Kernel Confusion

If you are testing the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit, you might want to choose the clients wisely. If you are “lazy” and just want to try the agent out and install it on a Windows 7 SP1 machine, you will end up with the .XML files in the “failed”-directory and the following event-log entries:

Error Source: ACUpload   EventID:0

ACTUPLOAD: Microsoft.ApplicationExperience.Common.ObjectFramework.PersistenceException: Persistence_FlushSqlError —> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: The INSERT statement conflicted with the FOREIGN KEY constraint “Logical_Machine_OS_ForeignKey”. The conflict occurred in database “ACT-Demo”, table “dbo.OS”, column ‘osID’.

The SQL Key here indicated it tried something regarding the OS Key. So a quick look in my file showed this in the 5th line of the XML:

<OsInfo Id=”6.1.1” MacAddress=”…

I manually changed that number to 6.0.0 and the file got imported correctly. The machine was listed as Vista now. Version 6.1.0 is for Windows 7, 6.1.1 is for Windows 7 Sp1, but that’s nor yet in the ACT Database. Nothing serious, just for those of you how didn’t see that coming, like myself

Designing a Windows 7 Client can be quite complicated, especially when you face a customer that wants to set everything there is to match his vision. In this particular case the customer wanted build-in Windows 7 Gadgets which connect to the internet not to appear in the Gadget list.

A little searching didn’t help me, I even found a TechNet thread where a Microsoft colleague stated that there is no way to turn single gadgets on and off, you can just disable the whole feature.

As a techie I wasn’t satisfied with that answer and pulled Sysinternals Process Monitor out of my sleeve… well, a USB stick. If a user right-clicks a gadget in the list, he is presented with a uninstall option. Using this one will add the filename of the gadget to the settings.ini in “%userprofile%\Windows Sidebar”.

So my solution is to use a Group Policy (Extention) to edit the .ini-file as I need it. Look at the [Root] section and the “PickerDefaultPackageSkipList” property. There you can add all the Gadgets you don’t want to see in the list.

Example:

PickerDefaultPackageSkipList=”Weather.Gadget,Currency.Gadget,”

This will remove the Weather- and Currency-Gadget from the list. Of course, the user can still re-add this one, but you could also delete the files as well. From here you can customize the solution to your needs.

Go Go Gadgetto Blogpost!