ECS Computer Solutions, Christchurch

Often when working on remote VMWare servers and you want to boot an ISO from the datastore it doesn’t give you enough time to press ESCAPE and select the CD-ROM. There is an easy fix… Add / Edit the VMX file for the server you are trying CD boot and add the line: bios.bootDelay = "boot delay in milliseconds" - Save the file back in the datastore and your done!

Currently I am entrusted with developing a Windows 7 Professional Image for deployment and have until recently been stuck with getting the default user profile to ‘keep’ pinned start menu items.

While I was copying them to C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu they still wouldn’t show up. There is actually a complementary Registry key which makes the magic happen. So without further ado: How to set Pinned Start Menu Items for Default Profile in Windows 7 (more…)

Upon Sysprep-ing our first test image of Windows 7 using an unattend.xml our WDS enviroment would produce the error ‘Windows could not apply unattended settings during pass (null).’ At first I thought my unattend.xml file was wrong BUT the actual problem was that WDS was using a Windows Vista Image for the Image Deployment. The required fix was copy boot.wim from the Windows 7 DVD\Sources directory and add that to the ‘Boot Images’ within WDS. After that you PXE boot as per normal and select your newly appointed image!

This post was inspired by this blog post

After a colleague of mine installed WDS at a client site they found that certain laptops and desktop PCs would not be able to pick up the images that have been captured.

The problem lies in the HAL Type of the PC that was captured and then WDS finds the HAL type for the PC asking for an image and if one doesn’t match then you will most probably get the error: “There are no images available”

My scenario was that we had a generic image built and working for Single CPU and MultiCPU PCs but only the Multiple / Newer PCs could see the image in WDS - that is because the HAL type was “Advanced Configuration and power interface (ACPI) PC” but these older PCs were being recognised as Uniprocessor HAL Types.

The solution: Get the image onto the Older PC type (via Ghost or Clonezilla etc) login to the system. Download DevCon and extract into C:\Windows or any other %PATH% variable you like.
Then run:
devcon sethwid @ROOT\ACPI_HAL\0000 := +acpiapic_up !acpiapic_mp
devcon update c:\windows\inf\hal.inf acpiapic_up

Reboot and Login two times then Sysprep and capture again!

Hopefully your good to go!

Reference: http://www.ngohq.com/processors/11891-how-to-update-the-hal-without-reinstalling-windows.html

Keywords: WDS, Force HALs, Force HAL, Windows Deployment Services, WDS, ACPI Multiprocessor PC, acpiapic_up, acpiapic_mp, No Images after Capture, Change HAL Type

Recently I came across a new file format called RSDF, these appear to be txt files which have a bunch of links in them, so called link containers.  I wanted to access the URLS in these files, but I didnt really want to entrust my computer to just “any” application. (more…)

Hooray! I did it!
I have managed to boot my bootable usb pendrive (BackTrack 3) under QEMU within Windows XP.

For those of you who want the magic one liner here you are:

qemu.exe -L . -m 512 -std-vga -hda \\\\.\\PhysicalDrive2 -soundhw all -localtime -M pc -kernel ../../boot/vmlinuz -initrd ../../boot/initrd.gz -append "root=/dev/ram0 rw initrd=../../boot/initrd.gz ramdisk_size=6666 vga=0x317"

• This gives you TextMode with 512 MB Ram and Mouse Support!!
• You will need to change PhysicalDrive2 to what ever drive number your USB key is. (Hint look under the DiskManagment snap-in)
• You require administrative rights also
• My Qemu directory lives under USBDriveLetter\BT3\QEMU FYI
• QEMU Version Win32 PreCompiled 0.9.1

Hopefully this saves you a few hours

I have been pulling my hair out trying to resolve a backup issue with a client’s backup on Veritas BackupExec 9.1. What happened was that backup was failing on 1 message because the antivirus couldn’t scan it, and locked the backup from reading it.

BackupExecs error was:
0xa0008488 - Access is denied
Backup - \\SERVER\Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes
Access denied to file FirstName LastName [user]FW: Your Tracking # 835503826372.

Now this particular message was found in the Inbox, I then deleted it and emptied the Deleted Items.
Backup still failed! But this time the message was it the root_store IE. The top level of the Mailbox and I couldn’t see it with OWA Client etc. I had to pass it on to another engineer who started looking at it, who then gave me the right tact to search.

I deleted the message by using a Microsoft tool called MDB Viewer, this is a low level tool for Mailboxes,  It’s on the exchange CD-ROM CD-ROM_Drive\Server\Support\Utils\I386\Mdbvu32.exe

I then basically (Remember I don’t do Step by Steps, I do summarys) Choose the Server, Choose the Mailbox (username), then clicked  OpenMessageStore on the MDB menu,
Click Open Root Folder on the MDB menu
From there I saw the message in Messages in Folder Column, I selected it, Choose the operation IpFld->DeleteMessage() and called the function!

Woo Hoo Backup now works!

Merry Christmas to me and you!

So I was back the stupid clients that had the crappy mdaemon / IMAP setup. This time upgrading there MS Office version to 2003 in an effort to stop the IMAP pst file hitting the 2GB limit. Anyway after pulling my hair out to get it to use the 2003 UNICODE PST type store I came across this post: link

“This issue occurs if the DWORD value for the NewPSTFormat registry entry is set to 2. This condition requires Outlook to use the Unicode-based personal folders (.pst) file format. This file format is incompatible with IMAP. ” Fuck! Looks like stupid internet standards win again!

You know the worst part - The client is a lawyer and he explicitly asked me in a email if this will fix the problem, to which I replied “Yes it will”

Now I just need to find that damn message…….

Part of works server migration has meant that we are working on a new Terminal Server. I liked the old one better because:

• It had a run command
• I could view the system drives
• I could type H: in the address bar and it worked!
• It had command prompt access!
• No firefox installed (Hardened IE installed! OMG WTF!)

And the list goes on….. What I find mose stupid is a work for an IT company and they lock the shit down which make us less productive!!

(more…)

Had a client whose print queue would jam up and they couldn’t restart the printer spooler until you manually cleared the spooled documents. So I stole this piece of code and put it in a batch file. Works wonders!

@echo off
net stop "print spooler"
del /q "%SystemRoot%\system32\spool\PRINTERS\*.*"
net start "print spooler"

Update: The reason the spooler was dying was because when he printed a PDF document he would close Acrobat before the document finished and in turned killed the Print Spooler. Because we charge by the hour, he didn’t want it to be investigated any further, which is fine by me!