I've been working on a project that accesses the WMI to get information about the software installed on a user's machine. We've been querying Win32_Product only to find that it doesn't exist in 64-bit versions of Windows because it's an "optional component".
I know there are a lot of really good alternatives to querying the WMI for this information, but I've got a bit of a vested interest in finding out how well this is going to work out.
What I want to know is if there's some kind of redistributable that can be packaged with our software to allow 64-bit users to get the WMI Installer Provider put onto their machines? Right now, they have to install it manually and the installation requires they have their Windows disc handy.
Edit:
You didn't mention for what OS, but the WMI Redistributable Components version 1.0 definitely exists.
For Operation System, we've been using .NET 3.5 so we need packages that will work on XP64 and 64bit versions of Windows Vista.
You didn't mention for what OS, but the WMI Redistributable Components version 1.0 definitely exists.
For Windows Server 2003, the WMI SDK and redistributables are part of the Server SDK
I believe that the same is true for the Server 2008 SDK
Wouldn't the normal approach for a Windows component be that the administrators of a set of servers use whatever their local software push technology (i.e. SMS) to ensure that component is installed? This is not that uncommon of a requirement for the remote management of servers via WMI.
By the way, the WMI Installer Provider is not provided in the Standard Edition of the server products, but it is in the Enterprise Edition. So, Windows 2003 Server will not have this installed by default, but Windows 2003 Server Enterprise (and DataCenter) will.
This answer does imply that you are putting the burden of installation back on your user base, but for Windows administrators this should not be any issue.
Related
Running Dependency Walker for my 32-bit dll shows that I require wlanapi.dll (x86) which was missing from my Microsoft Server 2008 R2 machine. The following post mentions that Wireless LAN service needs to be installed http://geekswithblogs.net/dlussier/archive/2008/06/02/122558.aspx
I did so, but it installed only the x64 version. Any idea how I can get the x86 version ?
It seems to be a redistribution issue of a 3rd party dll. I was trying to avoid installing the 3rd party software and tried copying dlls (yes,bad ,I know, but I wanted to fix the problem temporarily). Installing the software resolved the above situation.
P.S.: A web search did not provide any details of a 32 bit wlanapi.dll.
Im installing windows server 2008 on my Windows 7.
It seems like I will need to reinstall all programs after installing MS windows server 2008. I dont really want to do that, is there another way around it?
And how can i find out whether I already have Windows Server installed on my computer? Thanks.
The two operating systems do not support an upgrade path. You could do some unsupported things, IE exporting registry entries and importing them manually, but you're not likely to get things working the same way. Further, some of your applications may not actually be supported on 2008.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979563(WS.10).aspx
Are there any limitations with respect to developing ASP.NET and WPF apps using VS 2008/2010 and SQL Server 2008 on Windows 7 Home Premium?
I know you can run IIS 7.5 on Home Premium. I Googled and Binged on Home Premium and VS/SQL Server and couldn't find much. It doesn't look like the features missing from Home Premium, domain joining, xp mode, etc... shouldn't prevent one from running and developing in VS/SQL Server.
Update
I did discover one limitation w/IIS 7.5 and it applies to all versions of Windows 7 I think. You can't create your own self signed SSL certificate specifying a name other than the machine name. You're stuck with your machine name which isn't that big a deal, but it is a change from previous versions.
Update II
You can't do remote debugging on Home Premium. msvsmon won't run at all. I can't even get it to do remote debugging natively.
Visual studio will run fine. You will be "limited" to either SQL Server Express, or SQL Server Developer edition as the mssql installer checks the OS version and will refuse to install the higher end editions on desktop OSes. Note that developer edition is the exact same as the higher end editions, except with a different license, you can only use it for development, not to run real databases.
Yes, you can, and you won't have any trouble with it.
In general, application compatibility is not affected by the edition (not version) of Windows.
I would consider what the target infrastructure (Windows/IIS, .net, SQL Server etc versions) would be if you want to deploy it...
Here is a question not directly related to programming.
Being fed up with Microsoft Windows XP Professional, and the lots of eye-candy, I want to try Microsoft Windows Server 2003 as the main OS on my development PC. (The other reason is a better version of IIS than 5.1). And knowing that Win2K3 was originally designed as a Server OS, I think that I should make it somehow more "workstation friendly".
My question is: How do I transform Win2K3 (Standard Edition most probably) into a Workstation OS? Any articles or links are highly appreciated.
PS: My development PC must run mainly MS Visual Studio 2008, MS SQL Server 2008, MS Expression Studio 2, different Oracle software (10gR2, ExpressEdition, 11g) and other little utilities (a testing framework, a subversion tool - TFS, a web browser, a bittorrent client, etc). All of this are compatible with Win2K3, as I previously checked.
Tnks
I only server OS as my workstation, I had Server 2003 before I switched to Server 2008. There's a guide you can find here http://www.msfn.org/win2k3/.
You shouldn't run into any problems. Most of windows xp drivers will work on server 2003, however, some apps won't. Especially those that check for the OS version before installing. But you shouldn't have any problems with VS2008, Expression and anything you posted.
For me the only thing that was troublesome was running iTunes on server 2003, it doesn't look as good.
And if you like the eye candy you can turn it on by starting the Theme service and changing a few settings.
You shouldn't run into any issues running those applications on Server 2003.
The last time I personally ran 2003 on a workstation the only real big change was changing the security settings of internet explorer.
If you run one of the free anti-virus software packages you may find that they will not install on a Server OS.
edit: As another poster has suggested I would also go straight to server 2008 if it is an options. Server 2008 runs very well as a workstation OS and if you're hardware supports it the virtual server works very well.
Here's links for turning 2003 into workstation:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows+server+2003+workstation+converter
If you'd like use Windows Server 2008 as a workstation, runs much better (faster) than a regular Vista install:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows+server+2008+workstation+converter&aq=1&oq=windows+server+2008+work
or try getting your hands on Windows 7 RC1 which runs quite well.
None of the software types you've listed has any workstation-biased dependencies that I'm aware of. Expression Blend may suffer a bit depending on your hardware and drivers, as WPF is a little more demanding of visual goo than most other development tools for Windows forms.
What are the best practices in setting up a new instance of TFS 2008 Workgroup edition?
Specifically, the constraints are as follows:
Must install on an existing Windows Server 2008 64 bit
TFS application layer is 32 bit only
Should I install SQL Server 2008, Sharepoint and the app layer in a virtual instance of Windows Server 2008 or 2003(I am already running Hyper-V) or split the layers with a database on the host OS and the app layer in a virtual machine?
Edit: Apparently, splitting the layers is not recommended
This is my recipe for installing TFS 2008 SP1.
There is no domain controller in this scenario, we are only a couple of users. If I was to do it again, I would consider changing our environement to use a active directory domain.
Host Server running Windows Server 2008 with 8GB RAM and quad processor
Fresh install of Windows Server 2008 32bit in a VM under Hyper-V
Install Application Server role with IIS
Install SQL Server 2008 Standard edition
Use a user account for Reporting Services and Analysis Services
Create a slipstreamed image of TFS 2008 with SP1 and install TFS
Install VSTS 2008
Install Team System Explorer
Install VSTS 2008 SP1
Install TFS Web Access Power tool
After installing everything, reports were not generated. Found this forum post that helped resolve the problem.
Open p://localhost:8080/Warehouse/v1.0/warehousecontroller.asmx
Run the webservice (see above link for details), it will take a little while, the tfsWarehouse will be rebuilt
It is very important to do things in order, download the installation guide and follow it to the letter. I forgot to install the Team System Explorer until after installing SP1 and ventured into all sorts of problems. Installing SP1 once more fixed that.
One critical thing you has to keep in mind about TFS, is that it likes to have the machine all to it self. So if you have to create a separate instance on Hyper-V do it using the proven Windows Server 2003 platform with SQL Server 2005.
I am sure Microsoft has done a great job getting it to work under Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, however you don't get any additional features with this newer install and it is currently unproven in the wild.
So my recommendation is to stick with what is known until the next release of TFS comes out.
Also splitting the layers is definitely not recommended, especially in the workgroup edition where you will only be allowed to have 5 licensed users. Those 5 users will never exceed the server's needs. Also my recommendation is to not update Sharepoint if you don't need to. In my environment, we don't really use Sharepoint all that much, so I left it alone. Sharepoint is usually, in my experience, where most of the problems come from with TFS.
I just upgraded our team to TFS 2008, from TFS 2005. The hardest part was upgrading SharePoint 2.0 to 3.0, so I would make sure to do that first, if you have not already installed TFS 2008. We had a couple of other difficulties, but they were all either related to the SharePoint upgrade, or to the fact that we were using an aftermarket Policy package - Scrum for TeamSystem. We are on SQL Server 2005, so I cannot address SQL Server 2008. As for splitting the layers, we did not do this either, as we are running on Windows Server 2003 and everything ran under the host OS.
Splitting the layers is only needed for more than 450 users.
I would also recommend having the Build Server on a completely seperate machine. Building is very file system intensive. SQL Server performs best when it has complete control of a file system - so having build and TFS on the same machine may create performance issues while builds are executing.
Perhaps this can be alleviated with proper tuning and seperate physical drives - but I'd think in the long run it would be a lot simpler to just either use some old hardware - or spin up a small virtual machine on a seperate host for your builds