Search Federation

One of the new lesser publicized features in Windows 7 is called Search Federation. If a website uses the OpenSearch standards you can create an XML file and save it as a .OSDX file so that Windows will recognize it.

Search federation for example allows you to search Wikipedia from within Windows Explorer. There are several connectors already available, you can find them at the bottom of this article. One thing to note is even if a site doesn’t use open search, you can search it using live search.

You can see it in action with the preview pane open here:

Free Hyper-V book

You can pickup a free copy of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V by going here. Thanks to NetApp for putting on this promotion, you must register by November 20th, 2009.

The New Efficiency

Yesterday I attended a New Efficiency event in Kansas City put on by Microsoft to help get the word out about Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Exchange Server 2010. The event was packed, I’m guessing somewhere around 400 people or more.

Overall, it was a pretty solid event. It sure helps that they gave out a free copy of Windows 7 ultimate. It was nice to get to listen to MS Technical Evangelist Kevin Remde speak, he had some great presentations.

You can checkout Kevin’s blog here.

AKB 1820 Clarification

I just finished doing a “clean” uninstall (per akb 1820) of NS 7 to fix an issue in AKB 26197. After attempting a reinstall via SIM7 I was getting an error when trying to install the Symantec Management Platform by itself or as part of the client management suite. Altiris knowledge base article 1820 covers the process one must complete to do a manual uninstall of Notification Server. In short the article states:

1. Backup your existing Altiris or AeXNS (this is optional, but recommended).
2. Backup custom files: This includes Patches, Software Delivery packages, and any other customized files within your Notification Server installation. This does not include core program files.
3. Stop any Altiris Service using the Services Manager
4. Uninstall All Solutions, Notification Server, and the Altiris Agent from Add or Remove Programs.  Do *not* remove the Wise Toolkit if it is installed. This may cause IIS from running correctly.
5. Go into Regedit and delete the following keys if they still exist:
6. • HKLM > Software > Altiris and remove the keys: Altiris Agent, Communications, Scheduler, StartSoftwarePortal, StartCMS, Software Management, Patch Management, APackageStub.
   • HKLM > Software > Altiris > Express and remove all keys except Boot Disk Creator, console, Winpk.log (these will exist if Deployment Server is installed).
   • Delete the HKCR\Installer\Products\4E5A8049C67… key and any other keys that relate to Altiris including AppWeaver, Alert Manager, etc. (This will require you to explore the keys to find Altiris references, whether by Solution name or Altiris).
   • DeleteHKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Userdata\S-1-5-18\Products\ any of the IDs that correspond to Altiris.
   • Delete HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ any of the IDs that correspond to Altiris.
   • Delete HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services any of the Altiris services.
7. Delete the follow locations on the drive where Notification Server was installed:
   • Install path\Program Files\Altiris\Notification Server
   • From Windows: delete any Aex files in Winnt\System32
   • From Windows: delete any MSI files in WINNT\Installer related to Altiris (Look at the MSI properties).
   • Install path\Program Files\Altiris\Setup Files
8. Reinstall Notification Server. (Use the version from www.solutionsam.com/solutions/6_0/ to make sure you have the most current version.)

Number 6 is in need of a little clarification. Where it says to delete any items related to altiris from HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\Userdata\S-1-5-18\Products\. The only way to know if these keys relate to altiris is to expand the key and click on the installerproperties subkey and then reference the values in the right pane to see if they say anything about Altiris, if they do then delete the entire key related to that installer.

Note: This is for Altiris NS 6 but I applied it NS 7 without incident, ymmv.

Update!: This did not fix the SIM7 installer issue I experienced. There was an event log error reporting that NS 5.5 must be uninstalled before NS 6.0 can be installed. This was puzzling since we’re trying to install NS 7. The fix is to delete the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\UpgradeCodes\BD07D9FBBCB1C4A4394A9F46F2FACC2D This should take care of the problem, I was able to relaunch SIM7 and install the SMP without issue.

DS 6.9 SP3 & PXE

Just a friendly reminder here: When you upgrade to DS 6.9 SP3, make sure you either choose to update your PXE server through the SP3 install wizard or go back and relaunch C:\DSSetup\setup.exe (C: can be different in your environment) and choose component installation and choose to install a PXE server to upgrade to the latest build.

Failing to update the PXE server after the DS is running SP3 will result in clients booting into automation only to be struck by a \BOOT\BCD error before downloading the WinPE ISO.

Thank you VBS Gods.

We are working on a Cisco VoIP deployment and I’m currently using our 3 Altiris Deployment 6.9SP3 servers to push out the Cisco Desktop and Supervisor agents. We ran into a small snag to say the least. The cisco agents have an OS check in the MSI’s that prevent them from installing on Windows 7. Our core IT group is running Win 7 right now including the HD supervisor.

After a quick google on a super easy way to remove an OS check from an MSI I found this. Be aware that you need to go through the text you paste into notepad and replace the single and double quotes with the standard single/double quotes in notepad and save it with the .vbs extension.

After dropping the MSI’s onto the VBS they install and run in Windows 7 just fine which is not surprising considering they are vista compatible. Cheers to not waiting a week or more on an answer from cisco.

Disk2VHD 1.0 Announced

Sysinternals has just released a new tool called Disk2VHD. This tool will create a snapshot of any physical machine and turn it into a VHD allowing you to add it to Hyper-V or Windows Virtual PC.

You can find the tool here. Hope you enjoy, thanks sysinternals!

More Content Soon!

I will be publishing more content very soon out to The Juice. I will be sure and link to it from here. Thank you to everyone who has contacted me regarding #3 for the Hardware Independent Imaging article, it is on the way soon!

Busy Busy Busy!

Have been so busy lately with work and things we are doing there. Binding macs to the domain, gathering advanced inventory of them through Inventory tasks from the notification server. I have the 3rd piece of the imaging series as well as another article for updating the ProcessorDesc.ini file to add descriptions for newer processors.

Should have these articles to the juice in the next week… so sorry for the long delay on the imaging article.

In other news, I have passed my Notification System Foundation exam with a 96%

Using Model_num versus prod_name for HWI Image Scripts

This Altiris Juice article that I’ve written details the differences between using “model_num” and “prod_name” when doing hardware independent imaging. You can view the post here. Be sure to read dfrancis’s comment at the end of the story, very interesting.