Poster: Deploying Windows 7 in Enterprise

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Ward

To download just click on the picture.

No tags for this post.

Group Policy Preferences Data Sources Failed with error 0×80070057

Posted on March 15, 2011 by Ward

Group Policy Data Sources is voltooid.

Aanvullende gegevens:

Het voorkeursitem computer ‘Nordined’ in het groepsbeleidsobject ‘De naam van de policy {54A928D5-EAA8-421B-9F12-066B350B6671}’ is niet toegepast, omdat het is mislukt met foutcode ’0×80070057 De parameter is onjuist.’%%100790273

Oplossing:

Edit Datasources.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

</DataSources>

Delete username="" and cpassword=""
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Now the policy is deployed succesvol Open-mouthed smile

No tags for this post.

NTFS Chkdsk Best Practices and Performance

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Ward

Claus Joergensen, one of the founding fathers of Windows Storage Server, had a great post today about a new white paper, available here, discussing the best practices and guidance for sizing NTFS volumes. The paper also has details on self-healing NTFS and Chkdsk execution times on Windows Server 2008 R2.

When planning Windows file server deployments, we are often asked questions such as “How large can I make my volumes?” or “How long will it take to repair a volume?”. This white paper helps answer these questions.

Table of Contents:

Self-Healing and Chkdsk
How to run Chkdsk
Chkdsk Exit Codes
Improving General Availability of the Server
Chkdsk performance on Windows Server 2008 R2
Block Caching Improvements in Windows Server 2008 R2
Effect of Volume Size on execution time of Chkdsk
Effect of Number of files and Different OS versions on execution time of Chkdsk
Effect of Physical Memory at different Number of files on execution time
Effect of short file names on Chkdsk execution time
Effect of Enabling/Disabling short file names
Conclusion
Call to Action
Resources

If you are planning a Windows file server deployment or is looking to upgrade an existing Windows file server deployment to Windows Server 2008 R2, you should consult the white paper. It outlines how with Windows Server 2008 R2, NTFS can scale to easily support 15 TB file systems with 10 million files! Even with hundreds of millions of files the Chkdsk execution times are really fast. My favorite statistic is that a volume with 300 million files is able to Chkdsk in about 6 hours, that is so much faster than the old days.

SOURCE: http://blogs.technet.com/b/storageserver/archive/2011/02/23/guidance-for-sizing-ntfs-volumes.aspx

No tags for this post.

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 5.5

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Ward

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) is an agentless, automated, multi-product planning and assessment tool for quicker and easier desktop and server migrations. MAP provides detailed readiness assessment reports and executive proposals with extensive hardware and software information, and actionable recommendations to help organizations accelerate their IT infrastructure planning process, and gather more detail on assets that reside within their current environment. MAP also provides server utilization data for Hyper-V server virtualization planning; identifying server placements, and performing virtualization candidate assessments, including ROI analysis for server consolidation with Hyper-V.

MAP helps make the following IT planning projects faster and easier:

Migration to Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Microsoft Office 2010
Migration to Windows 7 compatible versions of Internet Explorer
Migration to cloud-based services
Server virtualization with Hyper-V
SQL Server consolidation and migration to SQL Server 2008 R2
Assessment of current software usage and client access history for simplified software asset management
PC security assessment and migration to Microsoft Forefront Client Security

You can use MAP to inventory the following technologies:

Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP Professional
Office 2010 and previous versions
Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2003 R2
Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
VMware ESX
VMware ESXi
VMware Server
Linux variants
LAMP application stack discovery
SQL Server 2008
SQL Server 2008 R2
MySQL
Oracle
Sybase

Download MAP 5.5 HERE

No tags for this post.

Home folders renamed to My Documents

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Ward

When you redirect users home folders to network share the folders are show as My Documents folder.

This is a bug in Windows 7
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947222

Solution:

Do not grant the Read permission to the administrator for the Desktop.ini files on the server. To do this, follow these steps:

Note If more than one Desktop.ini file exists, follow these steps for all the Desktop.ini files.

Right-click the Desktop.ini file, click Properties, and then click the Security tab.
In the Group or user names pane, click Administrators.
Click to select the Deny check box for the Read permission.
Click OK.

If you have 1000+ home folders this is not great thing to do Sad smile

Richard Willis created a nice powershell script that will do it for you Open-mouthed smile
You need only change the groupName to the group that you will give deny read permissions.
Save the script in de home folder where all the “My Documents” are and run the script.

The Script:
———————————————————————————————————–

$folders = Get-ChildItem | where-object {$_.psiscontainer};
foreach ($folder in $folders)
{
$desktopIni = Get-ChildItem $folder -Filter desktop.ini -Force
if ($desktopIni -ne $null)
{
$Acl = Get-Acl $desktopIni.FullName
$Ar = New-Object system.security.accesscontrol.filesystemaccessrule `
("groupName","Read","Deny")
$Acl.SetAccessRule($Ar)
Set-Acl $desktopIni.FullName $Acl
}
}

———————————————————————————————————-

Tags: Microsoft, Powershell, Windows, Windows 7

Remote Desktop Services Component Architecture Poster

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Ward

This poster provides a visual reference for understanding key Remote Desktop Services technologies in Windows Server 2008 R2. It explains the functions and roles of Remote Desktop Session Host, Remote Desktop Virtualization Host, Remote Desktop Connection Broker, Remote Desktop Web Access, Remote Desktop Gateway, RemoteFX and Remote Desktop Licensing.

To Download: Click on the picture.

Tags: 2008, 2008 R2, Windows, XP

Windows Cannot Find GPEdit.MSC

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Ward

I get this error on a Windows 2003 R2 x64 machine when I wanted to use the Group Policy Management Console.

Solution is really simple:

1- Browse to "%windir%\system32\" and copy gpedit.msc
2- Browse to "%windir%\syswow64\" and paste gpedit.msc
Now it works again Smile

Tags: 2003, Windows

How to Install & Configure Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Ward

Install Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition with setup.exe. There is one thing you must no.

The Management console is there in to flavors x86 and x64.

The Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition.msi that you need later works both fine on x86 and x64 machines.

Start Immidio FlexProfile Kit

Best Practice is that the ini are placed on a domain controller because If one domain controller fails you have no problems with your flex profile kit.

Import the ini files that you will find in the package
I have al ready some ini files (Word 2007, Outlook 2007, Excel 2007) that i used with a older version of flex profile kit.

Create on a File Server an application install folder. I named it Immidio Flex profiles
Copy the Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition.msi to that folder and the following script.

flexprofilesinstall.cmd

REM Voor Immidio FlexProfiles.
IF EXIST "C:\Program Files\Immidio\Flex Profiles\flexengine.exe" GOTO END
msiexec.exe /i "\\ward-dc01\install\Immidio Flexprofiles\Immidio Flex Profiles Advanced Edition.msi" /qb! LICENSEFILE="\\ward-dc01\Install\Immidio Flexprofiles\wardvissers.lic" /l* c:\InstallFlex.log

:END

Create A New GPO on the computers where you want to install Immidio Flexprofile kit. I named Install Immidio Flexprofiles. Asssign the flexprofilesinstall.cmd als a startup script. Set the maximum wait time on 3600.

Afther that i created a new policy for my domain users witch a named Immidio FlexProfiles Users

Add the Immidio Flex Profiles.adm to the new created GPO Immidio FlexProfiles Users

I did some settings where to find the ini files and where to save the settings.

Now you have a working roaming profile based on Immidio Flexprofiles. It’s a great tool a im loving it.

It’s works great when you migrate from XP to Windows 7

Tags: Outlook, Windows, Windows 7, XP

Enable Windows 7 Features through Group Policy

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Ward

I love Windows 7. But there is one thing a hate about Windows 7.
There is no nice way to enable Windows 7 Features trough Group Policy.

So I created a small visual basis script that i used as a startup script.

It checks if adsnapins.txt exist in the program files files. If exsist do nothing if it don’t exsist enable the feature.

Windows7ADSnapIns.vbs

‘Installeerd Windows 7 AD Management Snapins.
’13-07-2010 Ward Vissers

Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

If Not (fso.FileExists("C:\Program Files\adsnapins.txt")) Then
    Dim Wsh
    Set wsh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    wsh.run "dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:RemoteServerAdministrationTools", ,1
    wsh.run "dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:RemoteServerAdministrationTools-Roles", ,1
    wsh.run "dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:RemoteServerAdministrationTools-Roles-AD", ,1
    wsh.run "dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:RemoteServerAdministrationTools-Roles-AD-DS", ,1
    wsh.run "dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:RemoteServerAdministrationTools-Roles-AD-DS-SnapIns", ,1
    fso.CopyFile "\\ad.local\afs\install\Windows7Feature\adsnapins.txt", "C:\Program Files\adsnapins.txt"

End If

Set fso = Nothing

Tags: Tools, Windows, Windows 7

Enable the Change Password feature with Outlook Web Access on a Windows 2003 Exchange 2007 Server

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Ward

First Step create the IISADMPWD virtual directory, do the following:

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Services Manager.
Right-click the default Web site, point to New, and then click Virtual Directory.
In the Virtual Directory Creation wizard, type IISADMPWD in the Alias box, and then click Next.
In the Directory box, type c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\iisadmpwd or the location where your hard disk is your default hard disk, and then click Next.
Verify that only the Read and Run script check boxes are selected, such as the ASP check box, click Next, and then click Finish.
Verify that the IISADMPWD virtual directory has only basic authentication is set
If you use Windows 2003/IIS 6.0, verify that the application pool is set to MSExchangeOWAAppPool
Register the IISpwchg.dll file in the Iisadmpwd directory:
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type the following, and then press ENTER:
regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\iisadmpwd\iispwchg.dll
Configure the PasswordChangeFlags property in the metabase to make sure that the Password Change functionality is enabled:
Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type cmd, and then press ENTER.
Locate the C:\Inetpub\Adminscripts directory.
Type the following command, and then press ENTER:
cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set w3svc/passwordchangeflags 1
0: This is the default value. This value indicates that you must use a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection when you change the password.
1: This value permits password changes on non-secure ports. This value is useful if SSL is not enabled.
2: This value disables the Password Change functionality.
4: This value disables the advance notification of password expiration.
Do not forget to enable Active Server Pages.

Source http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297121