Whenever I tried to launch the ‘Install VMware Tools’ package, it failed with the error:
“You can’t open the application Install VMware Tools because PowerPC applications are no longer supported”.

The error did not make much sense as I didn’t have any PowerPC processor and when looking at the properties of the application it was made for an Intel processor.

They only way I could solve the issue was to drag the application onto the desktop and run it from there …

Bug VMware?

The next step was to have a look into the CBS.log file (c:\windows\logs\cbs\cbs.log) and there I found the following entries listed:

2011-03-17 10:14:44, Info CBS SPI: Reporting AC required event
2011-03-17 10:14:44, Error CBS SPI: (PerformSPInstallation:809)Machine running on battery power hr=0x800f0829
2011-03-17 10:14:44, Error CBS SPI: (wmain:1105)Failed to perform SP installation hr=0x800f0829
2011-03-17 10:14:44, Info CBS SPI: Reporting Failed event
2011-03-17 10:14:44, Info CBS SPI: SPInstall terminating, return code 0x800f0829

This clearly indicated that it is a prerequisite that your system should not be running on battery power when installing the service pack.
And indeed, after connecting my machine to an electrical outlet the service pack installation succeeded.

[PS] C:\> Get-WmiObject CIM_PhysicalMemory | ft BankLabel, Capacity, Speed -Autosize

By using this Powershell command you will get a list of the memory modules installed with their physical bank location, size and speed.

To make this work I had to:

• give my domain account ‘read’ rights on ‘All Instances’ of the ‘Report’ class
• give my domain account ‘read’ rights on ‘All Instances’ of the ‘Status Messages’ class
  (otherwise I could not see any of the status message reports but got a “RecordID can not be found” error message)
• add my domain account to the ‘SMS Reporting Users’ local group on the server which had the Reporting Point Site System Role installed
  (otherwise I could not see the reports tree but instead got an Internal Server Error message)

The first step is to get a list of the mailboxes for all disabled users in Active Directory

[PS] C:\> $mailboxlist = Get-Mailbox -Server yourservername | ? {$_.UserAccountControl -match “AccountDisabled” -and $_.isLinked -match “false” -and $_.isResource -match “false”}

The next step is to add the necessary permissions to the mailbox to be able to export it and afterwards export it to a specified directory

[PS] C:\> foreach ($mailbox in $mailboxlist) {
Add-MailboxPermission -Identity $mailbox -AccessRights fullaccess -User yourusername
Export-Mailbox -Identity $mailbox -PSTFolderPath c:\temp\ -Confirm:$false
}

Note that you can only run the Export-Mailbox command on a 32-bit computer with the Outlook client installed.

After making this change on my iMac, the boot time went from around 50 seconds to 30 seconds!

If only I had known this a couple of months earlier …

These troubleshooting packs can either be started by the user himself (e.g. via the topics in Help, the Windows 7 Action Center or the Troubleshooting Control Panel) or the system can launch them automatically for some applications or Windows components and try to point out what is causing the misbehavior.

Another option is to use Windows Powershell V2 together with the TroubleshootingPack module which I will explain to you in this post.

Before we can use the troubleshooting pack features, we need to import the module:

PS C:\> Import-Module TroubleshootingPack

Now that the module is imported, we can look for any commands related to the troubleshooting packs:

PS C:\> Get-Command -Module TroubleshootingPack | Select-Object Name

Name
——-
Get-TroubleshootingPack
Invoke-TroubleshootingPack

Before we can use the Get-TroubleshootingPack command, we need to find out which troubleshooting packs are available as the command requires that you specify the location of the specific pack you want to use.
If you have a look into the help information for the Get-TroubleshootingPack command, you’ll see that by default all the packs are available in the C:\Windows\Diagnostics\System folder.

So to get a list of the packs that are available on the system we can use the following command:

PS C:\> Get-ChildItem C:\Windows\Diagnostics\System | Select-Object Name

Name
——-
AERO
Audio
Device
DeviceCenter
HomeGroup
IEBrowseWeb
IESecurity
Networking
PCW
Performance
Power
Printer
Search
WindowsMediaPlayerConfiguration
WindowsMediaPlayerMediaLibrary
WindowsMediaPlayerPlayDVD
WindowsUpdates

Now that we have the list of packs available we can use the Get-TroubleshootingPack command to get more information about a specific troubleshooting pack:

PS C:\> Get-TroubleshootingPack C:\Windows\Diagnostics\System\Printer | fl Name, Description

Name  :  Printer
Description  :  Troubleshoot problems preventing printing from completing

To run the Printer troubleshooting pack we can pipe the previous command into the Invoke-TroubleshootingPack command:

PS C:\> Get-TroubleshootingPack C:\Windows\Diagnostics\System\Printer | Invoke-TroubleshootingPack

Checking the Spooler service …
Checking for Spooler service errors…

Which printer would you like to troubleshoot?
Select the printer that isn’t working correctly.

[1] Microsoft XPS Document Writer
[2] Fax

[?] Help
[x] Exit
:1
Checking for a default printer…
Searching for printer driver updates…
Checking network printer connectivity…
Checking printer power status…
Checking the toner cartridge…
Checking the paper tray…
Checking the paper jam…
Checking the print queue…
Checking for printers that are not shared with the HomeGroup…
Checking for errors from the printer driver…

No problems were detected

No user however will be running these tools using Powershell but the cool thing is that IT administrators can use this functionality to support end-users by running these troubleshooting packs remotely on their Windows 7 client machines using Powershell V2 and remoting.

There is also the possibility to write your own troubleshooting packs (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd323712(VS.85).aspx for more information on this)

Tuesday March 30th:

• Managing Exchange 2010
• Exchange High Availability
• Exchange Information Protection & Control (including RBAC)
• Exchange 2010 Client Side: What’s new talking about Client Access?
• Exchange Performance / Scalability

Wednesday March 31st:

• Managing Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 with Windows Powershell V2
• What’s Windows Server 2008 R2 going to do for your Active Directory?
• A-Z of Usable Security in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7
• Deploy Windows 7 Using Microsoft’s FREE Deployment Tools
• Eliminating Login Scripts using Group Policy Preferences

Thursday April 1st:

• Windows Deployment Made Easier: Meet WAIK 2.0 and Volume Activation 2.0
• DirectAccess Technical Drilldown, Part 1 of 2: IPV6 and Transition Technologies
• DirectAccess Technical Drilldown, Part 2 of 2: Putting it all together
• Introduction to Microsoft Communications Server “W14″
• Windows Crash Dump Analysis
• Notes from the field implementing Windows 7 in the Enterprise

and when you try to check in the file in the SharePoint Document library, you receive the following error message:

The following steps where taken to reproduce the issue:

• Create an Excel file (DraftsTest.xlsx), add some content and save it locally on disk
• Upload the Excel file to a SharePoint document library with versioning enabled
• Check out the file and save to the local drafts folder
• Disconnect from the network
• Open the Excel file from the local drafts folder, make changes and save it again
• Connect to the network
• Open the Excel file from the local drafts folder and notice that the links to the SharePoint document library are gone
• Try to check in the file from within the SharePoint document library

As some people within the company really wanted this feature to be working, I logged a call with Microsoft Support.
A few phone calls later the conclusion was that this was a known issue and that there were no plans to fix this issue in the current version of MOSS but that this feature ‘might’ be working in MOSS 2010.

We’ll see …

The only question that remains is although this hotfix has been there since November last year, it is still not being delivered via Windows Update.