Martin Zugec blog : Vista

Which symlinks are supported in Windows Vista and how to configure them

martin — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:25:04 GMT

I would like to write comprehensive article about symlinks\hardlinks\junctions\reparse points and mount points in future - however that topic is so complex, that I would need to spend few days just to prepare materials etc for this...

So for now all I want to tell you is that symlinks were supported by Windows since Windows 2000 - implementation was done through "reparse points", which is something like special tag on NTFS object that allows special FS filter to process them. Biggest limitations were that explorer was not able to handle them correctly (well, it was not able to delete junction, it deleted also target) and only L2L (local to local) symlinks were supported.

In Windows Vista, symlinks are implemented as new NTFS object - so major change is NOT introduction of concept, but rather possibilities and different implementation.

Major difference is that Vista supports all 4 common scenarios:

L2L (local to local) - for example C:\Documents and settings --> C:\Users)
L2R (local to remote) - for example C:\MyShare --> \\Server\Share\Martin.SoulinCorp
R2L (remote to local) - for example \\server\share\DownloadsOnMyPC --> C:\Downloads
R2R (remote to remote) - for example \\server1\share\Data --> \\server2\share\Data

I don't have (yet) experiences with R2L and R2R, however I really love L2L (which is possible also in w2k and wxp) and L2R (which is something new, but I love that functionality).

If (for any reason) you want to disable particular scenario, you can use FSUtil .

Syntax is FSUtil Behavior Set SymlinkEvaluation followed by symlink type (L2L etc) and status.

For example if I want to disable R2L and R2R, syntax is FSUtil Behavior Set SymlinkEvaluation R2L:0 R2R:0

Elevator - command line

martin — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:15:39 GMT

If you tried elevator, you probably know that it is running thought context menu:

It is assigned only to exe files (if it is needed, I can extend it)... But sometimes you may want to change shortcut to always run specific action using elevator.

In fact it is pretty easy - just run ElevatorRunner.exe with filename and parameters and you are all set :)

First parameter is executable you want to run and then any command line arguments you want to include.

For example if you want to elevate MMC.exe, simply runs ElevatorRunner MMC.exe and thats it.

To also show example with command line parameters, this is command line I use to run Joost:
C:\Data\SkipUAC\ElevatorRunner.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Joost\xulrunner\tvprunner.exe" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Joost\application.ini"

In following screenshot you can see few examples:

It is also pretty easy to modify shortcuts to use Elevator:

Martin

Vista - better and better?

martin — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:44:39 GMT

First warning - this is not really technical article, it is more user oriented... So if you enjoy all articles about scripting etc, go to next entry in your feed reader ;)

Maybe some of you know I had few presentations about Windows Vista beta2 - at that moment I saw huge advantages in "under the hood" changes, but it was still only beta - for example it was constantly crashing on my desktop...

I haven`t reviewed any RC or any newer version of Vista after beta2 - and based on too many disappointed people all around the internet I thought Microsoft probably messed up something - even thought I was not expected them to do so. When I got my new desktop, I decided it is time to move on and try Vista - and 64 bit version ;)

After some time spend with Vista I must say I really love it - performance is really great (well, in my case better than XP definitely) and I love small changes they have done. Vista is my first OS where my first action was not "Optimize for best performance".

In last few days two features really interested me - features that were missing for too long.

First one - if you are same like me you don`t use Windows Explorer - instead Total Commander or something that is more keyboard (and user) friendly. Sometimes you however need to do something from explorer - for example TortoiseSVN have sometimes problems with TC.

I always hated how you copy\move files and folders using explorer, specially if you wanted to move 3 files that are not next to each other - you had to hold ctrl and select items one by one and it was too easy to simple remove all your selected entries. Yesterday I found out that in Vista you can enable check boxes to select items:

I think this was already possible in XP, please correct me if I am wrong (I have feeling that I used it once loooooooooong time ago).

If you want to copy something now, just select all check boxes and drag&drop or hit ctrl+c:

There is also option to select all items by one checkbox:

As I said, I think this is not new to Vista - but for me it makes explorer much more useful tool.

Another feature I really like is the way how address bar of explorer is handled - you don`t see static structure like before (for example C:\Temp), instead you see all elements that makes path:

Of course you can click on all elements - I got used to this almost immediately and (from user perspective) it is one of most useful changes in Vista for me.

I always hated favorites in all Windows:

Because I don`t really use My Documents (don`t like that folder structure) and I probably never used My Network Places or My Recent Documents, I only used My Computer (in fact to get to my C: drive) and Desktop (for download -> read -> delete documents)...

There were some ways how to change items that are displayed here, but they were (for me) not worthy spending precious time on ;) In Vista these shortcuts are JUST ONE FOLDER:

You can add there whatever you want, remove it... Really easy and nice... It looks like after all those years I will maybe give explorer a second try (I did the same with Windows Media Player 11 some time ago and I was really impressed - but then I switched to Last.FM :D).

Next week I am going to US to attend MVP Summit - after that I would like to write some technical drill down of symlinks, hardlinks, junction, reparse points, mounting points etc in Windows XP and Windows Vista, so if it is interesting for you, watch my blog closely ;)

Troubleshooting Windows Vista performance?

martin — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 19:00:48 GMT

As mentioned in my previous post about Windows Vista, I think it is too soon to judge new OS from Microsoft. What is important is that once we will get applications designed for Vista AND users\administrators will learn what advantages this OS really holds, we will be able to decide whether or not Windows Vista is success.

I am comparing Windows Vista to LAUNCH version of Windows XP - and because my judgements are mostly based on Vista internals and not based on pretty face (and features that are publicly promoted by Microsoft), I can see big potential in Windows Vista.

One of my expectations is that Vista will be able to run stable (with good performance) for longer time than XP - I think everybody knows situation that XP started after few months to be sluggish, respond slower, sometimes stops thinking about some philosophical problems...

For example as you probably already noticed Vista introduces much more complex log viewer structures - and today I found out that you can use event log to troubleshoot your performance - just go to Microsoft\Windows\Diagnostics-Performance\Operational.

Currently I can see only reports related to shutdown\startup\standby - and one problem related to desktop window manager (I was testing how much it can take ;)):

In details you can also see details what causes slow down. For example here NlaSvc shut down took 20009ms, which means degradation by 19617ms (in this case it was rare problem, so I dont need to to care):

This is just example of small extras that are implemented in Windows Vista - there is still lot to learn about this new OS ;)

Is Windows Vista really failure?

martin — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 20:09:00 GMT

More and more articles are stating that Windows Vista is failure and reviewers all over internet are suggesting that Microsoft will soon end... After a while I decided I will try to collect all my thoughts and make my opinion public also :)

To understand current situation with Windows Vista, we should look back at Windows 2000 and Windows XP. If you read reviews, most people are saying "XP is superior to Vista, why we should upgrade?". But we shouldnt forget that Microsoft is not company that can build ad-hoc solutions for next 1-2 years. What I mean by this crypted sentence is that if you remember situation few years ago, everyone was saying that "Windows 2000 is much better than Windows XP, XP is just eye candy". Why in that case we dont see people stating that "XP is superior to Vista, not talking about 2000 that is superior to XP"??

Reason is quite simple - what most people mean is "XP SP2 is superior to Vista". Because XP was not really hit when it was released.

It took few years until everyone realized that XP is stable and everything works really nice.
It took few years for Microsoft to unleash the beast.

We are supposed to be IT professionals (depend YOUR job my reader, of course, but I am supposed to be IT professional ;)). I cant focus on today only, I must also look at future. And Vista is built on really GREAT core. How is it possible that Windows XP is still modern OS after those years? Because its success was based on lessons learned from Windows 2000. Windows Vista is based on lessons learned from Windows XP.

If you have a look at compains about Vista, they are mostly related to following: UAC, performance, hardware drivers, Aero... If you think something is missing, please comment, if I can post some useful reply, I will do so.

UAC

Implementation of UAC is not really user friendly - but we should consider that UAC is kind of backwards-compatibility fix. Have you noticed any applications that released new versions where UAC was not prompting user? I bet you did (at least I noticed many applications that are able to work with UAC now).

In few years we could see Vista in many companies (it really takes few years for companies to migrate to new OS, that is completely normal) and I am sure most vendors will modify their applications to be UAC compatible (which means to be able to run with limited user accounts). So UAC will be less and less problem in future.

Citation from Aaron Margosis(BTW Aaron works for Microsoft), talking about least user privilege principle: "Linux/Unix users have understood this for a long time, so this remains an area where Microsoft is perceived to lag in thought leadership." Another related bit of information from Technet magazine: "It’s a Bug—Treat it Like One and Make the Developers Fix It!".

I dont know about your experiences, but maybe most bugs we recently reported to our vendors were related to least-privilege principle. Currently developers are not forced to fix such issues - it works on most systems (due to local administrators accounts on XP), but with Vista spreading over world`s PCs we will see more and more software to be written in more correct way (talking about least privilege principle). And benefits of Vista will be more and more obvious.

And applications that will fail to migrate? Who is using (seriously) applications from Windows 95 or Windows 2000 today (if we ignore legacy apps)? In fact, Vista got advantage here - built-in isolation allows you to run applications that requires admin right under non-admin account (AIE, anyone?).

For me, UAC is pain - but it is something we needed for many, many years and it is result of some not really clever decisions Microsoft have done in past. But with Vista they are facing this issues - and UAC will be less and less important as time goes on and applications get adapted to it.

Performance

We have year 2008, hardware is moving forward. What always surprises me is that people expect new OS to perform better than previous one - I understand this if we speak about applications, but OS is implementing more and more features. Problem with Vista is that it is changing too much under hood - and performance suffers. If you noticed I bought new computer recently (not upgraded, due to fact that I only had laptop) and I had Vista preinstalled - and I must say that I didnt have any problems with performance. I want to run it for longer time first to see real affects (and turn off some features I dont really use like Indexing). But performance of Vista is NOT really bad - XP was faster, but it was older OS.

95 was faster than 98. 98 was faster that 2000. 2000 was faster than XP. And so we can continue, it is normal process in IT and I think it is same with OSX or Linuxes. Problem with Windows is that it comes with pre-installed applications and I can understand it (most normal users are complaining that Windows is too complex - make them install and configure software and they will return to their table calculators instead). From my perspective I would appreciate Vista Embedded to be broadly available, but it requires too high knowledge (lets say more robust and stable nLite supported by OS).

What was average hardware in 2001? Not really sure about this, I had AMD 700MHz with 128MB, 20GB (5400 RTM) HDD.
Today is 2008 and I have quad core with 4GB and 500GB HDD.

I would really love to install XP on mine old PC and see performance. BTW in 2001 I was using 98 - XP was too slow for me.

Compare numbers and think about lifecycle of OS - when it is released, when it can be used, when it have "best age". Vista is not performing bad on my current PC.

Also dont forget that what you usually want is not performance of OS, but performance of applications - and current applications are not "designed for Windows Vista", but rather "Compatible with Windows Vista". I dont really care about CPU and graphics perfomance these days - I see biggest bottle-neck in memory (there is never enough memory ;)) and specially IO operations (disk reads and writes). Vista takes radically different approach in memory management compared with XP - best description I found is on (very good) Coding Horror blog. I dont want to waste my memory (otherwise I dont need it).

IO operations are extreme pain these days - specially on laptops with 5400 RTM disks. I was always big fan of prioritization - talking about CPU, network, everything. Not long time ago I started to control priorities on my notebook using Process Lasso (see my older post) and my first thought was "One day I want to have same for disk operations". Vista supports prioritizing IO operations, now I just need to wait until more applications will support this (download managers, antiviruses or even better Disk Lasso to manage it yourself ;)).

You can even see importance of this when you study Windows Logo Program - there is difference between "Certified for Windows Vista" and "Works with Windows Vista" (as far as I remember, XP had only "Designed for Windows XP"). Hope so soon enough we will see more "Designed for Windows Vista" applications - not only with logo, but also with additional functionality ;)

Hardware drivers

Always pain. Everything on my PC was working correctly (but it was shipped with Vista, so all hardware was compatible). During my beta testing of Vista I run into serious problems with hardware (specially with graphic card), but with final release all problems were gone. I am not sure if hardware drivers are still problems. Comments, anyone? :)

Aero

If we want to talk about Aero, we must first make something clear - most of the time people are refering to Aero, they see it as eye candy with no additional functionality. Common interpretation is that Aero is like XP-themes, but more resource consuming (and shinier).

That interpretation is not correct. To understand Aero and its advantages, you should always think about Aero+DWM - because DWM (Desktop Window Manager) is beast, that was not yet unleashed. To understand (warning: following text will be short and partially inaccurate in order to make it easily readable. That doesnt mean it is fairy tale - it only means I will skip in-depth details), we should think how XP renders you desktop.

In XP, you desktop is one flat image. One desktop manager is responsible for drawing everything, applications are requesting to redraw their area. This is why you can see that when application stops responding, form is white - it is not responding, therefore it is not able to redraw its form. Different utilities that shows you thumbnails of your programs are therefore static - they show you only snapshot of window and it is quite resource consuming.

In Vista DWM situation is quite different and very similar to how OSX draws its desktop (which is good way). Applications do not write directly to video memory, but to off-screen buffers. These buffers are then composed by DWM to render your screen. Desktop in Vista is fullscreen Direct3D object with all advantages related to this. Composition is done by GPU - not by CPU anymore.

Read previous two sentences carefuly and think about them - what it means is that Vista allows cool visual tricks. Not windows flip (famous Winkey + Tab), not live previews.

Because of this change, there is much more space for applications like TaskSwitchXP - showing off-screen buffers doesnt cost almost any performance. Once you understand this, you can see that implementing Eclypse from OSX is really easy task - it was static in XP and can be dynamic in Vista (BTW many people are blaming Microsoft for ignoring Eclypse - Microsoft implemented same technology many years ago, but for some reason it is only available with Microsoft Hardware under name Instant Viewer). Consider terminal services manager like vRD - it can show you preview of all opened RDP session in one screen. Aero is just foundation - and we will get advantages once (again) we will get applications designed for Windows Vista. Really nice article is available at Ars.

These are my thoughts about Windows Vista - to summarize it:

Windows Vista is now in "compatibility period" - it just runs applications designed for Windows XP or even older operating system. If you think it have some advantages for you (definitely it have many for me), go for it and dont waste your time. If you think Windows XP is enough for you, wait for applications "Designed for Windows Vista" - but dont miss train and definitely dont judge new Windows too soon. Maybe we will see similar situation as with Linux few years ago - people disappointed by Windows started to evaluate different OS, but returned with XP SP2 afterwards (watch how popularity of Apple grows now ;)), this trend can be found if you try Google Trends I mentioned in previous blog post :D If you are aware of Windows XP limitations (in best case you are combination of IT Pro\Programmer\Hobbist), you can clearly see that Vista is providing solutions for most of them - but these solutions must be implemented on applications level.

Post comments please, I really appreciate them always :)

Martin