Senior Staff Engineer, Office of the CTO at Nerdio - on end user computing, virtualisation, modern device management, enterprise mobility, & automation
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 have a discussion topic that comes up again and again - client A has an application from vendor X that has only just been certified to run on Citrix Presentation Server version Y. This discussion topic is driving me nuts, driving me up the wall, round the bend, I think I’m gonna have an aneurism. Why is the concept of Presentation Server so hard to understand? Presentation Server does not do anything to applications, it’s Terminal Services that is doing the work. Write the applications properly in the first place so we can run it anywhere, run it as a limited user, run it on the latest Service Pack and run on Terminal Server. It’s not that hard, start here: http://msdn.microsoft.com.
Citrix have added a new ICA client to their download site. This client is very interesting as it uses application virtualisation from Thinstall that allows the user to run the ICA client without installing it. This is great for users who travel and may want to access applications from their corporate network, but end up in an Internet cafe where the computers don’t have the Citrix ICA Client installed.This client runs from a single compressed executable and evidently requires no change to the host PC. You can read more about the client here.
If you currently have Office 2003 (or any Office 2003 component such as Visio or Publisher) installed you’ll run into some problems if you upgrade to Office 2007 Beta 2*. The Office 2003 components will not be completely removed and you may have issues such as returning shortcuts or Outlook add-ins trying to reinstall eventually bringing Office 2007 to a grinding halt. If this happens, check out the “Windows Installer CleanUp Utility” for removing all vestiges of Office 2003. You may then have to perform a repair of the Office 2007 applications. See KB290301 for more information. Probably best to remove an earlier version of Office before installing Office 2007.
Now that Microsoft intends to expand their virtualisation strategy with the purchase of Softricity, I expect that we will see a few things with SoftGrid:
Always an interesting discussion around the traps is that of how much memory to install in Terminal Servers. Due to the nature of Terminal Server and limitations of the 32bit architecture, kernel address space will be exhausted before a Terminal Server will run out of RAM (depending on the number of users, of course). Brian Madden has an excellent article discussing this limitation.
I’ve recently had conversations about running anti-virus software on some specialised servers. Specifically Windows Servers running ISA Server 2004 or VMware Server (or Virtual Server). The argument for installing anti-virus software on these servers is to ensure they are protected against viruses and worms. I’ve been arguing against installing anti-virus software to ensure maximum performance. The reasons I have argued against are the following:
The User Profile Hive Cleanup Service is a tool that I’ve even been installing on desktops. A beta for version 2.x is underway and Thomas Koetzing has an impressive writeup of the tool on his site here, where you can also sign-up for the beta. Version 2.x sounds great and I hope that all of the features in this new version make it into Vista which a a similar service built in.
