Don’t store a battery that is almost empty. Stored batteries continue losing energy, albeit at a much slower pace. If the stored battery is totally discharged, it could be destroyed.

Don’t store a fully charged battery. Fully charged batteries deteriorate faster than half-charged batteries. Most articles I’ve read recommended storing laptop batteries with a 40–60% charge.

Store the battery at a low temperature. I usually put it in the fridge. It keeps my battery fresh and crisp. Check out this table at Wikipedia. 0°C (32°F) seems to be the best storage temperature. I wouldn’t put the battery in the freezer even though Li-ion batteries only freeze at approximately −40°C.

Store the battery in a dry place. A moist environment will accelerate discharging the battery.

Check the battery state every now and then. I would remove it from the fridge at least every 30 days to calibrate it (fully discharge and charge).

Let the battery warm up a little before you put it back into your laptop. If the temperature is raised too fast, it will strain the battery.

When I started this article, I thought I’d just share a few tips I’ve found on the web. But then I realized that there are quite a few things that can be done wrong with laptop batteries. That’s how I ended up with three articles. It is quite amazing that we can build space ships that have enough energy to fly to the moon but still have no decent portable energy sources for simple laptops. Perhaps fuel cells will change the picture in a few years.

Please note that even though physics was my minor in college, I consider myself a layman when it comes to battery preservation. Any comments and tips are welcome. Here are some of the articles I’ve read about this topic:

• Lithium-ion battery, Wikipedia
• How to prolong lithium-based batteries, Battery-University.colm
• Laptop Battery Care, Battery.com
• Take Care Of Your Li-On Battery, Ezine @articles
• How to Take Care of Your Laptop’s Battery and Make it Last, Associated Content
• Notebook Battery Guide, NotbookReview.com
• 5 Tipps: So halten Sie Ihre Akkus fit, PC-Welt
• Should I Remove the Laptop Battery For A Desktop Replacement Laptop?, About.com

• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Some more better-together features of Windows Vista – Server 2008 (9)
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista – better together? (4)
• Windows Vista from A to X (0)

Fully discharge a new battery and then re-charge it. This calibrates the battery.

Calibrate the battery every 30 charges, i.e., fully discharge it and charge afterwards.

Avoid frequent full discharges. In contrast to NiCd (Nickel-cadmium) and NiMh (Nickel-metal hydride) batteries, Li-ion (Lithium-ion) batteries show no memory effect. That is, it will do no harm to the battery if it is re-charged before it is empty. Full discharges will strain the battery.

Avoid total discharges. Total discharges, i.e., to the cut-off point, can destroy battery cells. Not all cells in a laptop have the same voltage. Your laptop’s battery gauge only displays the state of the whole battery. If a cell goes below a certain voltage it will be destroyed. Therefore, it is safer to stop working when your battery level reaches 20%. The low battery level can be configured under Vista in the advanced power settings applet. Vista will warn you when the battery reaches the low battery level.

Avoid high discharge rates. High discharge rates also strain the battery. Therefore, I would avoid power intensive tasks while working on battery. Some laptops come with special power management software that can disable unused components. Every piece of hardware that is active produces heat and wastes precious battery capacity. I also recommend checking out Vista’s advanced power management features. You will find many ways to reduce the power consumption. For example, I always set the maximum processor state to 1% while working on battery. You will be surprised at what a modern CPU can accomplish with 1% of its capacity.

Avoid full charges. Fully charged batteries deteriorate faster, especially at high temperatures. Monitor the battery icon in the systray and disable charging before it is fully charged. I guess this is not really a practical advice. Hence, it is only something for battery life-saver enthusiasts.

Avoid charging. This might sound like a rather unrealizable piece of advice because an empty battery has to be charged so it can be used again. The problem is that a lithium-ion battery only allows a limited number of discharge/charge cycles. If you are working on main, Windows will try to charge the battery whenever it falls below a certain level. This procedure is the worst thing that can happen to a battery. Usually, power management is set to high performance while the laptop is connected to AC. This increases the heat in the laptop while the batteries are being charged. One option is to disable charging while working on main. A far better option is to remove the battery if you don’t need it for the next couple of days.

In the next and final post in this series, I will give some tips on how a laptop battery should be stored to extend its lifetime.

• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Some more better-together features of Windows Vista – Server 2008 (9)
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista – better together? (4)
• Windows Vista from A to X (0)

There are two important keywords when it comes to battery preservation: charging and temperature. That is, how the batteries are charged, and the temperatures to which they are exposed, are key factors that determine their lifespan. Today I will write about how temperature influences the lifespan of a laptop battery, and in my next post I will cover charging and discharging.

Many people believe that low temperatures are harmful for batteries because they think of past winters when their car didn’t start in the morning after a cold night. However, the technology used in car batteries has little to do with Li-ion batteries. The same applies to non-rechargeable batteries, which can even be recharged a little by exposing them to the warm sunlight. The truth about Li-ion batteries is that high temperatures are their worst enemy. Therefore, the following tips will help prevent laptop batteries from getting too warm.

• Always use a laptop on a hard surface. Don’t put it on your lap (despite its name) or on thermal insulating materials such as cushions. If you like to work in bed with your laptop, I recommend using a laptop table. I have this one, and I am quite content with it.
• Try to avoid charging the battery while you are working with the laptop. Charging the batteries increases your laptop’s temperature. The problem is that the CPU, the graphics card and the hard disk also heat up your laptop, which adds to the temperature increase experienced when charging the battery. Many vendors deliver their laptops with software that allows you to disable charging. You also can remove the battery while you are working on AC current.
• Make sure the laptop’s ventilation can always work properly. Don’t place objects before the ventilation systems opening. Don’t run or charge the laptop while it is in its case.
• Don’t leave the laptop in the car or under the sun in summer. Use a bike. It keeps your laptop battery cool and your own battery healthy. And too much sun exposure causes only skin cancer anyway.

In my next post, I will give you some tips on how to charge and discharge a laptop battery in a way that prolongs their life.

• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• Some more better-together features of Windows Vista – Server 2008 (9)
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista – better together? (4)
• Windows Vista from A to X (0)

First of all, I should note that I was quite surprised how difficult it is to find out what these “better-together features” really are. Microsoft’s marketing texts give hints, but they also do their best to disguise the real benefits of Vista+Server 2008. Journalists tend to just copy Microsoft, often without really understanding what it is all about.

I should also mention that my first post about this topic was not 100% correct either. In a comment of my original post, Aaron pointed out that NAP has indeed a feature you can’t have on Windows XP. The NAP agent for XP is not able to verify if Windows Defender is up-to-date. However, he was wrong about the support for Cisco’s NAC. He was probably also wrong about the support of network level authentication in RDP 6.1. I didn’t try this feature, but at least Remote Desktop Connection 6 for XP seems to have it. Aaron was right, though, about the lack of Aero support in RDC 6 for XP. Aero is certainly not available for XP. I think, this demonstrates how difficult it is to get correct information about this topic. And the main reason certainly is that Microsoft wants to push Vista sales with Windows Server 2008.

Anyway, here are the additional Vista+Server 2008 features I found:

Transactional NTFS and Transactional Registry

Vista and Windows Server 2007 both support Transactional NTFS and Transactional Registry. This feature enables applications to group together sets of file and registry operations with a so-called transaction. Basically, that means that a whole set of file system or Registry related operations is executed or none at all. So if the computer crashes before the transaction is completed, you’ll get a system in a consistent state after the reboot. The point is that the operations included in a certain transaction might run on a Server 2008 machine and on a Vista computer. Thus, this feature will improve reliability of applications running on the server and the client if they support Transactional NTFS and Transaction Registry.

Policy-based Quality of Service (QoS)

Vista and Server 2008 allow you to prioritize network traffic using Group Policy. You can assign priorities for applications, IP addresses, and TCP ports. In networks with limited capacity, traffic throttling can turn out to be quite useful if you have to deal with bandwidth sensitive application such as real time conferencing. Even though you don’t need Windows Server 2008 to work with QoS on Vista, there might be cases where you want to prioritize network usage on the server and the client. More information about the QoS feature of Vista can be found in this white paper.

Caching of server resources

Microsoft listed other features which I am unsure what they actually do or what makes them special in a Vista-Server 2008 environment. For instance, the fact that Server 2008 allows clients to cache locally “server resources” “so that they are available even if the server is not”. I have absolutely no idea what these “server resources” are supposed to be. The first thing that comes to mind is the caching of a network share. But that is already possible with Windows Server 2003. Please, let me know if you know more about this topic.

Windows Search

Another feature often mentioned is Windows Search. Vista and Server 2008 come with a new indexing service allowing you to not only search for files on the desktop but also on network shares much faster than under XP/Server 2003. This is certainly a nice feature. However, if you look at this comparison table, you will see that you can have the same feature with Windows Desktop Search. Of course, you have to install it first on your clients and your servers. With Vista/Server 2008 you save this work.

Terminal Services Gateway

TS Gateway is a new feature of Windows Server 2008 that allows RDP clients to establish an encrypted connection to a Terminal Server via HTTPS. That is certainly also a nice feature, but it is supported by Remote Desktop Connection 6 for Windows XP as well. So if this is the only new feature you need, it probably won’t be enough reason to convince you to move your clients to Vista.

The strategy of Microsoft’s marketing seems to be just randomly listing features of Vista or Server 2008 to convince customers that both operating systems work better together. You could as well include Internet Explorer 7 or the Windows Firewall which Windows XP/2003 RTM lack.

Anyhow, there are certainly some interesting Vista+Server 2008 features. My research about this topic just showed that you shouldn’t just buy anything you read about it in IT magazines and especially if it comes from Microsoft.

• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – DNS Zones – Overview (2)
• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Windows Server 2008 Foundation – Why Microsoft’s licensing policy is outdated (3)

A part of this post is based on Microsoft’s article about Vista and Server 2008. During my research, I found a couple of articles in IT magazines that for the most part just rephrased that MS article. This is a pity because Microsoft’s paper is a bit misleading. It often cites Vista features that work together with Server 2008, but will also be supported by Windows XP. One example is the support of Network Access Protection (NAP) which will be available for Windows XP SP3. Of course, if you want to use these features you have to install the corresponding components on XP first, which you can avoid if you already deployed Vista. Other examples are the new RDP client (Remote Desktop Connect 6) and IPv6 support. However, since you can have these features for free on XP machines I don’t count them as arguments for deploying Vista together with Server 2008.

Okay then, here are the features I found thus far that could make Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 a better team.

User interface

Vista and Server 2008 share about 70% of their code base. The similarities of these two operating systems are obvious. Even though you usually won’t use Aero on Server 2008, the user interfaces of both operating systems are quite similar. So if you are familiar with Vista, you will find your way on Server 2008 pretty fast. If you only have to deal with one kind of user interface in the future, it will make your work easier.

New core features

This is not only applicable to the user interface, but also to many new features. Examples are the new Event Viewer, the Reliability and Performance monitor or the new Task Scheduler. Thus, the learning curve for admins that are familiar with Vista is quite flat as far as the core features are concerned.

Patch management

The common code base also affects patch management. That is, you’ll often have the same patches for both operating systems which might reduce the amount of time you need to test them before you deploy them in your network.

OS deployment

In my view, the most important new feature of Vista is its new imaging technology. You can clone one and the same image to every kind of hardware. This allows you to create the images in a virtual environment using VMware Workstation or Virtual PC and deploy it to all your PCs regardless of whether they are old or new, desktop or laptop with AMD or Intel CPUs. Windows Server 2008 has the same cloning capabilities. This means that you can rely on just one deployment method for all your machines if you only have to support Vista and Server 2008. OS deployment with Windows XP/2003 works quite different and is much more time consuming. This is especially true if your organization still relies on unattended installations.

Event log forwarding

Vista and Server 2008 both support event subscriptions. This feature allows you to subscribe to the event logs of multiple machines. The Event Viewer has a filter which enables you to subscribe to only those events that interest you. If you only have Vista and Server 2008 in your network, then you can monitor the event logs of all your clients and servers on a single machine. It is possible to do that on a Vista machine, but it probably makes more sense to collect all event logs that are important for you on a Windows Server 2008 computer. Of course, you can do this also with third party software such as EventSentry or LogMeister on Windows XP/2003.

Event log structure

The new Event Viewer is certainly a nice improvement, but it is still not a match for sophisticated event-log monitoring solutions. But even if you use a third party event log tool, you’ll benefit from the extended logging capabilities of Vista and Server 2008. You probably know that Vista and Server 2008 offer a lot more event logs than Windows XP/2003. This will certainly simplify troubleshooting and also improves security because it will be much easier to stay informed about what is going on in your network. Since the event log structures of Vista and Server 2008 are so similar, it will be much easier, if you only have to deal with their event logs. Event log management can get quite complicated. If you have to monitor the event log of different kinds of operating systems, it will certainly be more time consuming.

Network-performance improvements

Both Vista and Server 2008 have a new network stack with a couple of interesting new features. In most cases, these new features only come into play if both parties support them. Since Vista usually connects to a Windows server in a corporate environment, you can only benefit from these improvements if you run Vista and Server 2008 together.

One example is the Receive Window Auto-Tuning feature. Expressed in simple terms, the TCP receive window specifies how much data can be sent by the transmitter before requiring an acknowledgment. If the available bandwidth is high, a larger TCP receive window is possible. Auto-tuning means that the receive window is adjusted automatically to the available bandwidth. Hence, in networks with changing bandwidth you will see an improved average network throughput rate with this feature.

Another example is SMB 2 (Server Message Block). SMB is the application-level protocol that is used in Windows networks for accessing file or print shares. Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 support SMB 2. If a Vista machines connects to Windows Server 2003, it will use the older SMB version and if it is Windows Server 2008, SMB 2 will come into play. SMB 2 has a couple of new features that improve network performance. It allows multiple actions in a single request (reduces the number of round-trips), supports larger buffer sizes (improves performance with large files), and supports “durable file handles” (reduces interruptions in case of short network outages).

XPS support

Vista clients can render print jobs locally using the XPS format (XML Paper Specification), Microsoft’s PDF alternative. This reduces the load on your printer server if it supports XPS. I didn’t try this feature yet, but as far I understand it, only Windows Server 2008 supports it and not Windows Server 2003. Please, let me know if you have more information more about this topic. My research about it was not really successful.

AES encrypted Kerberos tickets

Windows domains use the Kerberos protocol for authentication. Kerberos supports ticket encryption using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) since version 5, but Microsoft has implemented it only now in Vista and Server 2008. This should improve security in Windows domains. However, AES encryption is only used if client and server run Vista/Server 2008, and if the server that issues the Kerberos tickets, i.e. the KDC (Key Distribution Center), runs Windows Server 2008, too. In all other scenarios, the old method using the weaker encryption method, i.e. RC4 or DES (Data Encryption Standard) is used. More information about this topic can be found in the Active Directory blog.

Heterogeneous environments are more error-prone

The last subject is a typical example of how mixed environments with different Windows version can cause troubles. With two different authentication methods, things get more complex and are therefore more error-prone. Another example is the different ways roaming user profiles are handled in Windows Vista/Server 2008 and Windows XP/Server 2003. You will have to invest some extra efforts, if you want to allow your users to logon on different Windows versions.

Organizations moving their whole infrastructure to Vista and Server 2008 will have less administration costs because of the similarities between the operating systems. I remember quite well when we started installing the first Windows 2000 machines. Windows NT and Windows 2000/XP didn’t really fit together. So we wanted to get rid of NT as fast as possible. I think, it won’t be any different with Vista and Server 2008. The more homogenous your network is, the easier it is to manage. Therefore, if you want Server 2008 you’ll also want Vista. Of course, you always have the option to just stick with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. But to my experience, it is only a matter of time until you discover a must-have feature of Vista or Server 2008 for your environment. And if you start deploying either Vista or Server 2008, you will soon be in a situation where you want to move your complete network to the new versions.

Please, let me know if you are aware of other features that can only be used if Vista and Server 2008 are deployed together. I am also curious about the opinions of the Vista skeptics. Do you believe that you can get some of the above-mentioned features with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003? Are these features important or can you easily do without them?

• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – DNS Zones – Overview (2)
• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Windows Server 2008 Foundation – Why Microsoft’s licensing policy is outdated (3)

• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Some more better-together features of Windows Vista – Server 2008 (9)
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista – better together? (4)

Ease of Access keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts that can help make your computer easier to use.

General keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains general keyboard shortcuts.

Dialog box keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for use in dialog boxes.

Microsoft keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for use with Microsoft keyboards.

Windows Explorer keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for working with Windows Explorer windows or folders.

Windows Sidebar keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for working with Windows Sidebar.

Windows Photo Gallery keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for working with Windows Photo Gallery.

Windows Help viewer keyboard shortcuts

The following table contains keyboard shortcuts for working with the Help viewer.

• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Some more better-together features of Windows Vista – Server 2008 (9)
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista – better together? (4)

At least, this is how I remember it. Then, there was this Zero Administration Initiative in 1996. Now, more than a decade later, what is left of this “zero administration”? In my view, things are getting more complicated every year in Windows administration. Ten years ago, I was able to stay informed easily about everything in detail. Nowadays, I am often only able to scratch the surface.

There are five times more IT professionals working in my department now. This is not only due to the fact that things got more complicated, but also because IT plays a more important role now. I think that any kind of prediction in IT more than a year ahead has a probability of almost 100 percent, to be wrong.

Some days ago, a German management consultancy predicted that until 2011 about 120,000 IT jobs will be cut down in Germany because of outsourcing, offshoring and efficiency increase. In my opinion such predictions are just wild speculation. Nobody can know what kind of inventions will be made next year that might revolutionize everything we know about IT today. Maybe 300,000 jobs will be cut down; maybe we need 500,000 new IT professionals until 2011. Nobody can foretell that, not even Bill Gates.

• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
• Some more better-together features of Windows Vista – Server 2008 (9)
• Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista – better together? (4)

SpeedyVista has a comprehensive list of Vista’s services accompained by some explanation regarding their purpose. The list distinguishes between the different Vista editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business and Ultimate. You can use this list to disable unnecessary services to speed up Vista and, more importantly, as reference guide.

They offer three configuration sets as .reg files: Safe, Tweaked and Minimal:

Safe: Just disables services which do not affect user experience.

Tweaked: Many heavy and most likely unused services have been disabled.

Minimal: All services that are not necessary to every day use and windows update have been disabled.

SpeedyVista also offers the default settings as .reg file. I suggest downloading them too, before applying one of the special configurations. Who knows, you might not be able to access the internet anymore after you messed up your system.

I am always a bit skeptical about tweaking tips for desktop systems. You can find countless such tips on the net for Windows XP. From my personal experience they never really help to improve the performance, they just make your system unstable. Everytime something doesn’t work properly, you ask yourself if your tweaking is the reason. The time you spend to tweak and repair your system usually exceeds the time you gained from the performance improvements.

Perhaps, the situation is now different with Vista, because it has more gimmicks than any other OS. I didn’t try the tweaking tips on SpeedyVista, though. The real value of this site, however, is the list of Vista services with its explanations. This is compulsory reading for any Windows admin.

Via Vista-Blog.de

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• Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 1: Profile size (0)
• How to disable the Shutdown Event Tracker in Windows Server 2008 R2 (0)
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Update: I have written a new article about turning off indexing in Windows 7 and Vista. Read this first before you proceed. If you installed Vista SP1, there are other ways to disable indexing.

Vista comes with a new indexing service which improves desktop search. It not only makes search faster, but also adds some nice features. The one I like most is that it allows you to search very fast for mails in Outlook. There are, however, cases where you might want to disable Vista’s search indexing.

Good desktop search tools index your hard disk only whenever the PC is idle. This seems to be different with Vista. I often saw the corresponding processes (SearchProtocolHost, SearchFilterHost, SearchIndexer) active even though my computer was quite busy with other tasks. This can decrease the overall performance tremendously.

Another reason why you might want to disable Vista search indexing is, if you are using another desktop search solution. Or perhaps you only rarely search for files on your PC. If it is not the reduced performance, then it could be the constant activity of your hard disk, whenever indexing starts, that might get on your nerves. And if you install Vista in a virtual environment, for example, VMware Workstation or Virtual PC, I recommend disabling it anyway since it will slow down your VM significantly.

I know of three ways to turn off Vista’s search indexing:

1. Navigate to Control Panel, choose “Uninstall a Program” under “Programs” and then click on “Turn Windows features on or off“. There you can disable the Indexing Service Navigate to Control Panel/System and Maintenance/Indexing Options. There you can remove all locations or only those you use rarely.
2. It is also possible to disable indexing for a certain drive or enable it only for selected folders. You can do this by changing the Properties of a drive or folder (right click on drive letter in Windows Explorer).
3. The fasted way is to simply disable the Windows Search service. Run Services (just type “Services” at the Start Search bar), right click on the Windows Search service and select “Properties”. Then choose “Disabled” for the start type. Afterwards, you have to stop this service by right clicking on it and selecting “Stop”.

The first option is the one you will quite often find on the Web. But I found out that Windows Search remains active after disabling it this way. The second option works, however, it takes quite long time until all files in all subfolders have been excluded from indexing. Thus, the third option is the best one. You don’t have to reboot, as with the first option, and if your want to enable it again later, it will cost you just a couple of mouse clicks.

• Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 2: The 3-headed monster (0)
• Troubleshoot slow logon – Part 1: Profile size (0)
• How to disable the Shutdown Event Tracker in Windows Server 2008 R2 (0)
• FREE: Smart Defrag – A defragmentation tool (9)
• FREE: NovaBench – Free benchmark software (1)

VMware Workstation 5.5 works fine with Vista as guest. Some features don’t work, like shared folders, for example, but it is quite stable as long as the host is Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. However, on a Vista machine, it is very unreliable. I was able to solve some problems, but I think, it is one of the reasons why my Vista crashed every now and then.

So I was pinning my hopes on VMware Workstation 6 as a solution to my problem. The good news is that it seems to be stable with Vista as host system. The bad news is that Beta 3 is so slow that you can hardly work with it. I installed it on a new PC with 3 GB RAM and a duo core CPU. So my hardware was certainly not the reason for this poor performance.

You can only run VMware Workstation 6 in debug mode. I suppose that this is the main reason for the bad performance. During my test, my CPU usage was never higher than 50% and my virtual machines and my host always had plenty of RAM. However, my hard disk was always extremely busy; even though, no application was running on my guest systems and on the host.

I disabled everything which could cause heavy hard disk usage. I turned off logging in my virtual machines (add logging = “FALSE” to the VMX file of the VM), disabled indexing of Windows Search (shutdown the corresponding service), removed my anti-virus software, etc. It improved the situation a little. But when I started more than one virtual machine, VMware Workstation 6 was still so slow that it didn’t make sense to use it.

If the debug mode is really the reason for this, then, why it is not possible to turn this off? Who wants to try a software this slow? Is someone from VMware reading this? Could you please tell us how to disable this debug mode?

VMware Workstation 5.5 is too unstable on a Vista host and VMware Workstation 6 Beta is simply too slow. Basically, this means that VMware Workstation doesn’t really support Vista. Vista’s release candidate has been already available for quite a while. Thus, there was plenty of time to prepare VMware Workstation for it.

I guess, the situation looks better for Microsoft’s Virtual PC. I’m sure that many have no other option now than to move to Virtual PC. If you’re running Vista on your workstation, it is quite useful having a virtual machine with Windows XP where you can use the tools which don’t work under Vista.

Since VMware Workstation 6 was so slow, I stopped testing it after I failed to improve its performance, significantly. However, I found out that some features don’t work yet under Vista. In my test, I only could connect my USB stick using the USB 1.1 protocol. It seems that USB 2.0 on a Vista host is not yet supported. The “Fist Guest Now” feature can’t be used if the guest is Vista. The only way to get a higher resolution is to change this manually on the guest.

Shared folders didn’t work either. At least, Windows Explorer on a VM running Vista doesn’t crash anymore if you try to access a shared folder. You can, however, use drag and drop to exchange files between the host and the guest system.

Anyway, in my view, it doesn’t make sense to use or test VMware Workstation 6 Beta 3 as long it is not possible to disable debug mode. I tried Beta 2 on a Windows XP machine. The performance wasn’t any better there. I guess, this didn’t change with Beta 3.

Update: Please, check this post about disabling debug mode in VMware Workstation 6.0 Beta.

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• How to add VMware vSphere 4.1 ESX/ESXi hosts to Active Directory (1)

You probably know that the C:\Documents and Settings folder doesn’t exist anymore in Vista. It was replaced by the C:\Users and C:\ProgramData. Vista uses symbolic links pointing to these new folders for compatibility reasons. However, many guides still refer to the old folder structure. There is a simple trick for using the old folder name in Windows Explorer, though. This way you can find configuration files easier.

If you want to see the symbolic links, you have to enable first “Show hidden files and folders” in Folder Options. To access the Folder Options you must press “ALT” in Windows Explorer to make the menu visible. You’ll find them under tools.

Now, you should be able to see Documents and Settings. But if you double click on it, you’ll get an error messages. Even administrators don’t have enough NTFS rights to navigate to this folder. It is not even possible if you change the rights by taking the ownership.

You can, however, navigate to subfolders of Document and Settings by entering the corresponding folder name in the address bar of Windows Explorer. For example, just type C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\ and you will see all of the user profiles’ subfolders, you know from Windows XP.

This also works if you use a language pack other than English. On a German Vista edition, you can type C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\, for instance.

• What you have to know about Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (0)
• What’s new in Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (1)
• Poll results: Will you wait for SP1 before you deploy Windows 7? (8)
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• Poll: Will you wait for SP1 before you deploy Windows 7? (4)

Some weeks ago, I moved to Vista with my own PC at work. Originally, I planned a smooth transition. Since I got a new PC, I wanted to install all the tools, I need for my work, step by step and only move to it, when everything works fine. But, then, my old PC suffered from a hardware defect, and so, I was forced to change my PC earlier than planned.

Since then my productivity decreased dramatically. I was spending a lot of time to get my new system working with the same capabilities as that of my old PC. Many of my tools weren’t working. I was able to fix some problems; the others were replaced by tools that work with Vista.

Some tools seem to work at first, but after I used them for a while, I realized that they don’t run properly under Vista. One example is Locknote, a tool, I use to store confidential data on my USB stick. Everything seemed to be normal when I entered new data. But when I wanted to access this data some days later, I realized that Locknote didn’t store the new entries to my USB stick. I didn’t get any error message, though. Now, I know that I have to run Locknote with Administrator privileges, but it costed me some hours to get the lost data again.

Many problems are still unsolved. For example, there is no Vista driver for my HP scanner. Today, I read on their Web site that HP doesn’t intend to release a Vista driver for this scanner. They suggest buying a new HP scanner instead. Great idea! I will certainly get a new scanner. Rest assured that it won’t be one from HP. I can’t use my Dell SDLT tape drive either. Vista recognized the drive correctly, but Vista’s new backup tool simply denies that this tape drive is a backup device.

Those are just a few examples. My list of apps that don’t work properly under Vista is quite long, meanwhile. It is obvious that many software and hardware vendors are still not yet ready for Vista.

One of these software vendors is Microsoft. Many of Microsoft’s own tools don’t support Vista. The most prominent one is Systems Manager Server 2003. Microsoft speaks of limited support, but you can’t take this statement seriously. SMS 2003 simply doesn’t support Vista. So how can you deploy Vista if Microsoft’s own client management tool is not yet ready for it? Only yesterday, they released WAIK containing many important deployment tools. Again, I was running into problems when I tried to install WAIK.

Then, I read this interesting article about Microsoft activation tools. The Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) is scheduled for release only in March. First, they get on our nerves with this genuine activation mess, and then, they don’t even give us the necessary tools in time.

Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but I am really not in a good mood. Today, my Vista machine crashed three times. Yes, it crashed! I had to pull the power plug, because Vista was not responding anymore. I am running Vista on a brand new Fujitsu-Siemens PC which is supposed to be Vista ready. I was writing a text in Word 2007, when Vista suddenly froze. Only CTRL-ALT-DEL worked. When I wanted to access the task manager to see which app was causing the problem, Vista crashed completely. Even CTRL-ALT-DEL didn’t work, anymore.

I restarted Vista and opened Word again to check if at least part of my text was still there. Of course, it was all gone! Then, I went to a meeting. When I came back, Vista was in suspend mode. I hit a key to wake it up, but my screen stayed black. I saw that the hard disk was busy so I waited for about 5 minutes. Nothing happened. My display still didn’t receive any signal.

I wonder why modern PCs don’t have a hard reset switch, anymore. This could be quite useful for a Vista PC. After Vista booted up again, I tried to continue with my text. Good that it was being automatically saved every minute, because after 30 minutes Vista crashed again. This time, I was at least able to log off after pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL. I didn’t log on again, though. I had enough “WOW factors” for one day.

Maybe, it is just a driver that’s not working properly. Perhaps, I will find out what went wrong after checking the event log. It certainly will cost me again a lot of time. Considering the amount of time, I already spent with Vista problems, I have to conclude that it is not yet ready for a productive environment.

My personal answer to the question, I addressed in the heading of this post, is 2008. I think that Windows Vista final, i.e. the Vista version, I want to deploy in my network, will not be available before Service Pack 1 is out.

Please, let me know about your experiences with Vista. Did you run into similar problems or is it working properly for you? Will you deploy it before Vista SP1 is out?

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The knowledge base article actually describing this solution has the doc id 2039, although, it doesn’t mention Vista. VMware Workstation seems to be having problems sometimes on machines with multiple CPUs. I didn’t experience this with Windows Server 2003. However, it might also be related to the fact that I am running Vista on a machine with different hardware. The reference to NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Architecture) in the error message is a hint that this problem is related to AMD CPUs. However, you can’t often trust these messages.

The recommended configuration settings in the knowledge base article also improves the performance, especially, during the VM’s boot-up process. It will then only run on one CPU core, which has the advantage of your host being able to use the other core. When I ran VMware Workstation on a machine with only one CPU core, my host was often quite sluggish whenever one of the VMs is busy.

Add host.TSC.noForceSync = TRUE to C: \ProgramData\VMware Workstation\config.ini.

The knowledge base article mentions the Application Data folder under Documents and Settings\All Users. However, “Documents and Settings” doesn’t exist anymore in Vista. Please read the article for more information about the meaning of this setting.

Add processor1.use = FALSE to the vmx file of the virtual machine.

This tells the VM to run on only one CPU core.

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He says that XP runs very well with 512MB. I think “very well” is an exaggeration; “well” would have been a better description. It is interesting, however, that in his view 512MB on XP machines is comparable to 1.5GB for Vista. This assessment corresponds to my experience.

Since 512MB on XP PC is usually enough for standard users, 1GB is the minimum for power users. I don’t agree with Steve, that 1GB only slightly improved XP’s performance. Power users usually have several applications open. If you only have three or four apps running at the same time, 512MB is enough. If you need to run more programs simultaneously, you certainly need more RAM. This will greatly improve the performance of an XP computer.

Thus, if you don’t want complaining users blocking your phone all day after deploying Vista, you should make sure that they have 1.5 GB RAM. Or at least let some of your typical users test Vista for some weeks to see how much memory they actually need.

Since I don’t consider myself a standard user, I will run my own Vista PC at work with 3GB RAM. It is interesting to note that the new memory, I ordered some weeks ago, has still not arrived. It seems to me that I am not the only one moving to Vista.

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I wonder why he calls the last option “folder redirection”. I only know this feature under the terms “shadow copies” and “previous versions“. Vista creates a restore point (a snapshot) of the hard disk once a day. You can access previous versions of a file thru the file properties.

I also played with CompletePC Backup (“Backup up computer” in the Backup and Restore Center), sometime ago. This is probably the first backup software delivered with Windows that I will really use. It can create a complete image for your PC and copy it to a DVD or any other backup device. This is pretty cool. It is just a pity that it doesn’t seem possible with the consumer version, as he writes. This could have saved me a lot of time whenever friends call me because of their crashed PCs.

By the way James O’Neill has some other nice Vista tips in his blog.

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First of all, I should note that the OSD Feature Pack is a Microsoft application that officially supports Vista. So it is not just some badly programmed third-party freeware which was originally developed for Windows 95 or so.

The funny thing is, if you just follow the instructions in the manual, you will fail. On a Windows XP machine, you would just have inserted the OSD Feature Pack Capture CD to create a master image on your reference computer. The SMS 2003 Image Capture Wizard starts automatically and guides you thru the configuration steps.

With Vista, things are a bit different. Vista’s AutoPlay popped up when I inserted the CD offering to start OSDRUN. However, when I accepted to run it, nothing happened. Okay, the Capture CD is not up-to-date yet, so I started the OSDRUN manually from the CD.

Sorry, but it is not that easy. When I clicked on it, I just got a run time error. My next try was to start the OSDICW application on the Capture CD. Now, the wizard guided me thru the setup process as I know it from Windows XP. After painstakingly answering the wizard’s questions, I ended up with “Unable to assign SMS client“.

After all my experiences with SMS 2003 SP2 and Vista, I just thought, okay, you have to wait for SMS 2003 SP3. Obviously, SMS 2003 doesn’t really support Vista yet. But then, I remembered my good old friend UAC. I started OSDICW again by right clicking on it and choosing “Run as administrator“. You won’t believe it, but this time it worked.

Now, you might ask, why UAC didn’t pop-up as usual when Administrator privileges were required? I mean, UAC gets on my nerves all day, why didn’t it disturb me this time when it really would have been necessary? The answer to this question is quite important for every Windows administrator. That’s why, I want to elaborate on it in a future post

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The first major problem, I encountered, is that Client Push Installation of the Advanced SMS client isn’t possible. The probable reason is the failure of CCR (Client Configuration Request).

However, it is possible to install the SMS client manually, by starting the setup on the share (SMSclient) on an SMS server. In my test, this worked perfectly fine. However, managing Vista with SMS 2003 SP2 only worked partly.

Software distribution, worked without major problems. I was able to distribute an MSI package containing Firefox (just for the fun of it) as an attended installation, and as an unattended installation.

I, then, tried several remote management tools; some worked, some didn’t. These tools had no problems with Vista: Resource Explorer, Windows Diagnostics, Performance Monitor, and Remote Desktop. These tools didn’t work: Event Viewer and Remote Assistance. Some of these Windows tools started by the SMS are incompatible with Vista. The Event Viewer of Vista is quite different to the that of Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.

Shitanshu wrote that SP2 doesn’t support Hardware Inventory for Vista, so I didn’t try it. He has further information regarding the compatibility of SMS 2003 SP2 with Vista and Longhorn Server.

I, also, didn’t test the distribution of Software Updates since we used WSUS for that. I wouldn’t risk that with SMS 2003 SP2, anyway. My overall impression is that it is better to wait for SP3 before using SMS 2003 with Vista in a productive environment.

The only exception could be the OS deployment feature pack. We are currently using it to deploy Windows XP and are quite satisfied with it. Technically, there shouldn’t be a big difference with Vista since they both use WIM images. I am planning to test this soon and will probably report about it here.

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First, I installed VMware Workstation 5.5.3 on a PC running Vista final. The installation ran smoothly. I, then, copied a virtual machine with Windows XP, as guest OS from another computer to my Vista PC.

This VM was created with VMware Workstation 5.5.3 on a Windows Server 2003. When I opened it, I got a message that I am running Windows 6 which is not supported by VMware Workstation. But the VM booted up, anyway.

Everything seemed to work fine, but I had problems with the VMware tools. I wasn’t able to drag files from my guest OS to the host and vice versa. Using the shared folder option of VMware Workstation didn’t work, either. So, I reinstalled the VMware tools on the guest OS. After rebooting the VM, I could access a share on the host. Drag-and-Drop still didn’t work, however.

Next, I wanted to know if Vista will work as guest OS under VMware Workstation 5.5.3. My host OS was Windows Server 2003 this time. Vista RC1 could only be installed with a trick on VMware Workstation. This issue is solved now. Windows PE booted from the ISO image without problems and the installation worked, too.

I, then, installed the VMware tools and rebooted the VM. I was able to drag-and-drop files from the guest to the host, and vice versa. The shared folder options also worked. However, this time VMware’s “Autofit Guest” function wasn’t able to adjust the virtual machine display to fit the Workstation window, automatically. This worked perfectly with Vista as host and Windows XP as guest.

Maybe this was due the fact that I ran VMware Workstation in a terminal server session. By the way, if you have a jerky mouse pointer in this constellation, you have to unselect “Enable pointer shadow” under Mouse Properties (right click on the desktop and then choose “Personalize”). You also should select “None” as Mouse Pointer Scheme.

All in all, Vista and VMware Workstation harmonize much better now. I suppose, it is the same with VMware Server. There are still some features which don’t work properly, though. I hope, VMware will release a new version soon to fix these problems.

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There is a comprehensive table comparing the various editions of Vista. The differing features are explained in the text. Of course, it is a marketing text. So you shouldn’t expect an objective review of Vista. However, I find this document quite useful, because it enables you to search for new terms and concepts more easily as on the Web.

It is interesting to note that Microsoft offers it only as Office 2007 and XPS file. If you want to read it on a Windows XP machine, you have to download the XPS viewer first. This reader is included in Vista already.

It is the first time I used the XML Paper Specification viewer. I must admit that I am quite disappointed. This thing can hardly compete with Adobe Reader. It only has a very primitive search function, annotations can’t be added, and it is not possible to highlight text. The XPS viewer behaved quite sluggish on my 2 GHz PC when I scrolled down in the Vista Product Guide.

• How to store a laptop battery properly to save it from an early death (13)
• How to charge and discharge laptop batteries to extend their lifetime (26)
• How to take care of your laptop battery to prolong its lifespan (7)
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