February 3rd, 2012 by Michael
Lately, we have been deploying XenApp servers using Citrix Provisioning Services. This is a great tool, that we have only just started using.
In our current process, we are creating a group of machines using PVS. When they come up, the join the farm and by virtue of the AD OU they are in, they become members of a worker group. We are also creating machines for test purposes that we want to get the same Group Policies, but we don’t want them to be in the worker group by default. We deploy the production apps to the Worker Groups, but not to individual machines. If the test machines are part of the Worker Groups, then the apps are also published to the test machines.
To prevent this, we created a sub OU to put the particular test machines in, so they would get the Group Policies, but not have the apps automatically published to them. Except that the machines wouldn’t come out of the Worker Group…
Turns out, if the machines joined the farm in the OU that the Worker Group is looking at, they will remain in the worker group. In order to correct this, you simply remove the offending machines from the farm. When they come back up and join the farm again, they are no longer part of the worker group. (As long as the machine accounts aren’t in the target OU.)
December 28th, 2011 by Michael
We use Citrix for a lot of applications, and I have a need to launch Outlook, then an application, and then close Outlook when that application is closed by the user. This seems like a pretty simple thing to do (and I suppose it is, sort of) but it took me a while to figure it out.
One piece of the puzzle is that PowerShell remains open if you do it the way I have it setup right now. If the user closes that PowerShell window, then the monitor process will not close Outlook when the user exits the LOB app. In order to mitigate this issue somewhat, I wanted to start PowerShell minimized. The way to do this is:
powershell -WindowStyle Minimized .\ScriptToRun.ps1
September 15th, 2011 by Michael
It seems like Windows Server 8 has a lot to offer. Hope it comes out sooner rather than later…
Server 8 will unleash a massive tsunami of new features specifically targeted at building and managing infrastructure for large multi-tenant Clouds, drastically increased scalability and reliability features in the areas of Virtualization, Networking, Clustering and Storage, as well as significant security improvements and enhancements.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/windows-server-8-the-ultimate-cloud-os/18594
July 21st, 2011 by Michael
We are using SharePoint Document Libraries for some projects now. The users are mapping the Document Library as a mapped drive. Users are also creating and deleting files. For the Projects site, the recycle bin settings are default:
Items in the Recycle Bin remain there until you decide to permanently delete them from your Web site, or until the items are permanently deleted after a set number of days, which is based on a schedule defined in Central Administration. When you delete an item from a Web site, the item is sent to the site’s Recycle Bin. If you click Recycle Bin on the Quick Launch, you can see all of the items that you’ve deleted from your site. You can either restore or delete the item from the Recycle Bin. When you delete an item from the Recycle Bin, the item is sent to the Site Collection Recycle Bin.
End-user deletes the Agenda document from a document library.
The document is moved to the Recycle Bin for the site, where people can restore it or delete it.
If the file is deleted from the site Recycle Bin, it is sent to the Site Collection Recycle Bin, where an administrator can restore it or delete it permanently.
It should be possible to restore user deleted items for up to 30 days. This requires Site Administrator privileges if it isn’t in the users recycle bin.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-sharepoint-services-help/view-restore-or-delete-items-in-the-recycle-bin-of-a-sharepoint-site-HA010021434.aspx
February 4th, 2011 by Michael
We have recently set up some new Windows Server 2008 R2/Citrix XenApp 6.0 servers. For some reason, users could not launch a remote desktop to them even though we (thought) allowed this. Turns out there is a policy which blocks this by default. I found the answer here:
Re: Unable to login using RDP or ICA after installing XenApp 6
Posted: Mar 31, 2010 5:27 PM 
in response to: Aref Mukred
Correct
4 users found this post useful
Hi Aref -
Can you please try the following ?
1. Open Delivery Services Console
2. Edit the unfiltered user policy | ICA
3. Set the policy for Desktop Launches to Allowed
This policy applies to XenApp 6.0 and Allows or prevents non-administrative users to connect to a desktop session on the server.
When allowed, non-administrative users can connect. By default, non-administrative users cannot connect to desktop sessions.
Thanks
Ramesh
Citrix Forums : Unable to login using RDP or ICA after …
The answer above will get you there, but as my teachers used to tell me all the time, he needs to “show his work”:
January 11th, 2011 by Michael
Mark Russinovich writes his blog posts for people who want to get REALLY deep into the causes of computer problems. But today, he posted something that is a little on the “fun” side as well.
“Blue Screens” in Designer Colors with One Click
markrussinovich
11 Jan 2011 12:15 PM
My last blog post described how to use local kernel debugging to change the colors of the Windows crash screen, also known as the “blue screen of death”. No doubt many of you thought that showing off a green screen of death or red screen of death to your friends and family would be fun, but the steps involved too complicated.
“Blue Screens” in Designer Colors with One Click – Mark’s Blog – Site Home – TechNet Blogs
January 11th, 2011 by Michael
Wonder what this will mean for the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft?
In conjunction with this leadership change, Bob has decided to leave Microsoft this summer. He will continue to actively run STB as I conduct an internal and external search for the new leader. Bob will onboard the new leader and will also complete additional projects for me
Steve Ballmer E-mail to Employees on Bob Muglia Transition: Text of an internal e-mail from Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer to employees regarding changes in leadership within the Server & Tools Business.
October 14th, 2010 by Michael
I recently had a problem with a couple of IBM Blades that I was trying to deploy as Hyper-V hosts. I employ the use of a replay volume from our Compellent storage to create an image for my blades. Basically, I install one, sysprep it, and then copy the volume mount the copy as the boot volume for each of my blades. The most recent hosts that I attempted to use this technique with, would boot, but once they made it into Windows, the screen would go black and there would be no way to interact with the machine other than turning it off.
This happened on two blades in two chassis so I assumed that it must be the image. I made a new image, and it worked just fine, until I installed the Hyper-V role. Once I installed the Hyper-V role, the machine exhibited the same behavior as above.
With a short amount of searching, I came across this: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverhyperv/thread/61fd5b0d-9d15-4f74-a970-7aafe491ef67
I have actually seen this mentioned before for something else, I just don’t recall what, but basically the problem was that the two processors in each blade were different revisions. The simple solution we employed was to swap a processor from each blade to have the two processors match. Now all is well in the land of Hyper-V. At least for the moment…
September 27th, 2010 by Michael
This is an old problem, but I still see it from time to time. You are trying to run and executable that you downloaded, and you are on a Windows 2003 system. You double click and get:
As you can see here, I am simply trying to install the windirstat utility to figure out what is taking up all the disk space. If you have drive space issues, and we seem to always have drive space issues, this is a great utility.
The problem is this:
Notice the Security section at the bottom. if you click on Unblock, then it looks like this:
Apply the change and the security section at the bottom goes away, and you can then run the program.
July 29th, 2010 by Michael
If you want to know what logon script users are getting, this is an easy way to get that information:
Import-Module -Name ActiveDirectory
Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=YourOUName,DC=YourDomain,DC=COM" -properties ScriptPath | Export-Csv "c:\script\ADUser.csv"
Note: In order for this to work, you have to have the ActiveDirectory Module loaded.
