"Local”, “LocalLow” and “Roaming”

May 30, 2010 by Ramesh

Windows Vista and Windows 7 ships with three new folders namely “Local”, “LocalLow” and “Roaming” which has been created by Microsoft intentionally for the following reasons

• Better performance during logon
• Segregation of application’s data based on the usage level

Roaming
The folder “Roaming” by design ensures that ONLY absolutely essential data like “Favorites” “Desktop” and “Documents” travel with the user thereby making it as a roaming profile. Data stored inside this folder would be user’s preference for a particular application. For instance, Adobe products stores user’s settings in this folder. It is worth to remember that “Roaming” folder is synchronized with the server meaning bigger the size of roaming folder longer the time required to logon to a PC.

Local
The folder “Local” is designed to store any machine specific information which wouldn’t be synchronized with the server at logon time. Usually, this data is machine specific. This folder is equivalent to C:\Documents and Settings\Local Settings\Application Data on Windows XP.

LocalLow
This folder stores what Microsoft calls as “Low Integrity” data. IE8, for example, can only write to the locallow folder (when protected mode is on).

The data that would go into any of the above three folders would be a vendor specific design. For instance, Adobe products install the custom dictionaries to “LocalLow” whereas Microsoft products install the same to “Roaming”

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32-bit and 64-bit Windows

May 29, 2010 by Ramesh

I have people frequenting to me with at least one question after buying a 64 bit computer (mostly inadvertently). “Hey .. i see two program files folder on my PC .... can i delete one of those? (mostly Program Files (x86)) as it is something new on my box”. This is when it occurred to me that both are radically different and the difference had to be educated to the users.

On a 64bit PC, We find two folder namely “Program Files” and “Program Files (x86)”. There is an astute difference between the two folders which is definitely worth discriminating. Simply put, “Program Files” folder is designed for 64 bit applications and “Program Files (x86)” for well known and more prevalently in use 32 bit applications. This precisely is what defines the installation directory for an application.

Windows 7 is designed to detect the architecture of an application which helps it decide the installation location. Needless to say that, the application should be 64 bit designed to be installed to “Program Files” folder.

These two types of application might leave us with a question like would a 64 bit application work on a 32 bit processor and 32 bit application on 64 bit processor? Well ... the answer is.... If an application is specifically designed for a 64bit processor, they wouldn’t run on a 32 bit processor. Whereas most of the 32 bit applications will work on 64 bit OS.

I believe, The above differentiation provides a holistic view on the two types of windows and I found the below link to be very useful

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Windows 7 Compatibility Check

by Ramesh

The below mentioned site shows up a list of software’s that are compatible with Win7 32 and 64 bit inclusive.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx

The URL provides ONLY the information about the compatibility of the software on Win7 platform.

A WORD OF CAUTION: This, by no means indicates whether the application can be successfully virtualized or not

For Instance, the application "Workshare Professional 5" shows a matching entry in both the categories of Win7 (32 and 64 bit). But Sequencing this application with complete functionality is next to impossible as the application has a printer driver

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App-V Management Console Crash

by Ramesh

Off-late, i ran into a strange problem which would crash my "App-V Management console" while importing virtual applications into the console with a stereotyped Microsoft message Management console encountered a problem and needs to close down as shown below


To Fix the above problem, create the below mentioned registry key

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Management Console\
DWORD: LoadConsoleIcons
Value: 0 (zero)

Close your console and open again. The annoying error wouldn't show up again :-)

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Objective

May 28, 2010 by Ramesh

Primary Objective of the blogs posted in this site would be to

  • To share new findings in Microsoft App-V
  • Challenges faced while sequencing applications
  • Trouble shoot sequenced applications and
  • Known issues and resolution techniques
I would also share my experience while sequencing complex applications and learnings and new take aways

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