The D-Spot (The Deployment Spot)

In many cases virtual applications will talk to physical ones. That’s one of the reasons to keep Adobe Reader installed locally.

But we’ve got an issue with the Reader again.

Launching a PDF file from within the bubble gave an Access Denied error (using a physical Adobe Reader 10.1):

There was an error opening the document. Access Denied

This issue exits only when the PDF file is stored on a “personal folder”, like the Desktop-folder for example. (local User NTFS permissions?).

This isn’t an App-V issue but a Reader X feature called Protected Mode that gave this error.

It can be solved with some basic OSD scripting, but the first step is here to stay: “Know your application”. As Reader X gave this error, we can disable this feature with a registry key. Most of the work is to find out what registry key to set. To keep this short, here is my OSD script that disables Adobe Reader Protected Mode when opening Reader from within a App-V application:

<REGISTRY>
<REGKEY HIVE=”HKCU” KEY=”SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\10.0\Privileged” NOREDIR=”FALSE”>
<REGVALUE REGTYPE=”REG_DWORD” NAME=”bProtectedMode”>00000000</REGVALUE>
</REGKEY>
</REGISTRY>

This goes into the VIRTUALENV-tag.

Happy sequencing!

I’ve had some trouble with slow logon on Windows Server 2008 R2. The “Applying Computer Settings”-part takes about two minutes!

The eventlog shows two records about this issue:

The winlogon notification subscriber <GPClient> is taking long time to handle the notification event (CreateSession).

And:

The winlogon notification subscriber <GPClient> took xxx seconds to handle the notification event (CreateSession).

I stumbled upon some possible solutions. The first was updating the NIC driver. As I’m using the wireless network card, I’m only updating this one.

Updating NIC driver

Old driver:

New driver:

Drivers are updated but the logon time wasn’t reduced by a single second.

Disable Computer GPO’s

Second try was moving the computer object to a unmanaged OU (without policies applied), run gpupdate /force and rebooted some times .. but the problem still exists.

GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue

Third try: adding GpNetworkStartTimeoutPolicyValue with value 1 to the registry:

Maybe it’s a service or application on the computer itself .. ? I disabled some 3rd party (non Microsoft) services, but the problem remains.

Disable IPv6?

–> no luck

Disable CardReader?

–> no effect

Disable Autotuning?

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled

Didn’t solved it either, so I enabled Autotuning again:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

Patches/Hotfixes?

KB2617858: Unexpectedly slow startup or logon process in Windows Server 2008 R2 or in Windows 7

KB2525332: You encounter a long logon time after you enable the "Do not automatically make redirected folders available offline" Group Policy setting in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2

–> This hotfix fixes the slow logon issue for me! (I’m using redirected folders!)

MDT 2012 Beta 2 is available for download on Microsoft Connect.  The most important changes are ConfigMgr 2012 compatibility, improved Lite Touch user experience and a nice and easy upgrade process! Read all about MDT 2012 b2 at the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Team Blog.

If 1Day = 30 hours then

WScript.Echo “Stay tuned at The D-Spot for some posts about the new beta product!”

End If

System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2012 RC1 (build 7678) is available for download!

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27841

After adding a security group to an AppV Application using the AppV Management console, the lovely error “Unexpected error” pops up.

Unable to modify the specified Application.
Please report the following error code to your system administrator.
Error code: 0000B004.

Maybe it had something to do with deleted security groups, hence the SID’s:

I found KB930424, but didn’t had the second error in sft-server.log. Therefor my chances to succeed weren’t high. Anyway, I changed the AppV Database transaction log to “Unrestricted File Growth”.

But that didn’t solved the 0000B004 error. I still wasn’t able to change permissions for that particular application

After a while I stumbled upon Hotfix Package 2 for AppV 4.5 Service Pack 1: March 2010. The changelog says:

When you try to use the Microsoft Application Virtualization Server Management Console to remove group assignments for an Active Directory group that has already been deleted, the removal fails together with the 0000B004 error code.

Also Service Pack 2 for AppV Management Server 4.5 contains this hotfix!

Once in a while you need to patch Office 2010 sequences with the latest security fixes from Microsoft. I needed to patch a package which contained Excel 2010 and an Excel Addin.

I prepared my sequence machine with:

• Windows patches, dummy printer, dummy odbc connections
• App-V Sequencer 4.6
• Placed new addin sources and the sequence to upgrade on the desktop
• Made a snapshot

Started the Sequencer, opened the package for upgrade. Enabled “Show Advanced Monitoring Options”, and select “Allow Microsoft Update to run during monitoring”. So far so good, but after downloading & installing the patches all of them failed to install!

All patches failed with error code 0×80070643.

What went wrong?

I forgot to install the OSPP (Office Software Protection Platform) service on my sequence machine! (AKA Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V).

After installing the prerequisite all security fixes installed successful:

I needed to change the config.xml for an Office (OneNote) 2010 deployment. After changing the config file I tested the silent installation but the installer couldn’t handle my newly created config.xml file.

All my xml tags where closed like it should, I couldn’t find any syntax error. But then I remembered something learned at school (it’s been 10 years!); opening an XML file in Internet Explorer to verify the syntax!

I used the Dutch word “geïnstalleerd”. After removing the special character (changed to “geinstalleerd)”, the Office 2010 installation was successful.

My colleague couldn’t get an App-V application launched properly.

The app throws the following error:

The Application Virtualization Client encountered a problem while waiting for the application to be ready to interact with the user.

Error code: 19-00001003

Because the app launches a VBScript we changed the SUBSYSTEM Value from windows to console, and the app launched like it should!

 <IMPLEMENTATION>
  
  <VM VALUE=”Win32″>
   <SUBSYSTEM VALUE=”console”/>
  </VM>
  
 </IMPLEMENTATION>

Sometimes you must change this setting in the OSD file yourself. Because the AppV Sequencer doesn’t know if a particular application is a Windows (value=windows) or a DOS (value=console) program.

Hotfix Package 3 is available for AppV 4.6 Service Pack 1.

It fixes an issue with the “Save As New Package” feature in the sequencer.

Here is the full changelog:

• You run the Application Virtualization Client on a computer that is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. When you try to start a virtualized application from a network location, such as a UNC path or a mapped network drive, you receive an application error message that states that a .dll file could not be found.
• When you try to run an Open Software Description (OSD) file that contains a batch script from a content share, you receive a “04-00000020″ error message.
• The Application Virtualization Client service may take a long time to start and may result in slow startup performance in certain computer configurations.
• The Save As New Package option of the Application Virtualization Sequencer does not correctly update the virtual registry.
• When a virtualized application calls the Windows API LoadLibrary function, the application does not work correctly in the App-V 4.6 SP1 Sequencer. This issue occurs only when the LoadLibrary function uses a parameter that has a trailing period (.) at the end of the module name.

This hotfix applies to both client & sequencer. Because AppV hotfixes are cumulative, each new hotfix release contains all the hotfixes that were included with the previous hotfix packages.

Hotfix 3 is available at Microsoft: KB2571168.

Microsoft gave the TechNet newsletters a holiday feeling with four different topics in a bite-size format. One of the topics of this summer edition is about Desktop Deployment.

Desktop deployment involves much more than just migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. In fact it’s mainly about managing your desktop and application infrastructure effectively. This Technet article covers all about optimized desktop and why a properly managed desktop has a good TCO. Also the new tools in MDOP are covered and how to use the cloud with Windows Intune. You can take a short tour (half an hour), mid tour (half day) or the full tour (full day).

The following topics are covered:

• Application Compatibility
• Office 2010 Deployment – Office 365
• Desktop Optimization Pack
• Windows 7 Deployment
• Internet Explorer 9
• Windows Intune

Take the deployment dive at Technet.