I know this is somewhat old news, but I really like it. Group Policy Preferences is a new (ish) extension to Group Policy provided on Active Directory domains that allows some cool stuph to happen. My favorite part, and from what I can judge, most administrators’ favorite part is the ability to map printers and drives without scripts. My company has been rolling out Server 2008 and 2008 R2 for all new projects, and I have to say, we are quite pleased with Group Policy Preferences. This is something that should have been present since Windows NT days – it just makes sense. Why write a script and run it in full view of users when the client OS can simply take it’s instructions from the domain policy and just do it.

No more Batch files or VB Scripts. No more KiXstart scripts. Just clean mapping of printers and drives when you log in, based on your organizational or group membership. Finally, some magic comes to Windows that actually makes sense.

I got a Motorola DROID phone to replace the old Motorola Q9c I had.

If the iPhone is the Jesus Phone, then this thing is the God Phone. It is simply phenomenal.

I won’t go into detail of the phone itself here, because world+dog has already done that, but I will say this: The phone is easier to use with Microsoft Exchange features than my previous Microsoft Windows Mobile phone.

I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in.

…

Yeah. I said it. You read it. Wanna fight about it?

Grabbed an unofficial/official RTM build of Windows 7 – running in 30 day trial mode, just to play with the OS. No key or cracks installed. I will definately be replacing this OS with a real TechNet version in less than a week, but I wanted to play with it NOW.

Piccy for your enjoyment.

I have installed the Windows 7 Beta both on The Beast and some piece of crap extra machine I had laying around. First Impression: Good, and a major improvement over Vista, but needs some minor improvement before I’ll be head over heels for it. I installed it on The Beast first to see what the performance would be like on an upper mid-range machine. It runs very well over all. I can confirm that Windows 7 is faster than Vista on the same hardware. It just floats on my nice(ish) machine.

For the guys at the shop, I installed it on an Athlon XP 2800+ /1GB RAM /Radeon 9800 and it’s just butter on that. Vista would choke on a 2800+, Win7 floats. Seriously.

It boots up just a might bit faster, shuts down faster, and loads apps like lightning compared to Vista. File copy actually seems to be fixed too, but my limited test can’t be taken as an all over correct statement. The 3d visualizations seem to be a bit more fluid and the system uses about half the RAM load after boot compared to a vanilla Vista install.

The primary thing I do not like with Windows 7 at first look is the new Taskbar. Its like a cross between the old Taskbar, the QuickLaunch feature, and the “Most Recently Used Apps” feature in XP. It is somewhat MacOS Dock like, in that it represents applications with a big icon. The more apps you use, it adds more buttons to the Taskbar. When an app is running, it highlights the icon with a glowing square. For the more windows from that app you have running, the taskbar will show a “stacked” effect, like a stack of cards. When you hover over the button, you get a picture of all the apps you have running, (like the Vista Taskbar Popup you get when you hover over a taskbar button). Clicking on the appropriate picture gives you the window you want.

Now, one would think this is a very efficient way of finding what you want from what you have running, but I find it much worse than the old task management paradigm. I find it faster and easier to find my tasks if I have WORDS to tell me what my tasks are, and I have task grouping off. Call me old school, but thats the wayI roll. I also find it not as fluid as the MacOSX Dock, even though its essentially the same darned thing.

Now that I’ve seen it, maybe I should make a “Seven” Theme for WordPress. Dunno yet. Gotta finalize Inanis Glass first.

I was challenged by Zarek to try SimCity4 on Ubuntu 8.10 because I was “complaining” about Ubuntu performance. This will be the second time I have done this, but the first time I will have blogged about it. Here’s what happened…

• Grabbed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10
• Ghosted Vista install out to another drive (to restore later)
• Installed Ubuntu, took whole system drive.
• Booted Ubuntu. Took about 10 seconds longer to boot than Vista. (Vista starts off booting slow, but as SuperFetch gets smarter, it boots faster and faster.)
• Downloaded updates.
• Marveled that Ubuntu auto-mounted my NTFS storage and app drives. No surprise there.
• Activated the recommended Restricted nVidia driver for my 8800 GTS and set full resolution, then turned on the eye candy.
  • Fought with this, as I have to do every time I install Ubuntu on this video card, to get 1280×1024 resolution. I’ll spare you all the minute details, but I spent a good 45 minutes on it. Ubuntu refuses to detect this mode automatically and the GUI gives me no option to force my own settings. None of the command line options to force a redetect of video hardware seem to work anymore, or I am using them incorrectly. I have to edit xorg.conf manually to add in the proper modes, refresh rates and the like. It’s a PITA. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO MANUALLY EDIT ANYTHING TO FORCEFULLY SET A VIDEO MODE THAT I WANT IF THE OS DOESN’T DETECT IT. Windows doesn’t make me do this. 1) It absolutely, 100% of the time, always has and probably always will detect my monitor’s native resolution JUST FINE and sets it to it out of the box and, 2) It just happily shows me all the resolutions the CARD supports and lets me set it to whatever I want in the event the monitor isn’t detected. See, Windows gives me a GUI for advanced options and assumes I know what I’m doing. XWindows on Ubuntu does not. (I cannot stress this enough, that Windows has never, as far as I can remember, failed to detect and either auto-set or allow me to set ANY LCD monitor’s native resolution EVER)
• Marveled at how the default compositing engine is slower in Ubuntu 8.10 than it was in 8.04, and is subsequently slower than Vista’s compositing engine. (8.04 was faster last time I ran it, actually, dunno why that might be). I don’t care if it might benchmark faster, because it LOOKS and FEELS slower. For eye-candy, that’s what’s important.
• Amazed that Firefox on Ubuntu renders this blog more slowly than Vista does, and scrolls pages slower too. It is positively choppy. Everyone says Ubuntu is supposed to be faster on the same hardware. Hmm…
• Installed Wine from Ubuntu repository with Synaptic. Easy.
• Tried to install SimCity4 and RushHour using ISO images.
  • This was a FAIL, most likely due to lack of experience on my part. Apparently, mounting ISO images over an SMB connection and getting them to show up to Wine is more difficult than I am willing to try to figure out. I just used the CD’s last time I did this, but I tried to save time and use my ISO files – no go.
  • Found out that the default way of mounting ISO files in Ubuntu doesn’t like Wine or vice versa, and is generally weird. I had to install gISOMount to get ISOs to mount well, using a GUI, in a proper way. I know, “use the command line, you noob”, but I shouldn’t have to use the command line to do something this simple. I don’t have to use the command line in Windows to do this.
• Installed SimCity4 and RushHour using original CDs instead
  • This worked just fine, although the SimCity4 installer shows a constant 0% completed while installing.
• Copied Plugins and Angel Coast Region from NTFS drive to linux home folder for testing.
• Launched SC4RH for “play”.
  • Launched the game and waited… some more… a bit more.. THERE (about twice as slow loading as Vista/XP)
  • Loaded up Angel Coast/Buena Vista (My HUGE city, almost entire map of skyscrapers and 600k people) and waited. And waited, and waited.
  • Marveled at how slow it was compared to Windows. Thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful 1-3 FPS when scrolling around the city map (in Windows this is more like 6-10fps). Noticed issues with rendering the clouds (could see silohuettes of planes and mission bubbles left behind when scrolling). Watched as the color of the ground would randomly change color when it shouldn’t. Menus took longer to pop out. Options took longer to open up. Was slower trying to lay down roads.
  • Didn’t end up playing, because it took too long to do anything. Hell, its slow enough on Windows, I don’t need anything helping it to be slower.
• Posted this complaint about how Ubuntu 8.10 and SimCity4 are slower on this computer than Windows Vista.
• Went back to loving Ubuntu for servers and Windows for desktops.

Found it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/739820.aspx

Running Windows XP (2k maybe)? Try to boot your computer and all you get is a background with no icons, no taskbar, no start menu and just a mouse cursor? Try this:

Symptom

When you try to boot your computer: all you get is a background with no icons, no taskbar, no start menu and just a mouse cursor. If you try to launch explorer.exe manually from Task Manager, you get “explorer” could not be found or “explorer.exe” could not be found.

Cause

A registry key that handles how the Windows shell (explorer.exe) loads is corrupt.

Fix

Delete the offending registry key and reboot the computer. Use Task Manager (CTRL+ALT+DEL) to run regedit manually. Then find the following key and delete it:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\
Image File Execution Options\explorer.exe

Then, reboot the computer. Problem solved.

Symptom

You are running Windows XP and you recently removed some malware. After removing the malware, you get the following message on a blue screen (BSOD):

STOP: C0000135 {Unable to locate component} This application has failed to start because [name] was not found. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

… where [name] is a word starting with the letters ‘base’ (not winsrv or user32) and has some random crap on the end of it, and you can’t boot the machine anymore.

Cause

You have inadvertently deleted a file windows ‘thinks’ it needs, but doesn’t really. The malware you removed hijacked a registry entry to ensure it is loaded with every Windows session, so you have to un-hijack the registry it to fix it, basically pointing Windows to the original non-malware version of the file it thinks it needs.

Solution

• Load the hijacked “SYSTEM” hive file on a clean system. (You can do this any way you wish. You can use Windows PE, or another Windows machine; it basically goes like this)
  • Get access to the file called “system” on the infected machine in the folder C:\windows\system32\config (the previous path may be different if Windows is installed in a different folder or on a different drive letter)
  • Use the clean system to run regedit, highlight the “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” branch at the left, click “File”, then “Load Hive…”, and point it to the “system” file I talked about above.
  • Regedit will ask you for a name. Just call it “FIX”.
• Next, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\FIX\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\SubSystems
  • The folder above called CurrentControlSet may be called ControlSet1 or ControlSet2, or the like. There may be more than one. If you are unsure which one to use, perform the following steps in all of them.
• At the right, you will see the value at the right called “Windows”. This is the infected registry value. You must replace the value with the following, all on one line:
  • At the right, right click on the item called “Windows”, and select “Modify”, then paste in the following value:
  • %SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,512 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16
• When done, go back to the top and highlight the FIX folder underneath HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Then click “File” and “Unload Hive…”
• Put your fixed machine back together (i.e. put the hard drive back in it, or throw the fixed system file back in the right place . .. or basically reverse whatever you did to get access to the system file )
• Boot up your fixed computer.

My previous fix for the HP LaserJet 1020 Spooler Service Restart issue did not stick. Upon reboot of the server, the problem returned and was not correctable in the manner previously described.

I researched the issue again and found a Microsoft forum post where they actually fixed the issue. The fix goes as follows:

• NOTE: Do this on the machine connected to the printer.
• Run gpdedit.msc
• Go to “Local Computer Policies\Administrative Templates\Printers”
  • Set the setting “Allow print spooler to accept client connections” to “Enabled”
• Go to “User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Control Panel\Printers\”
  • Set the setting “Point and Print Restrictions” to “Disabled”
• Close the Group Policy Editor
• Go into the Printers and Faxes control panel, right click on the printer and hit properties.
• Click the “Ports” tab
• Uncheck “Enable Bidirectional Printing”
• Close the Printer panels/windows
• Run a command line, type in “gpupdate /force”, and hit enter

Fixed!

The forum fix was here.

Finally found the definitive fix for error 720 in Windows XP if the problem is not caused by your ISP totally sucking b***s. The original fix was created by someone and was posted here. Here is my version for your enjoyment.

SYMPTOMS

When you try to use a dial-up connection to connect to your Internet Service Provider (ISP), you may receive the following error message during the "Registering your computer on the network" portion of the connection agreement: Error 720 – the connection attempt failed because your computer and the remote computer could not agree on PPP control protocol. Additionally, when you view the devices in Device Manager, you may notice a yellow exclamation mark (!) over the icon for the WAN Miniport IP (#2) device. Then again, you may not.

CAUSE

This issue may occur if:

1. the TCP/IP protocol has become unbound from the dial-up adapter
2. or if a conflict is created when a second WAN Miniport IP device driver loads
3. or a malfunctioning firewall product broke your network stack
4. or a firewall product was removed improperly or otherwise broken
5. or Windows simply decides it wants to suck a bit more today.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this issue, uninstall then reinstall the WAN Miniport IP and PPTP devices. To do so, follow these steps:

Part 1: Remove the WAN Miniports

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Hardware tab, and then click Device Manager.
3. On the View menu, click Show hidden devices.
4. Under Network adapters, you will see WAN Miniport IP devices. If a WAN Miniport IP device is listed, continue to the following step. If no WAN Miniport IP device is listed, go directly to Part 2
5. Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
6. Locate the following registry subkey:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
7. On the Registry menu, click Export Registry File, type backup-key in the File name box, and then click Save.
8. Click each of the registry subkeys under this key, and then view the Data column of the DriverDesc value to determine which of the subkeys corresponds to WAN Miniport (IP). For example, the 0005 subkey.
9. Right-click the subkey whose DriverDesc value data is WAN Miniport (IP) or WAN Minport (PPTP); (for example, right-click 0005), and then click Delete. Click Yes to confirm that you want to delete the key.
10. Quit Registry Editor.
11. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
12. Click the Hardware tab, and then click Device Manager.
13. On the View menu, click Show hidden devices.
14. Under Network adapters, right-click WAN Miniport (IP) and then click Uninstall. Click OK to confirm that you want to remove this device.
15. Repeat for the WAN Miniport (PPTP).

Part 2: Reinstall the WAN Miniports

1. Find netrasa.inf in c:\windows\inf
2. Make a copy of the file and name it netrasa.inf.save
3. Open the orignal copy of netrasa.inf and place a semicolon in front of the line that starts "Excludefromselect=\" and and continue with all follwing lines and then end with "MS_NdisWanNbfIn,MS_NdisWanNbfOut" under the [ControlFlags] section. (all lines between)
4. Start a Add new hardware session (from Control Panel) and choose that the hardware is already installed. Choose to "Add New Hardware" and then select "Network Adapters" followed by "Microsoft" and then both the PPTP and the IP Wan miniport one at a time. (NO need to reboot between these steps)
5. After you finish both then reboot.
6. Select Start -> Run and type: netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt
7. Reboot and try your connection.

This should resolve your issue.