via the permission dialog box that appears.

Incorrectly speculating about my friend 0xc000000f

DanielOxley — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 16:28:10 GMT

Back in April I blogged about how to get around the 0xc000000f error when trying to install programs over the network via RDP. In the original post I speculated that the problem was likely caused by some network latency issues, or something similar. However, it turns out that the actual cause of the problem was a bug in Windows, which has now been fixed!

The KB page and fix for the bug can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978869

Wasted Space, Begone!

DanielOxley — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:10:00 GMT

A few months ago I won an 8Gb Zune in an internal Microsoft competition. I really like the device and use it all the time on the train to work to help with the monotony. The interface is simple to use, I like the way the music is organised in the library, and the Zune software is not bad at all. My only qualm would be the requirement for another application to be installed in order to add the music to it; integration into Windows Media Player would have been perfect! Anyway, apart from that I am over the moon with it, and when I compare it to my wife's iPod I honestly believe the Zune to be superior.

When I first synced it I noticed that, of the 8Gb of memory installed, I only had a bit less than about 7Gb free for actual music. Although this was mildly irritating, I put it down to this missing space being used for the Zune OS, or some other system files.

However, after fiddling around with the Zune application the other day I noticed that this "missing" space was simply reserved for the InBox of the wireless feature of the Zune, and is totally configurable! Seeing as I don't use, nor intend to, the wireless sharing of music, I just moved the slider all the way across to the left in order to free up the space! And voila! All of a sudden my missing storage space was reclaimed!

To set this yourself, just open the Zune application and go to the Settings section, as shown below:

Now it may be that I am the last Zune owner on the Earth to discover this feature, but just in case I am not, I thought I 'd share it here :-)

Slimming Down Office Documents

DanielOxley — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:18:10 GMT

Being a consultant means that I always have to write bucket-loads of documentation, and the documents tend to be rather long and include plenty of images. Writing a 50 page document is not uncommon, not because I like to waffle (believe me, I don’t), but mostly because I need to include step-by-step instructions for something, including screenshots of each step. However, a consequence of writing such long documents is that the file size of them often ends up being too large to be able to send to the client via e-mail, which means either compressing the file, or sending it in compressed chunks in different emails.

However, saving a Word document in the new (well, not so new anymore!) Office XML format does reduce the file size substantially when compared to the same file saved in the old binary format. This is largely because any images are saved in their scaled size, rather than their original size from the source. What this means is that if you were to copy and paste an 10 MB A3-sized bitmap into a Word document, but then resize the image to something far smaller in order to fit on the page, Word will not save all of the information from the 10 MB file, but rather only that needed in order to maintain the quality of the image at its new reduced size, thus producing a far smaller file size. The trade off with this though is that, if you later on want to increase the size of the image in the document you’ll notice that it starts becoming pixelated because it is being stretched rather than scaled. When I noticed this, it got me thinking about how else the file size could be reduced…

After some playing around I noticed that, when using the copy/paste method detailed above, the images are moved around in bitmap (BMP) format, which is the largest of all image file formats. However, if you first save the image to disk in a different image file format (JPEG for example which is much smaller) and then insert the image file into Word rather than pasting it directly from the source, the Word file will only grow by the size of the compressed JPEG file, rather that the size of the bitmap image from the clipboard. Sound complicated? It isn’t at all, so it is probably my explanation! But here are the steps to do it:

Copy your image file to the clipboard
Paste it into Microsoft Paint (mspaint.exe)
Save the file in the JPEG format
Open Word, navigate to the Insert tab on the Ribbon, and then press the Object button
Select the Create from File tab, then press Browse
Locate the file you want to insert
Make sure that the checkbox Link to file is unchecked.
Press OK!

You’ll now see the image file appear in the document, exactly as if you had pasted it in directly. The difference is in the file size when you save the document, this file will be much smaller! I am sure that I am not the first person to realise this tip, but it is certainly coming in handy now with my documentation, which is why I am sharing!

Converting Windows Error Codes To Something More Friendly

DanielOxley — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:30:24 GMT

I can never remember how to do this, so I always end up looking it up. Therefore, I am posting it here partly for me as a reference, but also in case anyone else finds it useful :-)

Sometime the error codes that are returned by Microsoft Windows are accompanied by a rather cryptic message, or the message doesn’t quite offer enough information to be able to work out what has happened. Well, if you follow the steps below you can look up what the message means to Windows, based on the error code that was returned.

Make note of the last four numbers of the hexadecimal error code, in this example it is 2AFC.

Open the Windows Calculator (calc.exe) and switch it to the Scientific mode (or Programmer mode if you are using Windows 7). Select the Hex radio button, then enter the last four digits of the hexadecimal error number.

Select the Dec radio button, and you’ll see the hexadecimal number converted to a decimal one.

Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type the following command: “NET HELPMSG ” followed by the decimal number that appears in the calculator. In this case, the command would be: “NET HELPMSG 11004”. You will then be returned what is hopefully a more friendly version of the error message.

Note that this will only work for Win32 error codes that originate from Microsoft Windows, the codes will often start with 8007 but not always. Also, if the net helpmsg command does not return a result it most likely means that the error either did not originate from Windows, or is not a valid Win32 process.

Ooops, that’s not right…

DanielOxley — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:51:06 GMT

I have been asked twice this week if this is possible and if so how to do it, so I guess either the information is not readily available on the Internet, or the two people who asked me just couldn’t be bothered to look it up...!

I’m sure you’ve seen the below screen appear during the first boot of your computer or server after you have installed any updates in Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, it’s the screen that says “Completing stage X of Y”.

It is during this phase that, amongst other tasks, any files that were in use while the update was being applied are now copied into their right place and updated once the computer was rebooted. On very rare occasions you might one day see that the computer has gotten stuck at the above screen, and the configuring of the update(s) never completes. This creates a dilemma because you want to get access to the console so that you can work out what went wrong, but this will require a hard reset of the computer. However, on the screen in clear text it is telling you not to turn off your computer.

This issue might occur for several different reasons, which are way outside my field of expertise so I won’t try to explain them here. Thankfully, there is a solution for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that permits you to rollback the changes made by all the updates you applied during the last update. Simply use the below steps to recover your non-booting system:

Boot the computer into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) by either using the installation media or pressing F8 during boot (WinRE is built in to OS installations now).
Open a command prompt.
Navigate to the \Windows folder that you wish to repair.
Run the command: DISM /image:DRIVE LETTER OF WINDOWS DRIVE\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions

An example of this command might be: DISM /image:C:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions

A message should then appear saying

Reverting pending actions from the image....

The operation completed. Any revert of pending actions will be attempted after reboot.”

When you restart the computer you will now see a different screen, this time saying "Reverting pending actions". Once this process has completed, any changes that the previous update(s) made should now be reversed and you should be able to log on correctly.

Wallpapering your Windows 7 computer

DanielOxley — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:28:10 GMT

As some of you may know, certain countries have personalisation packs for Windows 7 that are activated on during the installation of the operating system, depending on the regional settings you first set. So, if you tell Windows 7 setup that you are in the United Kingdom, one of the wallpapers that will be available to you is a photo of Stonehenge. But what if you want to see all the other wallpapers that are available in other regions? Well, you can either go fetch them out of the Windows installation folder, or follow the below steps to make them appear in the desktop personalisation section of Control Panel!

Open Control Panel
Click Clock, Language, and Region
Click Region and Language
Click on the Location tab
Select the following locations, pressing Apply after each one:
- Australia
- Canada
- South Africa
- Spain
- United Kingdom
- United States
Reset the location back to the correct one, and press OK.

Now you can right click on the desktop and choose Personalise from the menu. In the Desktop Backgrounds section, you’ll see some new backgrounds! Note that not all countries have their own personalisation packs, the only ones I know of are the ones listed above.