App-V Recipe: AutoIt v3
This blog post will show you how to sequence AutoIt using App-V 4.6 SP1 (the latest version at the time of writing). Now, AutoIt is probably the easiest application to sequence in the world and doesn’t really need a blog post describing how to do it. However, I intend to write some more posts around using App-V in System Center Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2007 for deployment and upgrades so a nice easy to follow recipe for an application that is free should be useful. For sequencing I’ll be using Windows XP SP3 and...
read moreWindows 7 Aero Theme Not Enabled After Deployment
An issue I saw a number of times at customers was that the Windows 7 Aero theme was not enabled after deployment. I saw this numerous times in early workshops and pilots for customers and completely forgot about it until I saw the question asked again a few weeks ago. So here is a post describing the sort of symptoms you might see and how to workaround it. There are two main tools that people turn to when troubleshooting Aero:Running the ‘Find and fix problems with transparency and other visual effects‘...
read moreWindows 7 Self Optimizing Boot Process
You may have heard the about the fact that Windows 7 (and actually, Windows Vista too) has improved boot up times over Windows XP and dismissed it as “that there marketing speak”. Surprisingly, it’s actually true! On top of that, the boot process is also optimized over time to make things even faster. This blog post gives a high-level overview of how this works and also provides some actual measurements. The descriptions given in this article are fairly high-level for a number of reasons. I wanted it to be readable for the...
read moreWindows Performance Toolkit: Simple Boot Logging
Troubleshooting slow boots and logons are a common request. In this post I will show you how to perform boot logging using the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) on a Windows 7 machine and perform some basic analysis of it. Preparation First, you need to install the WPT on the machine you wish to examine. Secondly, we will be tracing the boot process all the way until the user has logged in and the desktop is shown. If we rely on quickly and manually logging in we introduce inconsistencies to any timings we do. The simplest solution is to use...
read moreWindows Performance Toolkit Installation
The Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) is a suite of tools designed for measuring and analysing system and application performance on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. They can be used by enterprises to log and analyse clients in order to detect and optimise performance problems. I intend to use the WPT in a number of upcoming articles so this post will cover how to obtain and install it. Unfortunately, the WPT is included as part of the Windows 7 SDK and cannot be downloaded separately, and the SDK download is a...
read moreWelcome to the AutoIt Consulting Blog!
Welcome to the AutoIt Consulting Blog! This blog will share tips, tricks and scripts related to Microsoft Windows deployment and related technologies. Until we start blogging in earnest, here are some links to some articles done by myself (Jonathan Bennett) for my former employer Microsoft MCS on the excellent Deployment Guys blog. Send us an email if you have any requests for the sort of content you would like to see. Previous Posts on the Deployment Guys Windows 7 VDI Optimization GImageX Dealing With Duplicate User Profile Links in Windows...
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