Windows System Restore is a feature that's saved my PC, as well as many family members, on more then one occasion.  When you have SWV installed and have to restore back to a previous point, where SWV is still installed, interesting things happen to your layers.  If you're familiar with Windows System Restore what's going on may be a no-brainier but I'm going to cover what happens to a layer when you restore to a previous point when  that layer wasn't installed.

SWV keeps files for layers, by default, in C:\fslrdr and registry info in SOFTWARE -> fslrdr and SYSTEM -> Altiris -> FSL.  So in our scenario we've got Layer1 imported into our system and then we create a restore point.  We then capture Layer2 and then realize something is jacked up for some reason and have to restore back to the point right before Layer2 was captured.  What would you expect to happen?

When you launch SVSadmin you'll see that Layer1 is still imported and...

With the advent of Vista SP1 Microsoft has removed the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) from the mix. You cannot even install GPMC after you upgrade to SP1.

Read on to learn how to regain control with a cool little package we like to call SVS.

You can install Adminpack.msi on Vista, but with reduced functionality.

RSAT is not yet available, so how do you perform GPO management from a Vista SP1 machine?

SVS! - You simply create a .vsa for GPMC.msi and/or Adminpack.msi on a Windows XP machine. Export the layer and import it on your Vista SP1 machine.

You now have all of your management tools available again.

Thank you SVS!

Another chapter of the Altiris-sponsored eBook, "The Definitive Guide to Vista Migration" is now available for download.

This chapter focuses on one of the most challenging aspects of Vista migration: application or program preparation and migration. Get the download details here.

You can download Chapter 6 here.

Chapter 6: Excerpt

This is the goal of this chapter: to help you develop a structured application management strategy that will help ensure you are always compliant in terms of usage and licensing as well as responding to business needs. To do so, this chapter provides a structured look at each activity related to application management. These include:

• Windows Vista features in support of...

Q:
Peter asks: I have one of let's say 10 app layers activated, and using Regmon shows that there are LOTS of reg seeks by services.exe that result in a "Not found". Wondering what's going on, and how I can stop these many reg seeks.

A:
One of the design principles of SVS is to keep the technology as small and unobtrusive as possible. So in the original release, we chose to pass through registry lookups rather than trying to "proxy" or "cache" them. The only way for this to work was to recursively search every active layer when a process tried to read or open a key. That's why you see what you mention above.

In practice, we observed that a different approach was necessary to be performant. In SVS 2.1, Altiris has implemented a registry cache. The result is a slightly more complex design, but a design that preserves the registry performance of native Windows. This one change resolved all of the performance...