Expertenwissen von Helge Klein

Not sure where user profile management might be useful? Here is an example that should apply to almost everyone. The obvious new user interface feature of Microsoft Office 2007 is the ribbon. But there are numerous other UI enhancements over Office 2003. One of these are the Quick Access Toolbars. If you are not sure what I am talking about: the following screen shot should give you an idea (from a German version of Office,

There are many ways to determine when Windows was installed. Here are some of them.

Systeminfo

The systeminfo tool displays a lot of interesting information about the computer and the operating system, among them the installation date. Here is some sample output:

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Host Name:                 WIN7
OS Name:                   Microsoft Windows 7 Enterprise
OS Version:                6.1.7600 N/A Build 7600
OS Manufacturer:           Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration:          Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type:             Multiprocessor Free
Original Install Date:     9/17/2009,

[A German translation of this article is available at faq-o-matic.net.]

The subtle differences between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows present so many intricacies and pitfalls that even Microsoft employees seem to have trouble getting it right. I just stumbled upon a KB article that describes how to reset the hosts file to its original state. The topic alone is funny enough – it is not as if the default hosts file contained great amounts of data.

A mandatory profile is a special type of roaming profile. As with a roaming profile, a mandatory profile is copied from its network location to the local machine during logon. But during logoff, changes are not copied back. Instead, the local copy of the mandatory profile is reset to its initial state at the next logon. In essence, mandatory profiles are read-only roaming profiles. This has advantages, but also severe drawbacks. The Good Since mandatory profiles are read-only,

Commenter Steven asked in response to my article on how not to delete local user profiles for the correct way to script the deletion of user profiles. Here is how. For completeness sake I start with the manual method.

Deleting Profiles Manually

1. Open the control panel applet „System Properties“ and navigate to the tab „Advanced“. I know of the following shortcuts for this often needed dialog box:
   • Press Win+Break
   • Press Win+R to open the run dialog box.

In many environments it is a common practice to delete user profiles prior to conducting tests in order to start with a clean slate. However, this may prove more difficult than anticipated.

Most people think that a local user profile only consists of the directory %USERPROFILE% typically located below C:\Users on Vista and Server 2008 (and newer). But there is more. Windows keeps track of the local profile incarnations in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList.

This is the seventh part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I explained that mixed 32-/64-bit processes are not allowed and how that rule affects both administrators and script-writers. In this context I mentioned the strangely named directory SysWOW64. Today I am going to explain what it is used for by starting with redirection. File System Redirector As you know,

This is the sixth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I discussed how 32-bit applications are wrapped up in the WoW64 subsystem. Today we will take a deeper look at some limitations of 64-bit Windows and what they mean in practice. RulesApplication interoperability and execution on Windows x64 is governed by a few simple rules, most of which you already know:

1. The kernel cannot execute 32-bit code.

Most technical folks have stumbled across the registry hive HKEY_USERS\.Defaultat some point. Many of them think they know what it is used for. Interestingly, most who do are wrong. The misconception about what HKU\.Default is used for dates back to the good old days when Windows NT 4.0 was still considered „new technology“. This misconception has been, and still is, passed on to future generations by means of books, magazine articles, blog entries and geek talk.

Update: The ADM file can now be downloaded here.

I recently came across a post in the Windows Server Performance Team’s blog that lists several registry values which can be used to tune Explorer’s SMB performance by modifying the following:

• Searches for Desktop.ini files used for folder customization
• Periodic refreshes of folder contents
• Searches for supporting library (.dll) files
• Individual file details and attributes pulled for each file
• Thumbnail extraction

I found the tips very interesting,