One of the features that we talked about a few months ago during the Beta and RC of Windows 7 was the new federated search features. It came to our attention that the TLA federated search OSDX file was not compatible with Windows 7 RTM.

So our first announcement is to say that we have fixed that and posted an updated version of the file available here. The original article will also download the newest file.

Second as TheLazyAdmin is also now on Twitter we also built a Federated search provider to search Twitter. While this is a pretty basic Search provider we thought you might like it. After you add it you can search Twitter from you Windows Explorer search bar!

Download the Windows 7 Twitter Federated Search Provider

Have Fun, and let us know if you build any other cool Federated Search providers.

A few weeks ago Rodney wrote a great post about the new XP mode in Windows XP. This is based on a new version of Virtual PC. I wanted to take a moment to talk about the new version which was released in beta along with the Windows 7 RC.

First this version of Virtual PC will only work with Windows 7, so earlier versions of Windows will have to stick with Virtual PC 2007.

Second, you can run Windows Vista and windows 7 in a virtual PC, what is really cool is that you can get full Aero glass compatibility in a virtual PC environment after you install the integration features. (notice that in Virtual PC it’s integration features not integration components as it is in Hyper-V) Notice the transparency effect in the screenshot below.

Another change is the integration of the virtual machine interface into Windows Explorer

Some additional things to keep in mind, in order to run Virtual PC for Windows 7 your CPU, chipset and BIOS need to support hardware virtualization.

Here is the link to download virtual PC

Window 7 RC has been out for a few weeks now the TLA team has been busy learning and testing all the great new features. Your tip for today is on Windows 7 App Locker. Many of you know about Software Restriction Policies. They allow you to block the execution of a program by file name or hash calculation. Many of you probably also know how it was a race to block applications in our network with these methods. Users could change the name of the file, or applications updates so frequently that you would constantly need to generate new hash files.

Windows 7 introduces a great new feature called App Locker. App locker works under the premise that it’s easier to allow the applications you want and block the rest. If you’re running a Windows 7 machine you can see App Locker by typing gpedit.msc into your search bar and pressing enter.

You can define policies based on Executables, Windows Installers, and scripts. Creating a new policy is really simple. right click on any of the 3 categories and click new.

You can create a policy to allow or deny an executable. You can also select witch groups the rule will apply to.

You can choose to create a rule based on a publisher (the program needs to be signed) or a program path, or a file hash (usually a good choice if the program isn’t signed)

For this example I chose publisher. the Rule wizard uses the information stores application signing certificate to learn about the application. You can adjust what level of information you’ll allow for an application.

 
In the above example I set the level to allow any version of Internet Explorer. (regardless of the file name used or the version)

You can use the same steps to create exceptions for specific applications. One of the best features is the ability to automatically generate rules.

This scans your applications in the program files directory and creates permissions for those programs to run. Perfect for quickly creating a baseline set of rules for a gold image.

One of the major challenges with moving to a new OS is dealing with older applications.  This was an issue with the release of Windows Vista and in order to mitigate that with Windows 7, Microsoft has released a feature called XP Mode, which runs a Windows XP SP3 virtual machine in the background that can be used to run legacy applications.  What is really interesting is that as a user, you only see a shortcut on the desktop or start menu and interact with the application as you would any other application.  Launch an application and the VM wakes up (by default it hibernates when not in use) and presents the application, close the app and the VM hibernates!

There are two components that need to be installed, Windows Virtual PC which is the successor to Virtual PC 2007, and the XP Mode VM.  Once they are installed there is a simple set up process to turn on Automatic Updates, set a username and password for the XP VM and you are on your way.  The VM can be joined to AD and act as any other domain member.

There are the typical Virtual PC settings such as memory, disk, networking etc… but the addition of Auto Publish allows applications that reside in the XP VM to appear in the Windows 7 start menu.

So to the end user they access the applications just like any other.

Any application that is installed in the XP VM can be published simply by dropping the shortcut to launch it in All Users –> Start Menu  As an example I placed the IE6 shortcut in All Users\Start Menu and launched it on Windows 7 next to IE8.

You can also mount any USB device in the XP VM as Windows Virtual PC now supports USB devices!

If you are looking to use this to solve an enterprise wide app compat issue you can use this same technology with the addition of a management suite with MED-V, or Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, which is currently in beta (as is XP Mode and Windows 7 at the time of this writing) or the Application Compatibility Toolkit which we wrote about previously.

For more information see:

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization

Download MED-V Beta 1

Microsoft Springboard Portal

Oh boy is this a feature designed for lazy admins. When I’m not writing and keeping the site up to date I’m usually onsite working for clients. Often I’m required to have multiple emails accounts active when working with various partners.

Now this isn’t usually a problem except as many know you can’t have multiple exchange accounts open in outlook at the same time. This means that you need to create separate profiles for each Exchange account. This also means that you need to type in a password every time you change profiles. Being that retyping passwords can be a drag on productivity, (fat finger errors and typos) wouldn’t it be great if you could have Windows remember your different accounts associated with your already logged on user account?

In the control panel choose Users Accounts and Family Safety

Then click on Credentials Manager

You can now see credentials that you have already entered in for various sites. If you check “Save Username and Password” in the checkbox the information will be stored here.

Once a credential has been added and stored here it will automatically be supplied when you next access the resource in question. In my case each time I open Outlook and choose a different profile I will skip having to re-enter the password for the specific Exchange account.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Your default Windows account should be secured with a strong password, and ideally it should also be secured with multifactor authentication.

One of the new command tools introduced in Windows Vista was powercfg. Essentially it’s a command line tool that enables users to control power settings. There are a lot of very granular setting that can be configured. To get an idea of what you can do with it just run the following command from the command line:

powercfg –Help | more

You’ll need to pipe that help output to a “more” because the standard command prompt settings won’t buffer the entire help output!

A really cool new feature for Windows 7 is the Power Efficiency Diagnostic Reports. This will allow power users and administrators understand and optimize their systems for maximum power efficiency and by virtue maximum battery life for laptops. In large environments the cumulative effect of optimizing power usage over thousands of computers can result in tangible power and money savings!

To generate the power Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report open an administrative  command prompt and run:

powercfg -energy

The system will observe the behaviour of your devices and settings for 60 seconds. Once complete the following output will be generated:

The output file is dropped into the current working directory. Open the report in IE to get a detailed list of the information. Also keep in mind that the PowerProfile you’re using will have an impact on the report.

Notice that the errors in the above screenshot are all related to the fact that I have set High Performance enable while on battery. Some may not agree that it is an “error” but the thing to keep in mind is that this is in the context of creating maximum power efficiency. When I change my power profile to one that uses speed step and lowers the performance on my laptop this error will resolve and go if I run the report again.

Some other errors that can be generated relate to drivers or peripherals that won’t enter a low power mode. If you ever dealt with a laptop that won’t sleep a bad driver that doesn’t support advanced power management can often be the problem. This report can help isolate these issues.

Near the bottom of the report is information about CPU utilization, processes, and this little gem (screen shot above) This report can help troubleshoot battery usage and charge capacity. This gives admin’s a great way to decide when a battery should be replaced. If the last full charge is consistently dropping from the design capacity it may be time to replace the battery.

With this report Admins can tweak power profiles to realize the maximum benefits of new power efficient computer platforms. Happy efficient computing!