Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Windows 7 is now available with keys to Technet Plus subscribers through the download areas. 

The full DVD burnable .ISO images along with keys for most of the editions – Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium & Professional… along with both x86 & x64 versions for each. (Except Home Basic which doesn’t support x64)

This is full RETAIL software for you to learn on.  No time bomb.  All the keys are RETAIL keys. (Except for Home Starter which is and OEM key since there’s not such thing as a “Starter Retail key”.)

I’m downloading it ALL right now. Muhuhuhahaha.  That’s right.  Heck, I don’t even have this kind of access to retail .ISOs like this within Microsoft. 

I feel like a king in front of my computer.  Kneel.  Kneel before Zod.

• DOWNLOAD: (Subscribers only) 
  http://technet.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads/default.aspx

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PSST.  WHAT ABOUT WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE & ENTERPRISE?
Here’s the thing:  Technically, I don’t think Technet Plus provides Ultimate & Enterprise software .ISOs or keys.  I think we draw the line at those two editions. 

So if you go to the standard Technet Plus DOWNLOADS page above you’ll see that the download link and the keys link are greyed out for these editions.

But if you’re a subscriber, check this page out and you will notice something interesting. (Snapshot above)
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/cc137106.aspx

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

———–

WAHWAHWAH!  BUT I DON’T HAVE TECHNET PLUS!
Well, sucks to be you then.  Just kidding.  It’s not too late… you can still be one of the first to get your own test copy of Windows 7.  A subscription usually costs $349 for download access only, and $599 for regular DVD shipments. 

But here’s how to get a Technet Plus subscription for 25% off the $349 price (or the $599 price).

1. Visit http://technetplustrywindows7now.com
2. Click the Buy or Renew Now button
3. Use the code:  TNWIN7RTM (Offer expires October 31, 2009)
   Your purchase price should now be $261.75 for the Direct Subscription or $449.25 for the regular DVD shipment price.

So stop whining, and get on it man!  What are you waiting for?  I’m totally teeing you up here.  What part of “WINDOWS 7 IS NOW AVAILABLE TO TECHNET PLUS SUBSCRIBERS” don’t you understand?

Man, this is such an awesome subscription, it’s disgusting…

Apparently, if you have a multi-core processor, Windows Vista by default doesn’t recognize this at boot, despite both cores being available.  The OS will leverage only a single core until a certain point in the system startup process.

If you’re like to enable the ability to take advantage of all the cores on your multi-core processor during system startup, follow the instructions below.

[WARNING:  Doing the following can hose your system if you don’t know what you’re doing and/or make a mistake within the tool.  Consider yourself warned.]

1. Click START & RUN
2. Type MSCONFIG & click OK
3. Click on the “Boot” tab
4. Click on the “Advanced Options” button
5. Ensure that “Number of processors” is checked
6. Select the number of cores you have from the drop down below.
   This drop down will say “1” by default and can be changed to, say, 2.
7. Click OK & OK
8. Reboot

Don’t expect anything dramatic.  Startup’s bottleneck is primarily the hard drive and not CPU utilization.  That being said, you’ll find that this can help quicken the process of booting up, logging in, and getting to a usable desktop.

[adapted from content originating at Blorge.com]

Ever since I’ve been using Twitter for things like my adventures at CES2009 or the birth of my son, I’ve been running Chirpr, which is a a Windows Vista gadget which provides quick and easy posting to Twitter directly from the Vista Sidebar.  It’s met my needs for the most part.

Except that it doesn’t allow you to follow people from the UI.  Nor does it Retweet.  And it doesn’t have a very configurable font.  etc. etc.

Enter BuildAGadget. 

TWITTER EXPLORER, FACEBOOK EXPLORER RELEASES, ALL FREE
This month they released the v1.0 version of Twitter Explorer available for free from the Gadget Gallery on Microsoft.com and it’s quite good!  (See graphic to the right)

But that’s not all.  They also released:

• Facebook Explorer, another professional looking Vista Gadget which provides rich access to Facebook
• XM Online Radio Gadget, which provide the ability to tune into XM Radio over the Internet from your Sidebar
• WoW Explorer, which enables people to monitor their World of Warcraft realm and search.

… and more.  There’s over 20 professionally designed gadgets for people to download and try. 

LINK: 
http://www.buildagadget.com/Products.php?Sort=Vista

The long awaited 64-bit version of Application Virtualization is finally here for testing.

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 Beta has been posted for download.  This is a seriously big deal because this is TRUE Application Virtualization (running applications in a virtualized OS environment, where the app believes it’s the only thing running, interfacing with synthetic operating system APIs and a synthetic file system) running on a 64-bit OS – for the first time ever!

From the App-V blog:

Today, I am happy to announce immediate availability of Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 Beta. At TechEd EMEA we announced our commitment to ship the next version of App-V in H1 2010.  In March of this year, as part of the MDOP 2009 launch, we indicated that the development of App-V 4.6 was underway.  Today, we have reached a major milestone and are a step closer to our goal.

This will be the first version of App-V to support both x64 and x86 Windows platforms.  The primary focus of this release is to enable App-V to take advantage of 64-bit Windows platforms including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  We’ve also made some improvements in the App-V Sequencer such as simplifying the workflow for creating virtual applications and adding the ability to sequence true 64-bit applications, a first to market!  For customers running Windows XP or Windows Vista, you can also use App-V 4.6 Beta and take advantage of the support for Office 2010, 64-bit platform support and additional features in the release.

Customers who want to get familiar App-V 4.6 Beta can register and download via Microsoft Connect.  As always, we want to hear from you.  We build great products by including feedback from our customers, so go ahead, test App-V 4.6 and give us feedback via Connect.  

For customers who are currently using App-V 4.5 CU1 with their 32-bit Windows 7 systems, we will release an update to the 4.5 version of the product.  App-V 4.5 SP1 will be available within 90 days of Windows 7 general availability and provide full support for running App-V 4.5 and Windows 7 (32-bit) in production.  Enjoy!

http://blogs.technet.com/mdop/archive/2009/07/30/app-v-4-6-public-beta-now-available-for-download.aspx

ENROLL:  Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 Beta
https://connect.microsoft.com/InvitationUse.aspx?ProgramID=3601&InvitationID=AV46-X6WJ-4DKR&SiteID=285

Wow.  Brian Madden can sure bring the lumber.  He wrote the following article recently shining a light on VMware View’s inferiority as a desktop solution for the Enterprise:

LINK: “How can VMware compete in the desktop space? “We have the best hypervisor” is not relevant anymore.”
http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2009/07/16/how-can-vmware-compete-in-the-desktop-space-we-have-the-best-hypervisor-is-not-relevant-anymore.aspx

To emphasize how strong his opinion is regarding VMware View, his first paragraph comes out swinging:

“I am not impressed with VMware’s desktop products, and I have no idea how they expect to compete against Citrix and Microsoft. Furthermore, I think VMware is damaging the industry by implying that just because they’re the experts at “server virtualization,” they’ll also be good at “desktop virtualization.””

It’s clear that he’s frustrated at the hype that is fueling evaluations that customers are undertaking of VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solutions.  Really, really good reading for those taking a look at virtualizing their business desktops.

[Ed. Note:  I’ve had this article sitting in my Windows Live Writer drafts folder forever waiting to be published.  I don’t know who to attribute this to because I’ve long lost the original creator (apologies), but props to whoever it was that originally figured this out. That being said, it’s about slow startup and shutdown times for Windows Vista SP1.] 

Q:  Have you noticed a degradation in startup & shutdown times of your Windows Vista SP1 workstation?

Basically, by applying the changes below, many folks have seen their startup and shutdown times increase by a factor of 2. when using Windows Vista SP1.

————–

CORRUPT READYBOOT MANIFEST
It turns out the issue has something to do with having a corrupt ReadyBoot plan that isn’t reconfiguring itself correctly post-application of Service Pack 1.  If you examine %SystemRoot%PrefetchReadyboot you’ll find trace files (.fx) that may be outdated – all the way back to a time prior to the application of Service Pack 1 on your machine.

This is because if you make any major changes to your systems configuration, you’re supposed to blank the WindowsPrefetch directory on the system drive to clear out any stale prefetch data that no longer applies to the new system configuration. Technically, we have this documented in an OEM performance whitepaper, but it certainly isn’t something that the average Joe would know to do after applying Service Pack 1.

NEED TO CYCLE MULTIPLE TIMES TO RELEARN
Doing this of course will ‘clear’ Windows Vista’s understanding of what sort of files it should prefetch off disk into memory to enhance performance of the system, but over time, it’ll relearn this.  Now in the case of Startup & Shutdown times you should be able to simply clear WindowsPrefetchReadyboot and be fine.

Cycling through a proper startup and shutdown multiple times (3-4) at this point should allow the prefetcher to know what files are important at boot time to improve performance gradually.

Personally, this has VERY noticeably sped up my startup & shutdown performance.  Hope it does the same for you.

We have a little known Windows 7/Vista Gadget known as the “Fix It” gadget that list out the most popular “Fix It” routines that we’ve published on the Microsoft Support web site.  “Fix It” routines are pieces of executable code that you can run from our Support web site that automatically repair or configure your computer simply by downloading them.

And it’s a good thing too – there’s more than 260 Fix It routines that we’ve published to date, and a lot of them a really cool… but most don’t even know that a tenth of them exist.

Here’s a quick listing of some of the more useful “Fix It” routines available:

• Show Internet Explorer desktop icon (if it’s missing or deleted)
• Error when you download updates using Windows Update or Microsoft Update: 8000FFFF
• The menu bar and the toolbar are missing in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista
• How do I reset Windows Update components?
  (This Fix It, in particular, is really nasty and requires a lot of work.  If not for Fix It, the execution of this modifications would take a fair amount of effort.)

DOWNLOAD:  Fix It Gadget for Windows 7/Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=https%3a%2f%2ffixit.support.microsoft.com%2freporting%2fgadget%2ffixit4me.gadget

Ever wondered how to change the maximum number of connections in Internet Explorer 8.0? (a.k.a. “How can I download more than 2 files at the same time over HTTP?”)

I once wrote up this post up that did the same thing for Internet Explorer 7.0, but the instructions for Internet Explorer 8.0 are different.  Here’s the step by step for INCREASING THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CONNECTIONS INTERNET EXPLORER 8.0 CAN HANDLE:

• Start Registry Editor.
• Locate the following key in the registry:
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPERSERVER
• On the Edit menu, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then add the following registry values:
• Value name: iexplore.exe
  Value data: 10
  Base: Decimal
  Note set this value to the connection limit that you want for HTTP 1.1 connections. By setting the value to 10, you increase the connection limit to 10.
• Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPER1_0SERVER
• On the Edit menu, point to New, click DWORD Value, and then add the following registry values:
• Value name: iexplore.exe
  Value data: 10
  Base: Decimal
  Note set this value to the connection limit that you want for HTTP 1.1 connections. By setting the value to 10, you increase the connection limit to 10.
• Exit Registry Editor.

Incidentally, we provide an online “Automatic Fix It” for this modification on the Internet at: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282402.  This “Fix It” is a download that will automatically apply the above registry changes to your computer for Internet Explorer 8.0.

(FYI:  We do this not to annoy you but to make it more difficult for viruses to propagate through HTTP connections over Internet Explorer.  Most people don’t need more than 2 connections and if a virus is constrained by 2 HTTP sessions, it greatly minimizes the ability of the malware to infect other clients.)

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 Now Released!
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 will be available in the near future. Are you thinking about deploying these new operating systems? Get a head start with the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0. Over 690,000 Microsoft customers and partners including Costco Wholesale Corporation, Continental Airlines, and Banque de Luxembourg have already downloaded and/or used this toolkit to date.

Introducing Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 is an integrated planning toolkit that makes it easier for Microsoft customers and partners to quickly identify what servers, workstations, and network devices are in their IT environment. This agentless and scalable toolkit has the ability to discover all computers within Active Directory and workgroup environments. It performs key functions that include hardware and device inventory, hardware compatibility analysis, and generation of actionable, environment-specific IT proposals for migration to most major Microsoft technologies including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, SQL Server 2008, and much more.

What’s New with v4.0?
Version 4.0 of the MAP Toolkit has the following new features:

• Windows 7 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V R2 Server Consolidation
• Integration with the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Calculator
• Inventory of VMware Server Hosts and Guests
• User Interface and Proposal Customization for Partner co-branding
• Enhanced SQL Instance Discovery
• Enhanced Usability and Improved Inventory Performance

Additional Features

• Virtualization Candidates Assessment for Hyper-V Server Consolidation
• Windows Vista Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• Windows Server 2008 Hardware and Device Compatibility Assessment
• 2007 Microsoft Office Readiness Assessment
• SQL Server Instance Discovery
• Desktop Security Assessment for Anti-virus and Anti-malware Programs Installation
• Forefront Client Security/NAP Readiness Assessment
• App-V Infrastructure Readiness Assessment
• Power Savings “Green IT” Proposal

Benefits to Customers and Partners

• Saves Planning or Pre-Sales Time. For most IT consultants and Microsoft Partners, a detailed network inventory and assessment of servers and desktops often takes days of manual labor. With the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, you can now conduct an environment inventory of up to 100,000 computers in a matter of hours instead of days, giving you extra time to focus on critical planning or pre-sales tasks. For IT professionals, this toolkit can significantly reduce the time it takes to gather the information necessary to make the business case for client, server, and virtualization projects.
• Provides Actionable Recommendations and Reporting. This toolkit provides valuable inventory and readiness assessment reports with environment-specific upgrade recommendations and virtualization candidate reports, making it easier for IT migration and deployment projects to get off the ground and running.
• Covers Wide Range of Scenarios–from Desktops to Servers. This toolkit offers technology assessments and planning recommendations for many Microsoft desktop and server products including Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V R2, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual Server 2005 R2, 2007 Microsoft Office, SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security, Network Access Protection, Microsoft Application Virtualization (or App-V), and more.

Next Steps–How can I get Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0?

• Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0
• Learn more about the MAP Toolkit on TechNet
• Learn more about the MAP Toolkit on Microsoft Partner Network site
• Provide us feedback, please e-mail us at MAPFDBK@microsoft.com
• Get the latest news from the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Team Blog

Thank You!
Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit Team – Solution Accelerators

It’s highly encouraged that organizations with Systems Management Server 2003 that are looking to deploy Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, begin planning to upgrade to System Center Configuration Manager 2007.

Besides the fact that SMS2003 enters the extended maintenance next calendar year, System Center Configuration Manager 2007 is designed to support our next generation Operating Systems being released in the upcoming timeframe.

What other immediate benefits will they get by upgrading?

• Vastly improved experience deploying patches using WSUS technology
• Ensuring compliance using Desired Configuration Management
• Ability to assign maintenance windows to insure proper scheduling of patches and app deployments
• App-V integration to manage all application deployments from one toolset whether MSI, APP-V or patch
• Comprehensive OS deployment using task sequences to simplify the process
• Client OS based Distribution Points for Branch Office scenarios
• Management that doesn’t stop at the Firewall/VPN using Internet Based Client Management
• Improved Asset Management Capabilities and updated software DB
• Simplify reporting by using SQL Reporting Services

WHITEPAPER: Why Upgrade from SMS2003 to SCCM2007
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/9/9/9994213d-db9f-4b3b-93b1-3832f85aa555/System%20Center%20Configuration%20Manager%20Why%20Updgrade%20FINAL.pdf

WALKTHROUGH:  Virtual Lab for Upgrading from SMS2003 to SCCM2007:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/webcasteventdetails.aspx?eventid=1032346653&eventcategory=3&culture=en-us&countrycode=us

LINK:  More general information on SCCM2007:
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/configurationmanager/en/us/default.aspx