If you try to sysprep a Vista reference system and get this error:

”A fatal error occurred while trying to sysprep the machine.”

then you should check your Setupact.log file and see if you can find the following line:

0×80070020 / ERROR_SHARING_VIOLATION

If this line is present in the log file, then sysprep is failing because MSDTC is trying to reset its log but sysprep has locked the log for exclusive access. The only solution for this at present is to contact Microsoft Customer Support Services (CSS) for a hotfix.

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If you try and run sysprep.exe /oobe /generalize /shutdown on a Vista reference system and get the following error message:

“System Preparation Tool has stopped working A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available”

and the following event in your event logs:

Event ID 1000 Source: Application error Faulting application sysprep.exe

Then you’ve probably got a third-party driver issue. One case I heard of involved the SoundMax Audio Driver, which had to be uninstalled from the reference system before sysprep would work properly on the machine.

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Before you upgrade your Windows XP workstations to Windows Vista, be sure to check whether the hardware will support the upgrade. To do this, use the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. Be sure however to download the latest version of Upgrade Advisor from the Microsoft Download Center, and be sure to plug in any peripherals such as printers, scanners, and so on before you run the utility. To run upgrade advisor, you need to be an administrator on your XP workstation and you need to have Internet connectivity. You also need to have the .NET 2.0 Framework installed and MSXML 6.0, which Upgrade Advisor will prompt you to download and install if you don’t already have these components installed on your workstations.

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A common sight when trying to get older software to work with Windows Vista is having to manually register DLL/OCX files using Regsvr32. There has been countless times where I have been working along in a piece of software and then all of a sudden it gives me an error about a DLL that it can’t access. The typical response to this is to run regsvr32 dllname.dll to register the DLL.

Occasionally, I run into Error 0×80004005 when registering these files. This error sounds highly complicated, but what it all boils down to is a rights issue. This error basically means that you don’t have the permissions to register the file you are trying to register.

This usually brings about the questions, “Wait! I’m logged in as an administrator?!”

Under previous versions of Windows, being logged in as an administrator is enough, but in Windows Vista there is a little thing called User Account Control (UAC) that prevents programs from running administrative tasks without first specifying that they are running as the administrator. This applies for the command prompt the same as it does for any other program. This being the case, right-click on the command prompt icon, and select “Run as Administrator”, and then try to register your DLL. This is a mistake that is usually frustrating enough that, once you figure it out, you won’t make too often.

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If you see a balloon when you log on to a Vista machine that shows the following error message:

then you have a problem as your user profile has either been deleted or has become corrupted. To resolve this issue, do the following:

Rename the directory where the profile is stored.

Open regedit.exe, find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList, and delete the key showing your profile’s SID (you can use the ProfileImagePath value to help you determine which one it is).

Log off and then log on again.

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System administrators are known to spend hours on end figuring out new and more efficient ways to deploy desktop operating systems to network clients. Microsoft has recognized this need and answered it with the release of its Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK).

The WAIK includes several different programs used to create a fully automated Windows desktop deployment center. Not only does it include all of these programs, but it also includes documentation on how they all work. This includes updated versions of the ImageX utility and the Windows Pre-Execution (WinPE) environment.

You can download the Windows Automated Installation Kit here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=c7d4bc6d-15f3-4284-9123-679830d629f2&displaylang=en

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Windows Vista is just like any other operating system in that it uses a whole variety of temporary storage that must be cleaned occasionally. Luckily, Vista makes cleanup of residual files a breeze with its disk cleanup wizard.

You can access the disk cleanup wizard by navigating to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Disk Cleanup. Once you are here you can choose to clean up files for just your user account or for all accounts on the machine (administrative privileges required). Some of the files you will want to clean up often are downloaded program files, contents of the hibernation file, Microsoft Office temporary files, offline files, recycle bin contents, setup log files, system error memory dump files, temporary internet files, the system temp directory, media thumbnails, and windows error reporting logs.

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You have two Windows Vista computers, in different locations, and you need to securely transfer a large amount of data from one to the other. What’s the best way of doing this?

Use IPSec to create a point-to-point tunnel that encrypts data transferred through it. This is really easy to do in Windows Vista because IPSec is integrated into Windows Firewall and it’s just a matter of creating a connection rule on each machine. See chapter 27 of the Windows Vista Resource Kit for more information on configuring Windows Firewall and IPSec.

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Will wonders ever cease? The more you play around with Windows Vista, the more cool things you discover about it. For instance, I just discovered that robocopy, that terrific file copying tool that beats xcopy by a mile is actually included in-box in Vista! Previously you had to get it by downloading the Resource Kit tools. In fact, xcopy is going to be deprecated in future versions of Windows so if you’re not a robocopy fan then start using it today! A good place to start is to type robocopy /? at the command prompt in Vista. Then search for discussion threads like http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/726004794731 for some real-world examples of how people use it in their environments.

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The Encrypting File System (EFS) allows you to secure data on NTFS volumes, but it also adds some processor overhead to your machine and can affect the performance of some applications, particularly SQL Server.

On Windows Vista and later, you can prevent users from encrypting their files in two ways. First, by running the command fsutil behavior set disableencryption 1 you can disable EFS on all NTFS volumes on your machine, so by deploying this command using a logon script you can disable EFS on targeted users’ computers.

And second, since all the above fsutil command does is to modify NtfsDisableEncryption, a REG_DWORD value found under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem, this means that you could also create a custom ADMX file to deploy this registry modification using Group Policy. For more information on how to create a custom ADMX file, see KB 918239

Note that if either method is used, the registry modification doesn’t take effect until after a reboot. In addition, before you disable encryption you should decrypt any previously encrypted files and folders on the machine, otherwise you won’t be able to access them once encryption has been disabled.

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