Microsoft Rights Management Solution

There is two version of Microsoft Rights Management, the AD RMS and Azure AD RMS, or called AADRMS, here is some tips to select which one fits you,

Minimum supported OS client
AD RMS: Windows XP
AADRMS: Windows 7

Minimum supported Office client
AD RMS: Microsoft Office 2007
AADRMS: Microsoft Office 2010

External trust
AD RMS: Domain RMS trust / Federation trust / Microsoft federation gateway
ADDRMS: Azure AD

License
AD RMS: RMS CAL
AADRMS: EA + RMS subscription

apart from the above differences, the two product has mostly the same features, including the PFILE format and RPFe folder support for non-MS Office type document, and the read only mobile client.

Factory reset Surface Pro without recovery partition, disk or image

The Surface Pro if installed with custom build before creating the recovery disk, it is not possible to reset it by selecting the reset options from the Windows Setting.  Here is the way to reset or re-install the Surface Pro to factory default when the recovery partition, image or disk been deleted.

First of all, you will need the following to complete the task,

• Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 Pro version image (ISO) file
• USB disk with 4GB or above
• RW-Everything, a tool can extract the OEM product key from your Surface Pro device
• Rufus, a tool to create bootable USB for you
• Surface Pro power cable

Windows 8 or 8.1 Pro ISO image, you will need the 64bit Pro version to rebuild the Surface Pro,  try your luck in Google if you don't have one

RW-Everything can be download from the product site http://rweverything.com/
Install the tool into the Surface Pro, run the program, select ACPI from the tool bar, select the MSDM tab, there you will found your key that translated

Rufus can be download from the product site http://rufus.akeo.ie/
There are many ways to create the UEFI bootable USB disk, but this is the simplest I experienced so far.  This is a zero install tool, with your ISO image and USB disk ready, launch it and configure the following to build the bootable USB,

1. Select the USB device to be use
2. Select the ISO image by clicking the disk icon
3. Select Partition scheme as MBR partition scheme for UEFI computer

Please follow the sequence as by selecting the ISO image, it will reset the partition scheme

Now you have the USB bootable disk and the OEM product key. With the Surface Pro turned off, connect the power cable, plug in the USB disk.

To boot the Surface Pro from the USB, you will need to do the following,

1. Hold the volume down button
2. Click the power button once
3. Keep holding the volume down button until the Surface logo loading finish

You should now see the Windows setup screen if successfully boot to the USB.

Just follows the instruction to re-install the Surface Pro by selecting Reset your PC, delete and select the only partition left.

After re-install, login to the device and go to Windows updates, run the Updates now, which should guide you to the latest firmware.

From the settings, select activate Windows, provide the OEM key for your device.

It is done !

Windows to Go update

You cannot update Windows 8 Windows to Go disk to Windows 8.1 directly, it need to rebuild the disk.... any options?

IE 11 compatibility mode

IE 11 comes with Windows 8.1 removed the compatibility mode button on the user interface, it may impact lots of in-house application that is not IE7 or about ready.  There is work around on this and do not stop using Windows 8.1 in the environment,

For normal user, from IE tool menu, goes to Compatibility view list, add the domain of the URL that require compatibility mode.

For developer, press F12 to turn on debug mode, that allows to switch from IE11 to different IE standard edition.

Google Chrome eating the Windows resources

If you use Google Chrome and found your system is very slow, it may related to the Chrome.  Google Chrome will leave a list of process running in the background even you are not using it, and they are memory and network intensive. It has a little icon on the system tray (next to the system clock), you will need to close the Google Chrome from the tray to free up its memory and process.

One click to shutdown/restart/logout from Windows 8

It is quite annoying to shutdown or reboot the Windows 8, specially when configured the power button to do nothing, here is how to create a tile on Windows 8 Start UI for Shut down, restart or logout,

1. On the desktop, right click to create a new shortcut
2. Type the following on the "type the location of the item" field
• Shutdown: shutdown /s /t 0
• Restart: shutdown /r /t 0
• Logout: shutdown /l /t 0
3. Provide the name for the shortcut and click OK
4. Select the shortcut, right click to Properties, and Change Icon
5. Select the icon for the shortcut, click OK
6. Right click and select Pin to Start Menu

Something happened and this app couldn't be installed. Please try again. Error code:0x80200013

Problem:

Error when try to install a Windows Store app with error code 0x80200013.

When try to install multiple apps, this normally happened to one Windows Store app only, and not specific to any Windows Store app. 

Fix:

• select multiple apps to install from Your Apps list
• click on installing apps
• select one of the Windows app and pause it
• all other windows store apps should now start installing, or select the one with error and click Try again
• resume the one paused

failure to install apps from store Error code 0x8024402c

Problem:

When try to install apps from Windows Store, it may have this error if you are using proxy to connect to internet.

Fix:

Run the following command with administrators rights to define the proxy settings to the winhttp service,

> netsh winhttp set proxy <proxy server>:<port>

or import from IE

> netsh winhttp import proxy source=ie

applocker error when creating policy for packaged app (SrpUxSnapIn.dll)

Problem:
When creating a new packaged app rule, there is option to select the method how to define the policy on the publisher page, but you may found the following error when click on the select button for Use an installed packaged app as a reference as following,

Fix:
You will need to add your login account into the Local Administrators group from the Windows 8 system, re-login and launch gpmc again.

AppLocker do not stop you buy application in Windows Store

When deploying AppLocker policy for Packaged apps in Windows 8, the policy could block an application installation and run, but it could not stop user "buy" an application.  When you deploy this policy, make sure the user aware of this, and do not buy any apps that has been blocked.

Allow users to install any signed apps with Applocker

The create new rules wizard for packaged apps in Windows 8 do has an option to allow any application installation.  To create a rule allow a user or group to install any signed packaged apps, you need to create a default rule, and from the default rule properties, change the user information, and change the version information from 0.0.0.0 to *.

Change the location for Windows Store Palyment

When try to add a payment method in Windows 8 store account, by default, it shows US for billing address, and you cannot change it.  To correct it to your home location, follow this,

on Start UI, type Control Panel, start the Control Panel
select Region
browse to Location tab
change the Home location to your country
restart the Windows Store
from the Charms menu, select Settings \ Your account

Now, you can add a new payment method with billing address to your home country

AppLocker event logging

Windows 8 will not log AppLocker activities in Windows logs (Application / Security / Setup / System), it is located in event viewer under - Applications and Services Logs \ Microsoft \ Windows \ AppLocker.

To make it works, the Application Identity service need to start. This service, by default, defined with startup type as Manual (Trigger Start), and it will not start in my scenario. by turning on this service, change the startup type to automatic and restart the machine, AppLocker activities will start logging into AppLocker logs.