Microsoft MDOP


MDOP AKA the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack is one of the least well known Microsoft products, and that’s a shame as it’s packed full of goodness!

It’s only available to customers who have Software Assurance on Windows Desktop OS licences (Vista, Windows 7 etc) and contains the following:

Application Virtualization (App-V)

Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V)

Diagnostics & Recovery Toolset (DaRT)

Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM)

Asset Inventory Services (AIS)

System Center Desktop Error Monitoring (SCDEM)

These tools can help make managing systems so much easier in so many ways!

They are licensed on a per user per month basis which means they’re not available on all licensing programmes-namely MDOP is missing from Open licensing. If MDOP is attractive to you, you should look at the Open Value Program to get MDOP and other benefits too.

There’s a whole host of MDOP videos from Tech-Ed available here. Be warned though-they require a TechEd Online subscription.

Diagnostic and Recovery Tool (DaRT)


DaRT is what was previously known as WINternals and is a great piece of software, a real boon to any IT admin’s toolkit. It comes with all kinds of tools and tricks to troubleshoot unresponsive PCs and get them back up and running by removing malware, fixing drivers and more.

The first part is the Crash Analysis Wizard, which looks at .dmp files (crash dumps) and pulls out the relevant info to tell you why the crash has happened.

The next part is ERD Commander. This lets you create a start up image that you will use in the future on seemingly unbootable machines. Once you have given it an OS (which it can extract from your install disk), you choose which tools you want to include on the disk…the choice is:

  • Computer Management
  • Crash Analyzer
  • Disk Commander
  • Disk Wipe
  • Explorer
  • File Restore
  • Hotfix Uninstall
  • Locksmith
  • Registry Editor
  • Solution Wizard
  • Standalone System Sweeper
  • System File Repair
  • TCP/IP Configuration
  • You can then add any specific .inf files (drivers) that you would need, if you have specific extra hardware requirements in your organization.

    Brandon LeBlanc from the Windows Blog has got a great post on DaRT here.