.NET Applications on Windows x64 – Easy? Yes and No When migrating to 64-bit Windows, traditional “unmanaged” applications can pose challenges. That is because unmanaged binaries contain hardware-dependent CPU instructions – and the view on the hardware differs between 32- […] Read more
Citrix User Profile Manager 5 Years Ago: Birth Citrix User Profile Manager is pretty well-known in the SBC space today. Five years ago, things were quite different. Citrix did not have a user profile solution, and neither did […] Read more
Visual Studio: Adding DLL References Whose Version Changes Frequently Let’s assume you have a C# project in Visual Studio. In that project, you reference an assembly (DLL) created by another of your projects. Because both projects are in active […] Read more
Which Software Installed That Driver – And When? Installing a software that includes a driver may leave your system in an inconsistent state. If the install fails, parts may remain on the system. And if the remaining part […] Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Windows (7 and 2008 R2), PowerShell and Citrix Windows General Good info for troubleshooting DFS-Namespaces in the MS KB: Storage locations, inconsistencies and how to deal with them. Complex passwords and security guidelines for end users? No, thank […] Read more
Are Mandatory User Profiles Deleted at Logoff – or Cached? This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. A popular misconception about mandatory user profiles […] Read more
Visual Studio: Fixing Broken $(WindowsSdkDir) Variable If you get weird errors in Visual Studio that basically state files like Windows.h cannot be found, the reason may be a missing or incorrect WindowsSdkDir variable. In my case, […] Read more
Syntax Highlighting PowerShell Code in HTML – With a PowerShell Script When you are publishing PowerShell code on the web, you soon discover that it looks much nicer with syntax highlighting – as did I. There are several ways to add […] Read more
How to List All Installed Applications From the Command Line This article describes how to list all installed MSI packages. A more comprehensive listing of all applications displayed in Programs and Features can be obtained through our monitoring and analytics […] Read more
PowerShell Script Lists App-V Package Dependencies (Dynamic Suite Composition, DSC) Update 2010-04-20: Thanks to Stefan Henseler the script now works correctly with multiple dependencies in a single file. Be sure to download the current version below. App-V’s Dynamic Suite Composition […] Read more
How to Analyze Kernel Performance Bottlenecks (and Find that ATI’s Catalyst Drivers Cause 50% CPU Utilization) Normally, finding the cause for high CPU utilization is easy – just start Task Manager. But what if the component consuming CPU cycles is a driver that runs in the […] Read more
The 30 Second File Copy Bug, or: EFS = Bad Performance? This article describes a bug that dramatically reduces file copy performance on Windows systems. I cannot provide a fix (not having access to the Windows source code), but I have […] Read more
VXI: How a Customer With Real Scalability Problems Uses Virtualization I wish all my friends and readers a merry christmas and happy new year! I hope you like sepago’s annual Christmas comic. Read more
Fixing Office 2007’s Quick Access Toolbars With Citrix User Profile Manager Not sure where user profile management might be useful? Here is an example that should apply to almost everyone. Read more
Should Roaming User Profiles Be Backed Up? This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. This may seem like a silly question, […] Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Windows, Hyper-V, Citrix, PowerShell and Application Streaming / App-V Windows Beginning with Vista, when formatting a drive the entire disk is overwritten with zeroes. While this is good for end users who like to wipe all data prior to […] Read more
My Take on ChromeOS? It will be Successful when End Users can Manage their Photos and Music in the Cloud ChromeOS seems to be the talk of the day. Why not? It is an interesting concept. But will it be successful? That is the wrong question, actually. It should be […] Read more
How to Easily Monitor System Performance with the new DiskLED 1.1 DiskLED is a small tool that displays performance counter data using an animated system tray icon. The new version 1.1 comes with a graphical configuration dialog that lets you choose […] Read more
Citrix Products 2010: A Wish List What would Joe, a Citrix admin, put on his Christmas wish list? Here are some guesses in no special order. Read more
What is a CTP Meeting all about? I just returned from my first CTP (Citrix Technology Professional) meeting and thought I might share a few experiences. The meeting took place in one of Citrix’s headquarter buildings in […] Read more
Virtualization – Old Hat? Although humans in general and members of its subspecies “marketing manager” in particular tend to treat currently “hot” topics as new and revolutionary, they only rarely are. In fact, “new” […] Read more
Found my first bug in Windows 7 APIs: PdhBrowseCounters requires Elevation I just found out the following, which does not seem to be documented anywhere: The Windows API has a function for displaying a dialog that lets the user select a […] Read more
Radio Buttons in MFC (Visual Studio 2008 / C++) This is a quick and dirty description of how to use radio buttons in MFC, written because I could not find this information in a single place on the web. […] Read more
On the Usefulness of self-extracting Archives I just found out that the new firmware version 2.1 for my digital camera Panasonic Lumix LX3 has been published. Very nice, especially the speed improvements. So I downloaded the […] Read more
New XenDesktop 4 Licensing Model: Flexibility? Yes, but at what Cost? It seems the Citrix community had only had one topic recently, albeit one discussed hotly: licensing. Now that Citrix has given in and practically allowed all conceivable license types, everybody […] Read more
DiskLED – A Flexible Hard Disk and General System Activity Indicator System Tray Applet What do you do when your computer reacts sluggishly to even the simplest commands? You probably look at its hard disk LED to determine if the disk is busy, because […] Read more
Profile Hell – The Reality of Windows User Profiles This article is part of Helge’s Profile Toolkit, a set of posts explaining the knowledge and tools required to tame Windows user profiles. A user calls the help desk to […] Read more
How to Determine the Windows Installation Date with and without PowerShell There are many ways to determine when Windows was installed. Here are some of them. Read more
New Articles, Tools, Tips and Tricks: Bugs, Annoyances, PowerShell and some other Stuff Bugs and Annoyances ICA connections initiated over the ICA client object (ICO) SDK fail because 128-bit encryption cannot be enabled. Apparently, setting EncryptionLevelSession does not work. Annoyingly, this bug is […] Read more
Useful PowerShell Scriptlets for Files and Folders What is the best way to learn PowerShell? Never use cmd.exe again! With PowerShell 2.0 on my Windows 7 machine I decided it finally is time to polish my rusty […] Read more
