Microsoft Windows

The End of the GUI?

Back in the 80’s, Microsoft made their fortune by creating products that used a graphical user interface. Today though, there seems to be a reversal of that thought process. Windows Server 2008 offers a mode called Server Core that doesn’t even have a GUI, and more and more of the utilities that are provided on TechNet seem to be command line only. A friend in Redmond told me that Microsoft really expects all Windows administrators to know how to work with PowerShell, a command line environment that has started to show up in a lot of Microsoft server products.

So what does all this mean? I really don’t know. It’s just an observation. I don’t think that the GUI is going to completely go away any time soon, but it does strike me as odd just how much of a comeback the command line is making.

The WIndows Installer Cleanup Utility

Today I ran across a utility that I had never seen before, and I just had to tell you about it. Before I do though, let me give you a little background.

I have a Windows 2008 server that is running Hyper-V. Right now that server is hosting a bunch of lab machines that I am using to produce a training video on Exchange 2007. To make a long story short, I had a power failure last night and it caused the registry on one of my Exchange servers to become corrupted.

I was able to repair Windows and get it to boot, but there was a problem with the .NET framework that caused my Exchange services to fail to start. Because of the damage that had occurred, I couldn’t uninstall the .NET framework, but I wasn’t able to reinstall a fresh copy either because the installer was convinced that a fully functional copy was already installed.

During my quest to manually uninstall the .NET Framework, I found a Windows utility called the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. This simple utility removes applications from the list of applications that are installed on a server. That way, if you have to remove something manually then the Windows Control Panel won’t keep showing the application even after you have removed it.

You can download this utility from: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

Windows Experience Index Drama

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post talking about how a recent hardware upgrade had maxed out my machine’s Windows Experience Index. Last night I received a very rude E-mail message in regard to that posting. I wish that I had kept the message, because I would have quoted it directly. Since I don’t have the message anymore, I will try to give you a sentence from the message, hopefully without misquoting the sender:

“Those who are not familiar with hardware might be impressed by your claims, but I seriously doubt your honesty in this matter”

You can imagine why I was a bit irritated by the message. My first reaction was to simply take a screen capture of my Windows Experience Index, and post it for the world to see. When I thought about it though, I began to realize that a screen capture wouldn’t prove anything any way. It’s too easy to manipulate the Windows Experience Index.

If you would like to try it for yourself, open Windows Explorer and go to \Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore. Open the most recent assessment file using Word Pad.  The assessment file is in .XML format, and you can change the scores to anything that you want. If you look at the figure below, you can see that I was able to change the scores to 9.9, even though Vista doesn’t actually use any scores higher than 5.9. Incidentally, this screen capture did not come from the same machine that I performed my recent upgrade on.

OK, so back to the issue of the score that I got after my upgrade. For those of you who may be wondering, I was using fairly high end hardware, but certainly not top notch. It really isn’t that difficult to get a score of 5.9. The hardware that I was using included:

An ASUS M3A78 system board

An AMD Phenom II Black Edition, quad core CPU

4 GB of RAM

A NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 graphics card (the super clocked edition with 2 GB of RAM).

The Windows Experience Index

When Microsoft first introduced Vista, one of the new features that was introduced along with it was the Windows Experience index. The basic idea was that the performance of various system components was rated and assigned a numerical score. The lowest score represented your overall Windows Experience Index.

At the time, Microsoft wanted to simplify things for home users by getting software publishers to list a minimum experience index rating for applications rather than firm hardware requirements. In other words, if an application required a minimum score of 2.0, and your computer was rated at 3.0, then you could be guaranteed that the application would work. Well, that was the theory anyway. Ultimately, I don’t know of any software publishers that actually began using the Windows Experience Index.

Although nobody really uses the Windows Experience Index to determine what applications they can perform, I do use it to test the effectiveness of hardware upgrades on my primary workstation. Tonight something interesting happened though. My computer previously had scores ranging from 5.0 to 5.9 and had an overall score of 5.0. I ended up replacing the system board, the CPU, the power supply, and the graphics card. This time when checked the Windows Experience Index, all of my scores were 5.9.

What I didn’t realize is that in Windows Vista, the scores are capped at 5.9. No matter how good your hardware is, you will never score higher than 5.9. This means that there will eventually come a time when the Windows Experience Index becomes meaningless as a benchmark because of improvements in hardware. Windows 7 also includes the Windows Experience Index, and the maximum score has been raised to 7.9. Even so, I have to question the effectiveness of the index if it is capped. Oh well, I guess that’s what the Performance Monitor is for.

Windows XP Compatibility for Windows 7

Yesterday I was reading everyone’s opinions of Windows 7 on various technology related blogs. Some of the blogs predict that Windows 7 is going to be the final nail in the coffin for Microsoft. Other blogs predict that Windows 7 is going to be the best selling operating system of all times.

I thought about writing about the reasoning behind these speculations in yesterday’s blog post, but ultimately I decided not to. I’m really glad that I waited, because today something was announced that could change everything. Windows 7 is going to come with a Windows XP compatibility mode that is based on virtualization technology. This new feature hasn’t made it into any of the betas yet, but it will be included in the RC build that is scheduled for public release on May 5^th. Right now there aren’t a lot of details available regarding this feature, but I will definitely write more about it as details become available.

Windows 7 Starter Edition

In a slow economy, it is no surprise that netbooks are really starting to become popular. These low end laptops are small in size, and typically sell for around $300.

One of the problems with first generation netbooks though, was that they usually came with a Linux operating system. Manufacturers did this as a way of keeping netbook prices low, and also because first generation netbooks lacked the power to run Windows Vista.

Since Microsoft didn’t want to lose out on the entire netbook market, they have licensed Windows XP for use on netbooks. Using Vista still wasn’t an option, but because of improvements in the hardware and more efficient software, netbook users will be able to run Windows 7 when it is released.

Microsoft has created a low budget version of Windows 7 that they are calling Windows 7 Starter Edition. Netbook manufacturers can license this version of Windows 7 for about fifteen bucks. So what’s the catch? Windows 7 Starter Edition can only open three applications at once, regardless of what the hardware is actually capable of.

At first this probably sounds like a deal breaker. I sure wouldn’t buy a copy of Windows that only allowed me to run three applications at a time. Things are not as bad as they seem though. Just because you can only run three applications at a time doesn’t mean that you can only open three windows at a time. Microsoft also has a very easy going definition of what constitutes an application.

What this means is that things like control panel applets, anti virus software, system services, and Windows Explorer are not usually considered to be applications, and hence do not count against the number of applications that you have open. Furthermore, you are allowed to open multiple instances of an application. There is nothing stopping you for example, from opening a bunch of different copies of Internet Explorer all at the same time.

Windows 7 Editions

A while back I recall seeing a list of all of the different versions of Windows 7 that Microsoft was planning to offer. At the time I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the list, but I do remember wondering how on earth the average person was supposed to choose.

I recently stumbled onto a news story in which stated that Microsoft will only be releasing three versions of Windows 7. There will be a Home Premium, a Professional, and an ultimate version. There are actually going to be some other versions too, but those are supposedly going to be used solely in other markets.

The Home Premium version is going to be the Windows 7 equivalent of Vista Home Premium. The Professional version will have all of the same features as the Home Premium version, but will also include the ability to attach to a domain, and will offer enterprise oriented management tools such as the group policy editor and remote desktop hosting capabilities.

The ultimate edition will have all of the same features as the professional version, but will also include BitLocker and the ability to boot from virtual hard drive files.

The Theory of Evolution

I have finally returned from vacation and dug out from all of the clutter that always seems to accumulate while I am gone. While I wish that I was still in the Caribbean soaking up the sun, I’m ready to get back to business.

In a way my vacation was quite the eye opener for me. No, I didn’t spend my time off optimizing a cruise ship’s or a hotel’s datacenter. Rather it was what happened in my own datacenter while I was gone that was an eye opener.

What happened was a lesson in evolution. Not evolution in the sense that I think that my great, great, great grandfather was a chimpanzee, but in the sense that one of my servers has evolved.

Because I write about so many different types of topics, I had to convert the entire second floor of my home into a datacenter. I spend an astronomical amount of money on hardware each year, and believe me when I tell you that you don’t want my electric bill.

Back in the spring I decided that I could cut costs by buying a really high performance server, and using it to host virtual machines rather than using dedicated hardware for all of my lab servers.  Normally, I attach battery backups to all of my production servers, but I never bothered to buy a battery backup for this machine, because it wasn’t actually a production machine. It is just hosting fifty or so virtual server images, many of which I blow away and recreate on a regular basis.

A couple of months ago though, I started working on a new book. The book’s labs all build on one another, so I have been forced to create virtual machines and maintain them for longer than I normally do.

While I was on vacation, we had several power failures that took this server offline. The power fluctuations corrupted the hard drive containing the operating system. When I remembered that all of the virtual machines that I needed for my book were on the machine and that I have a fast approaching deadline, my heart sank (at least until I remembered that I do back the machine up).

I put a new hard drive in the server, restored my backup, and all was right with the world again, or so I thought. Initially, the RAID array containing all of my virtual machine images seemed to be undamaged. This morning though, I booted one of the virtual machines that I had not used since before my vacation and had a bit of a surprise. I was not able to open any of the management consoles. Every time I tried I received a Class not Registered error.

This error message usually means that a critical DLL file is no longer referenced in the system registry. Since I was up against a deadline I took the lazy way out and reapplied the latest service pack. This corrected the problem quickly and easily. Even so, the whole situation made me realize that servers can go from trivial to mission critical without anyone really realizing it. It has me thinking about what other precautions I need to take to safeguard other machines on my network.

Worthwhile Event

I just wanted to let everybody know that Microsoft is having a HUGE Windows event on Friday. The event is taking place in Redmond, but will be simulcast on the Web using Live Meeting. It is a must attend for anyone who is interested in Windows 7. Here is the agenda:

  You can register for this event online at:

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032396930&Culture=en-US

 I also wanted to let everyone know that I am going to be on vacation starting tomorrow. Therefore, the next updates to my blog will be sometime during the last week of December.

Enterprise Desktop Virtualization

With the end of 2008 quickly approaching, it’s nice to kind of take a look back and see what the big IT trends of the year were. I don’t think that too many people will disagree with me when I say that virtualization was huge this year. Even so, virtualization if going to continue to evolve in the next version of Windows.

Today, there are a lot of people who run Windows Vista on the desktop, but who use Microsoft’s Virtual PC or a similar solution to run Windows XP in a virtual machine. That way they can continue to run applications that are otherwise incompatible with Windows Vista.

Windows 7 is going to introduce a concept called Enterprise Desktop Virtualization. The basic idea is that you will still be able to create virtual machines, but applications running within those virtual machines will appear to be running natively (and locally) on the Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft hasn’t released a lot of details yet about how this will work, but I suspect that Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is probably going to use some of the same technology as Smart Grid.