Kernel Confusion » Windows 7

ACT 5.6 Upload Error

Christoph Schmidt — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:49:02 +0000

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:

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

Customizing Windows 7 Gadgets granularly

Christoph Schmidt — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:44:39 +0000

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!

DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant

Christoph Schmidt — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:29:25 +0000

DirectAccess is a great technology and I love to use it. If I get connection problems, I just open up my command line and examine the ipconfig output to see if something’s wrong. But is this something all your customers and colleagues are capable to do? I think not. Especially in rather large deployments, DirectAccess might put your help desk under a lot of pressure.

To reduce such calls and ease the complexity of debugging actual problems, Microsoft’s DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant might come in handy. It’s a small tool that notifies the user of his current connection status and helps to provide valuable information to the help desk.

So let me show it to you in action.
After setup it will show up in the user’s tray bar.

DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant in traybar

A simple single click informs about the current status (as does the tooltip).

DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant balloon

A right-click offers two options: “Advanced Diagnostics” and a DNS preferation setting (we will come to that later)

DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant right-click menue

The “Advanced Diagnostics” window offers more detailed information about the status and will generate log files upon its launch. Those can be send via the “Email logs” button to a prespecified address. It also has a link to your company’s help desk web page.

DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant Advanced Diagnostics

You will need to use the supplied ADMX/ADML files to configure the agent via Group Policy.
To do this, on your Domain Controller, copy the “DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant GP.admx” file to the folder “%systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions” and then copy the “DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant GP.adml” file to the folder “%systemroot%\PolicyDefinititions\language”. For example “%systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions\en-us” or “%systemroot%\PolicyDefinitions\de-DE”.

After that, you can launch the Group Policy Management MMC, open your DirectAccess GPO and navigate to “Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / DirectAccess Connectivity Assistant”. You can now specify a couple of settings needed to use the tool.

At this point, I would like you to read the Deployment Guide supplied with the download, as it will help you to successfully deploy and configure your Assistant.

Bitlocker and the disappearing harddrive

Christoph Schmidt — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:11:16 +0000

A customer of mine uses Microsoft BitLocker encryption to protect all it’s computers, both mobile and workstations, as they contain critical financial information of several other companies. When upgrading their client environment to Vista, we already introduced BitLocker for all hard drives and it worked like a charm. As they now move on to Windows 7, an interesting problem occurred for one the workstations when trying to encrypt a secondary drive.

Bitlocker encrypted OS drive

Whenever the administrator deployed the encryption task sequence via ConfigMgr, the hard drive disappeared from the system. There was no sign left at all, no drive letter in explorer, no entry in the management console and no trace in the device explorer. Gone! Looking at the activity LEDs, there was nothing going on. Restarting the system brought the drive back, but it did not continue to encrypt. Restarting the encryption led to the same behaviour. Looking at the drive’s BitLocker status revealed it began it’s work as it showed a 1% encryption. Decrypting it, again, let the drive vanish.

After some resultless research the final solution was to update the SATA Controller’s driver with the most recent one, in this case from the chip manufacturer, not the workstation vendor. After updating it, the encryption worked flawlessly.