Forcing Address Book Updates in Communicator 2007 R2

[LEFT][CODE]http://www.shudnow.net/2010/01/20/forcing-address-book-updates-in-communicator-2007-r2/[/CODE]
Yes, this is old news and there’s about 462 blog entries (ok, that’s a made up number, but there are a lot) about how to force Communicator 2007 R2 to do an Address Book (Galcontacts.db) update. These blog entries will talk about the [URL="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972403/"]July 2009 update for Communicator 2007 R2[/URL] and how it introduced a random delay of 0-60 minutes for Communicator 2007 R2 to download an updated GalContacts.db to prevent the network from getting hammered by so many clients downloading an updated GalContacts.db all at the same time. And yes, these blog entries also talk about a registry entry you can create called GalDownloadInitialDelay and creating a Dword set to 0 in order to force Communicator to do an instant update.
Some blog articles that talk about this include:
[URL]http://www.tincupsandstring.com/2009/12/01/forcing-address-book-download/[/URL]
[URL="http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/12/17_Force_Downloading_the_Address_Book_in_OCS.html"]Force Downloading the Address Book to Communicator[/URL]
Now I’m sure you are asking yourself why I am creating this entry? Is it just to repeat information that’s already out there? Of course not!
So, Communicator 2007 R2 is a 32-bit (x86) application. That registry entry works perfectly fine on x86 systems. But, if you are running on a x64 system, it won’t. Why? Well, because when you run x86 applications on a x64 based system, it utilizes a system in Windows called Windows on Windows (WOW64). WOW64 has its own section within the registry called Wow6432Node.
So let’s say we take the registry key for our Communicator x86 (Communicator x64 not available) and run it on an x86 system. The following registry key works fine:
[CODE] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator]
“GalDownloadInitialDelay”=dword:00000000

[/CODE] But let’s say we have an x64 system. The above registry key will not work. We need to utilize the WOW6432Node part of the registry. The following registry key works for x64 systems:
[CODE] Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Communicator]
“GalDownloadInitialDelay”=dword:00000000

[/CODE] Please make sure you back up your registry before making changes as making changes to the registry can be harmful to your system if not done properly.
[B]Elan Shudnow[/B]
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