Windows 7 and Network Printing

By sduncan | Published: June 1, 2009

I am currently blogging about my Windows 7 Deployment experience. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

During some early smoke testing, we had mostly good results when it came to connecting and printing to network printers. The print servers at Data#3 are still running Windows Server 2003 (x86). All shared printers are configured with Vista drivers that worked just fine; at least they did for our 32 bit Windows 7 build. It’s easy to forget that we are not only introducing a new OS, but for the first time we are introducing a 64 bit client OS in to the environment.

In the end, it was a simple matter of making the x64 Vista drivers available on the print servers. Trying to make this happen while logged on to the print server was fruitless. So, using printmanagement.msc on a 64 bit Windows 7 Machine, we connected to the print server, updated the 32 bit driver for each shared printer to the latest Vista 32 bit driver and added the 64 bit Vista driver. Once Windows 7 drivers are released, we’ll have to revisit the print servers and update the drivers… but until then, network printing from both 32 and 64 bit Windows is working just fine.

 

 

 

 

 

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Windows XP Mode for Application Compatibility

By sduncan | Published: May 22, 2009

Application compatibility is undoubtedly one of the key reasons for organizations snubbing Windows Vista. Microsoft responded by providing a number of resources to help assess and remediate application compatibility issues; including the Application Compatibility Toolkit and the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit.

In addition to these tools, Windows 7 offers “Windows XP Mode” which is currently in beta. Windows XP Mode allows us to present entry points to legacy applications in the Start Menu or on the desktop that launch in a Windows XP SP3 Virtual Machine. The fact that the application is running in an XP VM is essentially transparent from a user’s perspective.  Paul Thurrott has some great articles about Windows XP Mode on his Supersite – have a look at these if you get a chance:

·         http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_preview.asp

·         http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_beta.asp

As far as hardware requirements go, Microsoft recommends at least 2GB of RAM – and of course the machine’s processor must support hardware virtualization. Have a look at this blog post for details about hardware requirements, and how to determine if your processor supports hardware virtualization:  Windows 7 and Windows XP Mode: Can you run it?

I’ve recently included Windows Virtual PC and Virtual Windows XP (both available here) in the current build of Data#3’s Windows 7 SOE. After initially being presented with a Blue Screen generated by vmmnet.sys; I flashed the BIOS on my HP 6910p (it was a few years out of date!) and haven’t looked back. It’s impressive.

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Core Infrastructure Optimisation (IO) Assessment

By sduncan | Published: May 14, 2009

Yesterday we walked through a Core Infrastructure Optimisation (IO) assessment with the National IO lead for Microsoft.  The tool used was a third party independent assessment tool developed by Alinean  that includes independent research metrics and analysis by IDC, Gartner Consulting Research (GCR) and Wipro. We’ll be able to provide these walkthroughs for our customers in the coming weeks.

In only a few hours, a 150+ page report was produced. We didn’t spend much time tuning demographics and cost models. Instead we opted to stick with the default data from the industry research provided by IDC, Gartner and Wipro.

It is easy to drown in a 150+ page report. There is a real temptation to challenge the assumptions that were made to arrive at the very detailed results. The immediate value that we were able to derive from the exercise included:

·         An indication of where Data#3 sits relative to industry average and industry leaders

·         Get visibility of the expected tangible and intangible outcomes of the Windows 7 Deployment Project, including some significant cost savings and elevated maturity

·         Identified key areas of weakness, so that effort and budget can be directed accordingly into other projects

For more information about CoreIO visit http://www.microsoftio.com/coreio.aspx

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Windows 7 SOE Project Underway

By sduncan | Published: May 8, 2009

So, we’ve just kicked off a project to design and deploy a Windows 7 SOE to our internal customers. It’s an unusual situation for me. In my 9 years with Data#3 I’ve delivered countless Desktop SOE projects for clients, but this time I also get to be a user of the solution when it’s complete. J  I’ll be blogging my experiences over the coming months from both perspectives.

 

We all know that Windows Vista was given a fair old snubbing from the business community. As a result, the number of Desktop SOE Design and Deployment engagements I’ve been involved in has slowed a little in the last couple of years. The pending RTM availability of Windows 7 promises to keep my colleagues and I busy for quite some time. Many of our customers are gearing up now to get the next iteration of their corporate desktop underway.

 

Plenty of us have already been running the Windows 7 Beta and RC builds and dabbled with the improvements in manageability and deployment. But this project provides an opportunity to properly re-visit the business requirements, the policies and the processes that contribute to a mature desktop environment.

 

By leveraging the features of Windows 7, MDT 2010 and SCCM 2007 we expect to significantly elevate the maturity of the desktop service provided internally by Data#3. We’ll measure this improvement in a number of ways, including before and after maturity assessments performed by an independent consultant.

 

Data#3 is a technology company and in an environment where everyone is an expert – there’ll be no hiding from the knives if this project doesn’t deliver. J

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