On September the 29th (from 6PM to 8PM UTC+1) Microsoft will discuss the “New Efficiency” and the upcoming launches of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange 2010 during a Live discussion from San Francisco (make sure to put some flowers in your hair! )
Checkout all info on www.thenewefficiency.com
You do not want to miss this!
Today I came across this great (and free) tool written by R. Zander.
It allows you to quickly view such information as what advertisements, maintenance windows, history, running executions, etc are (or have been) available for a client.
Furthermore it will give you the possibility to trigger some client actions all from one console.
Take a look behind the scenes of the next generation of Windows with the Talking about Windows website. You’ll be able to participate in the conversation about product decisions, feature trade-offs and deployment stories. Join the Windows 7 engineers and other IT professionals in the discussion about the Windows operating system.
http://www.talkingaboutwindows.com
earlier today I did the 70-680 exam and passed with only a few wrong answers.
Wondering whether I’d still be among the 500 first to have passed this exam.
The exam itself is not very difficult, I even got some questions on IE8 imagine that.
come on colleagues, who’s next ?
I’d say it’s time to relax now 
Error message when you try to import an .osd file into the SoftGrid Management Console: “Error code: 0000C81D”
Error message:
Unable to import OSD file. The file specified is not a valid SoftGrid OSD file. Please ensure the file conforms to the SoftGrid OSD file schema and contains well formed XML. Error code: 0000C81D
Error code: 0000C81D
When searching Google I always came with MS solution (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930562): package name is more then 64 chars. But changing this didn’t solve the problem.
I tried to import the package in the Package container. And add an application (OSD file) afterwards (instead of importing the app). This works like a charm.
I even had this error in an App-V 4.5 environment lately.
When troubleshooting App-V applications looking into the bubble can ease your work.
Sneaking into the bubble gives you information about which files are stored local and which virtual. This way you know what files actually will be used by the application. You can modify some configuration files without resequencing the whole application.
There are some ways to view inside the virtual Softgrid / App-V bubble.
Editing the .OSD file, inside the <DEPENDENCY> tag add:
<SCRIPT EVENT="LAUNCH" TIMING="PRE" PROTECT="TRUE" WAIT="TRUE" TIMEOUT="">
<HREF>cmd.exe</HREF>
</SCRIPT>
Launching the OSD file will present you a DOS BOX inside the bubble. With this box you can do anything. Browsing the Q: drive, starting regedit, changing config/ini files, map a drive, copy some files ..
With SFT Explorer you can look inside the SFT file without ever having to load it. You can see files and registry keys would look like if the App-V application was loaded on the target machine. It only supports viewing in the SFT file, you cannot make any changes.
Make some room in your calendars for this online event on October the 7th.
It all starts at 1 PM EDT, that means 7 PM on our clocks.
sessions will handle such topics as: Deployment, Migration, Virtualization, Security and Mobility
All info on http://www.windows7summit.com/
If you have been as eager as me to try out windows 7 (or Server 08 R2) clients in your SCCM environment, you might have seen the occasional hickups already. That is if you are already running in native mode and or using NAP functionality.
Earlier this week, Microsoft released a hotfix rollup that will solve these problems for good.
to remediate these problems, you have to install the hotfix on all site servers in your environment.
If your environment is not yet in native mode, the clients will also need to have the hotfix applied.
I guess you would all use SCCM to have that fix distributed, don’t you?
More Info on http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=974236
Microsoft announced that Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2009 R2 will be released in late October 2009 and will add Windows 7 support for all components, except for MED-V. Server and management components will support Windows 2008 R2.
Microsoft is promising that the new MDOP tools will have management components that support Windows Server 2008 R2, which was released to manufacturing on Sept 14 and available through MSDN as we speak. In addition, all of the components in MDOP 2009 R2, except for MED-V, will support Windows 7. Microsoft expects to add Windows 7 support in MED-V when it releases MED-V 1.0 Service Pack 1 sometime in the “first quarter of calendar year 2010″, according to the blog.
MDOP employs six innovative technologies to increase desktop manageability, reduce TCO, and improve overall infrastructure satisfaction:
With its virtualization technologies and manageability components, MDOP 2009 R2 is an essential part of your Windows 7 planning and deployment strategy.
This is a great opportunity to highlight the key innovations of MDOP 2009 R2 and talk about how MDOP can help you rapidly migrate to Windows 7, deploy applications with greater ease, resolve application incompatibility, and reduce desktop management costs.
Full Article on The Official MDOP Blog.
Stay tuned for a Win7 deployment via SCCM!
We will explain a bare metal Windows 7 deploy, as well as an upgrade path from Windows XP.