In Windows 2000 you could create a shortcut to an Active Directory resource, and turn it into an Windows Explorer view.  One of my (now long gone) predecessors worked out it would make life easier for end users.

“Oh, you just want to see the security groups you have delegation rights too?  No problems.  I’ll create you a shortcut.”

The AD Folder shortcut would look like this on a Windows 2000 system:

The user reported that since a Windows XP upgrade, the icon looked like this:

(and the shortcut no longer worked.)

You can tell the Windows 2000 shortcut looks like a Folder shortcut.  The Windows XP shortcut, just looks broken.

(more…)

And I only just realised it now. *
Now I’m not going to complain about Microsoft.  If you have a valid license key, you should activate it. 

But I don’t want to activate Windows as I’m just doing some tests, part of the Undelete series of posts.  And before someone says “Dude, you should activate it.”.  Well, in future,  I don’t want to go though the re-activation hell process, with some worker based offshore.

But Microsoft does offer a work-around, Automatic Updates, but I just don’t care for it.

Perhaps the fact that AU has rebooted my PC in a middle of a 4GB download has soured my experience.

So what to do instead?  Not patch?  No, you have to patch, it’s the prudent thing to do.

No, instead, I grabbed a copy of AutoPatcher.  I wrote about AutoPatcher here.  To recap, I like it because it works, and it’s free.  And 66 updates later, Windows XP will be a little bit more secure.

* most of the Windows XP installs I work with have a Corporate license which is already activated. (a VLK.  In Microsoft Vista/Windows 7 licensing speak, it’s a MAK type key)

… to the virtual machine.  Check the values provided and try again.” error

It sucks as an error message.  Would it take too much programming effort to make it more meaningful Virtual PC team?

What does it mean?

It means you have a Virtual Hard Disk file larger than 127.5GB.  Which Virtual PC does not support.
You might have created this with the Microsoft Disk2VHD tool.
To confirm the “disk is too big” problem, open the Settings on an existing Virtual PC, and try to attach the drive:

In other words, we’ve captured a 160GB hard disk, and Virtual PC won’t let us use it.

But we can fix it, it’s a two step process

First we use DiskPart, and then we use VHD Resizer.

(more…)

I was watching someone install Windows XP on a system with SATA drives the other day.

The PC would power up, look briefly at the CD/DVD drive, and then carry onto the hard disk.

The problem was that the SATA option in the BIOS, was set to AHCI.  To boot from a CD/DVD, you need to be in IDE Emulation mode.

Once the setting was changed to IDE emulation, Windows XP installed just fine.

Post install, you can set the BIOS SATA mode back to IDE.

Update:
Ed Bott, of Windows 7 Inside Out fame, amongst other things, was kind enough to call past.
Ed doesn’t see the issue I have.  After some Googling, I do believe it’s a Gigabyte motherboard/CD Bootloader issue.  Heck, I can duplicate the issue with Linux (Ubuntu 9.04), so I know it’s not just Windows.
Computers, you’ve got to love ‘em!.

Which we found out when we were piloting a Windows XP SOE release.  It was a serious “show stopper” for the rollout of Windows XP at this customer.  We’re talking 20,000+ desktops here.

Prior to Windows XP, going all the way back to Windows 95, there was the “Kodak Imaging for Windows” product.

It worked well.  In Microsoft Excel, a customer would click on the embedded TIF image, and Kodak Imaging for Windows would display the TIF.  It was missing in Windows XP.

We saw the Microsoft article, Kodak imaging for Windows is not included with Windows XP, and looked around for a solution.

There were four available to us:

1. Buy the replacement product, eiStream Global360 Imaging for Windows.
   There was a cost involved, which the customer didn’t want to pay.
   Looking at today’s cost, $250 for a single license!, I don’t blame the customer.
2. Write a customer solution based around Microsoft’s Windows® Image Acquisition Automation Library v2.0 Tool.
   Integrating it into the customer third-party business application, which generated the TIFF embedded Excel spreadsheet, looked difficult.
3. Implement the Windows 2000 Kodak Imaging controls in Windows XP.
   This is really easy to do.  Essentially you take your Windows 2000 CD, copy some files off it, and install them into the Windows SYSTEM32 directory.
   Then regsvr32 the OCX files.  A piece of cake.
   Whether it is legal or not to do so, is debatable.
   Global 360 Inc. does seem to take a dim view.  But if you go here, you can see how it’s done.
4. Obtain a copy of the “Windows XP Professional Direct CD Imaging Control” from Microsoft.

We were able to go with option 4 for our 20,000+ desktop customer.

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP (KB314463)
Essentially 32GB max size if using Windows XP/2000 to create it, 8 2 –> 8 terabyte if you wanted to use a non-Microsoft utility to format the drive.
Trivia: the original development name for FAT32 was BigFAT.

Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB (KB263044)
The fix was for Windows 98 systems, which then led onto:

Fdisk.exe Unable to Partition Drives Larger Than 512 Gigabytes (KB280737)
Windows 98 again.  But didn’t you imply in the first link (Limitiations of the FAT32 … ) that 32GB was the limit?
Yes, it was an artificial limit, courtesy of Microsoft.  They were trying to encourage you to use the NT File System (NTFS) for large disks.

How to receive verbose startup, shutdown, logon, and logoff status messages (KB316243)
Which seems to mostly work, most times

Ironic, when I think about it.  That I’m still supporting an operating system I first supported in 2001.

Today’s support query,

I have an ActiveX which prompts the user to install it.
Is there any way to make the ActiveX install silent, and not visible to the user?

Short answer, you need to have Administrative or Power User rights; AND the site needs to be in the Trusted Zone.

Slightly longer answer: if you pre-install the ActiveX to the PC, even a normal user can use it.

Long answer, consider this table.

In conclusion, a user with “User” Privileges cannot install an ActiveX.  The solution for this user is to pre-install the ActiveX to the PC*.

Vista, and later Microsoft Operating Systems, have an ActiveX Installer Service, which gets around this problem.

* How to register an ActiveX control (.ocx) manually

Is really easy with Windows Easy Transfer
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/easy-transfer.aspx)

I’m a fan of the clean operating system install, rather than an operating system upgrade install.
The bad thing about clean installs is that it removes all of yours, and any other users settings.

You can here the complaints now “I’ve lost my favourites” whinge whinge whine whine.

Windows Easy Transfer can help here.  It can transfer all your settings, documents and pictures across to the new computer.  EVEN computer encryption certificates (EFS and Internet certificates).  Certificate transfer is a BIG THING, as the other Microsoft product, USMT, couldn’t do this, until recently.

Backing up

You get three choices on how to transfer the files.  I picked the “CD, DVD or other removable medium” because I had an external hard disk, and was formatting the current computer (aka, a bare metal install).

You can password protect your backup file.  It’s a good idea, but don’t forget the password.

You’ll be asked what you want to transfer.  I picked “All user accounts …” as there were several accounts on this Windows XP computer.
Important point: make sure you have the passwords available for all the user accounts, as you will need them later.

Windows Easy Transfer now goes off and checks what can be transferred.  You will see this screen.

You’ll remember that I selected the “All files … ” option.  When it says “All files … “, Windows Easy Transfer goes out looking for everything, including external hard drives.  I’ve deselected them here, and the transfer file size changed from 497GB –> 17GB.

Here are some of the Windows settings which will be transferred.

Clicking next will kick off the transfer file creation process.

And,

you’re done with the export of your data files and settings.

Restoring

… shows the start of the restore process.  Remembering how I said, choose which accounts you want to transfer, this is why.  You have to map an old account to a new account.

Yes, you do get to see what is going to be restored, but you don’t get a choice to unselect.

The transfer is complete, and gee, we transferred a lot of files.

This is the end of the process.  Windows Easy Transfer will ask for the password of each user you transferred, when they logged on.  This is so any encrypted files, and web site security certificates, can be used in Vista.  It’s a great feature, as the any other way would see you lose encrypted files and certificates when you backup.

Done!

Things to note:

1. You need to know the passwords, or have access to them, for the accounts you are backing up.
2. Only backup those accounts that you need to.  When you are running the restore process, you don’t get a choice of what accounts you are going to restore.
3. Only backup files and settings you actually need.  That’s because you don’t get to choose what you can restore.
4. For picky users, screenshot their desktop so you can get the same look and feel in Vista.
5. While you should not have to, I’d recommend backing up the security certificates for each user you are transferring, separately.
   (here’s one step on instructions http://www.stanford.edu/services/encryption/desktop/windows/efs/backup_xp.html)

Because these are core setup files they have to be removed via Windows Setup. The utility sysocmgr.exe can be used in this case. The following command line can be used with the contents of the remgames.txt as per below. (This will be added to the next SOE agency release)

sysocmgr /i:%windir%infsysoc.inf /u:c:remgames.txt /q

(This was from a colleague, Tim Moon, back in June 2004.)

The remgames.txt file looked like this:
[Components]
Solitaire=off
Spider=off
FreeCell=off
Hearts=off
Minesweeper=off

I have dozens of Virtual PC/VMware images, and can never remember the password for the things.

A cleverer guy than me (Tony Cinanni) suggested this solution:

Set a “Password Hint”.  Works with Vista as well.

To set a password hint:

1. Start the User Accounts Control Panel applet, which you can find in the Start Menu / Control Panel / User Accounts
2. Select the account for which you want to add a password hint (in the above shot, you can tell it’s LimitedUser)
3. Click Change the password.
4. Enter your password in the two locations and enter your password hint (ie. in my example above, it’s the password), type your password hint, and click Ok.
5. Done!