Jason Yoder, MCT

You have the option to migrate EFS certificates when using USMT. If Scanstate comes upon a file that is encrypted, the migration will fail. If you have EFS enabled in your organizations, include the /efs:CopyRaw tag in your ScanState command line. No additional switches are needed with LoadState. What about your other digital certificates. The reference below shows to other methods to migrate your EFS certificates. These can be modified to help migrate your other digital certs. Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722147(WS.10).aspx

Windows XP mode is a software mitigation option that you have when migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7. Windows XP mode is designed to give you a fully licensed virtual version of Windows XP that you can utilize to continue using mission critical software that will not run properly on Windows 7. The question on how to deploy a copy of Windows XP mode in Windows 7 using an image based deployment came up in class. The like below will let you download a document from Microsoft with guidance in how to do this. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f142a1a-a7b7-4d0b-bd56-d9627f39c14f&displaylang=en

For those of us who have been around the IT world for a while, we know the pains of using the Windows recovery tools. For the 2000 and 2003 servers, we had the recovery disk that rarely worked. This all changed with Windows Vista and Windows 7. The recovery environment for both of these operating systems run in a graphical interface that is built on Windows PE. To access the recovery environment for Windows 7, you have two methods. You can boot from the installation media or create a recovery disk from the installation media. To get to the recovery environment, boot from the Windows 7 media. Click Next to confirm your language and time. At this point you will be presented with the option to Install Windows 7. If you look to the lower left of that window, you have the option to enter the recovery environment. This environment will allow you to run Startup Repair, System Restore, System Image Recovery, Windows Memory Diagnostics, and Command Prompt. To create a system repair di...

To change from a KMS to a MAK: • Click Start. • Right mouse click Computer and select Properties. • At the bottom of the window, click Change Product Key. • Enter in a MAK activation key. Reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd772269.aspx

After creating our answer files, the question came about as to how Windows knows to use this answer file. Our deployments took off after a reboot without us designating an answer file. Windows setup will use an answer file either explicitly, or implicitly. The explicit method of user an answer file is by running the following command from the installation media: Setup.exe /unattend:filename. This will launch windows setup and will take answers from your unattend.xml file that you created with Windows System Image Manager (Windows SIM). Windows setup also has some implicit ways of recognizing that you have an answer file. Windows setup will automatically look for an answer file in the following locations: 1. HKLM\System\Setup!UnattendFile 2. %WINDIR%\Panther\Unattend 3. %WINDIR%\Panther 4. Removable read/write media in order of drive letter, at the root of the drive. 5. Removable read-only media in order of drive letter, at the root of the drive. 6. windowsPE and offline Servicing ...

In Windows 7, and Vista, we have two opportunities to activate our software using volume licensing. Multiple Activation Key (MAK) and Key Management System (KMS). MAK is useful in environments of less the 25 clients, or when you do not want the clients to have a need to check in with the activation server. KMS is useful when you are activating more than 25 clients. These clients check back with the activation server every 7 days, but can go as long as 180 days before deactivating. Since the clients need to have some contact with a KMS host, the question is how to make this redundant. You can use the same KMS activation code to bring 2 KMS hosts online. One primary, and a backup. Microsoft does not recommend more than this. Reference: http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/aspnet/32994952/activationkms-issues-ca.aspx (See the comments from George Yin).

With most organizations electing to wait for Windows 7 as opposed to upgrading from XP to Vista, Microsoft has provided us a unique tool to help ensure our mission critical XP applications can still run in the Windows 7 environment. It is called WIN 7 XP Mode. Each copy of Windows 7 comes with a license for Win & XP Mode. This is a virtual machine of Windows XP that you can install on your users desktop. It can be configured so that when the user launches the program, it loads up the application. In class, a question was put forth as to whether or not Win 7 XP Mode can use Domain Credentials. The answer is yes. Here is the procedure below. • Open the settings for the XP VM and delete the cashed credentials. • Start the XP Virtual Machine • Right Click on My Computer and select Properties • On the computer name tab, click the change button • Join the computer to the domain and reboot it • Now when it starts logon with DomainName\UserName Reference: http://blog.sbs-rocks.com/2...

In class, the annouance of an autorun box popping up provoked this question. You can selectively disable the autorun feature on your removable drives, fixed drives, Network Drives, CD/DVD, and all others that you can think of. Follow the link below for instructions. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967715/en-us