Yet another free book from Microsoft press.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=ee2a1d38-88a9-43b3-95bc-7e962f0b6030 

The title says it all! The statistics is about Amazon UK

Read on http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/44377/140 

My colleagues from the Windows Server product team have released a free e-book on Windows Server 2008 R2. It’s available for download from the product home page.

Yet another security expert says that Windows is more secure now. Read on

http://www.pcworld.com/article/172197/vista_windows_7_are_more_secure_than_snow_leopard.html

I have been asked many times by people who attended my session that whether USB drives encrypted using the “BitLocker To Go” feature in Windows 7 is readable in Windows XP or not. The answer is YES and here is the screenshot of “BitLocker Reader”

90 days evaluation copy of Windows 7 is now available for download. Here is the link

http://technet.microsoft.com/hi-in/evalcenter/cc442495.aspx?ITPID=proplan

Enjoy!!

Mark is going to be back online with Springboard series. This time he is going to talk about “Windows® 7 Application Compatibility Part 2: Virtualization”. Mark your calendar today by visiting this site https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard/ 

You can also ask your questions in advance by dropping a mail to vrtable@microsoft.com.

The screen resolution provided by today’s computer graphic cards are much higher when compared to the previous generation ones. For example my ThinkPad T61P supports a maximum screen resolution of (1920 x 1200) which is many times more than the (1024 x768) resolution I had in my previous computer. We all appreciate higher resolution as it gives increased screen clarity, sharpness and better usage of screen area by accommodating more icons and windows. All these benefits are actually at the cost of smaller sized icons and texts. So the general tendency is to reduce the resolution so that texts are more readable. The other method is to increase the readability is by increasing the DPI from Control Panel in Windows while retaining the high resolution. Refer to the picture below to see how this is done.

But there is a problem with the above method. Even though the icons and texts look bigger the whole alignment goes for a toss and display would be skewed.

The above statement is no longer true if you are using Windows 7. I just tried the same on my Windows 7 computer and the results are amazing. Texts on my screen are more readable without any distortion even at a resolution of (1920 x 1200). So just give a try on your Windows 7 PC as well.

If you are still using the beta version (build 7000) of Windows 7 your must be restarting every couple of hours. Very soon it will stop working at all. To avoid your computer become completely inaccessible please upgrade to Windows 7 RC (build 7100). Here are the steps.

1. Download Windows 7 RC from here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
2. Backup your data using Windows Easy Transfer/Windows Backup/simple (copy/paste)
3. Reinstall  the OS. In place upgrade is not available
4. Restore your data and reinstall the programs

Creating Groups: Creation of computer groups is helpful in producing meaningful reports. There are two ways to do this. If Active Directory environment is available in the network, Group Policy can be used for creating AIS groups. There is a Group Policy template called sconline.adm available in the AIS web site to help you do this job. If the computers are not part of any any Active Directory then the following registry key can be used to create an AIS group and join the computer to the same

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\SCOnline\ClientGroup

This key should be a string value and the value specified is the name of the group.

Sorting of Computers: AIS managed computers can be sorted using computer name, last user log on, predefined AIS group, last reported date, date discovered and client version

Performing the inventory update: Along with the application related information AIS also collects information related to domain/user name, OS & service pack, hardware make/model, free disk space etc. By default this inventory collection happens once in a month. But this frequency can be increased manually to a maximum of four times a month (once in seven days). After initiating the manual inventory collection all the clients should report back within 24 fours, otherwise there is a problem which needs to be troubleshooted.

Here comes the third component of MDOP, Microsoft Asset Inventory Service (AIS).

What is AIS? It is a web based online service that can be used to track the software applications installed in Windows computers. There is no need to maintain any server for this application.

What is the use of AIS? The software inventory collected by AIS is useful in a networked environment to ensure license compliance and optimize IT budgets. Also it gives complete visibility into the kind of applications installed in various computers in the network.

What does AIS do? It identifies the list of applications installed in computers from links in Add/Remove Programs, Start menu, MSI file history etc. Also AIS maintains a catalog of thousands of commonly used applications. The inventory data collected is reconciled against this catalog to produce meaningful details such as type of applications, vendor and version details etc.

How about the security of data collected by AIS? The privacy statement attached is Microsoft’s legal document which states that customer data would remain confidential. Data is transferred over SSL channel.

Authentication is done using Windows Live ID. Each account has an account-specific certificate that is packaged with the AIS client. This ensures that the client software downloaded from different accounts are not interchangeable :)

Here is the usage flow of AIS

AIS client can be installed on multiple computers using manual installation method, group policy or System Center Configuration Manager.

Diagnostic & troubleshooting tools can be found under the following folders

C:\windows\sconlineclient.log

C:\program files\Microsoft System Center Online Client\Diagnostic Tools

Quote

'Automatic Crash Recovery, with NextGen Internet Explorer 8’


Watch the promo of the latest version of the internet browser Internet Explorer 8. The browser provides the user with the facility of auto crash recovery.

This is the second component of MDOP I want to talk about.

Application and OS crashes are inevitable. If not properly identified and controlled this can lead to serious productivity loss. The effect is amplified in a networked environment. By default when crashes happen Windows asks you whether you want to send a report to Microsoft or not. If the reports are sent to Microsoft they’ll be used it to identify the reasons and solve them if things are under the control of MS. But in a networked environment it is important to have visibility into the various application/OS crashes happening in various computers. This will help system administrators better manage their networked PCs. The Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) tools is an agent-less solution to collect error reports from Windows computers, analyze them, generate reports and optionally send the error information to Microsoft.

Here is the top level architecture of DEM

DEM uses Microsoft SQL Server for error management and generate reports. But the error data is reported to either a file share(2000/XP) or a web location(Vista) depending the version of OS.

If there are no agents required how would the clients know about the presence of DEM server. Simple, group policy settings are available to redirect client side errors to DEM server instead of Microsoft’s servers.

Examples of reports that can be generated using DEM; Top ‘N” errors in the network, top ‘N” applications causing errors in the network etc..

Note that DEM is a subset of features offered by System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)

This tool is part of MDOP offering from Microsoft. It has a client component as well as server component. Some of the salient features of AGPM are

• Offline editing of Group Policy Objects (GPO)
• Change history is preserved
• The AGPM server can be installed on either Windows Server or Windows Client. For example AGPM v3.0 server can be installed on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista SP1
• Role based administration and delegation

I am going to post a series of blogs on MDOP. Let me start with an introduction

What is MDOP?

Technically speaking it is a bunch of tools used for advanced management of Windows client computers in a networked environment. These tools are available as an additional subscription to Microsoft customers.

What are the tools available as part of MDOP?

There are six different tools available as part of MDOP. They are

1. Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM)
2. Microsoft Assent Inventory Service (AIS)
3. Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset (DaRT)
4. Microsoft Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM)
5. Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V)
6. Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)

In the upcoming blog posts I will be writing in detail about each of these tools.

Are you are getting the following error when trying to launch an application?

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application.

The solutions is to make sure that .net framework 2.0 is installed in your computer. Download it from here

The backup application in Windows 7 is much improved compared to it’s previous versions. Two things I really liked are

1. the ability to choose specific folders and
2. it starts and runs even if the computer is on battery power

The Tata Indicom Plug 2 Surf dialler did not work properly in Windows 7 beta. My device is Huawei EC 321 and I had to manually install the drivers and configure a dialler for the same. I had to follow the steps mentioned in this blog. But these steps are no more required in Windows 7 RC. I just downloaded the driver/dialler from here and installed in my Windows 7 Enterprise x64 RC. It worked perfectly :)

I’m going to try out this tool. Looks very promising. It can configure things like iSCSI settings in a server core

http://www.codeplex.com/CoreConfig

You might have got Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 in the form of an iso file. ISO files are great for installing OS in a virtual machine. But for installing OS in a physical computer you always needed a CD or DVD. But now there is smarter way to install OS without wasting a DVD. The video below made by my colleague explains how to do this

http://edge.technet.com/Media/Installing-Win7-using-a-USB-Stick/