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PressPass spoke with Scott Woodgate, director of Desktop Virtualization and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) at Microsoft, to find out how this new advancement is helping ensure a smooth transition for customers planning to migrate to Windows 7.

PressPass: What are you announcing today?

Woodgate: We are announcing the beta release of Windows XP Mode for Windows 7. Small businesses told us they wanted help upgrading to Windows 7. Windows XP Mode, an optional feature of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate editions, helps small businesses upgrade to Windows 7 by providing a virtual Windows XP environment capable of running many Windows XP-compatible business and productivity applications. Customers can run many older Windows XP business and productivity applications within Windows XP Mode and launch them from the Windows 7 desktop with just a single click. A beta of Windows XP Mode will be made available on April 30.

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Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM.exe) is a new command line tool that you can use to service a Windows image or prepare a Windows PE image. The DISM tool replaces the Package Manager (pkgmgr.exe), PEimg, and Intlcfg tools used with Windows Vista. DISM consolidates the functionality found in those three tools, as well as delivers new functionality to improve the experience of offline servicing.

DISM can be used to service Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008. When used with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you get the added functionality.

You can use DISM to:

• Add, remove, and enumerate packages and drivers.
• Enable or disable Windows features.
• Apply changes based on the offline servicing section of an unattend.xml answer file.
• Configure international settings.
• Upgrade a Windows image to a different edition.
• Prepare a Windows PE image.
• Take advantage of better logging.
• Service down-level operating systems like Windows Vista with SP1 and Windows Server 2008.
• Service all platforms (32-bit, 64-bit, and Itanium).
• Service a 32-bit image from a 64-bit host and service a 64-bit image from a 32-bit host.
• Make use of old Package Manager scripts.

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You can easily manage your Windows 2008 R2 servers from a PC running Windows 7 beta 1. But first you’ll need to download the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7, which you can get here.

Here’s an overview of the tools you’ll get in this download:

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Hard-Link Migration Store: The new hard-link migration store is for use in computer-refresh scenarios only. Hard-link migration stores are stored locally on the computer that is being refreshed and can migrate user accounts, files, and settings in less time using megabytes of disk space instead of gigabytes.

Running ScanState on Offline Windows Images: You can run the ScanState command in Microsoft Windows PE. In addition, USMT now supports migration from previous installations of Windows contained in Windows.old directories. The offline directory can be a Windows directory when you run the ScanState command in Windows PE or Windows.old when you run the ScanState command in Windows .

Volume Shadow Copy Support: With the /vsc command line option, the ScanState command can now use the volume shadow copy service to capture files that are locked for editing by other applications.

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Troubleshooting errors for a remote user can be very difficult since you can’t actually see what’s happening on the remote system. Often it comes down to a user saying he didn’t click a button, open a program, close a program, or so on. The new Problem Steps Recorder (PSR.exe) allows you to see exactly what’s going on, documenting every action that takes place on the system experiencing problems.

The Problem Steps Recorder tool is a simple screen capture utility that grabs screenshots whenever a mouse move or click is made and documents all the data into a zipped MHTML report page that can be sent off directly to the help desk. Every step of the user’s actions is logged complete with a screenshot with the item highlighted, and it even allows the user to provide commentary on specific details.

To launch the Problem Steps Recorder, just go to START and type PSR.exe and your off and running.