Test Lab Guides

To change the Start menu options, follow these steps:
1. Right-click Start on the taskbar, and then click Properties. The Taskbar And Start Menu Properties dialog box is displayed with the Start Menu tab selected by default.

2. On the Start Menu tab, use the Power Button Action list to select the action to use when the power button is pressed. Options include Switch User, Log Off, Lock, Restart, Sleep, and Shut Down. In a 24×7 environment, or when multiple users log on to the same computer, switching users, logging off, or locking the system may be preferable to shutting down the com¬puter. If you change the default action, you can shut down the computer by clicking Start and then clicking Shutdown.

3. Click Customize. This displays the Customize Start Menu dialog box.

4. Use the options in the dialog box to control the general appearance of the Start menu.

5. Click OK, and then click OK again to close the Taskbar And Start Menu Prop¬erties dialog box.

In the Customize Start Menu dialog box, most of the options control which commands appear on the Start menu and how they are arranged. Some items have the sub-options Display As A Link, Display As A Menu, and Don’t Display This Item. Display As A Link specifies that an item, such as Control Panel, will appear as a sepa¬rate option that opens a window when selected. Display As A Menu specifies that an item will provide access to a submenu that allows you to choose from its related options. Don’t Display This Item removes the item from the Start menu.

Other Customize Start Menu dialog box options you’ll see include the following:

Enable Context Menus And Dragging And Dropping When this option is selected, users can right-click to display a shortcut menu and use drag and drop. Typically, you’ll want to enable this option unless there is a specific security reason to disable it.

Highlight Newly Installed Programs When this option is selected, menus for recently installed applications are highlighted, as are the menu options.

Open Submenus When I Pause On Them With The Mouse Pointer Con¬trols the behavior of menus. When this option is selected, menus open when you point to them. Otherwise, menus open only when you click them.

Sort All Programs Menu By Name Controls whether menu items are organized alphabetically or by the order of installation. When this option is selected, menu items are sorted alphabetically. When this option is not selected, menu items are listed in the order of installation.

Use Large Icons Controls the size of icons for menu options. To reduce the size of icons used on menus, clear this option. Otherwise, select this option to display standard-size icons on menus.

Number Of Recent Programs To Display Controls the number of shortcuts to recently used programs that appear in the most frequently used list on the Start menu. Use the selection menu to assign a value from 0 to 30.The actual number of programs listed in the most frequently used list depends on the screen resolution as well as the number of items in the pinned items list, which appears above the most frequently used list on the Start menu.

Number of Recent Items To Display In Jump List Controls how many shortcuts to recently used items appear in jump lists. Jump lists are lists of recent items organized by the program that you use to open them. They can appear on the Start menu and the taskbar. Use the selection menu to assign a value from 0 to 60.

Required:

• USB Flash Drive (4GB+)
• Microsoft OS Disk (Vista / Windows 7)
• A computer running Vista / Windows 7

Step 1: Format the Drive
The steps here are to use the command line to format the disk properly using the diskpart utility. [Be warned: this will erase everything on your drive. Be careful.]

1. Plug in your USB Flash Drive
2. Open a command prompt as administrator (Right click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt and select “Run as administrator”
3. Find the drive number of your USB Drive by typing the following into the Command Prompt window:
   diskpart
   list disk
   The number of your USB drive will listed. You’ll need this for the next step.  I’ll assume that the USB flash drive is disk 1.
4. Format the drive by typing the next instructions into the same window. Replace the number “1” with the number of your disk below.
   select disk 1
   clean
   create partition primary
   select partition 1
   active
   format fs=NTFS
   assign
   exit
   When that is done you’ll have a formatted USB flash drive ready to be made bootable.

Step 2: Make the Drive Bootable
Next we’ll use the bootsect utility that comes on the Vista or Windows 7 disk to make the flash drive bootable.  In the same command window that you were using in Step 1:

1. Insert your Windows Vista / 7 DVD into your drive.
2. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
   d:
   cd d:\boot
3. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
   bootsect /nt60 g:
4. You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.

Step 3: Copy the installation DVD to the USB drive
The easiest way is to use Windows explorer to copy all of the files on your DVD on to the formatted flash drive.  After you’ve copied all of the files the disk you are ready to go.

Step 4: Set your BIOS to boot from USB
This is where you’re on your own since every computer is different. Most BIOS’s allow you to hit a key at boot and select a boot option.

I used these instructions to get my new Dell Mini 9 laptop loaded with Windows 7 (the PDC bits).

The next time you restart the computer, it will automatically log on with the local user account you selected. Configuring automatic logon stores the user’s password in the registry unencrypted, where someone might be able to retrieve it.

• Add, remove, and enumerate packages and drivers.
• Enable or disable Windows features.
• Apply changes based on the offline servicing section of an unattend.xml answer file.
• Configure international settings.
• Upgrade a Windows image to a different edition.
• Prepare a Windows PE image.
• Take advantage of better logging.
• Service down-level operating systems like Windows Vista with SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
• Service all platforms (32-bit, 64-bit, and Itanium).
• Service a 32-bit image from a 64-bit host and service a 64-bit image from a 32-bit host.
• Make use of old Package Manager scripts.

Command-Line Options

To identify and troubleshoot these issues, you can find more information from the KB articles:

• 975787 Adjust User Account Control settings in Windows 7
• 976832 Error message when you insert a smart card in a reader on a Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computer: “Device driver software was not successfully installed”
• 975784 Enable the Quick Launch bar in Windows 7
• 975785 Customize the notification area in Windows 7
• 975786 Customize the notification area in Windows 7
• 975788 Turn off the secure desktop in Windows 7
• 976034 Get a detailed Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report for your computer in Windows 7
• 976170 Troubleshoot Aero problems in Windows 7
• 976877 Troubleshoot Aero problems in Windows 7
• 976736 How to install Windows PowerShell on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 Core
• 2006291 Error message When You Bring up the Server Manager Console and click on Add / View Roles: “0x800B0100″
• 977510 Authentication fails when an external client tries to log on by using a read-only domain controller in a perimeter network

Source: http://blogs.technet.com/ferris/default.aspx

vSphere Client on Windows 7 now supported

In case you didn’t notice, Update 1 for VMware vCenter Server 4.0 was released last week. This is great news for all of you who wish to run the vSphere client on Windows 7 machines.

While we had a KB article (Cannot launch vSphere Client after installing in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2 (1011329)) which went through a couple of different incarnations as new information became available, we can now put this problem behind us. No work-arounds are necessary, it just works now.

Here’s a quote from the release notes:

Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2 support — This release adds support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 as well as 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 as guest operating system platforms. In addition, the vSphere Client is now supported and can be installed on a Windows 7 platform.

We highly recommend reading the entire set of release notes, they contain valuable information.

source : http://blogs.vmware.com/kb/2009/11/vsphere-client-on-windows-7-now-supported.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+VmwareKnowledgebaseBlog+%28VMware+Knowledgebase+Blog%29

Link to the document : http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011329

Cannot launch vSphere Client after installing in Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2

The User Profile Service Failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.

Then the logoff message appeared en I was back where I was started.

The strange thing is nothing had changed when I shutdown the laptop last night. No update’s installed, no software installed. So I started searching the internet. The following article resolved my problem. It is an article about Windows Vista, you can read it here. Link.

The first thing I tried was the system restore to an earlier restore point. That worked for me..

A couple of things to note about this guide:

• I do not use Vista — I have never really used Vista and now with Windows 7 out there really is no reason to; however the steps here will work just fine with Vista installation sources
• I have only tested this using a USB stick and will only cover that method here – it’s much more flexible (and faster) for installation than using DVD — but DVDs should work just fine: you can find plenty of tutorials on the web that will tell you how to use oscdimg.exe to take the files we create here and turn them into a burnable ISO

WHAT YOU WILL NEED:

• USB stick, at least 4 GB (perhaps larger depending on how many OSes you plan to integrate, I use a 16 GB) that has been properly formatted using Steps 1 and 2 here
• ISOs or DVDs of the operating systems that you plan to integrate
• imagex.exe (can be found for download on the web, or you can download the full 1.7 GB WAIK here)
• computer running Vista or newer operating system (XP should work but I have not tested it)

STEP 1: Extract the operating system files

Take your various ISO files or DVDs and copy their contents into subfolders on your hard drive – in my case I have Windows 7 x86, Windows 7 x64, Windows 2008 R2, and Windows 2008 SP2 x86, so I created folders called e:\7×86, e:\7×64, e:\2008r2, and e:\2008×86    (E is the letter of my hard drive, not the USB drive).

STEP 2: Browse the WIM files and extract the desired editions

Open a WAIK command prompt, or browse to whatever folder you downloaded imagex.exe to within an administrative level command prompt.  Start by running the following command:

imagex.exe /info e:\7×86\sources\install.wim

This will display a big verbose mess that, once you parse through it, lists out all the editions embedded in the WIM file (and their associated index #).  Most default Microsoft WIMs will have multiple editions – in this case the ones in the Windows 7 x86 WIM boil down to:

• 1 Starter
• 2 Home Basic
• 3 Home Premium
• 4 Professional
• 5 Ultimate

Since Starter edition is basically worthless, I only want editions 2-5 in my custom WIM file, so I run these commands one after another:

imagex.exe /export e:\7×86\sources\install.wim 2 e:\install.wim “Windows 7 HOMEBASIC (x86)” /compress maximum

imagex.exe /export e:\7×86\sources\install.wim 3 e:\install.wim “Windows 7 HOMEPREMIUM (x86)” /compress maximum

imagex.exe /export e:\7×86\sources\install.wim 4 e:\install.wim “Windows 7 PROFESSIONAL (x86)” /compress maximum

imagex.exe /export e:\7×86\sources\install.wim 5 e:\install.wim “Windows 7 ULTIMATE (x86)” /compress maximum

I now have an install.wim file in the root of my E drive that contains only the editions I specified in these commands.  Next,  I want to integrate Windows 7 x64 so I repeat the above steps using the 7×64 path instead of 7×86.  You will notice that the x64 version of Windows 7 has no Starter edition, so the index numbers are not the same as the x86 source!  Also, since just about any machine new enough to run x64 is likely new enough to handle Aero graphics, I don’t bother with integrating the Home Basic version of x64 into my WIM – so I only add Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate.

I then repeat these steps again using the Windows 2008 R2 source (here again I discriminate – I only pull Standard, Enterprise, Standard Core, and Enterprise Core because I have no use for the DataCenter or Web versions).  Finally, I integrate Windows 2008 SP2 x86 — I do this because I have a few older machines that are not x64 capable and therefore cannot run 2008 R2 (which is x64 only) – so for these machines I run Windows 2008 SP2 x86.

You can of course integrate any OSes and editions you like!  When you are done, you will have an install.wim file of varying size – mine is roughly 5.5 GB.  (not a big deal for the USB method, but for those of you planning on burning to DVD, you may have issues with WIM files that are larger than 4 GB…  To get around this see this link)

STEP 3: Finalize the USB stick

You must now choose which OS you want to use as the boot environment – this needs to be an x86 operating system if you plan to install any x86 OSes (because x86 OSes cannot be installed from x64 boot environments).  You also want to use the newest operating system you can, because you may encounter issues if you try to deploy an OS that is older than the boot environment - in my case I use Windows 7 x86 to ensure I can deploy any operating system I like:

• take the custom install.wim file (from E:\) and replace the install.wim file in e:\7×86\sources
• copy all contents from e:\7×86 to your USB stick

Now boot from the USB stick and you should see all your OSes, like below!

Source : This link.