Modify MSI files parameters

This fantastic tool allows you to modify the MSI parameters:
http://www.pantaray.com/msi_super_orca.html

Windows 7 Deployment capture from Virtualbox and Microsoft Deployment Toolkit

From some days I'm working on a windows 7 distribution project. I'm using VirtualBox to run some test of capture and deploy of the master pc created.

The target operating system is a W7 64bit pro so I started to create a new VM with that operating system, virtual machine created normally with no particular settings.

Then in MDT I created a test task to Sysprep and Capture.

So happy to start I runt on the master machine a console prompt with high privileges. The VM is not in domain (else the first start crash).

then on the console:

net use  z: \\server\MDTshare /user:domain\user *

z:
cd scripts
cscript LiteTouch.vbs

This start the capture wizard which should run the task sequences created in mdt, first sysprep then load the system state then restart and capture the image.


In this step and also during the connection to the server hosting the mdt share I experienced so many troubles, everytime seems the connection falled down or there was some trouble with the nic drivers.

Today after some search I found some incompatibility from Virtualbox and windows 7 64 bit guests, this problems appears on the lan both with windows and linux host operating systems on 64 bit.

This malfunctions should be corrected by using the virtio-net driver for the guest nic. You can find the correct drivers here: Virt I/O drivers if you use this drivers you have also to inject it on the mdt tasks drivers else when the tasks restarts the machine to capture fails to connect to lan.

You can also try to mount the iso on the vm and use drvload \\pathtoinf to load the needed driver. Do not forget to connect to network share.

AppexNetwork Accelerator on Windows 7 64 and network socket/connections closed

For some days I was involved in a strange problem on a custom application.
This application was written in vb6 and used oracle as a backend; after the upgrade from oracle 9 to 10 on the server side, client started to present a strange behaviour on the application.

If the user left the application in the taskbar without using it for some minutes the application freezing without any possible way out. Only killing the task.

The first actions was to verify some parameters on the network card, supposing the problem was caused by some Green feature to save energy

So with this command see the situation of the tcp stack
netsh int tcp show global
netstat –t

Used this documentation to understand the features of new network driver
http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Contact_Center_Networking:_Offload,_Receive_Side_Scaling_and_Chimney
https://support.microsoft.com/it-it/kb/951037 
http://blogs.technet.com/b/onthewire/archive/2014/01/21/tcp-offloading-chimney-amp-rss-what-is-it-and-should-i-disable-it.aspx
http://www.peerwisdom.org/2013/04/25/disabling-large-send-offload-windows/


Disabled some functionality of tcp

netsh interface tcp set global chimney=disabled

netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled

Look on something about the Nagle Alghoritm

http://apmblog.dynatrace.com/2014/07/24/understanding-application-performance-on-the-network-the-nagle-algorithm/

Then I found that the problem was presenting only in some HP pc. 

We bought two different HP workstation with Intel and AMD processors and chipset and I found 

that the problem was appeared only in AMD ones.

Even in clean windows 7 installation after the update of the os and card drivers the problem 

started presenting.

So I found a strange component called Appex Network Accelerator only in this machine, 

disabling it the problem disappeared

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f31/appex-networks-accelerator-network-protocol-will-squash-your-internet-speed-877593.html

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2398779

ITALIAN:

Il problema è causato da una funzionalità legata ai processori AMD e installata in automatico su qualsiasi scheda di rete, questo spiega perché alcuni test fatti con altre schede avevano dato dapprima esito positivo e successivamente (magari dopo update) esito negativo.

Ho riscontrato che disabilitando il componente Appex Network Accelerator,  evidenziato sotto, il problema si risolve senza dover reinstallare il sistema operativo.