“Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart” (Installing Windows Server 2012 on VMware ESXi 5.0)

Preparing somewhat for the upcoming Microsoft Beta Exams (071-413, 071-414, 071-415 and 071-416) thinking I would go ahead and install Microsoft Windows Server 2012 into my testing environment which is VMWare ESXi (at the moment). I created a custom VM, removed the Floppy drive (because that seemed to be the issue not getting Windows 8 working within VMware Workstation 8). I did do some other standard stuff like selecting Windows Server 2008 (64-bit) instead of Windows Server 2008 R2 (That seemed part of the solution on Workstation). All this to no avail on VMWare ESXi 5.0.

The resolution for me was to patch the VMware ESXi 5.0 server to Build 768111 which is up to 5.0.0 Patch 7.

I like the new fun error message though … Hope it will last beyond RC level, Microsoft should do more fun stuff like this, and I don’t mean more error messages .

Show / Hide Desktop Items Windows 2008 R2 / Windows 7 by means of registry and Microsoft Group Policy Preferences

Update: Corrected the typos, images, registry keys.

Creating a new Citrix XenApp 6 / Windows Server 2008 R2 environment for a customer, stumbled on the problem that I still need to perform some registry tweaks to get the desktop icons to be shown or not. Seems that it is very hard for Microsoft to get this done in Group Policies. I usually save this kind of information in my archive, I thought it might be of use for a broader audience.

Here are the registry locations for hiding the Microsoft Windows Desktop Items:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
HideDesktopIcons\ClassicStartMenu]

“{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}”=dword:00000000      (<= Computer)
“{59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}”=dword:00000000            (<= User Files)
“{5399E694-6CE5-4D6C-8FCE-1D8870FDCBA0}”=dword:00000000   (<= Control Panel)
”{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}”=dword:00000000     (<= Network)
“{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}”=dword:00000001         (<= Recycle Bin)

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\
HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel]

“{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}”=dword:00000000      (<= Computer)
“{59031a47-3f72-44a7-89c5-5595fe6b30ee}”=dword:00000000            (<= User Files)
“{5399E694-6CE5-4D6C-8FCE-1D8870FDCBA0}”=dword:00000000   (<= Control Panel)
”{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}”=dword:00000000     (<= Network)
“{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}”=dword:00000001         (<= Recycle Bin)

Microsoft Beta Exam 71-685 Pro: Windows® 7, Enterprise Desktop Support Technician

Ok, so I attended this exam yesterday and think I did all right. I do not want to violate Microsoft’s Non Disclosure Agreement so if I’m telling you guys too much you will let me know right?

The exam consisted of 70 questions in which I think I had to guess about 22 of them. I like the number of questions on a Microsoft Beta exams. With Citrix Beta Exams can take up to 250 (!) questions. As if anyone knows what he/she is answering after question number 120. If there are that many questions on a beta exam, that means you can toss the last 150 questions out the window for sure.

Anyway, for this exam know all the new features of Microsoft Windows 7 like BitLocker, BranchCache, DirectAccess, AppLocker, Internet Explorer 8. This information and more on this exam can be found here.

I have scheduled Microsoft Beta Exam 71-686 Pro: Windows® 7, Enterprise Desktop Administrator on October 14th.

Henny Louwers

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Henny Louwers