Fundamental Software Solutions

Although I haven't posted in a while, it hasn't been due to this particular blog's subject.  In fact, our first major corporate deployment over 10 computers is now officially a success.

The new Windows 7 client machines are running fine; with users only having a minimal 1/2 hour tutorial on the new features to get them going.  We had an old printer that had to be retired, but other than that - everything that was originally running in XP without rubber bands and twist ties is 100% functional, and dare I say 10% more functional than it was before we wiped and upgraded to Windows 7.

Some frustrations we have are with the Client side extensions.  First, if you plan to push out printers - be aware that if you choose to reapply the map instead of "apply only once", every background refresh will un-map and re-map your printers.  Some applications that cache the printer list fail miserably when this happens.  Drive mappings are the same.  The drives are less of a concern, unless you use databases like Access over the network.  (These database applications report that the data connection has been lost as group policy processing occurs)  We wish Microsoft would have checked the mapping and skipped it if it was as the settings in Group Policy indicated.

What are we missing?  We sure wish other applications like AutoDesk's AutoCAD supported jump lists.  We wish our PDF viewer (we don't use acrobat) integrated into the shell and allowed us to preview PDFs instead of having to open them.  We also wish all our printer manufacturers had updated drivers.  The staff wonder why the large format HP plotter appears like a multi-function fax machine.  I wish we could group the printers by location.

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().

We have been a part of deployment projects with Windows XP and Windows 2000 on very large scales in the past, and now are getting our hands dirty with Windows 7.  This deployment is for a SMB only of about 40 computers, and so far, we are very impressed.

Microsoft has come a long way with the deployment process of their operating system.  At first, understanding the steps and deployment stages can be daunting, but a quick read of the unattended settings using the documentation provided with the System Image Manager makes things a breeze.  The WIM format and ImageX tools allow us to overlay application data onto the drive in layers, instead of creating drive images and then copying loose files over-top. 

The goal with any deployment project is to minimize deployment time on the day-of, and there is some time spent with the WIMs that I think could be faster, but it is fast enough for a complete corporate install in about 2 days with only 2 techs on about 40-60 computers.  We found a way to do this without the purchase of any third party tools, also!

... Does anyone but me remember those weekends being stretched to the limit installing Windows XP by hand, and then installing all the applications afterward?

The time savings actually makes this deployment pay for itself in the long run, too.  New computers introduced into the company can be completely generated in 30 minutes.  No more ordering from your computer supplier and then stripping all the settings that you couldn't remove with Group Policy.

In conclusion of this brief article, anyone having to install an operating system (or returning an operating system to a base state) should be thinking automated and unattended deployment first - especially if 5 or more computers are involved - it is simple, cheap and very reliable.