Monday 9 November 2009, 6:21 PM
INIFiles: Getting those legacy files into order
Handling INI files can be a little tricky these days when you have to consider new security restrictions, virtualized environment restrictions (App-V and Citrix) and legacy applications that don't install the way they should... Or, more importantly stay installed the way they were intended to.
INI files are configuration files used to store application, user or machine information. They have been used for the past 10 years and have been used really well (by Microsoft) and abused by some (IBM's Lotus Notes) to store information and help configure applications.
There is a reasonable definition of INI Files located here;
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/INI+file
The reason I making this post is that INI files are causing some considerable issues with Windows 7, Citrix and App-V deployments. Application installations are installing and configuring INI files in semi or secure locations and either the user or the application is not able to properly read and/or write to these text based configuration stores. For example, under SoftGrid, the application will install correctly but when a user tries to run the application, critical information is either not stored or captured during the normal application loading/running process.
There are a few solutions;
1) Employ the MoveIniToRegistry Shim
Chris Jackson has an excellent posting on this technique found here
Http://blogs.msdn.com/cjacks/archive/2008/01/03/stock-viewer-shim-demo-application.asp
2) Use INIFileMapping
Frig (i.e. Hack) your local security settings and hope for the best (hint: turn off your mobile)
I prefer option 2, as the INI File Mapping allows use to replace your INI Files with entries (keys, names and values) in the Registry. This is great/useful as you can neatly avoid any local security restrictions as well as benefit from roaming profiles (e.g.. Not have to copy INI files on application start-up each time a new user logs onto a machine).
Microsoft has a great Knowledge Note/Support article which can be found here; http://support.microsoft.com/kb/102889
I won't replicate what has already been said in the Microsoft article but there are a few caveats;
INI File Mapping works great for Vista and SoftGrid - but DO NOT use for Citrix when actually installing applications. See the Microsoft support note here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186504
Your application needs to use the supported API's (GetPrivateProfileString and WritePrivateProfileString)
Note: you will find out really quickly if your application does not support INI File Mapping as your registry based settings will be ignored and your local INI file will be updated.
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Thursday 5 November 2009, 5:51 PM
Windows 7 pricing all over the shop..about as stable as Windows 7.
I really think Microsoft have made a mess of Windows 7 pricing. They got the product right, yet there initial pricing of at around £44.95 for the full version of Windows 7 Home Premium (which I feel is about right) has back fired on them.
It quickly came apparent that they could, as a so called monopoly, sell it for more, how much more, well as much as people would bear - someone got greedy.
The price has been all over the place up, down, anything but stable, compare this to the Mac Snow leopard upgrade that has stayed a consistent £25, maybe the unstable price is reflecting Windows 7 in more ways than one.
The so called 4 week window of opportunity at launch lasted less than a day at Amazon.co.uk, to order your copy at £44.97. Then in September Tesco, via Ingram Micro repeated the offer, well £49.97 (£44.97 with a £5 voucher) Tesco took the money upfront, it was the most popular item ever on hotukdeals.com.
Due to looming postal strikes, some suppliers such as Dixons were given permission to deliver on or after 19th October. Tesco followed suite and my copy was delivered early on 22nd October at 5.50pm, trouble was I was away for a week. No card appears to have been left. Re-deliver was attempted on the 29th at 11.50am.
On returning on the 29th that evening, there was a card from City-link stating that a delivery had been attempted that day.
On the 30th I checked to find City-link had strangely already sent the item back to Tesco, I couldn't pick it up.
No email had been received from Tesco to say the item was been delivered early, and their online webpage doesn't cross-reference the tracking info, so you can't check its progress from there.
I emailed Tesco to ask for the item to be resent, due to being sent early, and therefore returned early by Citylink, as to when it would have been expected, given the Worldwide launch and the delivery being 1-2 days after this normally.
I had no response via email from Tesco.
On phoning Tesco today they point-blank refused to re-send the item, instead offered a refund, with the option of re-purchasing at £95, instead of the £44.97 I'd paid.
I phoned Microsoft to discuss the matter as I felt it made Microsoft look bad, in light of poor customer service from Tesco/Ingram Micro. Initially Microsoft were helpful, as I pointed out that people legitimately purchasing software shouldn't have to put up with such practices, but once through to their customer response unit they gave way to the might of Tesco, and refused to get involved.
I feel Tesco made a mistake of not notifying Citi-link that the early delivery of Windows 7 should have meant slightly longer than 7 days before the item was returned, to take into account the early shipments.
But forcing customers who missed the item by a day ie. the 30th to have a refund and re-purchase at twice the price is just plain dishonest. Tesco you should be ashamed.
Monday 2 November 2009, 8:30 AM
Adobe Reader in the Enterprise
This week I had the pleasure of working with some of the Microsoft Premier Field Engineers (PFE's) in an effort to further understand some of the application compatibility issues that might occur when sequencing for Microsoft App-V (formerly SoftGrid).
Quickly, the topic turned to compatibility issues surrounding Folder Redirection as this appeared to pose a serious compatibility problem for Adobe.
A quick scan of the web, raised a number of forum posting where numerous IT personnel could not get Acrobat or Reader 9 deployed to C# debugging and "file not found" issues.
For a few samples look here:
http://thinmaillist.blogspot.com/2008/08/thin-re-watch-out-with-adobe-acrobat_9472.html
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b5c03a
It looks like there were some pretty drastic solution paths explored here, especially for Citrix deployments. Yikes... I am really glad that I don't have to do this stuff anymore...
Before I dive too deep into the Adobe deployment problems, let's have a little introduction to Microsoft's Folder Redirection .
The idea of re-directing user local data folders onto the network was introduced with Windows XP and is defined as, "the automated re-routing of I/O (operations) from local standard folders to use a different, storage elsewhere on the network". Translated, this means that some standard user folders (i.e. My Pictures, My Documents) are redirected to store your files on a network server. This greatly increases the chances that your files (and Pictures) will get backed up in the laptop being nicked or knackered.
Windows Vista uses folder re-direction on the following directories; Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Music, Videos, Pictures, Searches, AppData, Links, Saved Games.
If your browser has a spell checker AppData would appear with a red underline, which is appropriate as the AppData folder is one which caused us and to my great surprise, Adobe quite a lot of trouble.
Through our trouble-shooting exercise it became Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9 were attempting to write user specific data to the AppData folder. This is fine and according to the Microsoft logo application development specifications, this is OK.
So, in an enterprise environment, a user will logon to their desktop or laptop and if their IT department has done their job, the AppData folder will be redirected to something like; \\servername\region\department\username\AppData
And, here is the big issue. As folder re-direction takes place prior to logon- the user will not have any mapped drives. So, the fully qualified path to the final resting place on the target server for AppData will be a UNC path.
Hint: It will be a UNC path.
As you can probably guess where I am going here;
Adobe Acrobat 9 and Adobe Reader can not store their AppData files onto a UNC path. After a little debugging through their code, it appears that there is a failure to "read from left to right" and correctly parse the full path.
Hence, the file not found, app crashes and C# debugger errors that present themselves to users upon application start-up.
So, I did little more digging and loading Flash and version 6,7 and 8 of Adobe Reader. All of these packages use the redirected folder "AppData" in the same way - and I am sure that they will experience the same issue.
I will write more on the Adobe issues in forthcoming posts. And, there will be plenty to write about as it looks like there are over 400 application level conflicts between Adobe Reader 9 and Acrobat 9.
References:
Folder Redirection has a brief mention here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folder_redirection
Sunday 25 October 2009, 2:07 PM
No Email Program in Windows 7???????
This has got to be a joke (albeit a very bad one). Or an oversight. A mistake, maybe? Is there really NO EMAIL PROGRAM IN WINDOWS 7????? Not even Microsoft is that stupid, are they? Really?
If this is true, then I would guess it is a cheap trick from Microsoft to try to force their users to switch to Windows Live Mail or whatever. I certainly wouldn't put that past them - but still, it seems like an extraordinarily blunt instrument, even for them.
All of the dedicated (blind) Microsoft loyalists out there who have been going on and on and on and on about how wonderful Windows 7 is, and how easy the upgrade from Vista is (what about Windows Mail users), and how easy the migration from XP is (what about Outlook Express users)... I'm waiting to hear the rationalization behind this one.
Here's a new slogan for Windows 7:
Migrating is easy when you throw away an application
Here's one last thought. Assuming some Microsoft customers choose to go ahead and switch to Windows Live Mail (essentially at gunpoint, but we can be charitable and say "choose"...). Do the wonderful, excellent, beautiful Microsft Windows 7 Upgrade/Migration tools make it easy for them to transfer their existing data - mail folders (all of them, intact), addresses and such?
jw 25/10/2009
Thursday 22 October 2009, 9:22 PM
A Reminder from Windows
Today, on the day Windows 7 was released, my Vista installation decided to do me a favor, and remind me why I hate Windows and Microsoft so much. I had booted Vista on my HP Pavillion dv2-1010ez for the first time in several weeks. While I was working, it decided to download Vista SP2 and announced that it was ready to install. Once I got home I decided to go ahead and let it install - if I am going to have to use it from time to time, I might as well let it keep up with updates and Service Packs. It thrashed around on the disk for a long, long time, then announced that it was done and I needed to reboot. When I let it reboot, it thrashed around for another very long time before shutting down, then finally rebooted, and thrashed around for another long time as it came back up again. After all of that... ready... it announced that the Service Pack didn't install correctly, and it was going to be removed again. It then thrashed around for another really, really long time, and asked for another reboot, and thrashed around again, and finally staggered up to the login screen.
So, what is the state of this laptop now? I don't know, and I don't care. I suppose that what all the dedicated Microsoft loyalists will tell me that I should rush right out and buy Windows 7, and I was stupid to have ever bought Vista in the first place (even though it was the only option on this laptop). One thing I can absolutely, positively guarantee you, though. All of this absurdity does NOT make me want to give Microsoft even more money in order to buy what they themselves say is "what Vista should have been". This time I'll wait, rather than set myself up to be called "stupid" by the Microsoft fanboys. We'll see soon enough how totally awful Win7 is, and how the real fixed, superior, absolutely wonderful operating system will be the next release from Microsoft. then I'll pass on that one too, thanks.
jw 22/10/2009
Wednesday 21 October 2009, 7:35 AM
Office 2007 and Application Compatibility: An Integration Issue
I was asked by a colleague a little while ago to start thinking about Office 2007 in a new way.
He asked me, " What kind of issues would we encounter with the introduction of Office 2007 in an enterprise environment which might break applications?". My answer, "No clue". Followed by, "I am really busy right now". Followed by, "Yes, right... Uhmmm, got to go now...bye!".
I mean, Microsoft's Office 2007 is a really big, complex application. I use Word, Excel etc. all of the time and sometimes I feel that the desktop platform is a "merged" blend of WindowsOfficeAndIE. The difficulty in pulling these mammoth Microsoft monopolies apart got Microsoft in legal "poo" with the US government a while back. If you walk through the Office installation you begin to wonder where a desktop build ends and the application installation process starts. Add Internet Explorer (IE) to the mix, and for most organisation you have most of what people "USE" on a daily basis and a good chunk of what developers rely and most importantly "BUILD " upon for most of their applications.
So, not really taking his suggestion that I consider his request in the few moments before I fall asleep each night, or the few seconds between waking and getting up to get the kids breakfast, I started asking the question,
"What installation, integration and maintenance issues would Office 2007 cause in a big, heterogeneous corporate/enterprise environment?"
The answer is; surprisingly quite a lot. Here are some initial thoughts;
Excel Add-ins - these guys are chunks of code that completely depend on the Excel universe to survive and would have loads of links, dependencies and integration points which would be ripe for breaking under a new version of Office (Excel).
Applications that use Excel to display spreadsheet data - there are a large number of applications in the financial and insurance sector which rely on the Excel calculation engine to generate and display their results.
Office 2007 has deprecated (removed support) for a number of Application Programming Interfaces (API's) that previous developer's may have used. This means that a function within a 3rd party application may no longer start or simply return an empty string.
Broken support for integrated applications. Applications that integrate directly into Word or Excel may no longer work due to the changes in the Office UI or even the architecture of Office applications. I understand that version 6 and 7 of Adobe PDFWriter no longer work under Office 2007 and that there issues with getting the Oracle connector to work in Outlook.
New Security Restrictions. Applications could do pretty much what they wanted to in previous version of Office - this has changed with Office 2007 and may break some 3rd party applications. These changes could be pretty difficult to debug if you take the huge security changes that have been introduced with Vista as well - which one broke the app? Vista or Office? Both?
Office Updates: What changes, restrictions have been introduced over the past year through Microsoft update which may affect my other, 3rd party applications? This is a huge challenge for enterprise desktop management. As application developers design, develop and deploy applications for their target desktop and office - monthly changes and updates from Microsoft (while I am sure are very helpful) may move the goalposts in the sense of changing security restrictions or functions that were previously relied upon.
Loads of stuff - but I wonder how many applications would really be affected? So, over the next month or so, we are going to take a look at answering these questions and getting some rough and ready quantitative data - real applications, real numbers, real issues...
Should be a version of fun!
Monday 19 October 2009, 5:35 AM
Windows Operating Systems = Bloatware
There has been a lot going on. I've been trying out CTP 2011 “Quebec” from Microsoft, its basically Windows 7 Embedded. Now I know how various OEMs have been able to demo Windows 7 on all the netbooks that suddenly popped up. Consider the Windows 7 Embedded CTP to be like a "live-DVD" type of installation tool and you'll have the basic idea. If you take out pieces of Win7 that you don't need or want, you can lighten the OS load considerably. The smallest image with some networking I was able to make was about 500 MB. More on that later.
Win 7 Embedded is an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp. The OS is so freaking fat that it really doesn't make much if any sense to use it as an “embedded” operating system. As a touch screen enabled bistro table “information appliance” yeah, I'll buy that idea. Something to put inside a handheld or portable device? No and no way. Putting it in netbooks with Intel Atoms, or Via C7's maybe, they'd be slow. Windows XP though would be a better choice, and Win XP Embedded even better.
I suspect that a large amount of the fat in Win 7 comes from supporting old, really OLD applications. As an example I found edlin.exe in the system32 directory. That in itself was funny since the original edlin was a 16 bit LINE editor in MSDOS. It pre-dates edit.exe, another MSDOS editor, also in the system32 directory. Adding notepad.exe and write.exe makes 4 text editors in one folder. Is that really necessary?.
(Before you jump me, yes I know edlin.exe is still in XP Pro etc. When was the last time you HAD to use edlin? Did you really want to?)
There are runtime packages for C, C+, C++, VB5 and VB6, old MFC etc some of them pre-date Win95. ODBC database connectors for Access 95/97 databases, dBase3, and Paradox. Support for OS2, its limited but there.
Iexpress.exe, an application-installer-packager from the Windows 3.1 era also has an system32 “update”.
Most of the Win7 fat though is semi-hidden in plain-sight. Portions of the operating system have to be written in such a way to support either the old applications directly or through the application compatibility add-ons Microsoft has patched onto the various versions of Windows. Ntvdm and wow (Windows on Windows) are examples of application patching, hosting or shims embedded into Windows. I appreciate the fact that Microsoft wants to support everything they have ever released (except maybe MS Bob!) but come on, can't that stuff be supported in a download and only on the users' systems that need it?
Since Microsoft has stopped supporting MSDOS, Win 3.1 & 3.11, and WIn9X directly, why continue to support them in the new operating systems?
Hook Application Compatibility into Windows Update and use that to download the appropriate packages to support the old stuff the user has to continue using. There already is a side-by-side mechanism setup for the DLL hell of previous Windows NT versions. Something similar can be done for the old stuff, especially the 16 bit stuff.
How about MS making their Virtual PC software into something that does the legacy support? Its an extension of the idea of Virtual XP Pro stuff going to be done in WIn7.
Think of all the plug-ins that users have to download when they go web-surfing all over the Internet. Its not like the users don't already download most of the junk on their computers already.
Most of the people I have had to fix their home computers don't make back-ups and lose their installation disks so when they go out and buy the latest version of Windows Whatever, they end up buying new software anyway. This new software seldom needs MSDOS and 16bit Windows support. So why leave it in the OS as part of the piles of detritus that hardly ever gets executed?
If you want another argument to remove this un-needed dross, think of system security. All of this old compatibility software sitting on the system has a very large and exposed surface to malware writers. At present most of the compatibility software hasn't been used much to attack the host 32 bit system but its an attack vector waiting to happen. If the software wasn't there reliably on every Windows system that would be one less way to hack into or around system security. In other words, the 16 bit legacy software is not on the system UNLESS the user downloads a compatibility package, until then it wouldn't present itself as such a tempting target for future malware. If the malware guys can't count on it being there for use then its not a viable means of attack.
Friday 16 October 2009, 9:08 AM
Microsoft App-V: Helpful Tools
I wanted to mention a rather useful tool that have recently come from Microsoft.
As quoted by one of the TechNet blogs;
"The Microsoft Installer (MSI) Utility for Microsoft Application Virtualization, a utility for SoftGrid Application Virtualization solution that bridges the gap between traditional physical control of installed applications and the new paradigm of virtual applications."
This means that you can now load MSI packages into SoftGrid environments and not have to "Sequence" or convert them to SoftGrid (SFT) packages before deployment. This would allow an organization to utilize their existing SMS environment and "dilute" their application management efforts through supporting two different application management formats.
Have a read:
http://blogs.technet.com/softgrid/archive/2007/09/11/microsoft-unveils-plans
-for-the-msi-utility-for-microsoft-virtualization-at-vmworld.aspx
And the official source:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/sep07/09-11virtualization.mspx
This makes sense as the SoftGrid SFT file format was riddled with Open Source/GPL software and the compression algorithm was written by a lovely French chap who detested Microsoft - hardly the recipe for a thriving format for M$. I am not too sure that this is going to work for more difficult/complex applications. However, it may help with some of the rapid proto-typing required to get a SoftGrid (aka MAV) environment off the ground and get some applications sequenced quickly, ready for testing (i.e. thrashing).
Monday 12 October 2009, 11:18 AM
IE8: Another Application Compatibility Platform
Getting applications to work on Vista or Windows Server 2008 is not the only compatibility issue that you may encounter. One additional "platform" that you may not have considered is the security and application compatibility restrictions that have introduced as part of the update Microsoft's Internet Explorer - IE8.
These ideas got me thinking about the IE8 compatibility question(s). More specifically,
1) Have new security restrictions been introduced?
2) What features and functionality are no longer available?
3) Are there recent Microsoft updates or patches that may cause an issue with IE8?
4) Are there any new compatibility issues that are specifically relevant to Windows 7 and Server 2008?
It does not take long to work through the IE 8 release notes, the accumulated IE8 support documentation and with a little help from friends who have deployed IE8 to highlight some of the potential security and compatibility issues including;
Deprecated API's
Does you application reference any API's or functionality from these groups?
• DirectAnimation
• Channel Definition Format (CDF)
• Gopher Protocol
Deprecated Features
Does your application rely on any of the following functionality?
• XBM Image format
• Telnet Protocol
• Gopher Protocol
• SSL Version 1.x
• Scriptlet MIME Types
IE8 Signed Controls
Internet Explorer 7 allows for ActiveX controls to be signed and therefore allow for greater privileges and access to local machine file system. Some intranet environments may require that all controls are now signed. To deploy to these environments, you need to ensure all of your ActiveX controls that rely on the IE engine are signed.
IE8 Safe for Scripting Controls
Managing ActiveX controls in an secure enterprise environment is a difficult balancing act. IE8 allows for an additional level of security with the CATID_SafeForScripting and the CATID_SafeForInitializing component category registry settings. These settings allow your IE8 applications to fully use the ActiveX scripting model
IE8 ActiveX Pre-Approved CLSID
Due to the increased security restrictions available in IE8, ActiveX objects (DLL's) may not install correctly due to lack of sufficient permissions. Adding the unique identifier of an ActiveX control to the pre-approved list of ActiveX controls will allow the application component to install successfully. As recommend in Microsoft's (ActiveX Security: Improvements and Best Practices - see references) you should not employ this option if;
- Your ActiveX control was not designed to use pages served from the Internet (as opposed to your intranet)
- Your ActiveX control is downloaded to the target machine
- Your control is solely intranet based (you should use Active Directory Group Policy objects instead)
References:
Microsoft IE8 Release Notes
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/aa740486.aspx
Security and Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649488.aspx
Finding Security Compatibility Issues in Internet Explore
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250493.aspx
ActiveX Security: Improvements and Best Practices
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb250471.aspx
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