I always thought that USB bandwidth is sufficient for high transfer rates of 7200 drives and could not find any information about this on the Internet. So, since I believed it will give a huge performance boots for my USB drives I was looking for 7200 drives to put it into the USB case. Now, after I made couple of tests I realized, that it does not make a difference what the rotations per minute rate is if you HDD is relatively new and have transfer rate over 25 MB/s. So conclusion is - don’t buy 7200 drive for your USB storage case hoping that it will be faster than modern 5400 drives. You will not get any noticeable benefit out of it. Here are pictures from HDD Tune test. HDD’s I tested were Samsung SSD PM800 250GB, Western Digital WD3200BEKT, Fujitsu MHZ2250BJ:

Hope everyone already upgraded his notebook to the latest and greatest Microsoft OS - Windows 7.

If you have Windows 7 64bit you may have encountered into the same issue like I did - in Windows 7 the Biometric Device does not work with the drivers from Dell Website.
Now if you have Dell XPS M1330 with the fingerprint reader the TouchChip you might realised that the installation of Windows Vista Drivers and software from the Dell website:

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?os=WV64&catid=-1&dateid=-1&impid=-1&osl=EN&typeid=-1&formatid=-1&servicetag=&SystemID=XPS_M1330&hidos=WLH&hidlang=en&TabIndex=&scanSupported=True&scanConsent=False

Go under the section - Security. The software which might be found there is:

Everyone who speaks German is located near Zurich and is interested in latest developments in Microsoft Technology may want to visit the "Microsoft Evolution Day" organized by Digicomp Swiss on December 3, 2009 (which is Thursday) with collaboration of he MVP and MCT community.I will also be present there with a Workshop "

In one of the previous blog entries I described how to install RDP 6.1 on Windows 2003. Now, when RDC version 7 have been released for Windows XP 7:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=72158b4e-b527-45e4-af24-d02938a95683&displaylang=en

Let's see if you we can do the same with RDP 7. When we try to start the installation, the already well known info pop's up:

KB969084 Setup Error: "The version of Windows you have installed does not match the update you are trying to install."

okay so same like with RDP 6.1. Lets go into the properties of the installation file:

This time Microsoft TechED 2009 Europe will take place in Berlin, Germany. It is not as warm and cosy as in Barcelona at this time of the year but still it is an amazing place to be! So this year I attend the Event again in the role of "Ask the Experts" :)
Microsoft says there will be 6800 people attending which is about 1800 people more then in Barcelona last year. Having a quick look at the sessions I found some interesting sessions I plan to attend

Monday, 9 November

10:45 - 12:00  SVR206 Why Is Terminal Services called Remote Desktop Services?
London 1 - Hall 7-1b  

SVR303 Planning for Windows Server 2008 R2, Virtualization and Server Consolidation with Windows Server Solution Accelerators
Paris 2 - Hall 7-1c  
 
13:30 - 14:45  CLI305 T
hin, VDI, Blade, Thick, Optimized Desktop... What Do You Use? What Is Microsoft' ...

When you install Windows 7 (in my case 32bit) on XenServer 5.5 and then install XenServer tools on the Windows 7 you might get for what ever reason the Bluescreen

0x00F7DEAD (0x8E71E958, 0x0000015D, 0x00000000,0x00000000)

xennet6.sys - address 8e71e958 base at 8e716000, DateStamp 4a083020

with the reason of it xennet6.sys. To fix it just add those two values to your registry:

First find:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

Then add two value DWORD32

DisableLargeSendOffload  and put the 1 value to it

as well

DisableTaskOffload and also add 1 to it

It is so great when you have a nice HP Server, which is in every HCL of every Software Vendor - from Linux to Windows. But if that is not the case and you want to build a small lab at home or in the garage you might want to decide to build a " Server" on your  knees. And while an installation in a data centers on those fine HP DL 380 or BL blades never have got me any troubles this time I faced many of them! So the setup:

Motherboard: MB ASUS M3N78-VM NF8200 AM2 FSB 5200MHz PCIe mATX
Memory: DDR2 2x2048MB Kit Kingston HyperX 1066MHz CL5
CPU: CPU AMD Phenom X4 9650 2,30GHz AM2+ 4MB 95W
Hard Drive: SATA 320GB WD
CD-ROM: some old IDE CD-ROM

So, with brand name components like this you would think of some HW incompatibility as the last option. Not the case with XenServer 5.5 Installation. Besides the HCL list of XenServer can be found here:

http://hcl.xensource.com/

After burning the CD which I downloaded from Citrix:

http://www.citrix.com/lang/English/lp/lp_1688615.asp

with a good Plextor DVD Writer I put the DVD into the IDE Drive and started my knee build Server. The first error I got couple of times was KERNEL PANIC - the ...

So you decided to learn something about Terminal Services or as it is called now - Remote Desktop Services. Where do you start. First you have to decide what version are you planning to work with. If you are new to the TS world I would suggest to Start with Windows 2003 and only after engage the 2008 version. Keep in mind that while the difference between Windows 2003 and 2003 R2 in terms of Terminal services is marginal, there is a big difference between 2008 and 2008 R2. I personally would recommend to go for those two books on the topic:

Terminal Services for Microsoft Windows Server 2003: Advanced Technical Design Guide (Advanced Technical Design Guide series) from Brian Madden

and for Windows 2008

------------- MSDN --------------------------

If you are one of the lucky owners of Microsoft MSDN subscribtion and you are working on something which imply testing Terminal Services application mode you might wonder whether or not you can get TS CAL's as part of your MSDN subscribtion. Indeed you can, just follow this simple guidline:

1) Install Windows 2008 or R2 or 2003 or even 2000  (with MSDN key to avoid death after 180 Days)
2) Activate W2008 (you will have to do that once in awhile since MSDN keys need to be reactivated once in a while)
3) Install Roles, TS inclusive
4) Call Microsoft Clearance house (a.k.a when you are in License Server - add TS CAL - activate by Phone - call Clearance house)
5) State your MSDN subscribtion number and what ever information they will ask
6) Request the type of TS CAL you need (W2000, 2003 or 2008)
7) enter the code stated by MS employee

Thats it. So as a valid MSDN subscriber you can call MS Clearance house and request TS CAL for developer purposes and only for them. According to the License agreement you are not allowed to use it in production.

It is not a good practice to store Profiles locally on a Terminal Server - just because if the server dies all the data of your users is gone (unless you made a backup :-) ). However, if you have to have it you might sometimes notice that the disc space on your TS Box looses space faster than expected. When you do some research you find out that mysterious WER folder, which might contain hundreds of MB's in your users (each of them) folders. This WER folder is the place:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER

where the Windows Error Resporting information is stored. Unless you can start something with that you don't need that folder or the information in it. It's the folder where all the application crash information is stored for a particular user.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc709644(WS.10).aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb513638(VS.85).aspx

To Disable Windows Error Rep ...