My VMware View Win7 Optimization Guide

Good news:
We just purchased ProU+FlexApp, and the Trend-Micro appliance to scan at the host-level! Now, I have to prepare the implementation, but I've yet to perfect my golden image.

The problem I'm having is having the visual styles, visual effects, themes, etc. being dropped into new users. I'm able to get it to work at first logon, but if I log in with another username, or restart, it eventually breaks and falls back to having visual effects turned on. It's quite annoying.

I dislike disabling Themes because it looks like total crap. I feel that the Windows Classic look may be much more acceptable by users, so I've tried using the GPO (user policy), but that seems to be funky also. We didn't set the GPO in AD, just locally, for testing purposes, and it's not working as planned. Either the visual effects don't stick on Best Performance, and/or Windows Classic doesn't stick. Any suggestions?

I read the VMware Horizon View Optimization Guide and may have to follow their method of implementing default user settings using the ntuser.dat file (I tried this manually myself, with mixed results --end result is nothing sticks permanently--).
 
g0dM@n said:
I dislike disabling Themes because it looks like total crap. I feel that the Windows Classic look may be much more acceptable by users, so I've tried using the GPO (user policy), but that seems to be funky also. We didn't set the GPO in AD, just locally, for testing purposes, and it's not working as planned. Either the visual effects don't stick on Best Performance, and/or Windows Classic doesn't stick. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

One way that "might" work is to setup a profile how you'd like all desktops to appear. Then use something like Windows Enabler, which is used to enabled grayed out features - in this case the copy profile button in windows. To copy said profile to the "default profile" which may keep your changes in tact.

I've used it some time ago and it seemed to work okay for the needs at the time.
 
I have spent days on a script that does almost everything needed. I don't know how soon I can post it up, but I'd have to go through it with a fine-toothed comb to ensure there's nothing confidential in it first. Either way, I did rely on some of WoodiE's stuff in there.

What pagefile size do you guys use on Win7 x64? I read Mark Russinovich's write-up on pagefile and virtual memory, but it's actually quite confusing. He explains about over commit and how to test what pagefile size one should be using, but again it's a little more technical than I thought it would be (and I'm a senior tech). Anyone have some nice methods of toying with pagefile sizes? I know every environment or user will be different.
 
If you are serious about some of your changes i can forward them to the person who makes that doc see if they make it in there..
 
dasaint said:
If you are serious about some of your changes i can forward them to the person who makes that doc see if they make it in there..
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You mean VMware's "optimization guide"?
I noticed they had some errors in there too, but I didn't flag them. I just fixed everything I needed to. For example, one of the registry key changes was using the wrong type of key...
 
yea, the VMW Optimization Guide, i know the ppl who build that doc, and if i call out fixes that are errors they usually get them fixed in a revision.
 
WoodiE said:
Also note, there is a Command.bat file in the VMware Win7 optimize guide that does do some of these steps above for you. Just be sure you read each line to ensure you know what each line is doing and if it will work in your environment.
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The above cannot be overstated.

For example, this entry in the command.bat

Code: 
reg ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v MoveImages /t REG_WORD /d 0x0 /f

Causes IE 10 and/or 11 to no longer start on Windows 7 64-bit. It errors out with an "c:\Program Files(x86)\Internet Explorer\explore.exe Attempt to access invalid address" message.

There's also something else added by the command.bat on Windows 7 64-bit that causes the OS to deny user/admin access to /AppData/Local/Temp, I just didn't look through yet to find what that is. The effect is that some software which places files into /AppData/Local/Temp cannot be successfully installed. The files are created in /AppData/Local/Temp by the installer, but can then not be accessed by the user/admin to finish the install.
 
Thuleman said:
The above cannot be overstated.

For example, this entry in the command.bat

Code: 
reg ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /v MoveImages /t REG_WORD /d 0x0 /f

Causes IE 10 and/or 11 to no longer start on Windows 7 64-bit. It errors out with an "c:\Program Files(x86)\Internet Explorer\explore.exe Attempt to access invalid address" message.

There's also something else added by the command.bat on Windows 7 64-bit that causes the OS to deny user/admin access to /AppData/Local/Temp, I just didn't look through yet to find what that is. The effect is that some software which places files into /AppData/Local/Temp cannot be successfully installed. The files are created in /AppData/Local/Temp by the installer, but can then not be accessed by the user/admin to finish the install.
Click to expand...

I learned the hard way about the "MoveImages" key, after I created a few pools. It was quite annoying. We have IE10 and I got the same error.

As far as the AppData issue, I didn't notice that... I did go through that batch file line-by-line, but I made a boatload of changes/additions to it, so I wouldn't remember if I pulled out something that could have been an issue. Do you remember which line it was?
 
This may have been asked before, but what are you guys doing for the Windows 7 Optimizations? How are you copying it into the default user profile for all new users? I'd rather have defaults set in the image and use GPOs to enforce if necessary. The less GPOs, the quicker the logins.
 
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