Group Policy Software Installation (GPSI) is one of the greatest gifts that Microsoft has given you! It is a free and semi-robust application deployment solution. Almost any organization can manage their entire application infrastructure with it. GPSI does have a few limitations though. One notable limit is the all or nothing redeployment option.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could selectively reinstall applications for a specific computer or for a small group of computers? Today, we are going to learn how to reinstall an application on a single machine and on multiple computers.

Reinstall a GPSI Application on a Single Machine

When you deploy an application through Group Policy, the local machine stores the GPSI information within HKLMSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionGroup PolicyAppMgmt . Each installed application has a unique ID assigned to it. This ID is the same for every machine. In the screenshot below, you can see an example of a deployed application named Mochasoft. It’s unique registry ID is {606…..}.

We can trigger an automatic reinstall by deleting the {606….} registry key and rebooting the machine. The Group Policy client will initiate a reinstall of the application at startup. Deleting a registry key this way can be a bit time consuming.

To make this easier, you can use a free app to list and delete these IDs. Before we continue, head over to the Tools page and download the MSI Manager App. It is located under the Active Directory/Group Policy section. Pin it to your Start Menu/Start Screen. You will use it often!

When you first launch MSI Manager, enter a computer name and press Scan. For testing, you can enter in your local machine name. MSI Manager will connect to the machine and list all of the GPSI applications. You can select an application and press Go to remove the registry entry and to trigger a GPUpdate.

The force reboot option will reboot the machine and allow the application to reinstall without waiting. If you have Verbose Mode enabled, you can even watch the application install. Go ahead and try this out on a machine. It is pretty sweet!

Reinstall a GPSI Application on Multiple Machines

Occasionally, you might need to reinstall an application on a small group of computers. Group Policy Registry Preferences can make this possible! In this example, we are wanting to reinstall our Mochasoft application on a specific lab of computers. In Active Directory, we will create a new security group namedReInstall_APP_Mochasoft and add our computers to this group.

Next, we will edit our APP_Mochasoft GPO which deploys our application. We will expand to Computer Configuration/Preferences/Windows Settings/Registry . Finally, we will create a new Registry Item and set the Action to Delete.

Under the keypath, we will enter SOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionGroup PolicyAppMgmtREGISTRY ID

To streamline this preference, we will click on the Common tab and check Apply once and do not reapply. We also want this preference to apply to our specific group of computers. We will select Item-level targeting and configure a new Security Group target that scopes this preference down to your ReInstall security group.

On the next GPUpdate, our machines will remove the specific GPSI registry key. On the next reboot, they will reinstall the application! This is how I selectively reinstall GPSI applications on specific computers and on computer groups.

To safely run antivirus on HyperV Hosts you will need to whitelist some locations so they are not scanned by your Antivirus Software:

C:\ClusterStorage;
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\DataStore.edb;
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\Logs\*.log;
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\Logs\*.jrs;
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\Logs\*.chk;
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\DataStore\Logs\*.edb;
%windir%\Security\Database\*.edb;
%windir%\Security\Database\*.sdb;
%windir%\Security\Database\*.log;
%windir%\Security\Database\*.chk;
%windir%\Security\Database\*.jrs;
%SystemRoot%\System32\GroupPolicy\registry.pol;
%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\NTuser.pol;
%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Hyper-V;

After performing a Bare Metal restore with Veeam for a 2012 R2 server OS you may find logging in remotely via Remote Desktop taking longer than usual.  You may experience a delay at the logon screen for about 10-20 seconds before logging in and the following three errors may be found in the Windows System Event log, all logged as Event ID 7011 with the source Service Control Manager:

A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the UmRdpService service.

A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the ScDeviceEnum service.

The Smart Card Device Enumeration Service service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

The reason for this is the RDP service is attempting to use Smart Cards for authentication when a client attempts to connect.   It seems that the Windows Server OS enables the Smart Card service after a restore to new hardware (partial OOBE). To fix this, change the Startup Type of the the Smart Card Device Enumeration Service from Manual (Trigger Start) to Disabled.  After doing so the unwanted delay on remote logon will be resolved.

One of those annoyances that sometimes happen with the new Network Location in Windows 8.x is that the network gets mis-identified as Public when it should be Private, or the other way around. Changing this in the GUI is certainly possible, but annoying, so let’s take advantage of the improved Windows PowerShell support in Windows 8.1 and do it quickly and easily. First, let’s open up an elevated PowerShell window from our limited user session:

PSH> Start-Process WindowsPowerShell.exe -verb RunAs

Now, in that window, let’s find out what our current network location is set to:

PSH> Get-NetConnectionProfile

Name : Unidentified network
InterfaceAlias : vEthernet (Local-10)
InterfaceIndex : 18
NetworkCategory : Public
IPv4Connectivity : LocalNetwork
IPv6Connectivity : LocalNetwork

From this, we see that the problem interface has an Interface Index of 18, so:

PSH> Set-NetConnectionProfile  -InterfaceIndex 18 -NetworkCategory Private

And we’re done.

It is pretty important to make sure you set the Max Server memory setting for SQL Server to something besides the default setting (which allows SQL Server to use as much memory as it wants, subject to signals from the operating system that it is under memory pressure). This is especially important with larger, busier systems that may be under memory pressure.

This setting controls how much memory can be used by the SQL Server Buffer Pool.  If you don’t set an upper limit for this value, other parts of SQL Server, and the operating system can be starved for memory, which can cause instability and performance problems. It is even more important to set this correctly if you have “Lock Pages in Memory” enabled for the SQL Server service account (which I always do for x64 systems with more than 4GB of memory).

These settings are for x64, on a dedicated database server, only running the DB engine, (which is the ideal situation).

Physical RAM                        MaxServerMem Setting
2GB                                           1500
4GB                                           3200
6GB                                           4800
8GB                                           6400
12GB                                         10000
16GB                                         13500
24GB                                         21500
32GB                                         29000
48GB                                         44000
64GB                                         60000
72GB                                         68000
96GB                                         92000
128GB                                       124000

If you are running other SQL Server components, such as SSIS or Full Text Search, you will want to allocate less memory for the SQL Server Buffer Pool. You also want to pay close attention to how much memory is still available in Task Manager. This is how much RAM should be available in Task Manager while you are under load (on Windows Server 2003):

Physical RAM            Target Avail RAM in Task Manager
< 4GB                               512MB – 1GB
4-32GB                              1GB – 2GB
32-128GB                            2GB – 4GB
> 128GB                              > 4GB

You can use T-SQL to set your MaxServerMemory setting. The sample below sets it to 3500, which is the equivalent of 3.5GB. This setting is dynamic in SQL Server 2005/2008, which means that you can change it and it goes into effect immediately, without restarting SQL Server.

— Turn on advanced options
EXEC  sp_configure‘Show Advanced Options’,1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

— Set max server memory = 3500MB for the server
EXEC  sp_configure‘max server memory (MB)’,3500;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

-- See what the current values are
EXEC sp_configure;

You can also change this setting in the SSMS GUI, as you see below:

Finally, I have learned that it is a good idea to temporarily adjust your MaxServerMemory setting downward by a few GB if you know you will be doing a large file copy on your database server (such as copying a large database backup file).

Browse to %WINDIR%\RemotePackages\CPubFarms\CPubRemoteApps on each server holding the RD Connection Broker role and you will see all the .ico files.

In the following example, I have a RemoteApp called ‘Notepad’.  If i want to change the icon I’d remove “notepad.ico” and copy another .ico file of my choice and rename it to “notepad.ico”.
This will replace the icon for the RemoteApp in your Remote Apps and Desktop Connections application on the next refresh. For RD Web Access you’ll have to stop and start the Web application on the RD Web Access server.

This will only work for .ico files. If your icon is in a .exe or .dll you’ll still have to use powershell.

To fix WSUS errors with a cloned machines that was not sysprepped you will need to firstly delete the machine form the WSUS console then run he following commands on the PC/server that has been cloned:

gpupdate
net stop wuauserv /y
net stop BITS /y
rd C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution /s /Q
del "c:\windows\windowsupdate.log"
regsvr32 WUAPI.DLL /s
regsvr32 WUAUENG.DLL /s
regsvr32 WUAUENG1.DLL /s
regsvr32 ATL.DLL /s
regsvr32 WUCLTUI.DLL /s
regsvr32 WUPS.DLL /s
regsvr32 WUPS2.DLL /s
regsvr32 WUWEB.DLL /s
regsvr32 msxml3.dll /s
net start wuauserv /y
wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization /detectnow

Then restart the PC/Server and re-run Windows Update