Callahan's Blog

 

As a lot of you know, I do a lot of beta testing and create many, many labs, as well as VMs for demonstration.  Because of this, I don't have time to keep installing machines from scratch.

 

That's why sysprep and system image manager are my friend.  When working on machines for beta testing and demonstration, I use virtual machines.  I often have to have a number of machines running at any one time, each with it's own variation of a particular OS or two.  For example, I might need a 2003 server as a Domain Controller/POP3 Service (which has been removed as an option in server 2008), a RRAS/SQL 2005 server, and two WSS 3.0 servers running IIS and SMTP.  They're all on a 2003 base.  In addition, I often need at least one client-- either XP or Vista depending on the scenario.

 

So instead of reinstalling server 2003 three times and having to update each, I just install 2003 once, patch it up, slap some AV software on there, and (after defragging and compacting) I run sysprep.  Among other things, sysprep strips the SID off the server so it's image can be used over and over and over again to create other machines with the OS (and it's patches, etc) on them.

 

When you are working with virtual machines, you can take a nice virtual machine that you've set up and make it a parent virtual machine.  This means that it can be used as a base for "child" VMs.  These child VMs will be identical to the parent, so you can do things like add SQL or Exchange or configure then to be a DC or RRAS server-- all starting with a base OS all ready to be configured.

 

 

The problem with making child "clones" of a server is its SID (security identifier). The SID is what makes each machine unique on a network, and you shouldn't have serveral copies of the same base image on the same network with the same SID.  It causes havoc.  That's why you sysprep the parent machine.  This (with the correct setting) will wipe the SID from the parent machine and prepare it to be "cloned."

 

When you sysprep a computer (be it XP, Server, Vista, Windows 7, etc.), it becomes ready to be deployed on multiple different computers-- say in an office or lab.  When the OS is put on a new machine (be it virtual or physical), and run for the first time, a mini-setup generally occurs.  This generates a new SID and lets you personalize the machine-- like enter the product key, user name, computer name, etc.

 

Just like the install of a Windows OS (server or client) can be scripted so you can do unattended installs, the sysprep mini-setup can be scripted too (the script is called an "answer file"), so you don't have babysit the first run of the OS, and a lot of configuration can be done so the machine is up and running almost immediately without you having to touch it personally.

 

Now in the case of the numerous machines I need to bring up and configure for labs, betas, or demos; you can see why sysprep is useful for me.  I have parent images set up, and with some good sysprep answer files, I can bring up a host of new VMs and start working on them in far less time than it would take to reinstall and set up each from scratch.

 

Sysprep has been around a long time.  I started really using it with Windows XP and server 2003 beta (in 2002 I think), and got really good with unattend.txt and using the Setup Manager-- a really nice GUI interface that let's you create an answer file without actually knowing the syntax for the file.  It basically taught me how to write an unattend.txt file on the fly, once I got the hang of it.

 

((for those of you interested in how sysprep works for XP, here's a short but thorough technet article to get you started : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302577))

 

 

Now Windows OS's have gone through many changes since then, and system preparation and deployment has really changed to reflect that.

 

The old Setup Manager has been replaced by a much more complex Windows System Image Manager.  The old, flat, OS installations have been replaced with multiple images of the OS on one installation DVD.  Now, during installation, you just choose the OS version you want to have installed, and the installation unpacks and sets up that image on the computer.

 

Because of the new installation style of Vista, Server 2008, and Windows 7; the Setup Manager, ie System Image Manager, and the sysprep answer file, are more complicated.  Now the different "passes" that installation goes through before finishing installing and configuring a new machine (like generalize, specialize, audit system...) are really obvious and you can configure settings specifically for each one.  Each component of the OS images are also surfaced so you can explicitly choose them to apply relevant settings during the passes (some components can only be set during a particular pass, others can have settings configured at several different passes, depending on the settings).

 

The graphic interface of the System Image Manager is not a simple wizard like the Setup Manager was, but instead is a full console.  This allows you to do things like drag and drop components into certain passes, rather than laborously having to type the component's full name and guid into a text file (btw, the answer file is no long just a txt file, it's written in XML).  The interface also lets you easily specify addition OS packages you might want to add, and if you want to create a configuration set out of the answer file, image, and it's extra OEM files (a configuration set is a small, all in one collection of what you need to stick on a USB thumb drive, take to a machine and setup the sysprepped image from a network share from there-- I never use them but I am sure they're nice <g>).

 

 

So, anywho, I am currently beta testing Windows 7 (just like everyone else <g>).  Deployment and network access security have always been my two big interests when it comes to the workstation and server offerings.  Therefore, no one should be surprised that one of the first things I really dug into was sysprepping my Win7 Ultimate test machine.

 

And in doing so, found some issues.

 

Now, I have become accustomed to sysprepping Vista and Server 2008, so SIM wasn't that big a deal for me.  I had the components, settings, and passes down pat.

 

But something has changed.  Actually two somethings.

 

1) the Security-Licensing- SLC component has been "deprecated".  What this really, really means is if you use this tried and true component to skip the activation rearm, it WILL ruin your image.  Oh, sysprep will work fine and the system will shutdown with no indication that it is broken.  But when you try to use the image again, it will fail with some erroneous "Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]...."  It'll try to reboot over and over, but it will never work.  Sure try to repair it, but in the end (unless you mount the image/vhd and edit the xml to remove the offending component) you'll have to do a full install.

 

The work around for this (yes, luckily there is a workaround) is to use the Security-SPP component.  It's essentially the same thing, as far as I can tell. No one seems to be inclined to tell me what "SPP" actually stands for.  And I fear in what nefarious way SPP will eventually prove to be different than SLC, but for now it seems to work the same way...

 

2) the Shell-Setup component's username and password setting, when configured to autologon, causes the same exact error that the SLC setting causes.  That's right, set an autologon username and password and have the new machine set up using the sysprepped image fail.

 

Edited-- I was convinced that the shell-setup component was causing that error because of the, now mandatory, password hint whenever you create a user account with a password.  I have found though, that the real problem was with password encryption.  It appears, now that encrypting passwords is a default when creating an answer file with System Image Manager, that creating an autologon will fail.  The workaround, as far as I can tell, is to disable encryption.

 

Otherwise, you can only use shell-setup to create a user account (but not autologon) in the 7th pass (oobesystem).  The good news is you can specify a password without the password hint.

 

So there you go.  I was right about the error, but wrong about guessing why it happened.

 

And, as always, if I am wrong and there is a fix or workaround for any situation I bring up, please, please let me know.  I report these things because I want it to work, not to be right about it not working.  I do suspect, however, that for this build, there is no way around the SLC thing, and no explanation as to what SPP really is.

 

 

Hi there!

 

Sorry I haven't been around for so long, but I've been really caught up in the whole Windows SharePoint Services thing.  And, as a result, this personal blog has languished.

 

But do not despair, I'm still out here.  And now I have something to write about that has nothing to do with WSS or SharePoint in general...

 

...Windows 7.

 

I downloaded the OS on thursday (because I could, why wait until the servers would be crushed?), which is a good thing because the public beta crashed MS's servers and caused the beta to aborted for quite a while.

 

Anyway, downloaded the iso for the beta.  I chose ultimate x86 as my version/platform because I wanted to run the highest resource hog version in a VM.

 

I set up a VM to use 1024MB of RAM, it had an external network connection for updates and phoning home.

 

The install started at 2:25 and by 3:04p I was at the desktop-- so pretty darn quick for a beta.  (which makes me think this isn't really a beta, it's sort of R2 of Vista...)

 

Anyway, There I was at the desktop.  Already I liked it.

 

 

 

Why?  Well, you know how the backgrounds for new OS's change during a beta but are selected, usually, to be something nice, graphic, and new.  Something impressive.

 

Well, as if to underscore how this is not really a truly new OS, the background is just what looks like a deep ocean shot of sunlight beams through water (think "Finding Nemo" with a Beautiful blue and red Betta fish.

 

Betta (pronounced "Beta") fish, get it?

 

 

LOL.

 

Lots of 'testers didn't.  But I actually have owned a betta fish the spitting image of the one on the Windows 7 desktop-- so I appreciated it.

 

Some things that I noticed (mind you, this is in a VM, so the video card is not up to "glass" quality, this may change the look and feel a little, but this works from a business machine perspective):

 

-The big, brushed metal taskbar/apple dock. Not the smaller, less than a half inch sized bar.  It is big enough, by default, to show you time *and date* in the clock tray.

-The start button is still a round icon, but when you move your mouse over it, it sort of flouresces, which is nice.  Sometimes, if there are problems with drivers or services at startup, the start button can freeze for a while, but I can't tell if it's working until I click, click, click it.  This way I should.  No flouresce, no worky...

-There is no discrete quick launch anymore.  Instead full size icons for the apps are "pinned to" the taskbar like they can be pinned in the start menu.  They take up a lot of room, and you can't tell if they're apps that are already running, or once that can just conveniently be started from there.

-running apps/windows just show icons in the taskbar, not the names of the items (maybe if I had a beefier video card, they'd show an actual preview of the open item).  If there are several of something, like folder windows or IE, they are just stacked behind the icons and you have no idea how many there are until you move your mouse over it.

- the system tray is differentiated from general taskbar by being shaded a little darker.  There is an "Action Center" icon that tells you the predictably annoying stuff, even at startup-- you don't have antivirus installed (no duh, I just installed the OS...), windows defender isn't on... etc.  The problem with the icon is that it never goes away really-- more on that later.

- one nice, discrete feature that I really like is the button like gray square at the far right side of the taskbar, past the time and date.  If you click it, everything on the desktop minimizes.  Click it again, and they come back.  It's a really easy "show desktop" button, without cluttering the desktop/taskbar with yet another icon or having to right click.

 

Moving away from the taskbar for a moment, at 1GB (and later when I took it down to 612MB), windows opened smoothly, startmenu opened quickly and was very responsive.

 

Without effort, Windows 7 was able to correctly detect my network card and immediately went online without a problem.  That was really nice.

 

Windows 7 doesn't have, ANYWHERE, an email, newsgroup, or calendar client.  No joke.

 

Why?  Why would they gimp the user experience like that, out of the box?

 

Because they want you to go online, download, install, and use their Windows Live client.  Then you'll use their email, newsgroup (which kinda sucks), and calendaring capability from there.

 

That's right.  They have decided spontaneously, after Vista, that they just won't let you have any client by default.  Nyeah.  Think of that next time you think antitrust lawsuit.

 

So, because I absolutely despise Windows Live (well, except for my blog <g>), I installed Thunderbird.  It runs fine.

 

Speaking, indirectly, about calendars... There is a calendar gadget for Windows 7 so far.

 

Speaking of Gadgets, they are available sans dock (yay!!), and they don't resize to an ungainly hugeness while roaming free on the desktop anymore either.  The calendar gadget is a bit lame though.  It looks like a flip calendar, and automatically shows today's date in white text on an orange background.  If you double click it, it can go to month view, so you can see what the days are of the month are for this month (or any other month for that matter). In it's "enlarged" state (sigh, you know, when you click the "square with the arrow pointing at the top right corner like it's trying to get out" button next to the gadget when you move your mouse over it), it shows the month view above the day as if the calendar were flipped open.  Cute really.

 

But that's all it does.  You cannot schedule anything on the calendar.  It's just showing you the days.  I mean, that's pretty good.  I know when I'm on the phone or in IM and someone wants to know how many weeks are in a given month this year, I can whip out that gadget and let them know.  But otherwise, why not just use google?

 

I did get to try the snipping tool, and that worked great.  It also, in the save the picture window, let's me annotate, circle, etc, anything in the picture before saving (in any number of fine file formats).  Paint, if you open the picture there, also has some nice new capabilities, such as drawing a lot more shapes than ever before (I used a big, fat, red arrow in several snips for bug reports).

 

Often, when I am on a new, clean, pristine machine, and I want to install something a little, well, invasive, like an antivirus product-- I like to create a restore point before I proceed to possible unbalance my otherwise stable OS.

 

In Windows 7, at this point, System Restore will not let you create a restore point at will in the System Restore window.  It will only create a restore point for you before installing Windows Updates, or if a really invasive (think, requires reboot) software install, like VM additions.  To create your own you have to not go to System Restore (yes, unintuitive), but go to the system properties, System Protection tab, and set it there.

 

That bummed me out.

 

I also wanted to report (moving past that bummer) that the AV software I am using for this beta (again, so far) is Avast 4.  I wanted to give it a try, because during the Vista beta I used AVG (and I use it for most of my presentation VMs and VMs when I write books), but it really started sucking up a lot of RAM and CPU.  I wanted to use something smaller, so I went Avast, which says right in it's splash screen during install that it only uses 20MB while it's on.

So far it's fine, but it's icons in the system tray are annoying, and I can't get them to go away, even if I disable them in the program's own settings.

 

Speaking of the system tray... There is a new thing with that is there is a full control panel applet for controlling the system tray notification icons.  It doesn't really work, but it's an interesting idea.  Apparently you can choose to show all icons and notifications, only notifications, or hide all icons and notifications.  What that means is a corny little up arrow shows up in the otherwise sleek and unobtrusive system tray area that, when clicked, pops up a kind of cheesy list of little system tray icons and a "customize" link to show anything you set to "hide".

 

My problem is, when I have the task manager up, it shows TWO task manager icons in the system tray.  They are identical in every way, except one actually shows the activity going on with it's green meter line going up and down, and the other one just sits there blankly.  Apparently one is the "icon" and the other one is the "notification."  Now, if I just wanted the "notification" one to show, you'd think I'd set the tray to only show notifications-- but if I do that, task manager icons go away, and the useless icon ends up under the up arrow for some reason.

 

My only fix at this point?  Well, there is an overrriding setting for the system tray, "Always show all icons and notifications in the system tray."  If I enable that, it suddenly only shows one, *effective*, icon for the task manager in the system tray.  Unfortunately, it also shows every single other thing too.

 

All hide or no hide, that's seems to really be my choices.

 

So, that's been my experience so far.  I'd've done more but having Windows 7 in a VM, while sharing my network card for internet access, seems to be causing my host OS to crash spectacularly.

 

Hmmm, maybe Windows 7, despite news to the contrary, really isn't ready to be run in a VM (or maybe it's my flaky laptop...)...

 

More later.

 

 

Okay, so the fight goes on to defend internet neutrality and equality.  It turns out that the FCC is considering allowing companies (namely Comcast) to become gatekeepers of the internet- deciding who gets to have web sites, and who gets to visit them by fee.  This is ridiculous, but will happen if we let it.

 

Here's a blurb from the email:

 

"SavetheInternet.com just caught Comcast Corp. stacking an FCC hearing with paid (and apparently sleepy) seat-fillers.

The hearing was set up to investigate Comcast's recent blocking of the Internet. But Comcast packed the room so that the public couldn't get in to voice their support for Net Neutrality. "

So show your support, and go to http://savetheinternet.com/. Check out the video record of what Comcast did to avoid concerned citizens conflicting with their interests.  See what it's all about.  Check out savetheinternet.com.  I for one don't want Comcast (or any other corporate giant) deciding what I say on the internet, who sees it, or what I see.  Do you?

 

 

I just came across this site "whoisisick".  It is a simple site intended to let people anonymously record where they are and what their symptoms are.  That way you know what illnesses are going around in your area.

 

I think it's really cool and would have helped me recently when my boyfriend had a fever of over 102 for several days.  He was delirious, weak; showing all the symptoms of bronchitis and stomach flue all rolled into one.  The delirium scared me.  I constantly, for the week he had it, wondered if I should take him to the emergency room now...how 'bout now, how 'bout now?  Is now the time?  When do you take him?  Finally, it began to go away.  Mind you, it took about a week for him to fully recover, but still, he did.  It was, apparently, the flu that had been going around-- not where we live, but where he did a consulting job earlier in the week before the symptoms started.

 

 

That would have been good to know.

 

http://whoisisick.org.

 

 

Fascinating.

 

Check out what's been going on while I was too busy working...

 

...Anonymous versus sc31nt0l0gy:

 

 

Learn the story behind the signs that say the cult, I mean "church," kills:

 

 

An interesting thing to keep an eye on.  Who knows who's right?  I just know those crazy cultists are creepy man, seriously creepy.

 

It's official, TechEd 2008 is now going to be the same price ("comparable") as last year, but only four days instead of five.  And not only that, but... and this is where it gets sad... it's now going to be two separate events-- June 3-6 for developers, and June 10-13 for IT pros.

 

 

Nooooo

 

I have met some great people, made some great friends, that I otherwise would never had met because they are developers.  Now I will never see them again at TechEd because they will be cordoned off, so to speak, to their own conference.

 

There is a blurb in the FAQ where they mention they'll give a discount to those who want to do both, but that they really just want people to stay at their own TechEds.

 

 

But say someone wanted to drop the money (or could talk their employer into it) to go to both conferences, they're not back to back.  So even if you wanted to go to both you really can't because you'd need to fly out on the 2nd, get into a hotel, attend the conference, pack, fly home on the 6th or 7th, then fly back the 9th, get another hotel, attend the conference, pack, and fly home again on the 10th or 11th.   All because there is a three day gap between conferences.  What would an attendee do during those three days, on the company dime?  Hang out?  Go to disney?  C'mon MS, this was not good planning if you are really focused on the best for the attendee.

 

You are further separating the roles of developers and IT pros by not giving them the option to attend all TechEd sessions, you are isolating them physically from one another, and you are shortening the conference(s) by a day but charging the same amount. There's a blurb about how "cross over sessions" will be done at each conference for those who do both tasks-- develop and admin-- but that's really inadequate.

 

What a disappointment.  I was looking forward to seeing all my friends-- developers, dba's, and admins-- next year at TechEd.

 

-callahan

I noticed (on Fark) an article from PC World reviewing laptop.  And they discovered that the laptop that runs Vista the fastest is...

 

..the Mac book Pro.  Yes, it's a Mac and it beats all the others in terms of speed-- when running a Microsoft operating system reknown for its bloated slowness.

 

 

I've been running XP sp2 on my mac to do demos and write books since late last summer/early autumn. I did my presentations last year in Vegas and Orlando on the Mac-- and finally PC World has figured it out too...

 

I do have my complaints though.  Battery performance is optimized to work with the Mac OS (only lasts a few hours at best), and the touchpad performance in Windows is seriously crap.  I'm not kidding, I really hate the touchpad. Also, heat is a problem, and the fan is loud, ineffective, and runs desperately when on battery.  I suspect that's part of the reason the battery doesn't last.

 

However, while on AC, the machine works great. 

 

-callahan

 

 

As you know I have been writing (and now editing) nonstop for more than a year now, and nine months for this WSS book alone.  And all that time I have needed tunes to write by.

 

Originally I was using my iPod, but even though I bought additional earbuds, after a while they began to hurt (after a while being fourteen hours a day of wearing them).  Then, when I went to TechEd, I got some cheap little speakers for the iPod so I could just listen to it that way.  That was okay, but the quality was crap.

 

Then, after about eight months or so (out of a year and a half), I started getting sick of the selection I have on the iPod, but I didn't (and still don't) have time to go out, get more, organize it, sync, etc.

 

So I went back to my old standby, the online radio station I listened to while penning the chapters I wrote for Mark Minasi's 2003 book-- RadioIO.  I listened to that for a while, but the buffering drove me crazy and the commercials (and the way media player dealt with them) were painful (I mean, erectile dysfunction?! Please...). I used to give them lotsa money in donations, and still do drop a dime on them now and then.  But they've gone all for-profit on me.  My donations are no longer good enough to give me access to the commercial free streams, I would have to pay monthly.  But because I often cycle all the way through their playlists too often before they refresh, I can't honestly pay them for music I have to ignore every few weeks.

 

That drove me to look online for alternatives and came across somafm.  I was hooked, loved it. It's high quality, with some great and unique channels to listen to (secret agent, anybody?), and absolutely commercial free.

 

So I listened to that for about six months or so, on the Mac laptop with bootcamp and XP sp2.  The OS is running lean because I don't have time to worry about it while focusing on everything I am doing virtually.  That meant that I had been listening, gack, to streaming radio using Windows Media Player.

 

Wheeze, moan, stutter, lag, drop, buffer, hiccup, squeak.... welcome to WMP.  The bloated and resource demanding anti-fair market piece of media playing crap.

 

And yesterday, after hearing two minutes of music, then silence, then a few seconds of music, then silence, then....  I had had enough.

 

I went online and got ready to download Winamp.  But, then I remembered that winamp had become disgusting bloatware since AOL bought it.  So what to do?  I don't have time to shop around and test different players ( I don't have time to write this blog entry), I just need something that is small, unobtrusive (I do not need any unexpected software conflicts right now), that spares the resources and reliably plays my streams.

 

And after checking out, in google, the responses to winamp's bloatedness, I found an alternative-- XMPlay.  I took a chance, downloaded and installed it.

 

Dude, it doesn't "install" so no writing to the registry.  It uses 1% or less CPU every few seconds while playing the streams and powering the interface (that keeps a running tally of song playtime, has a little graphic equalizer thing, and blinks when buffering-- which is annoying).  When streams are buffering (RadioIO does it a lot) XMPlay can cycle up to about 15,000K of RAM, but otherwise runs at about 4,000K (so much better than the 25,000K that WMP needs just to be open).  In addition the interface is sleek, lean, and easy to use. And, best of all, absolutely, positively NO lags, drops, or dead air while buffering.  NONE, although the blinking buffering notice while the player desperately tries to keep the music going uninterrupted is visually annoying.  But with the player minimized so I can't see it, it seems like there is no buffering being done at all.

 

Un4seen Developments, thanks for XMPlay. You have a convert here.  Thank you for being out there, it was just what I needed.

 

-callahan

 

 

I found this on Digg.com and had to pass it on.  The title for the digg entry is "Why the zune is brown" and it shows the zune logo, upside down and mirror image.  In this position the word spells out "anus."

 

Maybe it's because I am so exhausted and stressed out, but that simple sight gag made me laugh.

 

"Heh, heh. Zune brown. Get it?" 

 

 

sigh.  Maybe I'll get some sleep now.