install – Virtual Engine Ltd

9th April 2014

RES IT Store Web Portal Setup

We’ve had some confusion both internally and externally with some customers with the installation of the RES IT Store Web Portal. During the installation you will be prompted as to how you would like the IIS website to be configured:

This dialog is a little bit unclear as to what it is actually asking you. If you follow these simple guidelines, I’m sure you’ll be a whole lot clearer as to what is going on:

The RES IT Store Web Portal setup will create a new website – no ifs, buts or maybes.
- It will not install to the default IIS website.
If you select the “Yes” option, the new website will be bound to port TCP port 80:
- The existing default IIS website will also be bound to port 80 and therefore only one will start.
- You will need to manually change the IIS default website port bindings.
If you select the “No” option, the new website can be bound to a specific TCP port:
- Be careful as it will default to TCP port 80 but you can manually alter it.
- The wizard will bind the Hostname specified to the new website as an IIS Host Header Name.

Our recommendation is to always select “No”, leave the default port binding and configure the host header value with your load-balanced fully qualified DNS alias, i.e. itstore.virtualengine.co.uk.

Easy!

9th April 2014

Windows 8.1 Update KB 2919355 Error 0x8007003

It’s been long, too long since the last post. However, never fear as we have plenty of new updates in the pipeline (pun intended!). This post is a little off topic but one that might help one or two people with the latest Windows 8.1 Update 1.

Whilst installing the latest Windows 8.1 Update 1 (and also KB2894853) on a couple of machines I saw the following error:

Installation Failure: Windows failed to install the following update with error 0x8007003: Update for Windows (KB2919355)

A quick Google landed me here which mentions that you will receive this error if the profiles directory is redirected with a registry key. As we have small SSDs in the office machines, the profile directory is indeed redirected to a bigger, spinning disk. This article is a little confusing (hence the post) as it states:

After putting a copy of UserProfiles on the C: drive, installation finished normally.

To fix the installation error we need to ensure that the Default directory is present in the redirected folder location, not on the C: drive. A quick copy of C:\Users\Default to D:\Users\Default fixed the installation issues with both updates.

2nd May 2013

Installing the new App-V 5 PowerShell Modules

Following on from the release of the Virtual Engine App-V 5.0 PowerShell CmdLets, I thought I best give you a quick run through on setting them up! Installing the PowerShell modules is easy, regardless of whether you’re installing them just for your user account or on a per machine basis. Note: we will package these up into a .MSI once we’ve had some initial feedback and fixed any “features!”

Per User Installation

To install the new modules on a per-user basis, extract the files into your ‘Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\’ directory:

Per Computer Installation

To install the new modules on a per-computer basis, extract the files into the ‘C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\Modules\’ (or %PSModulePath% for short!) directory:

Importing

To import and use the modules, simply run the following PowerShell command (they are digitally signed):

[code]Import-Module VirtualEngine-AppV5[/code]

You may be prompted to confirm that you trust the publisher (!?). The modules are digitally signed. If you want to use them, then you better ensure that you select the ‘Always Run’ (or at lease ‘Run Once’) option!

Once they’re loaded you can check by running the following PowerShell command. If you see something similar to this then you should be all set:

[code]PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-Command -Module VirtualEngine*

CommandType     Name                                      ModuleName
———–     —-                                      ———-
Function        Get-AppV5File                             VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Get-AppV5FilePackage                      VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Get-AppV5FileReport                       VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Get-AppV5FileXml                          VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Get-AppV5FileXmlPackage                   VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Get-VEAppV5Version                        VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Save-AppV5File                            VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Save-AppV5FileReport                      VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Save-AppV5FileXml                         VirtualEngine-AppV5
Function        Save-AppV5FileXmlPackage                  VirtualEngine-AppV5

PS C:\Windows\system32> [/code]

Note: The modules require PowerShell 3.0 and the Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5. These are installed by default on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. If you’re running Windows 7 without these requirements, then you’ll receive errors. Make sure you meet these requirements.