This feature primarily applies to laptops and mobile computing, but it is still pretty sweet.

Cool Feature: Location Aware Printing
I carry my laptop with me most places and especially to work. Sure there is a PC under my desk, but sometimes the applications I own are just handy. When I brought my laptop to work after getting Windows 7 I added a default printer just the same as I might on an XP machine. Intending it to be for use in the office, and just complain that it wasn’t available when I was at home or on another network. No big deal.

The printer was named Office Printer so I would remember where the printer existed. After adding the printer, I left work for the day and went about my normal routine. When I got out my computer to check mail later that evening on my home network, the Office Printer, was nowhere to be found.

Maybe I deleted it before leaving so it wouldn’t just hang out unusable later. The next day, at the office, the Office Printer was right back where I had put it the day before.

A bit more research lead me to the feature explanation of Location Aware Printing. The printer is added dependent of the network you are connected to. Windows then hides the printer when you are connected to another network where this printer does not exist. Being someone who uses printers sparingly and does his best to name printers in a memorable fashion, I was quite pleased that Windows took care of visibility for these items without my help.

This printer feature is enabled by default but can be managed from the Devices and Printers window.

Managing Location Aware Printers

From the Device and Printers window, select a printer and click the manage default printers toolbar button.

Figure A

Location Aware Printers - image by Microsoft

Then select the option to change my default printer when I change networks.

In the select network list, choose the network you wish to manage the printer for

In the select printer list, choose the printer you want to set as the default, then click Add.

This printer added will be set as the default printer for the selected network.

To add default printers for other networks, repeat the steps above.

Note: The Location Aware Printers feature is only available in the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate Editions of Windows 7.

For anyone who frequents multiple networks and needs printing capabilities, this feature could be just what the doctor ordered.

If you wish to disable this feature, select always use the same default printer in the Manage Default Printers dialog box.

Sure they seem like small things, but over time, these small things like change in the couch cushions can add up to a big ticket problem.  For me, the issue wasn’t all that bad, but it did take some head scratching (outside the scope of the actual issue) and a brief conversation with someone wiser than I about the symptoms of my issue.

We don’t trust you anymore, go away

Windows 7 is a rather finicky OS (moreso that Windows XP, and probably a bit less so than the OS between XP and 7).  Because computers are still objects within Active Directory that access other secured resources within the directory, they too authenticate.  In reality, this means that computers have accounts equivalent to User objects within the AD environment. These accounts allow computers to tell Active Directory that they belong within the environment and should be allowed to access resources.  Just like when I logon to the domain and request access to resources by providing credentials, computers in the environment do the same.

If for some reason, the Domain Controller cannot match the credentials presented by the computer to what is stored in its database, the Domain Controller refuses authentication and presents a message about trust relationships.

I didn’t create credentials for the computer, what the heck do I do now?

When a computer is added to an Active Directory domain its account is established and the password set.  Then the password is managed by the computer and AD and changed automatically about every 30 days or so.  If the computer is no longer trusted by the domain, it is likely that the password is incorrect or has gotten lost in translation causing authentication to fail.

My issue was a replication issue which caused the computer accounts of a few workstations to fail authentication.  Because it is not the best idea to maintain only one domain controller in any Active Directory environment, and because of the way that AD manages information about objects, replication happens.

Perhaps an example will work here.  Suppose I create a user object for John Smith using Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) on a Domain Controller named creatively DC1 at my office.  John will be starting his new career as a data entry specialist in my company’s Houston office in a week or so.  Adding the user account for John to a DC in my office works just as well as if I had flown to Houston (or remoted into the DC there) and added the account.  Because replication sends all objects created, maintained, or deleted to all other replication partners within the domain, a user account created in my office on DC1 can be replicated to Houston on DC2 and when John gets to work, he can logon and all is well.

Replication happens in the background and is pretty much out of site when things are going smoothly, but from experience I can tell you that you should check in on your friend replication regularly.  Maybe not daily, but weekly for sure.  Just to make sure that objects in the directory are being moved around without errors.

What might cause replication problems?

There are any number of settings and configurations that can cause problems with replication.  Surely more than I have seen or have time to list here, but some of the basic things are:

• Improperly configured links
• Unmanaged Replication configurations
• Misconfigured Firewalls
• Equipment failure

Improperly configured links

When you establish replication between two (or more) Active Directory domain controllers, you create links between them that allow these DCs to exchange information.  The links are one way which means that each domain controller has two links to each replication partner.  The links can be configured to handle high speed links (fast connections, like you might see between domain controllers in the same site) and slow links (which may be used to link two remote locations).  When the links are configured correctly things work really well, but if you neglect to consider the speed of your Internet connection (on both ends) replication may suffer as a result.

Replicating information across a slow link that is configured to behave like a fast one might be a little less dire to watch than downloading a blu-ray quality video over a dial up connection, but missing information can have rather large repercussions in your environment which may be seen as inability to login, latent access or no access to resources and other things.

Unmanaged replication configurations

By this I am not suggesting that you check on replication statuses every day (depending of course on the size of your environment) but you should be looking at it regularly enough to know what is going on and that replications in all directions are happening as you need them to.

Because Active Directory is a multi-master beast, meaning that any machine configured as a domain controller carries just as much weight as any other machine configured as a domain controller, information for an object that has not yet replicated throughout the environment could be a problem.  As in my earlier example, if I created the user object for John Smith, and it failed to replicate to the domain controller in Houston by the time he needed to log in, we might have a problem.

The login would likely happen, but would take a significant amount of time because the most local domain controller didn’t have the information needed to handle the request.

Misconfigured Firewalls (and other Network issues)

Windows includes a firewall to help keep things out of your environment that shouldnt be there.  I would recommend disabling the firewall on all your Windows computers and servers because it will likely be a bigger headache than you are ready for.  Also because all organizations should use dedicated firewalls to protect their corporate assets from the outside world.

My issue with replication came at the hands of a misconfigured firewall.  The firewall was enabled for a good period of time which caused hiccups in the replication of information throughout my Active Directory environment. The symptoms displayed were the previously mentioned domain trust errors that popped up when logging on or trying to unlock a PC.

In my research and previous experience the best fix for the trust problem is to disjoin the affected system from the domain and delete the computer account from Active Directory.  Then rejoin the system to AD.  Normally this will take care of the symptom.  Not necessarily the problem.

Outages and Equipment Failures

There is the obvious replication issue with failures and downed equipment.  If the replication is scheduled to occur between two systems and one of those systems is down, obviously replication cannot happen.

Working on these issues is an interesting scenario as well.  For the sake of troubleshooting, the usual steps must be followed and checked out even if the steps do not solve the problem, they will likely help you down the path to correcting the problem.

The moral?

Do not be afraid to check out the functionality of your Active Directory environment, being proactive and working to pay attention to things like replication and group policy settings.  Keeping up with those tasks before the problem strikes and requires many late nights to correct.  You will still have some long nights working with Active Directory, but they can be worth it, without all the fires.

Checking for compatibility

One new thing I noticed is that the SP installer checks currently installed applications for compatability with the service pack.  This is definitely new (or at least newly advertised).  Because of this compatibility check, the installation failed.  It said that an application was not compatible and stopped before problems were caused.

The incompatible application was Security Essentials.  So following the instructions provided, mainly telling me to make sure the incompatible items were at their latest version, I tried to update Security Essentials.  The application is as up to date as I can get it which means I have to wait until a later version is released to move to SP1.

I realize that the Security Essentials team and the Windows / Service Pack teams are different and that getting the post SP1 release of Security Essentials will likely allow me to load the service pack, but allowing the update for the application that fails the service pack to be requested by the process would be a pretty sweet feature.

Speeding the process

Allowing the Service Pack installation or compatibility checker to get the latest (or newer than latest) version of a Microsoft application to rectify the problem and allow the service pack to complete would be yet another improvement to the service pack process. I think the compatibility check is a huge step in the right direction, but correcting the issues that hold up the process would be pretty amazing and innovative too.

When Microsoft pushes a new version of Windows out the door and then a new version of Office it seems that some people get confused by the two.  For example, my mom has Office 2007 at work running on Windows XP.  When Windows 7 came out she was sure that she needed to get Office 7 to support any coming changes, but Office 7 would probably not run well in Windows 7 given that the current Office version is actually 12 (soon to be 14).

I do not think it is bad that people think this way, but I do think it something easy to correct.  The problem has been around since the Rolling Stones’ “Start me up” was used in a Windows campaign, yup… Windows 95.

It really is a confusing problem if you look at it from an average point of view. Windows 95, Office 97, Windows 98, Office 2000…. etc.  The fun continues to present day with Office 2007 (and the forthcoming Office 2010) and Windows 7.

The numbering of applications and operating systems is a good idea, especially since there is only a rare occasion when the OS and Office Suite get to shelf in the same year (though Office 2010 and Win 7 are close… loosely). It keeps the product simple and easy to understand like all marketing it isnt perfect.

I guess user education is the key here.  For me, referring to Windows 7 simply as 7 needs to stop as it confuses some people.  That is afterall why the product is called Windows 7 (oddly not Windows 6.1 or Vista but better) to differentiate it from other numbered products like Windows Server 2008 R2 (2008) and Office 2007 or 2010.

Simple separation

Surely the separation of Office Products from Windows products should not be terribly hard, afterall the users must shell out separately for them both.  Since I cannot buy a PC with Office and get too far without Windows (or some other Operating System) but I can buy and run a PC with Windows and not Office.

Educating users and consumers, friends and family, and anyone around you might be the best thing to prevent the installation of Office 7 and Windows 2010 (until Windows 2010 actually hits… if ever).

My question here is simple, does Microsoft think about these things?  Surely people on the Windows and Office teams have seen/heard this before.  Also… which version of Office was Office 7, I am curious to know if there was one.

Creating a VHD

Before your Windows 7 PC can boot from a VHD, you have to create it.  To do so you will need the following:

• Windows 7 media
• Free hard disk space to contain the VHD file

As with any process there are typically multiple ways to accomplish the task, however I find the Pre-boot environment the easiest way to get started.

Question: Why do I need Windows 7 loaded to use the boot from VHD feature?

Answer: The boot from VHD feature is available only in Windows 7 and it makes use of the Windows 7 boot loader application to allow the file to boot.

Before we can load Windows 7 into a virtual hard disk, like a physical hard disk it must exist.  Let’s create a VHD file.

Open a command prompt window with elevated permissions by right clicking the command prompt shortcut and selecting Run as Administrator.

On the command line enter the diskpart command to enter the built in disk partition manager.

From the Diskpart command line, enter the following to create a fixed size VHD file:

Create VDISK File=”c:\my vdisks\win7vdisk.vhd” maximum=16000 type=fixed

Figure A

The Create vdisk command

This will create a vhd file of a fixed size on the C drive at the my vidisks folder location.  Now that the VHD exists we can load Windows 7 into it.

Insert the media for the installation and reboot the computer to boot the system from the DVD.  When the boot environment starts, press Shift + F10 to open a command prompt and enter the diskpart command.

Question: Didn’t we already use diskpart command to create the VHD?

Answer: Yes we did, but now we need to attach the VHD file so Windows can use it during the installation.

Attaching a VHD file will make it visible to the computer during the startup process so you can load Windows into the VHD.  Because it works similarly to a physical computer, with the only difference being the location where the installation will be placed, on a file rather than consuming the entire physical hard disk.

To attach the VHD you will need to select the file in Diskpart by entering

select vdisk file=”c:\path_to_vhd\disk.vhd”

Where path_to_vhd\disk.vhd is the path and filename of your newly minted virtual hard disk file.

Once the file is selected, you can attach it by running the attach command in diskpart

attach vdisk

This puts the virtual hard disk onto the system so that it can be assigned a letter and get Windows installed.

Enter assign letter=X where X is the letter of the drive you want to add to the vhd

Now you can exit Diskpart and proceed with the installation of Windows 7.  When you are asked where to place the installation, select the drive letter you assigned to the VHD as the installation location.

Once the install gets rolling, it will behave just like a usual Windows installation, the next part of the process makes the VHD a bootable option for the PC.

Note: without adding the vhd instance to the boot menu, the PC will never know that it is an option.

Adding the boot option for your new VHD is fairly simple, begin by opening an elevated command prompt by entering CMD into the search box on the start menu.  When CMD appears, right click the shortcut and select run as Administrator.

Within the command window, enter the following two commands and press enter between each as follows:

bcdedit /copy {current}  /d “My Win 7 VHD” <enter>

After entering the first bcdedit command, the prompt should display a success message and the CLSID information for the new entry.  Note: You will need the CLSID data for the next command.

bcdedit /set {CLSID} osdevice vhd=”[C:]\<path to vhd>” <enter>

Note: The [C:] is required to be entered as shown, the remaining portion of the path to your vhd file should be outside of the braces.

After entering the BCDEdit commands you can exit the command prompt and reboot the system.  If everything was done correctly, you should see additional options when booting your computer.  Selecting the VHD option will boot your computer into the VHD copy of Windows 7.

Bottom Line

If you do a considerable amount of demo work or need a Out of Box experience for any reason creating a VHD boot environment is a great way to accomplish this without carting multiple systems around.  You can create multiple VHDs and configure them to boot, keep in mind though that physical hard disk space is consumed by vhd files and should be considered when planning to use multiple vhds.

My recommendation is 5 or fewer VHD boot options, one of which being your primary system.  Doing that allows you to backup everything you use within your environment by backing up a VHD.  If and when your hardware fails, you can then get the things rolling with a new PC and vhd boot.

Lots of possibilities and points of view

Windows 7 brings lots of new possibilities to the table by allowing boot from VHD and other things Microsoft has really come along way.  Hopefully you will give boot from VHD a try and post any gotchas or success stories in the comments.  Good Luck!

First… what is a vhd?

A VHD is a virtual hard disk, essentially an image of a system and installed applications that runs on top of another environment.  It is also the format of the virtual hard disks used by Microsoft’s Hyper-V Hypervisor platform.

Ok.. so a VHD is a image of a system… why would I want to boot from it?

I had once thought that booting from virtual hard disks was a bit more work than just loading up a system and pressing the start button.  And indeed it is a bit more work, but in the end, for some it may be worth it.

Note: While it is not the goal of this post to go through the process of creating VHDs for boot, it is relatively simple to do (and can be done using the Windows 7 media).

Back to the why would booting from VHD be useful part.

Suppose you got a new system and it was running Windows 7 and had a fair number of the latest bells and whistles (64bit chip, lots of RAM, etc).  Rather than grabbing your binder full of CDs and loading them into this new system consider this for a moment.  Computers are only new for a short time, and the harder you use them, the more you might be inclined to format and rebuild.

What if there were a way to keep your base system as new as possible, and still run everything you need without crudding up the computer?

Suppose your system was freshly installed with Windows 7 and had no other applications on it (obviously reformatted or built from scratch).  If you create an image of the clean environment and store it on an external source and then create the obligatory repair disk you can keep your PC like brand new for a long time, as well as recover pretty much everything you use with very little work by booting to a VHD.

When you create the VHD, you will configure Windows inside the virtual hard drive and add programs like MS Office, Nero, iTunes, and the other gazillion things that are on your typical computer.  All of these things live within the VHD, which can be backed up to external storage.

Because Windows 7 allows you to choose the vhd as a boot environment, the copy of Windows running on the bare metal of your system is virtually never touched.  Sure there may be times, failed hardware, changes in config, random Sunday afternoon formatting, that cause your physical system stress and require a cleanup, but with a system image of the pristine environment of a brand new Windows 7 box and the repair disk, that is a snap.

Still sounds like more work

The setup is considerable, since a good many have licensing to take care of their needs for OSes or get PCs with a retail license already installed.  Given the return that the IT department will get on reduced repair time will be worth it because the “possibility” of a pristine image of Windows 7 being available for use is huge.

Being able to push an image out to a workstation and reboot into that image in a short period of time, depending on size of organization might be a very good trade off given the time it takes to deploy Windows and applications needed (even though Windows 7 has a shorter time to deploy than previous versions).

Something to consider

If your environment turns over frequently or needs methods for testing deployment scenarios this might be a great solution for your environment.  I encourage you to give booting from a VHD a shot, it might be a great time savings in the medium to long term.

What are your thoughts on deployment from a VHD?

I am curious to find out how the retail launch of Windows 7 went as compared to any goals that Microsoft had.  Surely as it is available, sales will pick up, especially if the “it beats Vista” claims are true, and in my estimation they appear to be.

Have you upgraded to Windows 7 yet?  Either at work or at home?  I am getting there slowly at home, but it will be a while before I move that direction in the corporate environment.  In the testing I have done there, most things seem to work without a problem and the few that aren’t yet working will either go away or get support by the time we get that far.

The capabilities that will sell the application to management in most organizations are two fold.  Sure they will like the power management features and efficiencies of the OS when paired with Windows Server 2008 R2, for things like Direct Access, Branch Cache, and others, but what about the users?

Selling a feature like Branch Cache to an everyday user (or to management when they are wearing their user hats) might be a bit difficult because the end user in everyone, geeks IT Pros included wants the stuff they use to work.   In this case, features like search, Jump Lists, and stability might be the best thing to demo or to sell on.  The search and jump list features should increase productivity at the desktop because there are fewer clicks to locate files, I do not think this will bring a million dollar savings, but it should please the users that they can locate things anywhere on their computer and the network.

For the mobile user, the ability to specify a different printer depending on the location and network connected is a great feature.  Especially when coupled with better wireless support and auto connect.  The auto-connect thing has been around for a while, but it is very much improved in Windows 7.  As an example, on my laptop, it connects to my home network as soon as it fires up and there is no interaction needed… the same is true of the network at my office.  This has been excellent.

To create a case for Windows 7 in your environment, some cost benefit analysis will likely be needed, but work with your Microsoft partner and determine which features of the OS will be the biggest light bulbs for your company.  These should be the ones that you show off to everyone.  Doing this will help build user excitement, which can show management that boosted productivity is right around the corner.  Not to mention, getting everyone who will use the tool on board by choice rather than by force is always a plus.

I was reading a post at TechRepublic by Jason Hiner who pointed out his hits and misses in Windows 7, and in many ways I agree with him.  The system and data partitions should be split up by default to allow the OS to be wiped out and corrected without losing user data.  The OS is leaner than previous releases and will keep itself out of the way even in terms of UAC.

The one area where my opinion of Windows 7 differs from Mr. Hiner is in the area of the taskbar.  At first I wasn’t sure if the new Dock-like taskbar would be useful, but in fact it is onw of the most used places in the OS for me.

The addition of jump lists from both the start menu and taskbar make information very easy to find.  Mousing over the item on the taskbar, when it is running will show you the list of instances available just like grouped task bar items did in Windows XP. 

For example, mousing over a taskbar icon for Internet Explorer, will show a preview window of the open tabs.  You can then select which tab you need by clicking the instance.  For me this is an improvement over the list of titles when you click the XP taskbar because you get to preview the windows that are open.

I do not disagree that the new taskbar will be confusing for users as they get started with Windows 7.  The missing quick launch toolbar, and its move to the entire taskbar, was a bit of a change even for me when I didn’t use the QL toolbar for much of anything.

The review of hits and misses is a great read, and will help point out some key areas where things are better and where they aren’t, but because the OS is new and there are a large number of XP users still out there, the confusion will be seen, I think as a learning curve in most cases.  Will there be some who want to go back to XP?  Sure.  There will be and thats alright for now… as more and more companies and consumers get their hands on Windows 7 this will change and might even repair the damage done by Windows Vista.

So far, I haven’t found, other than a few driver issues that I need to fix, much in Windows 7 that doesn’t feel like an improvement.  The ability to search for anything on my computer from the start menu or Windows Explorer is huge.  I realize that this is a Vista carry over, but it seems to work better for me in Windows 7.  I no longer get discouraged that something isnt where I thought it would be in places like Control Panel because I can simply search for it or the action I wish to perform and get taken right to the item I need.

I am excited to see where Windows 7 takes the PC and Microsoft, and even curious about how it might shape the next version of Windows.  So far the vista from Windows 7 is pretty promising, especially given the view from the last Windows release.

Affiliation Disclosure: Derek is a contract contributor to TechRepublic and a Microsoft MVP. 

Sure there are new features, improved features, and some things that were carried over from previous versions of Windows, but it seems I am finding new things all the time (usually when I am not looking for them).

I was reading about jump lists in the help within Windows just to get an idea of what they were created for, which is essentially to provide task bar level shortcuts to things used frequently.  But do not let the simple description fool you… this feature is sweet.

I do a bit of blogging for a technology site (techrepublic.com) and am constantly trying to remember where I put a template or what another post’s layout might be like and jump lists are gong to save me time and desktop real estate for sure.

Windows Vista (and to some extent the desktop search updates for XP) introduced the concept of search to Windows users.  You click start (or the toolbar) and enter the terms and off you go.  This feature is still in Windows 7 and allows me to proudly state that visiting the All Programs portion of the start menu has happened maybe 5 times.

The search has been expanded further to allow me to be sitting in Windows Explorer and search for items right from the top end of the location bar (shown in figure A).  When I do this it also allows me to add filters for file type and other things.  In figure A I looked for a word template and filtered the list to only include word templates.

Figure A

Searching for items in Windows Explorer

This is where jump lists come in… I can save these search results to the Windows Explorer jump list for later, single click use by dragging the magnifying glass icon in the location bar onto the task bar.  This will pin the search to the appropriate jump list.    The Explorer Jump List is shown in figure B.

Figure B

Windows Explorer jump list

Now anytime i want to chase down a word template on my laptop, I can access the jump list by right clicking on the task bar item and click the search item for type = .dotx and it will open with the results showing in Explorer.  This way when I create a new template or receive a template from someone, I do not have to remember that I saved it as Myhugelongtemplate for new documents.dotx or something like that.

There are other features available in Jump Lists depending on what the application is.  They have their own set of items on jump lists that work with the applications they represent.  For example, Outlook adds the frequently used tasks, like new message, appointment, contact, etc.  You can also jump right to a specified folder from the list.

Other Office applications show a list of recent documents used within the program, allowing easy access to items you have worked on.

Remember, the jump list for an item on the task bar is available via right click.

Figure C shows the jump list for PowerPoint and Outlook.

Figure C

Office Application Jump Lists

Jump Lists have been a hugely positive surprise for me.  Using them has improved the experience of Windows 7 for me.  I hope Jump lists will improve your Windows 7 experience.

The chats will feature industry experts from Microsoft and the MVP community as well as some real world IT Pros to discuss the business advantages (or disadvantages) of moving to either OS.  The chats will not be a place to focus solely on the new bells and whistles in each product.

The first web chat will be held on September 30th 2009 at 10 AM PDT and will cover Windows 7.  As future chats within the series are scheduled, I will get the details posted here.

Registration info for the chat series can be found here: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032425300&Culture=en-US

About the host:

Tim Vander Kooi, Systems Administrator for Explorer Pipeline, a fuel transportation company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma will be your host for this series of web chats.  Tim has been working in IT for the past 15 years and has spent 5 in his current role.  He is also the chairman of the board for the North American arm of Culminis and the President of a Tulsa OK IT Pro User Group.