2008 R2 RDS & XenApp 6 Tuning

Great article on tuning RDS, XenApp6  & Windows OS by Julien Sybille

RDS & XenApp 6 Tuning Policies

Cleanup Winsxs after Windows 7 SP1 install

I recently noticed that the free space on the 60GB OS partiton on my laptop was running very low on space. Some of this was due to old offline files which I managed to cleanup fine.
I then ran Tree Size on the OS partition and found that the winsxs folder was 10.2GB.

After a bit of research I managed to use the command below and reduced the winsxs by 4GB

DISM /online /Cleanup-Image /SpSuperseded

The command needs to be run from an elevated command prompt and you cannot uninstall the Service Pack after it completes

I then did the same on my desktop and recoverd an almost identical ammount.

Pre CleanUp

Post Cleanup

MDT 2010 – What’s my TimeZone?

When configuring the CustomSettings.ini file for MDT 2010 one thing I like to do is set the TimeZone. One problem I come across is trying to figure out the correct syntax for the time zone name.

Well there is a really handy command in Windows 7 that will give you the correct names called TZUtil.

TZUtil /g will display the current Time Zone

TZUtil /l will display all Time Zones.

MDT Refresh Task Sequence Failures

Lately I have been using MDT to refresh old machines with a fresh XP image.

The machines are all DELL and the task sequence kept bombing out during validation complaining that it couldn’t detect the disk\partition type.

After checking disk manager I noticed the standard DELL system partition configured as EISA which you can’t delete using Windows disk manager.

The solution was to use diskpart to remove the OEM partition and then the task sequence continued fine.

To remove the EISA partition follw these steps

From Command prompt run

• DISKPART
• List Disks
• Select Disk 0
• List Partitions
• Select Partition x (In my case it was 0, be sure that its the right partition before continuing with the next step)
• Delete Partition Override

Provisioning Server – Management Interface: Vdisk File Access Denied

After clonging a vDisk and adding it back into the vDisk pool I was presented with the error
Management Interface: Vdisk File Access Denied
This was an easy fix. Check what account that the streasming service is using and makes sure that the appropirate permisson exists on the vDisk.
In my case it was the Network Service so adding in the Local Computer account and granting permission fixed the issue.

Permissions required are read\write although I simply gave the computer account full control.

Voila, issue resolved