At first Microsoft was planning a new “Guest Mode” in Windows 7 to replace the functionality of the SteadyState toolkit.  That feature was dropped from the final product, so if you’ve been using and loving SteadyState on Windows XP, you’re left a little high and dry.  There is a free product that is a kind of fusion of SteadyState, System Restore, Backup and VMware virtual disk snapshots (but for real machines)…

Ever wonder exactly what Windows prefetch is pre-loading with your request to load an application?  Now you can use this handy utility to find out.

AppCompat Toolkit 5.5 has been upgraded to 5.6 and now supports 64bit, includes community voting improvements and web service performance improvements.

Some smart folks at wintellect have collaborated with Mark Russinovich to give you a .NET Assembly that will let your application write to the Process Monitor log!

This week I built a virtualization server on the cheap.  I wanted to be able to test with both Hyper-V and VMware workstation on the same configuration.  However, once you add the Hyper-V server role, the parent partition becomes virtualized as well.  VMWare Workstation detects this situation and simply shows an abort message.

After having difficulty with a DVD drive on one of my laptops, I did some snooping around to find out if I could install Windows from a thumb drive. The first utility I found did not work but then the perfect solution came from the most unusual place and it works with Server 2008 R2 as well!

Microsoft has released a Windows Update that contains a large number of fixes for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server.  This is the second release of this package, so if you previously applied it, you may need to apply it again.

Microsoft is running a survey about the Windows Software Logo Program to find out how it can be improved.  For Windows 7 the program was streamlined for developers to make it easier for them to get on board.  There is, however, one area that remains challenging for smaller development shops - you know, precisely the one's that IT admins would love to have focused on building platform compliant software?  You can help by showing your vote...

If you've ever taken a class from DesktopEngineer.com or CSI-Windows.com and did not receive one of our cool Debugging Checklist mousepads, drop us a line to get yours. See below for a graphic of what it looks like.

Error 2738 is “Could not access VBScript run time for custom action <custom action name>.  You can quickly find out that you need to register vbscript.dll, but there is a nasty gotcha if you are too quick on the draw.

We still have seats available in our April 5th delivery of TRK-55 Windows 7 App. Internals & Packaging Jumpstart.

Even with all of Microsoft’s concerted efforts to get older MSI packages to run on Windows 7, there are still some challenging ones.  When these occur during the UI sequence of the package, there are several things you can try to get the package to install.

We are adding two new consulting services to our offerings on CSI-Windows.com.  The first one is micro-service offering called "Windows 7 Application Compatibility Shimming" - it is designed to help Administrators or Developers get a troublesome application working on Windows 7.  It is a fixed price and you only pay if the application can be made to run.  The second one is called "Corporate Deployability Assessment for Commercial Software MSI Packages"  It is designed for Software Developers to help them make sure their software package is easy to deploy.  The Windows 7 Logo has no setup program requirements - so even the most compatible software application can be difficult to deploy.

There may be times when you need a file or two out of a Microsoft SDK or other large distribution. It can be a painful process to install an entire SDK or toolkit to obtain a single file, so we’ve documented some better ways.

Quite amazing.  After I was away from my computer for a couple hours I came back to the below dialog window (Figure 1) asking me “How safe is your computer?”  Regardless of how safe my computer is or isn’t, I wouldn’t expect this from a company trying to get my security business back.  So I set about reverse engineering how it got there…

The other day I received an email about an error a user was experiencing, I wanted to see a screen shot and started to write an email detailing the steps required to capture and email me a screenshot when I suddenly realized “Wow, for how helpful screenshots are, this is sure an overly complex process”.  Some Googling turned up just what I was looking for and it is free and does not require installation …

Mark Russinovich has authored a Technet article on the changes to UAC for the Windows 7 release…

If you include a <trustinfo> section in a .manifest file for an EXE, virtualization is disabled for that EXE.  However, if you are not careful, you can end up creating a virtualized .manifest and it will be …

This is an interesting site which contains a DLL Catalog for every DLL that ships with Windows 7.  The catalog is built with the information from within the files – it does not contain commentary about what the files are for (other than the descriptions that can be extracted from the files).  It does…

Looking for the latest news about Windows 7? Windows7news.com has you covered. All the latest, including news of leaked builds. Don't overlook the...

If your company decided to wait on Vista, you may not have had opportunity to get into the core technology that Microsoft introduced in version 6 of its kernel which powers Vista, Win7, Server 2008 and Server 2008R2.  Integrity Levels (ILs) are a new and significant feature of the new kernel.

The 5th edition of the defacto guide on Windows internals went to press in May.  The 1200 page volume covers through Windows Vista and Server 2008.

Although it is listed as the Microsoft Press free e-book, it is still downloadable (as of 5/28/09).  You may want to follow up on this one quickly – the free e-book offers don’t usually last past the end of the month they are published in.

Troubleshooting and debugging is one of those life activities that we tap into relentlessly - yet never learn about in a structured manner. “Debugging” by David Agans sheds some light on the general principles that produce reliable results no matter what you have under your microscope.

I love dig deep into new functionality and find out how it works, but it also leads to unearthing implicit limitations - especially when you reconsider a technology in the framework of the current real environments it will need to work in, rather than the brave new world it seeks to define.

In preparing for a recent conference session I did some extensive testing of the big name feature in Windows Installer 5 which ships with Windows 7.  I have some concerns about this new functionality and I am sharing them in this post...

Chris Jackson has a great article on the reasons behind why Windows Installer 5 (Windows 7) custom actions are lied to by the shimming engine.  It also provides another great example that Microsoft is committed to the shimming infrastructure to the point where major segments of the OS rely on it for their own compatibility.  Shimming is not a bolt-on!

Why Custom Actions get a Windows Vista Version Lie on Windows 7

The attached videos contains the working version of my demonstration for Windows 7 Per-User Applications (MSI 5).  I have also posted the test package that allows you to reproduce the demos as well as do several other tests of Windows Installer 4 and 5 in your production environment.  The download includes a 30 page lab manual to step you through several of the capabilities of the test package.  Click "Read More" to see the videos.

I spoke at the Microsoft Management Summit 2009 on the new features in Windows Installer since the 4.0 (Vista) release.  As part of this I used a test package to demonstrate the features.  The attached file includes the test package and a 30 page lab manual so that you can test these new features in your production environment.