Fundamental Software Solutions

We found another solution while deploying Windows 7 that we could not find information anywhere on the internet.  Our client wanted an aggressive power management strategy for their desktop computers; that is they would be forced to try and save power across their fleet of client, desktop computers.

When building the systems, we found that the Windows 7 Aero interface wouldn't work.  We also couldn't run winsat (the experience index calculation tool) from either the command line, nor the control panel.

After searching through tons of blog entries and support forum requests, we found the problem in our own log.  The power settings couldn't be applied - and winsat exited with some other error from WMI indicating that an instance of an object could not be created.

 After turning off the GPO, everything started to work again.

I had a couple of intermittent problems while supporting a client that I couldn't find any information on, anywhere.

The problem manifested itself when they plugged in their mobile phone to their computer.  In XP, using ActiveSync, or using Windows Mobile Device center in Vista, and Windows 7.  Before they plugged in their mobile, they could use the internet browser on their computer, through a proxy auto-configured with WPAD.DAT, and after, they couldn't.  The web seemed to just "stop" resulting in a "cannot connect" error at the web proxy server, every time.

I incorrectly focused on ActiveSync at first - since that was the point of contact that caused the failure, and found that although it installed a network driver to communicate with the phone - it didn't seem to matter what the network settings were.

Finally, while working with the WPAD.DAT (auto-configuration script) I found that the actual call to myIpAddress() was returning an auto-configured address, and not a DHCP address on the connected subnet.  Since I was using shExpMatch(myIpAddress(), "192.168.1.*") to test the validity of the local network - the WPAD was incorrectly configured to go DIRECT through the firewall, which wasn't allowed.

Instead, I added this to WPAD.DAT:

So, careful using myIpAddress() in WPAD.DAT, unless you account for the Windows Mobile IP Address to be returned in myIpAddress().

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 is a pretty cool little piece of software; it indexes a computer and allows free-text searching of file contents and properties.  In fact, it replaces a lot of technologies that would have cost thousands of dollars.  However, windows Desktop Search is best run on the computer where the data resides and not necessarily over the network.  (Think of a corporate situation where tens or hundreds of systems are trying to index the same server... eek!)

So how do you get the results to the client desktops when you need them?  Well, as Microsoft always tends to support with their products - there is a way to query WDS pragmatically. More...