Our partner Denamik has released a new version of Denamik LoadGen. The execution of massive load and stress tests is now easier than before. You can now record your own user action scripts from within LoadGen, and setup LoadBots to handle the execution of these scripts. LoadGen allows you to manage LoadBots to create remote sessions and evaluate your IT environment under stress. A built-in reporting facility will give you instant results.

What is new in LoadGen 2.3:

• Rewrite of installation and activation of LoadBots
• Rewrite of internal functions of the DUAF language to speed up interaction with XenApp desktops
• Introducing the possibilities to add your own libraries to DUAF scripts

Feel free to check out Denamik LoadGen 2.3, it’s free up to 15 virtual users.

A while ago my Windows 7 laptop suddenly refused to go into Hibernation. The strange thing was that the whole process of saving memory to the hibernate file seemed to work correctly. The screen would go black and there was lots of disk activity. Then after the disk activity finished the system would return to the logon screen.

A Google on this issue learned that the most likely cause was a driver preventing the system from going into hibernation. Using the cmdline “powercfg -DEVICEQUERY wake_armed” we can check if there are any devices that can wake the system. Another useful parameter is –ENERGY which generates an html report file.

But in my case this lead to nothing.

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UPDATE: See this new article by Helge Klein

Recently Helge Klein wrote a blog titled How to Speed Up Your Windows 7 Boot Time by 20%. He does this by disabling the graphical animation that Windows 7 displays while booting.

After applying this tweak I noticed that a resume from hibernation (which I do far more often than a full boot) still showed the graphical animation (and wasn’t speed up).

So how to disable the animation while resuming?

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Sometimes it’s just handy to use you’re laptop as a Wifi Hotspot. There are a lot of applications to do that, but the ones that actually work cost a bit. So why not use the built in utility of Windows 7? This is how you can do that.

1. Open a command prompt with administrative privilges
2. Enter the following command: netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow ssid=WIN7 key=password This will create a wireless access-point with SSID of “WIN7”
3. Open Networks and Sharing Center and enable the newly created wireless connection.
4. Share the interface with an internet connection to the newly created wireless connection.

Now you can start the interface with the following command: netsh wlan start hostednetwork

I wanted to save the SHSH signatures from my iPhone before updating to iOS 5.01. I started Tiny Umbrella but it showed an error indicating that there’s already a process listening on port 80:

I verified this using netstat (netstat –aon | find /I “LISTENING” | find /I “:80”):

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While running a Citrix / XenApp or Terminal Server Published Desktop on a Windows laptop, the user is unable to check the laptop’s battery status. This may lead to a serious inconvenience when the battery runs out: the laptop will shut down and the user’s session will be terminated / disconnected. We have encountered this inconvenience on some of our projects, and developed a way to solve it. Our solution involves two elements: RES and BatStat.

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After running recent updates on my Windows 7 machine the following error occurres:

SignTool Error: Signtool requires CAPICOM version 2.1.0.1 or higher. Please
        copy the latest version of CAPICOM.dll into the directory that contains
        SignTool.exe. If CAPICOM.dll exists, you may not have proper
        permissions to install CAPICOM.

Number of files successfully Signed: 0
Number of warnings: 0
Number of errors: 1

The solution to fix this error:

• Download the Capicom SDK from: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=860EE43A-A843-462F-ABB5-FF88EA5896F6&displaylang=en
• Copy the capicom.dll from “C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft CAPICOM 2.1.0.2 SDKLibX86″ to “C:WindowsSysWOW64″
• Start cmd.exe with elevated rights
• Type cdwindowssyswow64
• Type Regsvr32 capicom.dll

Problem solved…

Daniel Nikolic

An annoying error this morning. After prepping a laptop, running sysprep with the audit mode the following error occurres:

Windows could not finish configuring the system. To attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer.

1. When the error: Windows could not finish configuring the system. To attempt to resume configuration, restart the computer. Press SHIFT – F10. Don’t press OK.
2. At this point you can do basicly anything
3. My advice is to start services.msc and start all of the services which are marked: Automatic
4. Start compmgmt.msc, enable the administrator user, or create an extra user with administrator rights
5. Start explorer.exe
6. You can now Switch the user
7. Log in with the admin user and start the hotfix

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When receiving the following error while installing Windows Vista or 7: 0×80070017
Just burn your DVD at a lower speed (4x).

Daniel Nikolic

This is the new Start Menu under Windows 7. De left side contains the last programs you started or just installed. This side of the Start Menu can be customized to ‘pin’ an application to the Start Menu.

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