Citrix Xen. Desktop 7. Provisioning Services 7. Xen. Desktop Setup Wizard with Write Cache and Personal v. Disk Drives. The original articles I wrote for Xen. Desktop 7. 1 and PVS 7. Note 2008 and older issues are only available as. On most versions of windows you must first save these files to your local machine, and then unblock the. Stepbystep procedure with screenshots to install Windows 7 on VirtualBox. Xen. Desktop 7. 5 and PVS 7. This article will show the same process as the original articles but use Xen. Desktop 7. 6 and PVS 7. Xen. Desktop 7. 6 and PVS 7. Introduction. A while back, I worked on a project where the customer required the use of a Write Cache drive and a Personal v. Disk Pv. D drive with Xen. Windows 7 Cd Writing Wizard' title='Windows 7 Cd Writing Wizard' />Desktop 7. Provisioning Services PVS 7. Getting information on the process to follow was not easy and, as usual, the Citrix documentation was sorely lacking in details. As with most things involving Xen. Desktop and or PVS, there is NO one way or one right way to do anything. This article will give you detailed information on the process I worked out and documented and now updated for Xen. Desktop 7. 6 and PVS 7. Assumptions PVS 7. Xen. Desktop 7. 6 is installed and a Site created and configured. Hosting resources are configured in Studio. PXE, TFTP and DHCP are configured as needed. This article is not about the pros and cons of Pv. D. It is simply about what process can be used to create virtual desktops that require the use of a Write Cache drive and Pv. D. I will not be discussing the overhead of Pv. D or the delay it brings to the startup, shutdown and restart processes or the IO overhead, the storage impact or the storage IO requirements or what is needed for High Availability or Disaster Recovery needs for Pv. D. Lab Setup. All servers in my lab are running Microsoft Windows Server 2. R2 fully patched. The lab consists of 1 PVS 7. Laserjet 6L Pro Driver'>Laserjet 6L Pro Driver. Xen. Desktop 7. 6 Controller running Studio. SQL 2. 01. 2 SP1 Server. Windows 7 SP1 VMI am using Xen. Server 6. 2 fully patched for my hosting environment. There are separate Storage Repositories for the Virtual Machines VM, Pv. D and Write Cache as shown in Figure 1. Update This has been tested with Xen. Server 6. 5 with no changes or issues. Figure 1. The Hosting Resources are configured in Studio as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. To start off, in my lab I created my Organization Unit OU structure in Active Directory AD for my domain, Websters. Lab. com, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. One of the reasons to use Pv. D is to allow users to install applications. In order to do this I created an AD security group, shown in Figure 4, that will contain the AD user accounts and that AD security group will be made a member of the local Administrators security group. Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows ME marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun me, but commonly pronounced as an initialism, ME, is a graphical. Hi, I wanted to go into safe mode on windows 7 but it kept stopping at classpnp. After reading a few threads I read about using Msconfig and checking. Getting ready for Windows 7 may seem like a Herculean jobbut there are plenty of ways to maximize the OSs new features while minimizing disruptions. Figure 4. Three AD user accounts were created, shown in Figure 5, for the three different Pv. D users for this article. Figure 5. Those three test user accounts were placed in the Local. Lame V3 99 3 For Windows Exe more. Admins AD security group as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6. Most organizations that use Xen. Desktop to serve virtual desktops or servers require that Event Logs persist between reboots or the security team sits in the corner crying. Other items that may need to persist between desktopVM reboots are antivirus definition files and engine updates. To accomplish these a Group Policy with Preferences is used. Why not manually change the file system and registry Because the Xen. Desktop setup wizard completely ignores all the careful work done by creating folders on the Write Cache drive. When the Write Cache and Pv. D drives are created, they are empty and will NOT carry over ANY of the manual work done before hand. So just forget about doing any of the items usually done by pre creating a Write Cache drive. The Write Cache drive is always created as Drive D and the Pv. D is created with the drive letter assigned during the Wizard. My Group Policy with Preferences is linked at the OU that will contain the computer accounts created by the Xen. Desktop Setup Wizard. These are the settings in the policy used for this lab. Computer ConfigurationPoliciesAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsEvent Log ServiceApplicationControl the location of the log file Enabled with a value of D Event. LogsApplication. Computer ConfigurationPoliciesAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsEvent Log ServiceSecurityControl the location of the log file Enabled with a value of D Event. LogsSecurity. evtx. Computer ConfigurationPoliciesAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsEvent Log ServiceSystemControl the location of the log file Enabled with a value of D Event. LogsSystem. evtx. Computer ConfigurationPreferencesFolder Action Update, Path D Event. Logs. Computer ConfigurationPreferencesControl Panel SettingsLocal Users and Groups Action Update, Group name Administrators built in, Members ADD, lt Domain. Name lt Security Group Name User ConfigurationPoliciesAdministrative TemplatesStart Menu and TaskbarRemove the Action Center icon Enabled. These settings will Keep the user from getting popups from the Action Center. Create the Event. Logs folder on drive D the Write Cache driveRedirect the Application, Security and System event logs to the new D Event. Logs folder. Add the domain security group that contains use accounts who should be local admins to the desktops local Administrators group. Create the Virtual Machine. Next up is to create a Windows 7 VM to be used as the Master or Golden image. Do just basic configuration of the VM at this time. Do not install any applications at this time. Citrix provides a PDF explaining how to optimize a Windows 7 image. Kb. Servletdownload2. XD2. 0 2. 0Windows2. Optimization2. 0Guide. Once the basic VM is built there are four things that need done before joining the VM to the domain. Fix the WMI error that is the Application event log. I know it is not a critical error but I am OCD and simply must have error free event logs. Run the Mr. Fix. It this one actually works from http support. Install the hotfix for using a VMXNet. ESXi. Request and install the hotfix from http support. From an elevated command prompt, run Win. RM Quick. Config. This allows the desktops to work with Citrix Director. Disable Task Offload by creating the following registry key. HKLMSystemCurrent. Control. SetServicesTCPIPParametersKey Disable. Task. Offload dwordValue 1. The Write Cache drive will become drive D when it is created so before installing any software change the CD drive letter from D to another letter. I use Z. The VM is ready to join the domain. After joining the domain, shutdown the VM. Now two hard drives need to be added to the VM. One for the Write Cache drive and the other for the Pv. D drive. NOTHING will be done to these drives, they are just stub holders so Windows knows there should be two additional drives. The Write Cache and Pv. D drive must be different sizes or strange things can happen. If they are the same size, it is possible the write cache file and page file can be placed on the Pv. D drive and not the Write Cache drive. To make your life easier, keep the drives different sizes with the Pv. D drive being larger. For this article, I will use a 1. GB Write Cache drive and a 2. GB Pv. D drive. Make sure the new drives are created in the proper storage locations as shown in Figures 7 through 9. Figure 7. Figure 8. Figure 9. Power on the VM, login with a domain account, start Computer Management and click on Disk Management as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. 0Click OK to initialize the two new drives as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. 1The two new drives appear in Disk Management as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1. 2Leave the drives unformatted and exit Computer Management. How to Burn Photos to a CDHow to Burn Photos to a CDBrian Gongol. The following instructions explain how to burn photos to a CD using a Windows based computer. Step 1. Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop to open up Windows Explorer. Step 2. Find the photos you plan to burn to the CD. Step 3. Insert a blank CD into your CD burning drive. A window should pop up to ask how to open the CD. Choose Open Writable CD Folder Using Windows Explorer. Step 4. You should now have two windows open The one where you have the pictures you want to burn, and the one with the writable CD folder. Click and drag the names of the photos you want to copy over to the writable CD folder. Step 5. Once youre done clicking and dragging the files you want to copy over to the writable CD folder, click Write these files to CD. Step 6. Name the CD then click Next. Step 7. Wait for the CD writer to finish burning the image to the new CD. Step 8. When the Completed the CD Writing Wizard window pops up, click Finish. Your computer will probably pop the CD out automatically. Step 9. If the CD writing directory is still open, click Delete temporary files. If you dont see this option, dont worry about it.