These days the I have been busy on a problem that (according to the forums on the Internet) occurs regularly and in my case (eventually) was very easy to solve.

After the installation of Microsoft Office 2010 everything worked smoothly for some time, until a few weeks ago. Outlook refused to start. Somehow you still saw a fleeting window appearing, but as quickly as it appeared it was gone.

When you start Outlook while you press the CTRL key, the program is started in  safe mode. This worked well and given the hectic days, I just worked through. Yet this gave me no peace of mind. Finally, computers are set up to do what the people want and nothing else.

Finally I decided to do something about it and completely removed and reinstalled Microsoft Office 2010. This was (to my surprise) not the solution, everything worked except Outlook. I discovered that the uninstall process of Microsoft Office was not very thoroughly in cleaning up the remains. Microsoft has created a separate program (follow the link to KB290301 for more information). In my opinion ths program should be a part of the deinstallation programm, but... it isn't.

After deinstalling Microsoft Office 2010 and running the Cleanup tool I install Office 2010 again started. To my surprise, Outlook continues to show the same problem!

In a last brainwave last I looked by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL in the task manager and found that Outlook was indeed started as a application but wouldn't show up. By selecting Outlook in the Task Manager I could press the right mouse button and got an option to maximize the window. That was precisely the option needed to Outlook again to appear, after that Outlook shows up after clicking the icon.

I'm still sitting here enjoying the ultimate simplicity of the solution (you just have to know it). Hopefully this blog helps people to find the (faster) solution of this miracle.

Have a nice vacation!

Sinds the release of Windows 7 it also possible to configurate your workstation as a FTP server. The FTP Service is a part of the Internet Information Services that can be installed separately after the standard installation of Windows 7.

To install thet IIS functionalities on a Windows 7 workstation you can choose "Programs and Features" in the configurationscreen, next you can select "Turn Windows Features on or off" in the left part of the window.

In this part of the control pannel you have to select the options shown above, afterwards, click on the OK button and wait until the selected features are installed.

After the installation of the IIS features you can start the IIS Manager. This programm is located under Start-> All Programms->Administrative Tools.

When you want to connect to the FTP service from another workstation, the windows firewall on both workstations has to be configured correctly. FTP Traffic (port 21) has to be openend in the firewall. You can configure the firewall by selecting the option "Windows Firewall" in het configuration screen. 

At this moment the FTP service on the workstation is active, but still nothing can be up- or downloaded. A so called FTP-Site has to be created (There can be multiple FTP and even Websites be configurated on one server). To create a FTP site you have to click on the right mouse button in the left part of the managementscreen. Then you have to select "Add FTP site" and enter the name of the FTP Site and the path to the map on your local disk where the FTP site reffers to. When this is done, click on the OK button and the next screen will appear.



In the Window above you can select the different ways of connecting to the FTP site. When u choos to use a simple (but less save) way of connecting you can choos for a site without SSL connection, this way you don't need a certificate to connect. This option is good for everyone who wants to up- or download a file every once in a while.



After you clicked on the next button again, the windows above appears. In this window you can configure who has what rights on the FTP site. When you choose for "anonymous", everybody has rights on the site and can upload and download files. When you want a more secure site, you can choose to create FTP users in the startscreen of IIS Management and give only thoose users rights on the FTP site. When those users connect to the site, they have to give a username and password before they are allowed to connect.

To make everything clear, FTP users are different users as the Windows users that can be used to logon to your workstation. FTP Users can be created on the startscreen of the IIS Managementconsole.

The use of a FTP server is preferable when you want to exchange larger files with other people over the world. Those files can't be send by e-mail because they are often to large.

When u dont't use the FTP service on a regular basis, it is safe to stop the FTP site after u have used it. To stop a FTP site, you start the IIS Management console and select in the left part of the screen the desired FTP Site. Next, you select "Stop" in the right part of the screen.

Any additional information of remarks on this weblog are more than welcome, leave a comment on this blog !

Microsoft offers the free service SkyDrive for a while now. With this service, you get 25 Gb of storage in the Cloud, which you can use to store your files and gives you to ability to connect to them from all over the world and share them with friends.

Unfortunately the possibilities of the default user interface are limited, for example, you can only upload one selected file to the SkyDrive at a time. With the ammount of files I have, this option is worthless.

My confidence in 'the Cloud' is thereby not that much that I fully give my confidence to it. I have also a number of applications installed locally on my computer. Actually, the SkyDrive should be accessible als a networkmap in the windows explorer. That way you can cut, paste and move files and folders from your local disk to the skydrive.

If you want to connect the SkyDrive as a networkmapping, there are a few things that have to be done. There is no default option in Microsoft Windows bute, a few friendly IT-Pro's and developers have made an workaround for that.

First of all you have to know the network adres of your Skydrive. To get this address, you

can us an open source utility written by Mike Platt, you can download it here.

After the installation of the tool, you are asked for your SkyDrive username and password. Then the programm tries to connect and shows the WebDav adress for your account. 

To make a network mapping using this address, you have to rewrite the adres in the following way:

Original address https://khwek7.docslive.net/65c80b16d88f6aed/^2Public

must be \\khwek7.docslive.net@SLL\65c80b16d88f6aed/^2Public

In the Windows Explorer you choose the option to map a networklocation and use the path to the folder with the rewritten address. Next, you select the option "connect using an other username and password" and use your SkyDrive username and password.

When everything is done, the mapping to your SkyDrive folder appears in the windows explorer. I am using it for a short time now and I must say that copying files and folders to the SkyDrive is sloooow..

In the investigation I am going to seee if this can be better using other alternatives, for example Gladinet or the SDExplorer van Cloud Storage Explorer.com. It would have been great if Microsoft had build in this functionality itself in the operating system. Perhaps, they will, in a next release...

Actually, since the introduction of Vista, but also now while Windows 7 is introduced, stabbing increasingly problems are emerging which deal with accessing shares on other computers or accessing shares that are offered by a dedicated NAS (Network Attached Server).

 

The reasons are twofold, where network drives and shares were previously mainly used by IT-PRO's, the use has expanded to family situation also. Secondly, the technology increased and with the arrival of Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 introduced new NTLMv2 authentication techniques.

 

In short, enough material to restore a small corner of the veil.

 

When it is not possible to access network shares, this can be many causes. So, if you have the illusion that this article here points to all of the problem areas and  solves all of your problems, then you will probably be disappoint.

 

Initially we focus on the Network and Sharing Centre and in particular on the Advanced Sharing Options. Many of these options are related to the way you can access your network resources. If you want to connect to a so called XP share from a Vista or Windows 7 a share computer, I recommend to put the "password protected sharing option off. This option gives many problems and is difficult for the average user to configure.

 

A second consideration are the various forms of authentication by the various Windows versions that are used. Eg NTLM version 1 and NTLM version 2. Send standard Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 (R2), Windows 7, only NTLMv2 responses. When it is a Windows XP computer to communicate this will be is problematic.

 

The way of communication within Windows 7 can be changed by the local security policy (found under Administrative Tools). After some clicking through the menu, you will find the following settings:

 

 

Through this policy can be defined which type of authentication will be used. By default this policy is not defined and used the standard Windows 7 (NTLMv2). However, there is a choice between six different methods of authentication.

 

In this case, set the LAN Manager authentication LEVEL is to "Send LM & NTLM - Use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated". In normal spoken: "Make sure you NTLMv1 and NTLMv2 can talk and use v2 only if you are sure that the other side that can".

 

Above action is (in addition to the setup of the "advanced sharing options") a common solution. Which only works if the computer is not part of a Windows Domain, in that case there are other rules to play again because no longer NTLM authentication will be used. For authentication in domains Kerberos is used.

 

Enough is enough, if this weblog has brought a solution for you, please let me know!

Virtualisation is a so called "hot item" in the world of information technology. Although a lot of money is being spend on this technology, you can also save a lot of money using this technology.  After the server virtualisation on which I wrote a weblog before, this blog will put a focus on application virtualisation.

In a normal infrastructure we used before, applications as Microsoft Office are being installed on a workstation, the software makes changes to the registry and files are placed all over the system.

The benefits of using application virtualisation in this case are:
- No local installations of applications.
- No conflicts between applications.
- More than one version of a application can be installed on the same workstation.
- Options to simplify offering (upgrading of) applications to users.

This weblog will be a global introduction to the possibilities of using VMwareThinApp in order to virtualise an application. There are more suppliers of application virtualisation software like: 
- Citrix XenApp (Profiler)
- Symantec AppStream (Altiris)
- Microsoft App-V (SoftGrid)

ThinApp, the applicatie virtualisation solution of , virtualises applications bij putting registry settings and files together in one ThinApp file which can work independent of the operating system that is used on the workstation. A 60 days trial version can be downloaded from http://www.vmware.com/go/trythinapp

To create this kind of ThinApp package the ThinApp capture utility has to be used.

The screenshot above describes the steps that have to be followd during the proces of scripting an application. As a start there will be made a prescan of the workstation, during this proces the current situation will be registered (which files en registry settings are on the system).

The next step is to install the application on the workstation.

After the installation the process asks which "isolation mode" has to be used for this application. In other words, is the virtualbox allowed to write to the registry and filesystem outside the virtualbox (sandbox in VMware term).

When you desided to choose using the Merged isolation mode, applications are allowed to read and write to the filesystem outside the sandbox. By using the WriteCopy isolation mode, reading and writing outside the sandbox is not allowed. 

A package can be executed in two instances, a executable for starting applications in a sandbox or a MSI (Microsoft Installer) file for an automatic installation of the application on the local system.  

The structure of a "sandbox"
In a sandbox, ThinApp usesa filestructure which is more or less equal to the filestructure which is produced during the scripting proces of the application.  It uses for example variables as %AppData% and no hard coded paths.

Next to the filestructures, in the sandbox are also a couple of registry files: 

- Registry.rw.tvr – Which contains all changes the application needs in the registry.
- Registry.rw.lck – Makes sure that other users cannot use the samen registry file at a time. - Registry.tvr.backup – A backup of the .tvr file ThinApp uses when the original .tvr file is  corrupted.

Next to these registery files, the sandbox contains the folders %AppData%, %ProgramFilesDir% and %SystemRoot%. These folders contain the changes which would be made during the scripting proces to these folders.

The following video give a short view into the scripting proces with ThinApp.

More information about the various amounts of options to scripting an application can be obtained in the online manual VMWare ThinApp 4.5

Happy Easter and.. take care of virtualisation !

In a weblog earlier I wrote about the meaning of Cloud computing. This weblog is about the Azure platform which is a increase of the known Windows platforms (client, server and mobile) and for which you can have a contract since the first of february 2010 for taking your applications really to the cloud.

The Azure platform consists of multiple items

• Windows Azure as a operating system
• Windows Azure storage
• SQL Azure as a database system for the platform
• AppFabric to offer services through the platform

Windows Azure operating system
The Windows Azure operating system consists of virtual servers on which the cloud applicaties run. On these virtual servers the 64-bits version of Windows Server 2008 R2 is installed including the Azure Runtime which makes sure that the applications become independent of the operating system and can easily be moved to another virtual machine.

Windows Azure Storage
Because applications runs on (multiple) virtual machines it cannot use the local storage in the server. This fact is nothing special and is also the case in bigger terminal server environments and data is being stored on a network attached storage (NAS) or storage area network (SAN). Windows Azure storage consists of three kinds of , blobs, tables and queues. Files (pictures for example) are being stored in Blobs, the meta information about the file is being stored in the tables. The queues takes care for the communication between the virtuele machines.

SQL Azure
This is the Microsoft SQL Server version for Azure, not all of the functionalities are available in this version. De main goal of this SQL server version is tot supply a database layer tot the cloud environment. The SQL Server looks like an ordinary SQL Server as we know from the server platoform and can also be managed bij the management studio.

AppFabric
The AppFabric offers services that cloud applications need to do their job and functionalities that are needed to provide reliable communication between cloud applications with other applications within the cloud. Futhermore, in the AppFabric are facilities for regulations about authorisation.

For individual companies it is not possible to buy a copy of the Windows Azure platform to realize a private cloud in this way. I wonder if this option will be offered, Microsoft has created a big cloud and has the knowledge to let this cloud work a stable as possible. Organisations everywhere in the world can ure this cloud.

I am curious to the experiences with the Azure platform, please leave a message to this post when you can tell something about it.

Thanks in advance ! 

Besides the Windows Backup software that is brought to you by the installation of Windows 7, this operating system contains also an other (perhaps more powerfull) backup tool, which is called RoboCopy.

RoboCopy (a abbreviation of Robust File Copy Utility) is not a new product, it was part of the Windows Server 2003 resource kit and also shipped with Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Server 2008.

On of the most special functionalities this application has, is de possibility to make a backup of so called open files. Moreover it is possible to make an incremental backup to a network disk (on a NAS or a shared disk on another computer), the biggest advantage of this option is that only the modified files will be copied, while all of the properties of the files (NTFS rights, access control lists etc) are being copied.

The fact that the standard version of RoboCopy has to be used from the commandline and has more than one hundred parameters (optional fortunately) gives us the problem that the command needed for making a backup kan be very complex, but don't let this hold you back !

You can start RoboCopy by starting a command prompt and type the command C:\>RoboCopy  Then next screen will appear:

While RoboCopy has such a lot of parameters, it is sensible to save your commandline in a batchfile and make a shortcut to this batchfile on your desktop.

The most important parameters are:

• /S         Make a backup of files, folders and subfolders which contain files.
• /Z         Start the backup action from the point where it went wrong the previous time
• /ZB       Copy also files when they are opened.
• /Mir      Create a mirror of a folder or file
• /move   Move the files from the source to the destination.
• /secfix  Make a copy of the ACL's and NTFS right structures. 

When you want to creat a batchfile which contains the Robocopy command, it could look like this:

REM Create a backup of my documents

set log = c:\backuplog.txt

set err = c:\backup-error.txt

robocopy "c:\documents and settings\my documents\" "\\server 121\backup\ /s /mir /secfix /R:1>> %1%  2>>%2%

Fortunately Microsoft has made also a version of RoboCopy which has a graphic user interface. This version is official not supported by Microsoft.

Through the link download you can download RichCopy, this is the RoboCopy application with a Graphical User Interface. After the installation (which is really no more than clicking a few times on the next button) the next screen will appear:

Het main screen of Robocopy is intentionally kept clean and synoptic, after telling the location of the source and target, you could make a backup. Of course, all of the parameters that can make your life hard (and give a lot of functionallity) are in this version. To view the parameters, you select the option button at the right of the screen.

In the screenshot above all possible settings can be made, it is sensible to make a test backup in the beginning. There are such a lot of parameters that a lot of things can go wrong (including deleting your owen files).

Dont't say I didn't warn you....

Goodluck !

For quite a period a new word has been delivered in the world of information and communication technology. This weblog is a short dive into the world behind the term of cloudcomputing and (maybe evenmore important) what will it bring to us ?

Cloudcomputing is basically a development of something we (more or less) allready use for a sometime. Services like hotmail, GMail, Twitter and GoogleDOCS can (from the perspective of a user) be seen as services which are being delivered by the cloud. A characteristic of these services is that a company or user takes a (free) subscription or contract without knowing which computer in the world you are working on. Basically, it doesn't matter. A company or user pays for the facilities and functionalities which can be used anywhere in the world (provided you have an internet connection).

The main advantage of the phenomenon cloud computing is flexibility in all kind of ways. People will be more mobile because they can use their own applications and access their data anywhere in the world, but also flexibility in the hardware capacity that is needed. In a regular infrastructure the IT department needs to fit the available hardware to the working hours on which most of the employees are working (which is often not more than four hours a day). You don't need to worry anymore in the  cloud. This issue had become a responsibility of the cloud provider who can fit the hardware needs more efficiently because he services customers all over the world. The last advantage is a saving on investments in hardware for end-users. The specifications of the workstations needed for the cloud end-users will be lower than workstations in a conventional infrastructure. Most of the calculating and memory activities will take place on the servers in the cloud. 

Opposite to all advantages of cloud computing there are some disadvantages. De main disadvantages at this moment are in spaces of security and privacy.  Companies are affraid to give their (confidential) company information to a cloud provider, who says he will take good care of it in a way that only authorized personell can access the data ?   And you know what ? They are right, at this time no one can guarantee everything will be save... But can you answer that same question at this moment ?  

In the area of cloud computing, Microsoft is also working hard to deliver an own platform which is called Windows Azure. In a next weblog I'll tell more about it. 

Pfieuw "the cloud", I wish it was there :)