Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant : Vista

Anti-Virus Software, That's Free!

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:27:00 GMT

I am probably the last Microsoft blogger to actually get round to writing something about this… but hey, I have been busy!

Microsoft recently released to the public their free anti-virus solution, Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). I had been trialling the beta versions for a few months on a Windows 7 computer and I was really pleased with it, so the fact that it has now been released as a final product is great! Bizarrely, it even got the stamp of approval from my Anti-MS brother who told me that it consumes much less CPU and memory on his computer, and he has now gotten rid of his McAfee software completely (even though his paid for subscription has not expired). Of course, then he finished the sentence with the usual “but it is from Microsoft so is bound to be full of security holes” nonsense he actually believes.

The virus signature updates are automatically downloaded via the Windows Update service, so it is important that you have this feature enabled. MSE is available in 32 or 64 bit and will run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, so go get it now! There really is no excuse not to run an antivirus product on all your computers, especially because it is completely free – you just need to have a genuine license of Windows in order to be able to install it… :-)

The download and more information is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/

Kicking the tyres

Daniel Oxley — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:44:00 GMT

Want to try out Windows Server 2008? Or perhaps Exchange Server 2007? You can download complete virtual machine environments for a whole list of Microsoft products, free of charge. Check out the Test Drive program here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb738372.aspx for more information and the download links.

The best thing about it is that you can download an entire virtual machine with the software pre-configured and running correctly – so you don’t need to complete any additional tasks in order to start playing/testing/evaluating the products immediately in your own virtual environment.

Enjoy!

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Daniel Oxley — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:59:32 GMT

Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista (SP2) has been a hot topic recently. While Microsoft has not released an immense amount of information regarding this upcoming important update, some interesting stuff has appeared (here and here, for example).

As normal, the service pack will include all previously released updates since service pack 1 (SP1) was introduced, along with some additional new features:

Support for new types of Hardware and emerging standards, including Bluetooth 2.1, the ability to natively record data on Blu-Ray media, support for ICCD/CCID smart cards, and support for the new VIA 64-bit CPU
Wi-Fi setup and maintenance is simplified with the addition of Windows Connect Now (WCN)
The ex-FAT file system is enabled, supporting UTC timestamps to ensure correct file synchronization across time zones
Windows Search 4.0 is included, which provides users faster and more relevant results. Windows Search 4.0 also allows Group Policy integration, which provides administrative control over search parameters
End users should also experience improvements in resume performance when a Wi-Fi connection is no longer available

One important thing that you should be aware of though is that SP1 will be a prerequisite for installing SP2. This means that it will only install on computers that already have service pack 1 installed. This is important as it will need to be taken into account when you start planning the rollout of the update, as you might need to first deploy SP1 to the computers that don’t have it (none by now though hopefully) before being able to deploy SP2.

See this blog post for some more information.

Self-healing NTFS

Daniel Oxley — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:29:19 GMT

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 contain an often overlooked feature called NTFS Self-Healing. In a nutshell, it is basically an improvement to the NTFS system whereby Windows will detect a file system error and automatically fix it on-the-fly. All this is performed in the background without anyone actually noticing that it happened, unless you have something (such as MOM or SCOM) keeping an eye on the Eventlog for the relevant events as they are logged.

This is a major improvement as before you often had no idea that a file was corrupt until you went to open it, which was normally the moment when you most needed the data! Running Chkdsk.exe on the machine nearly always gives the message:

“Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts (Y/N) ?”

Which, although understandable, is never helpful at that specific moment in time, especially if the machine in question is a server in a production environment. The most common method used to try and avoid any possible problems with corrupt files is to schedule regular Chkdsk’s on the machine, but this often requires lengthy downtime while the scan is being run.

By default in Windows Server 2008, the self-healing feature is turned on by default. You can double-check this with the command “fsutil repair query c:”, this command can also be used to enable or disable self-healing. When you run the command, you should see the following:

C:\Windows\system32>fsutil repair query c:
Self healing is enabled for volume c: with flags 0x1.
flags: 0x01 - enable general repair
0x08 - warn about potential data loss
0x10 - disable general repair and bugcheck once on first corruption

The whole process is transparent to the user, and he/she will probably not even realise that anything has taken place, although I have not actually seen any specifications as to if it uses any noticeable CPU cycles or RAM. In fact, as Mark Russinovich explains “If a corruption is detected, an NTFS worker thread is spawned which will go off and perform a localized fix-up of those data structures. The only effect that an application would see is that files would be unavailable for the period of time that it was trying to access, had been corrupted. If it retried later after the corruption was healed, then it would succeed. But the system never has to come down, so there's no reason to have to reboot the system and perform a low-level CHKDSK offline."

Decorating Windows Explorer

Daniel Oxley — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:22:03 GMT

This is a tip that someone recently showed me that I really liked. It allows you to display in Windows Vista (I haven’t tried it on any other Windows OS) a unique background image in Windows Explorer for each drive (internal or external) that you have in your computer. This is particularly useful if you have external USB drives as it lets you assign a different background image to each one, making them easily identifiable.

It is simple to setup, and only takes a few minutes:

Create a file called “desktop.ini” in the root of the drive that you wish to have the custom background image.
Open the file in notepad (or your favourite text editor), and insert the following text:

[ExtShellFolderViews]

{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}={BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}

[{BE098140-A513-11D0-A3A4-00C04FD706EC}]

Attributes=1

IconArea_Image=U:\MYBACKGROUNDFILE.gif

(where u:\mybackgroundfile.gif is the name of the image file that you want to display)

Take care with the type of image that you choose, anything too garish will make Windows Explorer pretty ugly to use. The best type of image is one that is almost transparent or very faded, that way the background won’t ‘commandeer’ the display, it will just add to the visual effect of Windows Explorer.

BTW, you need to specify the path to the image file, unless the file is in the same folder as the desktop.ini file.

Windows Vista, please can you stop changing the view of my folders without asking me?

Daniel Oxley — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:57:00 GMT

Something that really bugs me with Windows Vista is that it ‘decides’ all by itself what view you want for your folders in Windows Explorer; and it seems to always get it wrong (as least for me anyway). As you can seen in the the picture below, I have 5 files in a folder but Vista has deduced that I want to view information such as the author of the file and a 5-star rating of it. Why????

I want to define my views in Windows Explorer; me, and no-one else. I would not mind as much if the views were often correct, i.e. seeing MP3 tag information for a folder containing MP3 files, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Consequently, I get columns appear in Windows Explorer for information that the files could never contain, or for information that I would never be interested in.

If you feel the same, then don’t fret; you can fix this permanently by editing the registry fairly simply. Just follow the steps below:

Open the Registry Editor (regedit.exe)
Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell
Right-click on the Bags entry in the left-hand column and delete it.
Right-click on the BagsMRU entry in the left-hand column and delete it.

You have now deleted any existing saved views that Windows Explorer “detected” that you would want to see, but we are not finished yet. Still in the registry, follow these next steps:

Right-click on the Shell entry (the parent of the now deleted Bags entry) and create a new key called Bags.
Right-click on the newly created Bags, and choose New –> Key and name the key AllFolders.
Right-click on AllFolders and choose New –> Key then name this one Shell.
Select the key Shell from the left pane, and then in the right-hand pane right-click and create a new String Value and name it FolderType.
Double-click FolderType and in the value data box enter one of the following items:

Contacts
Documents
Music
Pictures

The items in the list are the default views that you can choose. Enter the one that you want to be used as the default, i.e. Documents. Choosing Documents is probably the best bet as it will give you the ‘normal’ view that you are used to.

OK, almost there! Open Windows Explorer and navigate to your user profile folder (normally at C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME). For each of the main folders in your profile directory you need to customise the columns as you want them to appear, and also their widths. For example, go into the Downloads folder, and remove any columns you do not want, add those you do, and then adjust all their widths. Repeat this for the other folders you commonly use, i.e. Documents, Pictures etc.

Don’t forget to save your customizations before exiting each folder by clicking Organize –> Folder and Search Options – > ‘View’ tab - ‘Apply to Folders’ button (shown in the picture below). By doing this you will be setting your configured view for that folder, and that all subsequently created sub-folders will inherit that view.

Finally, remember that this is a per user setting so it will not affect any other user profile other than your own. If you wanted to apply it quickly to multiple computers/users, it would not be difficult to script using the tool reg.exe that comes with Windows Vista.

VMWare working great on my computer

Daniel Oxley — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:11:46 GMT

I was at a conference a while ago and got talking to someone about virtualisation. When the guy found out that I worked at Microsoft he gave me a VMWare ESX Server 3i VMVisor USB Flash Disk to try out, telling me that it was the best thing on the market and that I would love it. I was extremely grateful for the USB drive and went home at put it to use immediately, I am very pleased with it and it works nicely with my computer.

A photo of my pendrive

Oh, by the way, I almost forgot to mention how I use it. As soon as I got home, I formatted the pendrive completely deleting all those strange partitions and data that it had. Then I plugged it into my home computer running Windows Vista Ultimate and configured it as a ReadyBoost device. So now, my computer has a 1GB Kingston USB drive running ReadyBoost :-)

My intention all along was to use it with ReadyBoost, I can't imagine what other possible use it would have had...

Hyper-V on the side

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:06:00 GMT

I noticed today that someone has written a new cool gadget for the Windows Sidebar that lets you display what multiple Hyper-V servers are doing, all from your workstation. Double clicking on a server will also allow you to connect straight to it.

You can get the gadget, and more info about it, here: http://mindre.net/post/Hyper-V-Monitor-Gadget-for-Windows-Sidebar.aspx

Getting my bits in a twist

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:04:35 GMT

This week I installed a new Windows Vista virtual machine in Hyper-V. I installed the OS, added it to the domain, then realised that I had not added the integration services for the guest OS. Launching the install for them gave me the following error message which I had not seen before.

As far as I was concerned I had installed Windows Vista with Service Pack 1, something which winver.exe confirmed, but the components still refused to install. I started thinking it was a bug in RC1 of Hyper-V, so I set about to write up a query with the internal help email list we have. I opened up the system information screen to compile the info for my email when I noticed my mistake...

Without realising, I had put the Windows Vista x64 DVD into the drive rather than the x86 version. Consequently, I had installed Windows Vista 64bit, for which Hyper-V does not have the integration services available. :-(

Back to square 1 then. It is always a nice feeling to realise that you have lost an hour or so because of doing something rather silly. Sigh...

Uninstalling the uninstall

Daniel Oxley — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:25:47 GMT

Windows Vista is a pretty big install, and then when you add to it the install of Service Pack 1, it becomes even bigger. So, once you have been running Service Pack 1 for a while, you can safely remove the uninstall files for the Service Pack. Doing so should save you around 1Gb of disk space as well! :-)

Simply run the command wsp1cln.exe from an elevate command prompt and then let it do its stuff.

Getting burnt with DVD Burning

Daniel Oxley — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:52:00 GMT

For a pretty long time I have used Nero Recode to create DVDs from the movies I take with my video camera. The other day it decided to stop working and crashed whenever I added my avi files to it with a nice helpful "StackHash_1703" error. The solution given by Nero was to buy Nero 8 which quite frankly I was not prepared to do as I am really not a fan of the direction that the Nero software is going in (and, in my opinion, paid upgrades should be for new features, not just to fix bugs in the previous version). Then I remembered that Windows Vista has the tool Windows DVD Maker included for free, so I thought I would give that a try to see if I could create the DVDs, but without Nero.

Windows DVD Maker is an application that has surprisingly few options to configure, which I normally see as worrying because it means that it is trying to be 'idiot-proof' (I prefer to have every conceivable configuration option presented to me even though I probably would not have any idea what 99% of them meant). You pretty much just add your video files, select your DVD menu template and press burn. So, I added the same avi files that Nero didn't like and... it crashed with the same StackHash_1703 error. This made me think that the video files themselves were at fault and that it actually had nothing to do with Nero. However, after a very quick search on the web it turned out that plenty of people were having the same problem, and the solution was to simply uninstall Nero 7 completely. Before doing anything else after uninstalling Nero it is vital that you run their "CleanTool" as it seems that the Nero 7 installer does not actually uninstall everything, it seems to actually do a 'selective' uninstall and leave a whole bunch of stuff on your hard drive and in your registry (don't you just hate it when applications do that??).

Anyway, removing and then cleaning up Nero solved the problem completely and I was able to start the creation of a DVD with Windows DVD Maker. "Great" I thought. I have been able to remove a whole suite of applications from my computer and I can still create my DVDs using tools which come with the OS J. However, when the DVD creation process got to 99% up popped the extremely helpful error "The owner SID on per-user subscription doesn't exist", and when I use the word "helpful" I am being sarcastic. What on earth does that error message mean, and what does a SID have to do with DVD creation? Worst of all, the DVD disc that I was burning to was had now become a shiny coaster.

After a few more wasted DVDs I gave up with Windows DVD Maker and I decided that it was a terrible application. Then I had a brainwave, why not use Windows Movie Maker to create a new film based on the existing files, but then publish the new film to DVD! Fiendishly clever! Off I went to create the movie, I hit the publish button in Windows Movie Maker and I was told to my disgust that Windows DVD Maker is required to finish the process! I went along with it anyway even though I was not expecting anything other than a "The owner SID on per-user subscription doesn't exist" error.

However, to my disbelief the DVD was created and burnt to the blank disc! I tested the DVD on my TV and it played as well! Hmm, so why did Windows DVD Maker work via Windows Movie Maker, but not when I ran it directly? Who cares??? I now am able to create my DVD discs with 2 tools built into Windows that don't cost a penny! I am however a little curious as to why it worked when launched via Windows Movie Maker, if I find out the reason then I will post it here.

In conclusion, if you receive the "The owner SID on per-user subscription doesn't exist" error when trying to create a DVD with Windows DVD Maker, try the following steps to achieve the same goal:

Create a new project in Windows Movie Maker - File -> New Project
Import your video files into the collection folder - File -> Import Media Items
Drag your video file(s) onto the timeline at the bottom of the window
Publish the movie - File -> Publish Movie
Select DVD then press Next
Press OK on the window telling you that the movie will be created with Windows DVD Maker (you'll need to save your project at this point)
Add a title to the disc, and press Next
Customise your DVD menu and then press Burn.

A screenshot of Windows DVD Maker showing the menu templates that are included with it. Click the picture to enlarge it.

It does take a little longer to complete than Nero Recode did, but the end result is the same, if not better because the DVD menu templates are far more slick than what Nero had to offer. My only criticism of Windows DVD Maker is that it insists on burning directly to the disc, rather than create an ISO file which is always my preferred option as it means that if the process fails at any point I have not wasted a blank disc (this is a habit I got into when blank DVDs were expensive). To get around this problem, I am testing an application called Virtual CD 9 which creates a virtual DVD burner drive on the system. So, from Windows DVD Maker I simply select the virtual DVD burner drive rather than the physical one and an ISO file is created instead!

So I take back all those bad words and thoughts I had about Windows DVD Maker. It is a great tool to use, extremely simple but it produces high quality results and it is now my application of choice for making DVDs from my video files.

Finally, if you have any errors regarding missing codecs, try opening the video files in Windows Media Player as it will identify and download any missing codecs for you. Once completed, you should then be able to go back and use the video files. That is what I like to see, applications working in unison rather than trying to compete with each other and take over the system!

Trigger happy events

Daniel Oxley — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:32:00 GMT

The new Task Scheduler functionality that was introduced with Windows Vista is superb, it knocks spots off what Windows XP ever had; my favourite feature is the ability to fire a task if a certain event is logged in the Windows Eventlog, which is great because it opens up all sorts of possibilities.

A while ago I had a dodgy ADSL router at home which would periodically reset itself but I was never able to understand why. Upon reset, it would refuse to respond to my Windows XP computer until I manually did a "ipconfig /renew" from my computer. Also, an error was logged in the Windows Eventlog when the client computer attempted to use the network but discovers that it had lost network access. While I was at home, this was never an issue but if I was away from home, and I wanted to use RDP to connect to my home computer, then it proved frustrating because I could not get access. As a workaround, I wrote a VB script that periodically pinged the router and if router did not respond it would run the "ipconfig /renew" command itself. Not a very graceful fix but it did the trick.

Now, had I had Windows Vista at the time, then I could have created a task that looked for the Windows event that was caused by the router resetting itself. Then, when the event appears, I could have launched a script that renewed the IP address. That would have been far simpler and it would have used built-in functionality rather than some homegrown solution.

An example of the Windows Vista trigger window is included below. As you can see, you can create a trigger for pretty much any event, in any log.

Anyway, I actually wanted to blog about Windows XP here because with the use of a tool from the resource kit you can create this exact same functionality for Windows XP! If only I had known when I was having the fun and games with my ADSL router...

There is a tool called eventtriggers.exe that allows you to trigger an action when an event is logged (perhaps that is why they called it eventtriggers.exe???) This is useful in plenty of scenarios, not just the one I described earlier. For example, the command below will launch Windows Backup when a low disk space warning is logged. The event will trigger a script to be launched that automatically runs a disk cleanup.

eventtriggers /create /s srvmain /u contoso\jbloggs /p p@ssW23 /tr "Low Disk Space" /eid 4133 /t warning /tk \\server\share\diskcleanup.cmd

Here are full details of all the switches for the command line: http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/e33bcf4c-dece-4b47-9bb7-31ecfcbc76d51033.mspx?mfr=true

And here is some more information about the tool: http://www.microsoft.com/germany/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/z03c621675.mspx

I want that text, and I want it now!

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:06:49 GMT

How often have you had an error pop up in a dialog box full of useful error numbers, filenames, return codes, and plenty of other stuff, only to start cursing because you could not get a hold of the text content of the dialog box? Normally people resort to a screengrab of the error box but the trouble with that is that the text portion of it is not searchable by live.com (or any other Internet search engine) if you have posted to a newsgroup or mailing list. Therefore, you end up typing it all out by hand which can introduce typos and other human errors, just making the problem worse.

Well, type no more! The next time a dialog box is displayed, and you want to get at the text contents, just press CTRL+C when it has focus to capture it. Then, you can paste this text into an notepad, an email, a newsgroup post, a forum message, or anything else that you want to. This is an incredibly useful, and often overlooked, feature that has been around for quite a while but has always been missed by people.

An example of an error that I had yesterday when using Hyper-V Beta:

This is the contents of that error window that was copied to the clipboard when I hit CTRL+C:

[Window Title]
Virtual Machine Connection

[Main Instruction]
Capturing the drive failed.

[Content]
Failed to modify device 'Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk'.

Failed to open attachment 'IDE\CDROMCORP_DVD+-RW_TS-L632D_______________DE03____\5&1A4FB3FB30&1.0.0'. Error: 'One or more arguments are invalid'

[Expanded Information]
'SSS-IIS1' failed to modify device 'Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk'. (VMID 187CCF91-A248-4052-BBA0-A19A2F913586)

'SSS-IIS1': Failed to open attachment 'IDE\CDROMCORP_DVD+-RW_TS-L632D_______________DE03____\5&1A4FB3FB30&1.0.0'. Error: 'One or more arguments are invalid' (0x80070057). (VMID 187CCF91-A248-4052-BBA0-A19A2F913586)

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p.s. Yes, I have already upgraded to the Release Candidate version of Hyper-V!

Windows Live Installer - without the installer??!?!?

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:18:27 GMT

To install a Windows Live product(s) you need to download and install the WLInstaller.exe file, which is a rolled-up package of all the Windows Live services. You run the installer and then you can choose the components that you want to install from the main screen. This is a great way to distribute the applications as it means that you only need to download one file, from one web page, to install any of the separate programs. However, you might one day want to install one of the components only to find that the installer package gives the following error:

I personally received this message recently when trying to install the excellent Windows Live Writer on my freshly installed Windows Server 2008. The first thought that when through my mind was that, by switching to a server OS as my main desktop OS, I lost the use of programs like Windows Live Messenger, and that I was now forced to blog via the web interface that our blog server has; not good. The reason that this message appears is because, when the programs where rolled up into the installer, the product team decided that it should only install on client OS's as they were the only ones supported. I don't want to get into the "why" and "who decided that" discussion as that is not what I want to focus on with this post.

Well, not to worry, because I can confirm that you can install the Windows Live components on a server OS, indeed, I am writing this blog post via Windows Live Writer so it definitely works! All you need are the separate MSI installer files for each application. With these files you can then just double-click each one to install the application that you want.

There are 2 ways that you can get a hold of the MSI files. Firstly, you could install all the components via the WLInstaller.exe program on a client OS machine, and then copy them out from the following folders:

32-bit Windows - C:\Program Files\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources
64-bit Windows - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources

The files you want are called:

Windows Live Sign-In Assistant 4.200.520.1: Install_{AFA4E5FD-ED70-4D92-99D0-162FD56DC986}.msi
Windows Live Messenger 8.5.1302.1018: Install_{508CE775-4BA4-4748-82DF-FE28DA9F03B0}.msi
Windows Live Writer 12.0.1366.1026: Install_{9176251A-4CC1-4DDB-B343-B487195EB397}.msi
Windows Live Mail 12.0.1606.1023: Install_{184E7118-0295-43C4-B72C-1D54AA75AAF7}.msi
Windows Live Toolbar 03.01.0000.0146: Install_{D5A145FC-D00C-4F1A-9119-EB4D9D659750}.msi
Windows Live Photo Gallery 12.0.1308.1023: Install_{257E440F-781F-459B-9A68-A0872B80C1D6}.msi

If you can't use the above method, you can go to the following SkyDrive to access a copy: Live Suite SkyDrive folder.

Out of the 2 methods mentioned above, I strongly recommend the first one for two important reasons. By using WLInstaller.exe you will always have the latest version of the files. Secondly, you know the authenticity of the files as you have downloaded them from live.com rather than the SkyDrive (not that I am saying that the files in the SkyDrive are not safe, which they are, especially as they should carry the digital signature from Microsoft).

Thanks to these guys for the heads-up: http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/20879/Default.aspx

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Virtual 'Roundtable'

Daniel Oxley — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:56:00 GMT

Do you want to join in with an interactive live virtual roundtable session with Mark Russinovich about Windows Vista Service Pack 1? He'll be hosting an interactive virtual roundtable which will be broadcast live over the Internet on Wednesday, March 5th. He will be talking about Windows Vista, Service Pack 1 and deployment of Windows Vista. Joining him will be "independent industry experts and IT pros from organizations that have already deployed Windows Vista - all openly discussing known challenges, solutions and workarounds, and sharing tips & tricks".

Go to http://ms.istreamplanet.com/events at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time on March 5th and ask your questions live during the event. If you want to submit your question in advance you can do that by e-mailing your question to vrtable@microsoft.com anytime between now and the day of the event.

For those of you who don’t know Mark, check out his blog at http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich