How to use the Cisco VPN Client on 64bit Windows 7

Posted on June 29th, 2009 in Technology, Work by Jim Prince

XP Mode is a new feature of Windows 7 which allows you to run apps from a Windows XP Virtual Machine as if it was on the desktop of your Windows 7 PC.

The following details how to use this facility in order to run the Cisco 32bit VPN Client from a Windows 7 64bit Install.

First you need to get XP Mode installed and running. I followed the instructions on LifeHacker. I used the official Intel Processor Identification Utility to confirm my CPU supported Hardware Virtualisation so can’t comment on SecurAble.

Ensure you download the x64 software packages for your PC, but note that the XP Virtual Machine will be 32bit regardless.

Once you’ve followed the instructions on Lifehacker boot up the XP Virtual Machine and install the Cisco VPN Client. Once the install is complete you should see the Cisco program group appear on your Windows 7 programs menu under Windows Virtual PC -> Virtual Windows XP Applications.

I mainly use VPN to access servers using remote desktop so I tried making a shortcut to mstsc.exe in the programs menu of my Virtual Machine. Unfortunately this didn’t appear in the Virtual Windows XP Applications menu. I’m not sure why this is, but after some searching I found a comment on Virtual PC Guys Weblog with some instructions.

Basically copy mstsc.exe and the en-us directory from “c:\windows\system32″ to a folder under c:\program files in your VM. Then create a shortcut under “c:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs” to the mstsc.exe under program files. Hey presto remote desktop appears under the Virtual Windows XP Applications Folder.


I can now run the Cisco VPN Client and access remote severs from my 64bit Windows 7 desktop without having to boot up and log into an x86 VM. :-D


.Net Framework and MOSS 2007

Posted on June 10th, 2009 in Technology, Work by Jim Prince

Yesterday I had a frustrating experience trying to install .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 in one of our dev environments. Due to some, frankly bizarre, dependency problems I found myself having to uninstall .Net 3.5, .Net 3.0 and .Net 2.0. I was then finally able to install .Net 3.5 SP1 which thankfully is cumulative.

Optimistically I thought that would be the end of the issue but SharePoint seemed to be very broken. For example if I tried to navigate to the root of a site collection I’d get a 404 error. If I navigated to the full URL using /pages/default.aspx the site would load but images called from a document library were missing. If I accessed pages under /_layouts such as settings.aspx then everything loaded just fine.

The Windows Event logs were empty and since SharePoint Central Administration was exhibiting the same behaviour I ran the SharePoint Config Wizard. Once this completed CA was fine but I still had problems with the other Webapps and Site Collections.

At this point I resorted to trawling Google and perhaps for the first time in my career found the solution on Experts Exchange.

Open IIS Manager and for each Webapp navigate to Properties -> Home Directory -> Configuration -> Wildcard Application Maps.




If you’re experiencing the same problem as I did you’ll see that this is box is empty. Click on insert and add C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll.

Ensure that the check box “Verify that the file exists” is unchecked and click on Ok. After running IISRESET everything was working again and the problem was resolved.