One Up for Vista, Two More Down

Earlier I described the saga of getting printer drivers that work under Vista without crashing the spooler subsystem.

I am pleased to say that after loading the Vista drivers onto the server and deploying them through a custom GPO that only deploys those Vista compatible printers, the first machine I joined to the domain after that has (so far) been completely stable and able to print. So far it is just test page printing.

On the other hand, despite running GPUPDATE I have not been able to get the old printers removed on the previous test machine that I was using. These older printers have various problem drivers and their non removal will simply cause more failures on that system.

On another test system today I was unable to install an application locally despite being logged on as a member of the Domain Admins group - which should have given me full control over the local system. Add to that the very first machine whose problems have been listed in a previous message and it looks like Vista is still too bleeding edge to be taken seriously yet.

When Office 2007 turns up here as well as our VLK and new security software I will start more serious testing of various things.  

Dual booting Vista and XP

I have just managed to get a dedicated PC that I will use solely for imaging, both for Vista and XP. This one has the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset (onboard X300 graphics) in an Intel D101GGC motherboard, so it supports Aero, unlike anything older that we have here. The fun started when I tried to install XP on another partition alongside the existing Vista installation. When you do this XP rewrites the boot sector, ignoring Vista entirely.

Now, one would naturally assume that with this super duper new operating system, Microsoft would have put some effort into making the Vista install DVD work that out and offer to configure the boot sector with a boot menu. After all, if you install XP first and then Vista, a boot menu is created when Vista boots that lets you choose which installation to boot from.

But no. Vista will get partway through the installation startup (WinPE load) and fail the installation with a message that implies your hard drive, DVD ROM drive or some removable device might be failing - the infamous "Status: 0xc00000e9 An unexpected I/O error has occurred".

This is entirely avoidable and not what we would expect from the millions of dollars that have been put into Vista development by Microsoft, that the boot loader is actually inferior to the one in Windows XP, which is completely unfazed by the same set of circumstances.

And so it appears that the only configuration that will work flawlessly is:

• Create two partitions using XP Setup
• Install Windows XP on the first partition
• Install Windows Vista on the second partition.

Installing drivers on WS2003 shared printers for Vista clients

Changes in the Vista print driver model means your existing server shared printers (especially if pushed down from a WS2003R2 server) may cause the local spooler subsystem to crash, disabling printing. Some printer manufacturers have updated their Windows built-in drivers but have not made them available for general release. Use the following procedure to install Vista drivers onto the server:

• If you use GPOs to push printers on WS2003R2, put a PC running Vista into its own OU to ensure no existing printers are pushed to it. (Block policy inheritance if necessary)
• Log on as a system administrator to this PC.
• Open printmanagement.msc (Print Management Console)
• Right click Print Servers and add the WS2003 server to the list of servers.
• Expand the tree under the server you just added and right click Drivers.
• Add the drivers from the local computer to the server for each printer you need. (Version number will typically start with 6 and provider will be Microsoft)
• Right click the WS2003 server in the Print Servers tree and click Add Printer.
• Select the appropriate options to install the printer(s). When asked for a driver, select the driver for that printer that you installed above.
• If you want to use GPO printer deployment on a WS2003R2 server, put your Vista clients in their own OU and create a GPO that deploys only the Vista-drivered printers from the server.

During these procedures you may receive messages that the spooler subsystem or service has stopped working. In order to complete each procedure:

• Open the Local Services console from Administrative Tools in Control Panel
• Step back one step in the procedure you were performing before you received the spooler subsystem error.
• Restart the Print Spooler service in the Local Services console.
• Resume the installation procedure you were performing when you received the spooler subsystem procedure. It should now be able to be completed.

If you continue to experience problems with the spooler subsystem, check with Microsoft Product Support for other possible causes.

Server 2008 Is Coming!

I see that Longhorn now has a proper name... it is Windows Server 2008. Everyone sort of knew it would be called Server something - the only reason to hold this up must be that they didn't know which year to release it :)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing it in action on our network, in maybe a couple of years - I am sure we will have a new server by then!

And if you want to know how they came up with the name...

Vista Is Still Coming !!!!

I had better luck with my second attempt installing Vista Business. For this trial I chose a Pentium III/800, about a 6 year old PC, fitted with 512MB RAM (the minimum needed to run it) and a 20 GB HDD. The install went smoothly but the Intel 815 onboard graphics are not supported meaning I could not increase the screen resolution above 640x480. A Matrox PCI graphics card in one of the slots soon fixed that enabling me to use the full 1280x1024 resolution of my screen.

Overall it has been a smoother experience but there is still a lot of work to do to get Vista running properly on our network. The folllowing are significant issues:

• Printer spooler subsystem failures due to non-Vista compatible drivers being pushed down from the server to the PC - need updated drivers from MS.
• Compatibility issues with the proxy server client service.
• Sync Files (former Offline Files) is not turned off by our policy settings.
• The whole client PC security restrictions model which is even more locked down than XP (which in turn was a lot more strict than 98). Lots of fish-hooks in that.

And then there's a lot of changes between Vista and XP that will take a while to figure out. It's unlikely any pupil PCs will see Vista for a good wee while, the main priority is to deal with new TELA laptops coming in later this year. Pupil PCs have lots of lockdown stuff that demands a whole new approach from Vista.

Update Glitches - 14/5/07

This is a list of updates that we are having difficulties with at the moment. This list will be updated as it changes.

• Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2: Most scheduled tasks no longer execute (Shadow Copy system generated tasks still work fine). [NOW FIXED - if you install a UPS, be careful because now it says you are running on batteries - and most tasks by default will be set not to start on battery power]
• Windows XP - KB931768 applied W/E 13/5/07: Internet Explorer 7.0 will not start, it asks to download the home pages or files and quits regardless of which option is selected. Removing the update returns IE7 to normal behaviour.

Windows Server Update Service and SVCHOST running at 99% of CPU

Well, this is a real big one, just about everyone who is running a big network and using WSUS will know about this one. Today I had numerous calls from users about their PCs running slowly. Probably this has just happened since I got time Monday to sit down with WSUS and make sure all the updates were approved for installation (Since we reinstalled WSUS on a member server that had been turned into a DC, some of the older updates were not approved for installation). But some of our users have been reporting this problem since mid April.

Basically SVCHOST.EXE is running the automatic updates scan, while this is pretty normal, it's said there are some bugs in the Windows Update Agent and other bits that are causing this problem. If your PC is idle or working normally, type wuauclt /detectnow at a command prompt or using the Run command from the Start menu and you will see it happen pretty quickly. SVCHOST.EXE will have an instance visible in Task Manager that is using maybe 50,000 - 100,000 KB of memory and high CPU utilisation.

There are several fixes depending on circumstances. Microsoft has said the patches will be released to WSUS on 22 May. The major one is the WSUS 3.0 Client Agent. If you want to download and install this manually on your PCs I recommend you create a restore point first. There will also be the WSUS 3.0 Server coming out in a few months which will also improve the situation.

Vista Business is unimpressive so far!

Last week I obtained an evaluation version of Windows Vista Business Edition (requires activation in 30 days). I try it out first of all in a VPC2007 virtual machine, where it installs successfully, but runs quite slowly. Buoyed by this success, I decide to try it on an actual machine. A one-year-old Intel D915GAG motherboard equipped PC with 512MB of RAM is selected. The existing XP system partition of 20 GB is duly joined by another of the same size for Vista's use in a dual boot config. A DVD is burned from the ISO image and the PC is booted from it.

The installation goes without a hitch. I download and install EasyBCD off a USB key to edit the boot configuration to make XP continue to boot as default OS with a short boot menu delay to allow Vista to be selected when needed. I then join the machine to our domain and assign it to an OU of its own to prevent anyone else except me from logging onto it (configured through Group Policy).

It is soon after this that the "fun" starts. Through several different boots, messages come up telling me that subsystems have failed (Spooler) or that processes (Rundll32) have quit unexpectedly. Or that "the parameter is incorrect" when attempting to run applications or control panel applets. And all this on the bare vanilla OS install, apart from the EasyBCD software previously mentioned.

A search of Microsoft's website yields few clues, but third party sites are found to contain a lot of information on all three problems. It seems the Spooler problems may be compatibility issues with our local XP drivers for our printers. All computers on the domain get a list of network printers pushed down by the Print Management policy on the WS2003R2 domain controller. However, I still have no idea how to fix "the parameter is incorrect" when running something as simple as a desktop shortcut, or an application from the search bar, and I'm unimpressed to get "access denied" messages when I'm logging on as a Domain Administrator.

So far, I will not be recommending early changeover for any school to Vista Business. The suggested path to follow is to either invest a lot of time fixing the problems as they occur, or (preferably) wait until enough significant issues are patched, maybe even Service Pack 1. I expect we will be offered laptops with Vista Business installed in six months, and we will then have to make a decision on whether it is worthwhile supporting. We already have offers of laptops running Vista Home Basic, and have to decide whether to keep that and wait for VB, or wipe and install XP Pro instead.

WDS, RIS and WIM

Right now I'm working on my second RIPREP image. Even though we have WDS, we will still be using RIPREP (legacy) images for a while, probably until Vista rolls into town. I have, however, started looking at the transition, installing Business Desktop Deployment 2007 and Windows Automated Installation Kit on my desktop. Since we don't have SMS, this would be a "Lite Touch Installation" scenario for BDD (in the Vista install jargon).

Let's take a quick look at the new Windows Image (WIM) based installation system for Windows Vista. Some of the important components and features of this system are:

• Componentised OS installs. Vista has a Package Manager (like most Linux distros) and changes to an image can be made fairly easily to apply updates, service packs, drivers and so on. You can also customise what is in the installation that you are setting up.
• Setup is WinPE based. There is no text-mode installation any more. This means text-mode network card drivers aren't needed for WDS installs.
• HAL restrictions on images are removed. Vista installation can detect and install the correct HAL. This means fewer images are needed for different hardware configurations.
• WIM imaging is file-based rather than sector based as tools such as Ghost are. This means an image doesn't run into problems with disk size or partitioning differences.

Let's also look briefly at how WDS works with existing Windows XP and new Windows Vista installations:

• WDS does not support RIS images natively. However it can deploy Sysprepped images of Windows XP computers.
• WDS is much more robust and easier to configure/support than RIS.
• WDS will offer different functionality depending on which version of Server it is installed on. "Longhorn" Server will only support the native mode, whereas legacy/mixed modes are available on Server 2003.

Steps for creating a WDS image of Windows XP in summary are:

• Set up the reference machine with the operating system and software
• Run the new version of Sysprep which is available for WDS.
• After Sysprep is finished, the PC must be PXE booted for the image capture process. You provide information for naming and identifying the image much as you would with RipRep.

I expect we are going to start using Vista much sooner than I originally planned; the reason being that with 20 odd laptops coming in, it will be to our advantage to image them as other schools do. However the timeframe at this stage is likely to be rather cramped; I'm expecting to get started on the transitional steps of learning about the new technologies fairly soon.