Windows 7 Activities at Gartner Symposium

Brandon LeBlanc — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:49:48 GMT

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, the industry's largest and most important annual gathering of CIOs and their senior IT leaders is taking place this week in Orlando, Florida.

During this year’s event, which will focus on how business technology can help customers return to growth by balancing cost optimization and risk mitigation, Microsoft will be helping customers to understand how they can realize the benefits of Windows 7 through the following activities and sessions:

Windows 7 Early Adopter Customer Panel: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 12:30PM - 1:30PM ET (Moderated by Michael A. Silver - Gartner)

A panel of Windows 7 early adopters will discuss Windows 7 planning, deployment tips and rollout plans. During the panel, attendees will share their experience on planning for a successful deployment and the immediate results they received deploying Windows 7. Featured Gartner Research VP & Distinguished Analyst Michael Silver will facilitate the panel discussion. Please visit Gartner.com for a replay of this webcast on October 22nd.

Windows 7 Unplugged-- Tips From Microsoft's CIO Office: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 2:00Pm - 2:20PM ET (Rick Merrifield - Microsoft)

In this interactive session, the Chief Architect in Microsoft’s IT department will share insider tips on how to plan, pilot and rollout Windows 7. Learn how your organization can benefit from applying the Windows Optimized Desktop to increase end user productivity, enhance security and reduce costs by automating IT management.

Windows Optimized Desktop-- Windows 7 and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack: Wednesday, October 21st 3:30PM -4:30pm ET (Gavriella Schuster - Microsoft)

The Windows Optimized Desktop is designed to help with today’s imminent IT challenges while ensuring your future success. Come learn how Microsoft Windows 7 and the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 together provide better user productivity, stronger data protection, security and PC management and automation improvements that can help you save costs and improve IT efficiency.

Mastermind Keynote with Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division Thursday, October 22nd 11:00am - 11:45am (Moderated by Neil MacDonald and Brian Gammage - Gartner)

Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald and Brian Gammage will moderate an interview with Stephen on a variety of topics top of mind for Symposium attendees. As president of the Microsoft Business Division, Stephen oversees the Information Worker, Microsoft Business Solutions and Unified Communications Groups here at Microsoft and is a member of the company's senior leadership team that sets overall strategy and direction for the company.

Windows 7 Hand On Labs— Monday, October 19th- Thursday, October 22nd Various times (Various presenters)

30 minute, proctor led, interactive sessions where attendees can experience the following features of Windows 7: Windows 7 UI features, Internet Explorer 8 & Web Slices, Problem Steps Recorder, Med-V (using Internet Explorer to launch a Med-V web site), and using BitLocker which will include a 1GB key drive to activate BitLocker as a giveaway, with pre-loaded content including the current product guide and the Microsoft Optimized Desktop datasheet.

Giving the Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) a Try

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 03:02:00 GMT

Today, Nick told you about some updates to the tools in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) from Barcelona, Spain at TechEd IT Forum. I recently had a chance to give one of the components of MDOP - the Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) 6.0 - a try. DaRT is an excellent set of tools for IT Professionals to troubleshoot unresponsive PCs and removing viruses and malware off infected PCs in their environment. DaRT 6.0 also now has the ability for IT Professionals to conduct offline removal of malware and viruses from infected PCs.

The first thing I noticed when I started using DaRT is that it provides two options to the IT Professional: a way to analyze crash files from unresponsive PCs through the Crash Analysis Wizard, and a way to create a startup disc with the necessary tools in fixing an unresponsive PC that is unable to boot into Windows called ERD Commander.

I first took a look at the Crash Analysis Wizard.

The Crash Analysis Wizard allows an IT Professional to take a crash dump file (*.dmp files associated with a system crash) and analyze it and get important bits of information that could help figure out why a PC is crashing. I have an old .dmp file from a crash a long time ago I dug up to run through the Crash Analysis Wizard. The Crash Analysis Wizard requires the Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows as a prerequisite so before proceeding in analyzing my .dmp file, I had to install that first. I was also able to specify any Symbol files I had as well. I had no Symbols to provide so I skipped to choosing the specific .dmp file I wanted to analyze.

Once I choose the .dmp files - I clicked next and the analysis commenced. The analysis finished in about a minute and brought up a new screen telling me what probably was the cause of the crash as well as when the crash originally occurred.

If I wanted, I could view the full details of the crash as well. The .dmp file I used for this was from June 20^th and was in fact due to a graphics driver issue. The graphics driver issue was corrected after updating to the latest video driver.

I then proceeded to check out ERD Commander.

ERD Commander lets you create a startup image. That startup image can then be burned to a CD in which you can boot off of that lets you repair PCs that do not function. I went through the process, via the ERD Commander Wizard, in creating my own startup disc. In creating a startup disc, I was required to provide a Windows Vista DVD to create the boot image.

After choosing the Windows Vista Ultimate DVD in my DVD Drive and choose next, the Wizard then told me it is about to extract the necessary files in creating a boot image and that it may take a few minutes. For me, it barely took a minute to extra the files. Once the extraction of the files is complete, the wizard then brought me to a new screen in which it gives me an offering of tools I can add to the startup disc.

I went ahead and choose all of the tools. You are given the choice of the following tools for your startup disc:

Computer Management
Crash Analyzer
Disk Commander
Disk Wipe
Explorer
File Restore
Hotfix Uninstall
Locksmith
Registry Editor
Solution Wizard
Standalone System Sweeper
System File Repair
TCP/IP Configuration

In choosing all of the tools - I proceeded to the next step: providing any .inf files for any specific devices I would need to install drivers for (*.inf files are device driver files). At this point I didn't have any specific drivers I wanted to include on my startup disc as I was looking to create a generic disc. I was then asked to include any additional files, which I had none, and then create the disc. ERD Commander creates the startup disc image as an .iso file.

To my surprise, after the .iso image is done being created - ERD Commander asked me if I would like to then burn that .iso image to a CD. ERD Commander allows you to burn the disc directly. I was thinking I would have to use a third-party imaging burning tool to burn my startup disc image. This was a very cool surprise perk (a feature I think IT Pros will appreciate as well).

At the end of the Wizard, my startup disc was created as well as an .iso of the disc so I can re-burn the disc and create more if needed at a later date.

To test my new startup disc, I fired up Windows Vista in Virtual PC 2007 and booted off my new startup disc. When I did this, it went into System Recovery (WinRE) which is built into Windows Vista and DaRT runs on top of WinRE (Windows Recovery Environment). Matter a fact, WinRE has its own tools as well and DaRT works with them in helping the IT Pro diagnose what is wrong and recover a unresponsive PC.

I was then able to choose the tools offered in DaRT (which were the tools I chose above) and was able to scan the PC for malware and much more.

After experiencing DaRT first hand, I believe it is a must have for IT Professionals and offers a great set of tools in helping IT Professionals recovery crashed PCs in their environment. DaRT 6.0 (announced today as part of MDOP) offers IT Professionals the ability to run these tools on a BitLocker-encrypted drive as well. Customers can learn more about DaRT on Microsoft.com.

Windows Experience Blog : Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

Windows 7 Activities at Gartner Symposium

Giving the Microsoft Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset (DaRT) a Try