At work we run two web browsers namely IE and Firefox.  IE usage is on the decline as everyone is working out that IE is crap for AJAX interfaces which is what our webmail system uses.  So most people are using Firefox as it is so much faster this posed a little problem.  With Active Directory you can easily push out and lock Proxy settings for IE. 

To do with Firefox some file changes on the application itself must be set, so on our terminal servers we’ve done the following;

1. Open a Text Editior and create a file called mozilla.txt in it add the following lines.
   •  lockPref(“network.proxy.http”,”mypoxyserver”);
   • lockPref(“network.proxy.http_port”,3128);
   • lockPref(“network.proxy.type”,1);
   • lockPref(“browser.startup.homepage”, “myhomepage”);
2. Then byte shift the file with an offset of 13, you can use this service to do it for you.
3. Copy the new file without editting it again, to the Firefox.exe directory as mozilla.cfg
4. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\greprefs and open the file all.js in a text editor
5. Add the line pref(“general.config.filename”, “mozilla.cfg”); to the start of the file and save.

Now when any user starts the application the homepage and proxy settings will be locked.

Microsoft in the wisdom released WDS as a stealth nerf to RIS with Service Pack 2 of Windows 2003 server.  Service Pack 1 versions shipped with the tried the tested Remote Installation Service (RIS).  Personally I feel Microsoft has jumped the gun a bit here by introducing WDS in the R2 release, documentation is very very light on and there is alot of confusing about how to deploy XP via WDS. 

 WDS is the intended Deployment system for Server 2008 and is focused on deploying Vista and not XP systems.  They key to deploying XP with WDS basically comes down to the understanding that you will require a copy of Vista, even if you are not intending to deploy it.  Below are the rough steps I use to deploy XP and Vista with WDS.

1. Install WDS (do not configure)
2. Install WAIK – Windows Automated Installation Kit, this is an external download from here. Be warned it’s quite large, but required none the less.
3. Start WDS Legacy Services – Use the Wizard to add your XP unattended image, I use nlite to create mine you can find it here.
4. Now configure WDS, running it after Legacy puts WDS into Mixed Mode.  Configurations options to check are;
   • ‘PXE Responce Settings’ = ‘Respond to All’
   • ‘Advanced’ = ‘Allow windows deployment services to dynamically discover valid domain servers’ and ‘Yes, I want to authorise the WDS server in DHCP’
   • ‘DHCP’ = ‘Do not listen on port 67’ and ‘Configure DHCP option 60 to PXE Client’
5. From the WDS console you need to now add the ‘boot.wim’ from the Vista installation media to the boot images and add ‘install.wim’ to the install images.  The later is only required if you want to deploy Vista.  However you must use the ‘boot.wim’ from vista, without it your XP clients will not get a boot image via tftp when they try to start with PXE.
6. At this point you should be able to boot a client machine from PXE and have a selection of OS’s to install.

The above assumes that WDS and DHCP are running on the same server and that you have a domain.  WDS is easier to setup then RIS, but at the moment its still alittle bit of voodoo as very little seems to be known about it.

I am yet to have a pleasent experience with Vista, and trust me it’s not like I haven’t been trying.  I’ve had some version of Vista installed on one of my many machines since it went RC1.  At work my new laptop runs the 32bit Buisness versions and well it’s just plan slow, I look over to one of my developers offices and the same machine running XP Pro is nice and fast.  Add to this the daily frustration of Vista’s intolerably slow tcp/ip stuck and the fact it doesn’t remove deleted file icons from its cache decently and well in my world it’s rubbish.

 So given this one may wonder why on earth I would want to take my perfectly working gaming machine with XP Pro 64bit and install Vista Ulitmate 64bit.  The answer “World in Conflict”.  See the Beta looks magic with dx9 and my twin 8800GTS cards, but as it’s also a dx10 title it should look more magic on Vista.  Hense I began traveling down the road to oblivion.  The nano second after I blew away the partition it occured to me it might have been prudent to image my old installation first as this in all likely hood would end in tears and much raging.

The machine in question is;

•  Tyan K8WE Motherboard 
• 2x AMD Opteron 265 Processors
• 4Gb ECC Memory
• 2x 150Gb Raptor Hard Drives
• 3ware Raid Controller
• 2x Geforce 8800GTS 640mb Video Cards 

So first thing on the agenda is the SLI, gotta get those twin beauty video cards rocking again so we can see WiC in all it’s glory.  Installed the lastest Nvidia beta drivers for Vista 163.x as these even contain a special patch just for WiC, reboot and whoa whats this? Code 12?? Device cannot find enough free resources?? WTF??

After alittle head scratching I figure out this is caused due to the way Vista now talks to the bios, in fact Tyan as well as other vendors have had to release new bios revisions to correct problems just like this one.  See if I drop my memory back down to 2Gb it’s all fine SLI works, but um like I’m gonna do that.  So I tweak with the memory hole settings in the bios but alas I’m not having much joy. 

After a good 4 hours of swearing at it, the conclusion once more is Vista just isn’t ready.  SLI has been around for a bloody long time now, but you just have to visit the nvidia forums and will see countless threads on Code 12 without solutions.  Disappointing to say the least.  At any rate at 10pm I reinstalled XP Pro 64 and everything is back to normal. 

Welcome to the world of Diomac, faster then superman, more grinding then WoW, and all too much fun.