XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

Aaron Junod — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:41:00 GMT

Could not be a better time for this. Let's hope this trick works with the toolbar suite too! Thanks a ton!

http://blog.iceglue.com/archive/2004/12/13/462.aspx

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

ToddS — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:48:00 GMT

John,
I can see how this method of installing would be powerful, and I would love to be able to use Virtual Desktop Manager (as well as the new MSN Desktop Search) on my development box (Win Server 2003 RTM). However, I cannot get these instructions to work. I also notice that you are running Windows Installer 3.1 which makes me wonder are you doing this on your SP1 box (thus the 1289 build number on msiexec.exe)? Do these instructions work on an RTM version of 2003? Also, I don't see a "Per User Compatibility" tree item on my Compatibility Administrator. Is this a newer version of that application as well? Thanks.

MSN toolbar suite? Not on 2k3! Bah!

Aaron Junod's .net thinking — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:51:00 GMT

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

John Howard [MSFT] — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 03:37:00 GMT

ToddS - yes, this was under SP1 RC1, and you're right (and very observant!), msiexec.exe is version 3.1.4000.1289. Unfortunately :-) I don't have a single Windows Server 2003 box (physical or virtual) which is still running the base Windows Server 2003 code, so I can't test it.

However, I would imagine this to be a generic solution, not specific to Windows Installer 3.1 or RC1 of SP1. I'm using the public download of the application compatibility toolkit, so it should look the same. Did you download using the link in my original post, or are you using a version already installed?

Let me know where it fails for you - would be interested in hearing. This _should_ be fairly generic to force installations, but obviously there's no guarantees....

Aaron - looks like you're trying to do exactly the same as Todd. Please let me know how you get on so this is a bit more widely published.

Thanks both of you.
John.

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

Ash — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 04:16:00 GMT

Hmmm

Couldn't get this to work. Tried to install the MSI 3.0 Redist as well.

This is what I did
Win2K3Ent (no Service Packs, otherwise fully patched)
Installed the ACT
Stopped Windows Installer service
Made sure no msiexec's where running in Taskmanager
Definied msiexec in ACT as you specified
(even rechecked with your image)
Tried to install Deskman, but got the warning that I'm not running WinXP :(

-Ash

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

John Howard [MSFT] — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 04:27:00 GMT

Update - found a Windows 2003 Server without SP1 RC on it (is actually my home server). I felt brave so used it to experiment on just now. I didn't break it, and still have Internet access(!)

It was running msiexec 2.0.3790.0
I installed MSI 3.0 as documented in KB884016 from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=5fbc5470-b259-4733-a914-a956122e08e8&displaylang=en and rebooted.

Recreated the msiexec compatibility (as the exe has a different signature), and nope, didn't work - the installer still complained it wasn't Windows XP.

Copied the RC msiexe.exe onto the machine and recreated the msiexec compatibility and nope - still doesn't work - exactly the same error.

So, it looks like the solution is to install the RC code for SP1. There's lots of caveats associated with this, but for what its worth, I've got it on installed on numerous machines (mostly virtual) and haven't encountered problems so far. For a test machine though, it's probably in the "good enough" bracket, but it's your decision.

Otherwise, wait a few months for the final SP1.....
I'll keep digging - I may find a solution ;-)

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

ToddS — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 05:41:00 GMT

Here's what I did (copied from my Wallop blog). This doesn't work for the MSN Toolbar Beta.

Follow John's directions until you get the pure .msi file. Then run msiexec.exe with the /a flag. It will look like this msiexec.exe /a "C:\Documents and Settings\administrator\desktop\Virtual Desktop Manager PowerToy for Windows XP.msi". This will perform a network install so select a place to put the extracted files. Once this is done you'll have a System32 directory with three files msvdm.dll, PowerToyReadme.htm, and vdm.chm. The readme is obvious and the chm is just the help file. This leaves the dll. Copy it to the Windows\System32 directory and then register it with regsvr32 (regsvr32 /c msvdm.dll) and *POW* it's installed. Right click on the tool bar and select "Toolbars" and "MSVDM" and now you have 4 virtual desktops to (ab)use.

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

John Howard [MSFT] — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 06:30:00 GMT

Todd

There's a result. Forgot about the /a switch. Great research!

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

Aaron Junod — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 11:43:00 GMT

Spent some time playing around tonight and still no go on the desktop toolbar. This did work for intellipoint, though, which rocks.

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

John Howard [MSFT] — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 16:53:00 GMT

I did manage to get the beta MSN toolbar running this morning (again though, this is under the RC of SP1). This was a little more complicated to "fool" the installer.

- Download MsnToolbarSuiteSetup_en-us.exe
- From command prompt run "MSNToolbarSuiteSetup_en-us.exe /t:c:\x /C" to extract the files to a temporary directory (c:\x in my case)
- In c:\x two files now exist: Setup.exe and MsnToolbarSuite.msi
- In the ACT set the compatibility mode for setup.exe extracted above.
- Do a test run of setup. Yes, the installer complains once about not being a supported OS, but it goes through eventually.

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

Aaron Junod — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:30:00 GMT

I had tried that (other then I used a diff method to extract the files). No go on my box, which is 2k3 with all updates except the sp1 RC. It seems as if the first warning is no longer there, but then msiexec throws the warning again once it gets to the msi. It's almost like I want to setup ACT to run setup.exe in compat mode, then also tell msiexec to run in compat mode, but since setup.exex launches the msiexec, it doesn't seem to work. Maybe it was just too late. I'll try again today too.

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

Aaron Junod — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 20:39:00 GMT

Answer at slashdot. Install is starting now.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=132674&cid=11078084

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

ToddS — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 04:55:00 GMT

Is it just me or does it seem to basically kill your machine on everything? IE takes longer to load, Windows Explorer takes longer to load. Is this just the lookout engine redeployed to be located in more places than just Outlook? Maybe my home beta box will settle down after indexing is finished.

Thanks for the complete instructions on installing. It's very helpful to know what commands we can use (never heard of TBSDEVCODE though). Is it because they used WiX (old version too) to develop the installer that /a doesn't work?

re: XP Virtual Desktop Powertoy under Windows Server 2003 (The ITPro way....)

John Howard [MSFT] — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 22:51:00 GMT

ToddS - looks like TBSDEVCODE is unique to MSN installer (unless anyone knows any better). I hadn't noticed any performance drop, but I am using the SP1 RC so this may be part of the reason.

Re: OS version check workaround

Brandon Paddock's Blog — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 08:01:00 GMT

re: Windows Server 2003 as a Workstation OS

Brandon Paddock's Blog — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 08:04:00 GMT

ActiveSync 3.8 Download - new release now available

John Howard — Sun, 09 Jan 2005 12:06:00 GMT

Del.icio.us Links » Blog Archive » links for 2007-11-19

Del.icio.us Links » Blog Archive » links for 2007-11-19 — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:06:12 GMT

PingBack from http://mnathani.com/blog/links/2007/11/19/links-for-2007-11-19/