Letters to the Editor - 30 Mar 2004

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Using Event Tracing
I was impressed with Darren Mar-Elia's article Internals: "Inside Event Tracing for Windows" (December 2003, InstantDoc ID 40707). I hope Darren can help me solve a problem.

My company has a client/server standalone application. Assume that this application has five functions and that these functions are dealing with five separate bank transactions. I'd like to know how I can monitor how long each type of transaction takes (i.e., from user requestto server answer to delivery of the answer to the user). Basically, I'd like to differentiate the five types of transactional data. Darren's article says that event tracing monitors data from providers. Can Performance Logs and Alerts also be used to monitor at the transactional level?

—Neil Camara
[email protected]

It sounds as though you can use event tracing for your application. You'll need to build the provider and instrument your application code to declare the start and end of a transaction. In your example, each of the five functions would call a start and end event on your provider, and these events would be logged to the event tracing system. You can then use the usual tools, such as Performance Logs and Alerts, logman, and tracerpt, to collect and report on the data. Your best bet is to check out the relevant Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) documentation about event tracing, which includes examples for instrumenting applications. You can find this documentation at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/perfmon/base/event_tracing.asp?frame=true.

—Darren Mar-Elia

Reg.exe to the Rescue
Mark Minasi's Inside Out: "Quick, Automated AD Setup" (December 2003, InstantDoc ID 40719) contained information about using reg.exe that I found particularly useful.

One of Microsoft's recent update patches caused trouble for my company's training facility. The patch kept usernames from being included in URLs. We discovered a registry edit to solve the problem, and because all the client machines in our training facility are Windows XP Professional machines and members of our AD domain, we used reg.exe to update our logon script. What could have been a long evening spent manually updating each and every machine was a simple fix using reg.exe and a logoff/logon cycle. Thanks!

—Bill Nichol
[email protected]

Controlling the Recent Documents Folder
I read Ed Roth's column Windows Client: "Managing User Profiles" (February 2004, InstantDoc ID 41405), then went back and reread his Windows Client: "Using IntelliMirror to Manage User Data and Settings" (July 2003, InstantDoc ID 39193). My company uses folder redirection for the Application Data and My Documents folders in our users' roaming profiles. Some of our users have a Recent Documents folder that's larger than 5MB, and I'd like to control that folder's size. Does a registry setting exist that will let me control the size of user shell folderrecent%userprofile%recent?

—Tim McClenahan
[email protected]

I don't know of a way to control the Recent Documents folder's size without enabling a quota on the entire profile. However, one Group Policy setting might help. If you enable User ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesStart Menu and TaskbarClear history of recent documents on exit, the contents of the Recent Documents folder will be deleted each time the user logs off. Enabling this policy won't affect the list of recently used files that the File menu in Microsoft Office applications displays, so your users can still rely on that list. Enabling this policy provides the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesExplorerClearRecentDocsOnExt registry subkey with a REG_DWORD value of 1.

Another Group Policy setting looks promising, although it won't alter the contents of the Recent Documents folder. User ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesWindows ComponentsWindows ExplorerMaximum Number of Recent Documents will let you limit the number of documents that the Start menu displays.

One more option is to exclude the Recent Documents folder from roaming. You can specify folders for exclusion in Group Policy with the User ConfigurationAdministrative TemplatesSystem
User Profiles setting.

—Ed Roth

Thanks for the Information About ExpertVNC
While reading "New & Improved" (InstantDoc ID 41117) in the January 2004 issue, I ran across an interesting product highlight that mentioned remotely controlling PCs. After a conversation with Patrick from ASITI Software, the vendor mentioned in the highlight, I purchased one license of ExpertVNC (now renamed NetworkStreaming) for testing. This license let my company take control of an unlimited number of PCs in our three geographic locations when users opened the link we supplied—for only $695. NetworkStreaming has many of the useful features of more expensive alternatives, including chat capability, autoreconnect, and file transfer. We were so impressed that we wanted to learn more about ASITI Software's products.

Now, a month later, we own three licenses and the gateway product that extends NetworkStreaming's remote control to any user in the world, no matter where our IT department is located. ASITI Software even upgraded and reconfigured our software free of charge as we evolved the product's use in our environment. The total cost for the gateway solution and one license was less than $1400, and setup was flawless. I can remotely control a user's machine when the user is in Japan. Our company has needed capability like this to help our two-person Help desk support more than 300 users who travel throughout the world. There is no software to deploy; users simply click the link we provide to install the tiny download and boom!—we're in control of their PC. This software has become an important part of our Help desk over the past 30 days and makes our lives easier.

—Ryan M. Austin
r.austin@cineticindust

OOPS
The Buyer's Guide: "Change and Configuration Management Tools" (January 2004, InstantDoc ID 41097) inadvertently omitted LANDesk Software's LANDesk Management Suite 8 from the table of product listings. For information about LANDesk Management Suite 8, refer to the updated table on our Web site or contact LANDesk directly at http://www.landesk.com.

In Darren Mar-Elia's Internals: "Inside User Profiles" (March 2004, InstantDoc ID 41654), the correct default path for local user profiles on Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000 is %systemdrive%documents and settings&username% folder. We apologize for any inconvenience these errors might have caused.