Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 introduce a number of new user profile paths and environment variables that differ from earlier versions of Windows and these changes may have an impact on scripts such as logon scripts and application install scripts. Most scripts should work correctly - VBScript scripts that use system functions to find folder paths should work as expected, however batch scripts that use environment variables or hard codes scripts will require modifications. Here’s a short run down of the changes.

I’ve recently updated a few WSUS servers with WSUS SP1. The admin tool shows build numbers but does not state if the version is RTM or SP1. For reference these build numbers are:

Like all ridiculously expensive software we love to hate, the SAP GUI does not use standard Windows print queues to send print jobs, but implements a printing method they call SAPLPD instead. This is launched by a process that looks to be external to the SAP GUI component and does not respect the working directory key in each users registry. This process will attempt to write a file named LPRINT.NUM to the working directory of it’s parent process, the SAP GUI. If user does not have rights to write to this location the SAP GUI will exit completely without warning.

When Microsoft released Windows 2000, the new default UI font was changed to Tahoma from Microsoft Sans Serif. Unfortunately, not every team involved in developing Windows got the memo detailing this change. (There’s a whole team for the Display properties applet right?). I think it was also the same teams that then forgot to change the font in various dialogs in Windows XP. It still haunts us in various locations in Windows Vista as of build 5456 for which the new UI font is Segoe UI. Well if you’re picky like me and just want to see the same font across all UI elements, you can get most of the way there with a couple of registry edits. Navigate to:

I’ve always thought that turning the little icon that displays network traffic on is dumb. From remote RDP or ICA sessions, it creates and endless loop of traffic. Here’s a quote from the “Advanced Concepts Guide: Citrix Presentation Server for Windows Version 4.0”

After adding my laptop running Windows Vista to our AD domain, Windows Update was unable to synchronise and would produce the following errors:

If the Citrix Program Neighbourhood Agent is slow to connect to the PNAgent web service and then takes time to display a list of applications, it’s probably related to folder redirection of the Application Data folder. Program Neighbourhood Agent, by default, stores cache information in the following folder:

Outlook Web Access can be protected with an extra layer of authentication via RSA SecurID. This can be implemented in one of two ways:

Truly geeky people will appreciate the ability to run their mailbox on their very own Exchange cluster running on their laptop. Not quite high availability but high on a list of silly things to do. Here’s how to create a cluster in VMware Workstation:

I’ve just spent yesterday and today working on a site where the client had a need to run both the Microsoft Java VM and the Sun Java VM on their Terminal Servers. (The Microsoft Java VM is used for one site only, yes developers strike again). I was pretty happy when I was able to use Presentation Server 4.0 and Application Isolation Environments to get these to work on the same server, in Internet Explorer, at the same time. Here’s how: