Cliff Saran’s FUD blog

I received this statement from PayPal today:

Unfortunately, due to a technical issue, we mistakenly held some of the funds for your payments, which showed up as a "Pending" balance in your account. Rest assured, you're not currently subject to this policy and the issue has been corrected. We know this may have been frustrating and apologise for any inconvenience.

Every payment I have received via PayPal in the last 15 months has been subject to this "technical issue". I think it is about time PayPal compensated those people affected.

 

Hello again dear CW Blog readers, it's been almost a year since the initial series of posts describing a automated method of deploying Office 2007 via your KIX-Based logon scripts, complete with additional items of interest surrounding the customisation of the Office Ribbon itself to allow you to call your own programs or functions for easier use of the product itself.

Now you thought that would be it on the matter, but of course as with all things, there can be room for improving the process itself.

The KIX method we used before assumed that the user running the logon script was an administrator of the machine, and of course provided not a lot of feedback to the user in terms of what the process was doing at the time.

There was also the point of not enough redundancy within the script itself to take into account certain issues like disk space, and what about informing the end user that a certain part failed and they needed to inform their helpdesk as to what failed?

What about having the option of specifying what server to run the install from for multiple locations and packaging the office folder content to be copied to any server and know that all will be well?

Continue reading "Office 2007 Deployment: One Year On (Improvements on the deployment process)" »

I actually don't mind Windows 7, having used it since RC1 was released last summer. But this weekend, I had to install it on my main PC, because Vista had become unstable.

 

Unlike previous releases, I needed to boot into Vista first in order to run the upgrade rather than a clean installation. It took ages - over two hours - but it did finally boot up. Upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 shoud be straightforward. Like most things from Microsoft, things got off to a good start, but the problems quickly mount up.

 

Most things worked - which is good, but it's also pretty bad. Why, with all the time, effort and testing involved, does the Microsoft installer fail to upgrade a working Vista system to Windows 7.

 

Microsoft assured me previously that Vista to Windows 7 would be a straightforward upgrade. But I found my PC no longer shut down properly and certain devices, that worked perfectly under Vista, now fail on Windows 7.

 

Scouring the internet, I solved the device driver issue, by using the boot up option that lets you run unsigned device drivers (use F8 at boot time). This allowed Windows 7 to detect a ColorVision Spyder2 monitor calibration device, allowing me to calibrate my PC monitor.

 

But there seems to be little information on the internet about how to fix the problem with shutting down. I appreciate that the installer software to upgrading an operating system is non-trivial, but if Microsoft expects people to upgrade, it must get this right, 100% of the time. Spending hours trying to solve problems like theones I exerienced is frustrating for a techie, but for a business or home user, it is completely unacceptable.

 

Last week I met up with Don Tapscott, author of the bestseller, Wikinomics, to talk about hs new book "Grown-Up Digital". Having been sent the PR material from the publisher I was a tad skeptical...basically Don's premise is that teenagers are going to solve all the world's problems like climate change and poverty - because they naturally collaborate digitally and share ideas on a global scale..

 

I'm usually the fuddy-duddy on the train who gets irate when the kids play music on the loadspeaker of their mobile phones, whilst texting and having a really noisy conversation about what's going on on Facebook or showing their mates a YouTube vid.

 

While I don't think it's true for everyone - let's face it, most teenagers are lay-abouts - having met the author, and started on the book, I think Don may be onto something here.

Here in the sunny heartland of the UK we had a solid Windows 7 release within days of RTM. How did we get a build out to a cross section of users so rapidly? The story starts several years ago with a pattern of build, test and release for Windows XP. The build was well understood, the requirements defined. Each iteration allowed for improvements in our deployment technologies introducing new and innovative processes. As Microsoft evolved its toolsets such as the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK), WinPE, Pkgmgr etc so we were able to incorporate these underlying technologies. As XP gave way to Vista much of what we learned transposed onto Vista as we were already making use of Windows Imaging Format (WIM) technologies and associated tools.

It's now widely acknowledged Windows Vista wasn't as well received as Microsoft would have hoped. It's fair to say its adoption by Enterprises was somewhat disappointing. However, what Vista did provide for those of us who did work with it was a solid grounding for Windows 7. Much of what Windows 7 is, is an evolution of Vista. All of the ground work we put into building a stable Vista platform, evolving the build and deployment processes, remediating applications etc. made the eventual switch to Windows 7 so much easier. To be fair, this was the message that Microsoft had been putting out for the previous two years and with good reason.

As a close partner of Microsoft and being part of the Technology Adopter Program for Windows 7 we have had access to build releases since January 2008. From the very first Milestone build it was clear that Microsoft were pulling out all the stops to produce a product that would wow! The difference from the early Vista builds was huge. One of Vistas initial blockers to business was a lack of driver support. Our client uses a mixture of hardware from the likes of HP, Lenovo and Panasonic and we have been pleasantly surprised at how well Windows 7 has either provided driver support out of the box or able to use existing Vista drivers to enable us to move forward with testing. Microsoft is shipping some great tools to enable users to create standardised builds, including the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and the System Image Manager. Our build creation has relied heavily on these tools through XP to Vista to 7 and as these tools have evolved and improved, so our ability to rapidly create build images, to inject changes etc. in a much more agile fashion has evolved.

Over the coming weeks I'll be blogging about some of our experiences of getting ready for Windows 7, some of our approaches and the ways in which we've utilized the tools Microsoft have provided. I'll also discuss some of the pitfalls and headaches and ways in which we can go forward with some of the lessons learned. For now I'll leave you with one of my personal favourite new tools in Windows 7. It's been blogged before and you may have already used it, but for those who haven't and for those in support who have ever spent hours on the phone to a user trying to find out exactly 'what caused the problem', let me introduce The Problem Steps Recorder. 

By default you won't find this on the Start Menu. To access it run psr.exe from the Start Menu search box.

 

Ask your user to fire up the problem steps recorder and press the Start Record button. Get them to repeat any steps you want to see.  The PSR will capture a screenshot of each step along with a narrative of each step taken.  How good would that have been under NT4!

Next time.  The evolution of MDT 2008 to 2010.

 

Trevor Scott

Technical Consultant

 

Google has fleshed out its strategy for Chrome OS, an operating system which will only run web applications and will offer no local storage directly. The hardware will be tightly controlled to ensure the OS performs well, which means devces will use solid state disks and specific wireless network adapters.

The local storage will only be used to cache data, so that users can work offline. When they are connected, Chrome OS will synchronise local data with cloud storage.

Google will try to provide an operating environment analogous to Windows and other desktop OSs for web applications. This means web applications will be able to access graphics accelerators, mutli-core architectures and multimedia peripherals like cameras, speakers and microphones - just like normal desktop software. In fact, the whole operating system is optimised for cloud computing.

The neat thing about Google's appraoch is that any web application will run, even something like Office Live, created by Microsoft.

Many of Computacenter's customers remain on Windows XP and it was dificult to make a compelling business case for moving to the Vista operating system.  This has presented an opportunity for customers to define their desktop strategy and evaluate alternatives to the Fat Client approach.  These projects are often referred to as Next Generation Desktop or the Desktop of the Future.

Computacenter have hosted scores of workshops with customers from all sectors.  From these workshops, we capture customer requirements and have identified a common set of requirements as to what the Future Desktop Platform needs to achieve.  These can be summarised in four categories;

1)  Reducing TCO.  Customers need an easier to support desktop, where tasks are automated, user settings maintained and avoid at desk support.  Many customers are looking at solutions that avoid future desktop refresh visits or minimise the impact.

2) Power Management.  Green issues are in vogue, especially in local government organisations.  As well as identifying devices that have lower power consumption, customers require the tools to automate and manage the power down of devices.  These solutions often have the most attractive ROI of any desktop related project.

3)  Flexibility.  This is both a business and user requirement.  Businesses want the flexibility to rapidly deploy standard images to new groups of users.  This is particularly common in the financial services sector, with mergers and acquisitions.  Organisations are looking at mechanisms to provide desktops remotely to off shore users, for Business Continuity solutions and to thrird parties, such as contractors and partners.  End Users are becoming increasingly IT literate and need to access business resources from home and in some forward thinking organisations, on non corporate devices.

4)  Security.  Organisations want to break the links between the device and the data and host all data centrally.  This is particularly important for mobile users, where the data should not be held on a device that is easily lost or stolen.  In blue light organisations, end users need to access multiple desktops with different security levels from a single physical device.

The common technologies to meet these business drivers are Windows 7, Desktop Virtualisation, Application Virtualisation and Thin Client Hardware. 

Organisations are unlikely to meet all their customer requirements from a single infrastructure.  In a subsequent blog, we will discuss User Segmentation and tools that can be used to aid this process.

 

Ian Mapp

Technology Leader

Computacenter. 

This is the third part of my by three part blog and it looks like I might have to add another piece - meaning that this is really the third part of a four-part series...oops.

 

As mentioned in the previous two postings, we need to get applications working on Windows 7 and App-V: together. This means getting an application successfully deployed and running on an App-V client running on top of Windows 7.

 

This blog posting relates to the challenges facing administrators who have existing App-V packages (client versions 4.1 and 4.2) that were probably sequenced on Windows XP and who will need to migrate these packages to the App-V client 4.5. In fact, though the most recent client version of App-V is 4.5 CU1, we really should be planning for clients to deploy to version 4.6, which is expected to be released by Microsoft to production soon. Thus, I have tailored our results of the SFT package analysis to take client 4.6 issues into account as well.

 

With the updated release of Microsoft App-V 4.5 (and also relating to the update CU1 and 4.6 BETA), there have been a number of significant architectural changes that impacted how applications are sequenced. As a result, the sequencing practices are now different for versions for App-V 4.2 and later versions. As included in the release notes of App-V 4.5, there are now several core components which may generate application compatibility issues with App-V applications including:

 

·               .NET Installation Components

·               Microsoft Internet Explorer Components

·               Microsoft MSI Installer Redistributables

·               Core Operating System (OS) components

·               Installation artefacts (settings left-over from MSI Installation processes)

 

In addition to these issues, it appears that empty directories (or folders) that are captured as part of the sequencing process are causing the App-V VFS to crash on certain clients. We have not fully analysed this issue yet, however I've included the results for our AOK "Empty Directory Check" Plugin for illustrative purposes: 

 

 

 

I am really surprised by the results. And, by means of qualifying the results, this is really a preliminary analysis of these App-V SFT file types. The AOK Plugins may need to be refined or seriously modified based on some real empirical evidence of client issues. That said, all of the manual testing of each of these "classes" of issues did match the AOK Plugin results.

 

I am going to spend some time analysing these results but it looks like the big issues are .NET and IE integration issues with a surprisingly high number of SFT packages with empty directories - something that is known to crash the Microsoft App-V client sub-system. Maybe some more thought is required here.

 

To help out with explaining what we are actually looking for in each App-V SFT file, I have included some brief "snippets" of the AOK Plugin descriptions included in this particular report. These descriptions should give you an idea of the things that we are looking for in each application package, and the reason why we are looking there.

 

Darwin Descriptors Registry Check

This AOK Plugin will analyse each selected and loaded application for the following Registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\extfile\shell\Open\command within each application package. If a Darwin descriptor registry key has been raised, and AMBER issues will be flagged by the AOK application.

 

Empty Directory Check

This AOK Plugin will analyse each loaded and selected application package and ensure that the loaded MSI or SFT file does not contain any non-system empty directory table entries. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these types of directories are detected in an application package.

 

Internet Explorer Integration Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are included as part of the Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) redistribution package. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these files are detected in an application package.

 

Known DLL File Check Analysis

This AOK Plugin will analyse loaded and selected application packages for file level entries that match the list of Microsoft Known DLL's. The DLL's contained within this list will not support SxS isolation or any other Microsoft redirection technology. This AOK Plugin will generate AMBER results.

 

Microsoft .NET Sequenced Component Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are included as part of the Microsoft Windows .NET redistribution package. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these files are detected in an application package.  Due to the Operating System and .NET installation requirements, if older versions (.NET 1.X and 2.X) are included in a sequenced package then application runtime issues may arise.

 

Windows Installer Redistributable Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are included as part of the Microsoft Windows Installer redistribution package. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these files are detected in an application package.

 

Sequencer Registry Exclusion Analysis

This AOK Plugin analyses each loaded and selected application package for file entries that are not fully captured as part of the Microsoft App-V sequencing process. This Plug-in will raise an AMBER issue if these registry settings are detected in an application package.

 

The final blog posting in this series will analyse some of the results and attempt to match these results to real world scenarios and possible application compatibility issues.

 

Greg Lambert, Technology Director, ChangeBASE AOK

My iPod is fully loaded with the best of my collection to keep me spurred on, and the Pretenders' tune made me stop and think for a moment.

It's a productionline here at deployment central.

Engineer 1 connects bare-metal hardware and deploys the image from a Microsoft Deployment Toolkit server over the network.
The newly-installed Windows 7 image then calls to to the existing Altiris infrastructure to receive the core applications that have been packaged by the packaging team to silently install.

Engineer 2 and Engineer 3 (hey! that's me!) then take one of Engineer 1's new laptops and configure the installation for the user.  This aspect could have been better automated, but this is a pilot and the experiences and issues are being collated by the team and will be reviewed for the larger rollout in 2010.

As you can see, there's 4 roles that I've mentioned so far, but besides this, there's a deployment scheduler and a couple of build developers, a whole tranch of project people, a Sharepoint consultant and 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support that also need to be considered and communicated with. 

And all THIS for a couple of hundred PCs?  Yup... if you want approval for a full-scale rollout then you need a positive user experience in the pilot and that means investment.  Investing upfront and you get a slick rollout.  Try and do-it half-hearted and you get a rollout that stutters and dies and three years later you'll still have some "legacy" PCs out there.... somewhere....

So, here we are, on the cusp of deployment of Windows 7 when the first PCs will be deployed with the thin-build installed. 

There have been a couple of false-starts along the way as last minute technical issues have been resolved.  Co-existence was a last minute headache - What happens to users as they roam between Windows7 desktops, WindowsXP desktops and WindowsXP via Citrix?

Application testing and approval is always a major concern in a deployment.  In this case, the customer has decided to package a newer version of Lotus Notes for installation on laptops, and this has required rigourous testing.  The folder virtualisation was a worry for a day or so - what happens to the .ini file?   Where is the .id file going? and so on, but eventually thsi was ironed out too.

So here we are, all engines gunned and new PCs built.

Tune in next week for the update...

Nick Thompson
Senior Technical Consultant