Tim Mintner : Windows Vista

Group Policy in Windows Vista Webcast

tmintner — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:07:32 GMT

I will be posting over the next few months about all of the new management features in Vista. It is easy to say that Vista will be the most "management" friendly OS that we have released to date.

To get you started you should really watch the webcast on some of the new Group Policy features in Vista available here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032292773&EventCategory=5&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

There are over 700 new policy settings in Vista and it can be a little overwhelming when you first load up the GPMC and look through all the settings. You can download the settings reference guide here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=41dc179b-3328-4350-ade1-c0d9289f09ef&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f5%2fa%2f9%2f5a97f495-51b1-433a-b5c4-976a61391f71%2fVistaGPSettings.xls

If you are new to managing the new ADMX format with Vista you should really read through the Step by Step Guide to Vista Group Policy. You can download and read through it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=311f4be8-9983-4ab0-9685-f1bfec1e7d62&DisplayLang=en

Download the Windows AIK

tmintner — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 00:00:33 GMT

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) is now available for download. This download includes the much anticipated Windows PE 2.0 which is the primary installation delivery method of Windows Vista.

I have been using the WAIK for several months now and it is a huge improvement over the days of the sysprep.inf, unattend.txt, etc. Now you just have to configure one file, the unattend.xml.

The install for WAIk includes the Windows System Image Manager which allows you to create the unattend.xml. You can use the unattend.xml to customize not only your Windows Vista installation but also customize your Windows PE 2.0 boot process.

Other great tools that are included are imagex, our new imaging tool with that allows you to create a WIM file. You can easily create WIM files with both Windows XP or Vista so you don't have to wait until deploying Vista to take advantage of the new tools.

The Windows Deployment Service (WDS), is also included in the WAIK. WDS is a replacement for RIS and allows PXE booting to a Windows 2003 server. You can take your custom WIM file created with imagex and deploy it with WDS.

The help files are outstanding and the Windows System Image Manager has competely integrated help so you can click on any item and hit the F1 key and find great reference information.

Download and start playing with WAIK today at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7e5752f7-4e64-474f-9069-d2694eff2245&DisplayLang=en

Adminpak on Vista RTM

tmintner — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:55:00 GMT

Wow it has been a long time since I've posted anything. I have been heads down getting my customers ready to deploy Vista in their environments. There was so much information to keep track of on what we could and could not share, I just decided to keep quiet until everything had been made public. Well now that we have RTM'd Vista I am free to talk!

So one of the most challenging items for my customers during the Vista Beta was running the Windows 2003 Administration tools on Windows Vista. There were many "hacks" out there that seemed to work by modifying the MSI using Orca or another tool, however with Vista RTM our story is much better.

Vista RTM includes an application compatibility shim that will allow the Windows 2003 Admin Tools (Adminpak) to install on Vista! This requires no modification of the MSI.

One thing to note after testing is that Active Directory snap-ins do not seem function immediately after the install. However, this is easily rectified by registering the following DLL's. , ADprop.dll and DSadmin.dll So once you install the Adminpak go to a command prompt and type

regsvr32 adprop.dll

and

regsvr32 dsadmin.dll

Once you register those DLL's the adminpak seems to work fine. Please leave a comment if you find any more issues using the Adminpak.

This solution probably isn't entirely supported but seems to work.

Thanks for reading!

*UPDATE*

The official supported method of getting the Adminpak working can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/930056

Nice "blogcast" on ImageX

tmintner — Sun, 16 Jul 2006 09:22:00 GMT

Chris Haaker over at the Blogcastrepository has created a great "blogcast" (screencast for some) on how to use ImageX. http://blogcastrepository.com/blogcasts/37/windows_workstation/entry1586.aspx

For those of you who aren't familiar with ImageX, it is the new imaging tool that will be released with Windows Vista for creating images of workstations using Microsoft's WIM file format.

I've been asked numerous times what the difference is between the WIM file format and the Ghost file format. Other than the obvious file extension, the WIM format does a file based image as opposed to a sector based image as with other imaging tools. This allows you to easily apply offline patches and make modifications to files inside of an image without having to apply the image, make the change, and re-apply the image.

There is a great overview of ImageX here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/expert/imagex.mspx

If you would like to try it for yourself, sign up for the open beta of BDD 2007 on http://connect.microsoft.com

Great Video on Bitlocker on Channel9

tmintner — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:20:00 GMT

In case you haven't already seen this, Channel9 has posted a great video discussing Bitlocker encryption with Vista. Since I am primarily working on Vista TAP engagements right now this topic is very near and dear to my heart.

Here is the link to the video:

http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=214558

As a follow up make sure to read all of the technical details on Bitlocker here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/security/bitlockr.mspx

Posting from Word 2007!

tmintner — Wed, 31 May 2006 19:00:00 GMT

Last night I took the plunge and upgrade my laptop to Vista Beta 2 and Office 2007 Beta 2. So far the experience has been great! I’m still working out some kinks with a few applications but overall I couldn’t be more pleased. This is sooo much better than the previous builds of Vista.