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.

I am currently evaluating various laptops that can run multiple virtual machines simultaneously. One of the key components I’m evaluating is the RAM. Both DDR2 and DDR3 based RAM modules are available today. If budget permits I will definitely go for DDR3 because of two advantages 1) faster 1067MHz as against 667 or 800 MHz in DDR2 and 2) 30% less power consumption, this will lead to better battery life for my computer

This article is very informative.

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

One of the most innovative food items, available in one of shops in Mumbai-Pune Expressway :)

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

Today, virtualization is a hot topic among IT Professionals. And it is not very difficult to find information on virtualization technologies. In fact every vendor has some story around virtualization. Information overflow and its unstructured nature is creating more confusion than clarity. This is exactly what we are trying to address in the virtualization track @ TechEd India 2009 ( www.msteched.in ). This track is going to have a complete 360 degree coverage of virtualization

There will be 8 dedicated sessions on virtualization ranging from desktop virtualization to data center virtualization. Here is a brief description of all these sessions

I plan to deliver at least a couple of sessions at TechEd India this time. One of them is going to be …

See you @ TechEd

Findings by BBC

http://www.bbcworldnews.com/Pages/ProgrammeFeature.aspx?id=18&FeatureID=1075

Here is a quick summary of new features introduced in service pack 2 of Intelligent Application Gateway 2007.

• Ability to connect from Macintosh OS, Linux OS and Firefox running on Windows OS
• Wiper feature which would wipe off the user data after logoff
• Ability to run IAG 2007 SP2 as a virtual machine on Hyper-V

For more details watch this video

http://edge.technet.com/Media/IAG-SP2-hits-RTM-details-under-the-cover-interview

The desired configuration management (DCM) feature in SCCM is a great tool for ensuring software compliance management across your server and desktop systems. This is typically done with the help of various configuration items (CI). Now there is a new CI for managing the power consumption levels of PCs in your network. Click the link below know more about it.

http://www.microsoft.com/environment/campaign_energy_star.aspx

Are you looking for ways to increase the size of virtual hard disk (VHD format) files? Then here is a great tool

http://vmtoolkit.com/files/folders/converters/entry87.aspx

HP has recently updated it’s server update catalogue for managing Proliant series of servers using SCCM. Follow this link for more details

http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/integration/catalog.html