cluberti

How about WMI filtering so that policy doesn't apply to non-XP clients?

The _msdcs tree should contain the GUIDs (and A records) for all of the domain controllers in your environment at the root domain level, as well as sub-folders (containing records, of course) like dc, domains, gc, and pdc. If it is empty, your domain's DNS and site structure is most definitely broken, and you should be resolving this before going any further. Usually restarting netlogon on the DCs fixes this, but this can fail if an authoritative restore failed in the past, or if a DC promotion event caused a GC issue, etc (you are probably going to find the logs on your DCs and DNS server(s) are unclean, and full of errors - start by resolving those). The reason this must pass is to access the Active Directory and update the Schema (which Exchange is going to do), it needs to find the domain controllers and holders of the FSMO roles, as well as a global catalog server, before running the update. Having host records is fine, but your domain's forward records for the AD itself are broken, and Exchange will not continue (nor should it try) to install on a broken domain.

Correct, but using a system backup image to install to another hardware platform isn't technically supported. I try to avoid hacks if there's an actual supported method of doing something - the last thing you want is to, for example, call Microsoft two years down the road and have them deny you help because the entire installation you're running on is not supported due to something you did to save 60 minutes.

Well, it's complaining that you are missing a DC host record that it thinks is still valid (de67edef-eceb-4b03-a449-15b7f915044b) in the _msdcs tree for DNS in your domain. You should probably start by figuring out what that GUID points to and work from there.

Seems like you might want to consider WSUS, for both a new patching system (it's free) and the fact that it gives lists of all patches, KB numbers, and tracks the installation on all reporting machines. If you're looking for just a list of all updates that apply to all machines with variants for each version of a particular product, I don't think you'll find one that meets your rather stringent goals.

If you VPN from one RFC1918 network to another with the same IP range, you'll have trouble routing packets between the two networks (hosts will be the same IPs on both - not good for VPN).

The system backup image made by the backup program isn't meant for this - you want to do what some of the other posters have said and either make (and sysprep) a Windows 7 image and capture it using imagex, or use a 3rd party tool to capture it. Do not install a system and make an image with the backup program to accomplish this, as it's likely not to work.

Agreed - I personally use 172.22.x.x/24, but that's because I've seen most home/smb networking equipment try to use a class C either at 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x, so I avoid those ranges due to the VPN connections I make. Just avoid using 172.16.0.0/12 or 10.0.0.0/8 for a home network - make sure you are breaking them down (any range) into a proper class C (or smaller) for a home network.

What steps do you use specifically to reproduce this? I can't with a simple advanced search, so what exactly are you doing? That way I can try to reproduce the error with your steps.

Windows 2000 shipped with a version of WISE package installer, but I don't know what free packagers are out there that will actually make it easy to create an MSI package. There are lots that can do it, but none are free, and very few are easy for first-timers.

Good catch - see if you can repro with a full Win7 install, and if not, come back and ask. If you've used vLite, try posting this there instead.

When I used to run XP systems, the first time the lab machine would run across this I would simply uncheck the "warn me..." box on that dialog, and it would do basically the same thing and noone else would have the issue running that same executable again.

You auth to the remoteapp endpoint, then you're passed off to the internal server hosting the app (even if it's the same box), and you have to auth again to get an actual logon session to run the app.

If you're trying to share files and folders, ICS is not meant for this - Homegroup is. If you're trying to get the Desktop to share it's internet connection so the laptop can route through it, then this should be working. It would be better if you used the Homegroup feature if you're trying to share files/folders/printers/etc.

The unattended guide here has info for doing this.

No offense, but it's the weekend for me, and in general I stay offline during this time. I expect most others who frequent here do as well (given the relatively large dip in traffic from Friday afternoon to Monday morning). Be patient.

Yes, I'd be suspicious of a drive-by or LSP issue, something that would affect IE but not Firefox. That domain is registered to a googlemail.com address, and the registrar's address is the Borough of Manhattan Community College - the zip code on the registration is wrong , and there are no apartments at that address at all either. Whatever it is, it isn't friendly.

It sounds like you might want to pick up Windows Internals (5th Edition) from Mark Russinovich and start reading on page 391, but to answer your questions: On a multiprocessor system, the Windows thread scheduler can schedule any thread on any available processor, and it keeps a "database" (actually called the dispatcher database) of which threads are waiting to run, which processors are executing which threads currently, and each processor in a system has it's own dispatcher ready queue (it speeds up and makes more efficient the thread manager's dispatch decisions). Each thread can be in any one of a number of actual states - specifically: Ready: A thread is waiting to execute, and is in the pool of threads that the scheduler can choose to schedule to a processor.Deferred Ready: A thread has been selected to run on a processor, but isn't actually scheduled to run yet.Standby: A thread that has been assigned a processor to run, and is on the list waiting to be chosen to run (only one thread per processor can be in this state). Unless pre-empted by a higher-priority thread, this is going to be the next thread that the processor is context-switched to when the current thread is finished or is switched off after it's quantum time has completed.Running: I think this one is obvious .Waiting: A thread is waiting on something to finish before it can continue (that something can be waiting for an object synchronization, waiting for an I/O completion, or any number of other events that the thread is waiting to fire before it will continue).Gate Wait: A thread specifically waiting on the gate dispatcher object - this is a heavily optimized call that disables all kernel-mode APC, avoids raising to IRQL to APC level, and doesn't need a global dispatch lock, and is a very special kind of wait.Transition: A thread is ready to execute, but it's stack is currently paged out of memory - once the memory is faulted back into memory, this thread will execute.Terminated: A thread in this state isn't actually "gone", but it is in a state that allows the object manager policy to determine whether or not to de-allocate this thread's executive thread block.Initialized: A thread is being created when in this state As to your question about the Print Spooler, spoolsv.exe is indeed multithreaded, and can create threads across multiple processors. File services are handled by the server service, which runs inside of an svchost.exe process, which is also multithreaded. Again, the thread can run on any CPU, and the thread scheduler takes care of it based on load, queues, priority, etc. As far as a virtual environment, if VMWare is saying that you should create single-CPU VMs to run Windows, then you should probably do that. Windows running in the VM won't have any idea about the "hardware" underneath, and it will behave as if the VM is a real system and thread schedule accordingly. If VMWare is saying to run a Windows VM as a single-CPU VM, it may be due to the way their VM kernel handles the thread scheduling, etc, and it may be suboptimal code underneath so they're trying to avoid problems in the VM. I don't know this for sure, but I would recommend going with whatever the vendor recommends in those scenarios. You might want to ask VMWare specifically how many virtual CPUs are supported being assigned to each version of Windows Server that would run in the environment (Server 2003, Server 2008, Server 2008 R2, etc) and go with that recommendation. Again, the Windows installation in the VM won't know any different, so it will thread schedule in a VM with multiple virtual CPUs the same way it would in a physical machine with multiple CPUs, so if the vendor has specific rules for their VM environment, it's best to follow those.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766320(WS.10).aspx Scroll down to the section entitled "To create a capture image" for instructions.

What type of file is the background file? I remember with XP we had a horrid time with jpg or gif files, but bmp files always worked. Windows 7 uses jpg files (I believe) by default, so making sure it's a JPG is a good start, also running a procmon while forcing/setting the wallpapaer (and watching it disappear) might be a good idea too, in case something odd is happening at the process/thread level you can see.

There are no threads started by you listed in the trash - what was the thread about? Do you perhaps remember the title of the thread you created, and what forum section it was in?

It's actually in the amd64 folder, I believe. The answer is no, though - you should not do this.

It allows multiple users to use the same physical PC with multiple keyboards, mice, video cards, and monitors. It's designed specifically for education environments where the admin (teacher) and students are in the same physical location, and it doesn't require a network, TS CALs, etc - it saves costs and works pretty well for what it's designed to do.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314470

It seems this is somewhat of a known issue if the stars align for you, and it's also documented (and there's a hotfix available) on the Microsoft site.