Month: July 2011

  • V2P [4], Thin PC [4]

    A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how our laptops which were set up with native boot VHD would all have to be V2Pd because VHDs on the native boot system tend to get corrupted more often. This week it is time to put that into reality by getting started on the 14 laptops…

  • More problems with Windows 2008-R2-Vista-7 security elevation

    Last week I wrote a rant about the changes MS has made due to its security elevation model implemented in 2008/R2/Vista/7. The post covered what is effectively turning the domain administrators group into a lepers colony, by effectively implementing built in and irrevocable Deny permissions to the administrators group on a computer or server. Today…

  • !@#$%^ Windows stupid ownership / permissions changes in Vista/Server 2008

    This is a response to the above message which zillions of system administrators world wide hate seeing on their server console. These messages were introduced as a new “feature” of Windows Server 2008, along with the changes that cause them. Microsoft arbitrarily brought in different meanings of ownership in Vista/2008 that are different from XP/2003.…

  • Windows Thin PC [3]

    Today’s Thin PC experience has been to set up a computer at work to see what I can do with it. I wrote a custom shell in Delphi 5 which has a very simple task of launching Remote Desktop Connection and passing a RDP file to it. This means the user doesn’t have to do…

  • Windows Thin PC [2]

    Following on from today’s earlier post, I have found out that WTPC is supported by WAIK, which allows for a custom image in the same way as we would set one up with Windows 7 Enterprise. I also found out how to get Remote Desktop client to start automatically by replacing the shell. However I…

  • Windows Thin PC

    Recently I was logging into the MS VLSC and I noticed a MAK for Windows Thin PC. So naturally I wondered what this was and took a closer look. Windows Thin PC was put on general release on 1 July (five days ago) and it is essentially Windows Embedded Standard (2010) (i.e. Windows 7 SP1…

  • How to fix Windows 7 logon error: “The Group Policy Client failed the logon. Access is denied.”

    I have seen this particular error several times with Windows 7 and Vista and we are not helped by a lack of documentation from Microsoft for this problem. In my case the most recent instance of this occurred when I had to drop and recreate a user account. The first time I got the error…

  • Native VHD data integrity issues / V2P [3]

    The first thing to say is we are now moving to implement all of our deployments which have been in VHD, to physical i.e. V2P. This includes all computers such as desktops, although being networked with users’ personal files redirected to network shares, they are not as critical as laptops which all have users stuff…