Windows System Specialist

Eject for Mac OSX (or OS X)

2011-08-10T23:11:00.003-05:00

Tired of getting the "Device Removal" dialog box in OSX every time you pull out your USB flash drive or iPod?

I present "Eject" a two tap utility for OS X that will display a dialog of all of your mounted disks. Select one, click "Choose", and Finder will eject it.

Here's a screenshot:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5396315/Eject/screenshot.png

Here's the App in a Zip file:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5396315/Eject/Eject.zip

And the Automater Workflow if you want to tweak it:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5396315/Eject/Eject_Workflow.zip

Note on Deploying Adobe CS5

2010-06-28T14:37:00.002-05:00

Found this tidbit in the Adobe Enterprise Deployment guide. At least they're upfront about not being user or administrator friendly:

The CS5 applications do not implement application preferences in a consistent manner across applications, nor do the implementations conform to existing platform standards.

Set Printer Share Comment to the Port Name With IP Address

2010-06-10T17:16:00.003-05:00

So as an update to an earlier post on adding the port name to the comments of a print queue on a Server 2003/2008/2008 R2 box, below is an update script that will add both the port name and the IP address or DNS host name associated with a given port.

$printersWMI = Get-WMIObject -Class "Win32_Printer" -NameSpace "root\cimv2" -computername "."

$portsWMI = Get-WMIObject -Class "Win32_TCPIPPrinterPort" -NameSpace "root\cimv2" -computername "."

$ports = @{}

ForEach($port in $portsWMI){

$ports[$port.name] = $port.HostAddress

}

ForEach($printer in $printersWMI){

$printer.Comment = $printer.PortName + "`r`n" + $ports[$printer.PortName]

$printer.Put()

}

Excluding My Music from Roaming Profile

2009-11-03T09:00:00.002-06:00

By popular demand, we recently rolled out iTunes to our users. An unexpected consequence of this was that our windows roaming user profile demands skyrocketed. We're talking over doubling basically over night. Our solution to it was to exclude the My Music folder from the roaming user profile. In general its probably best we don't have user's music collections sitting on expensive enterprise storage. To do this, create a new Group Policy. Drill down to Administrative Templates\System\User Profiles. Enable "Exclude directories in roaming profiles" and set the value to "My Documents\My Music". If there are other folders you'd like to exclude you can add them with a semicolon, eg "My Documents\My Music;Temp".

The good news is that once this policy is enabled, the next time that the user logs off, the user profile will sync without any of the Excluded directories. Even better is that it will remove existing "My Music" folder on the server copy of the roaming profile. Turn on Performance Monitor, setup some counters, and watch the drive space roll in.

Exchange Cluster Continuous Replication Failed

2009-04-10T15:34:00.002-05:00

We had an Exchange 2007 Mailbox server's storage drive fill up due to log files not being cleaned out due to the backup job failing (don't ask). After we deleted the unnecessary log files and got the store back online, we weren't able to get its CCR passive node to bring 3 of the 5 stores online. We ran "Update-StorageGroupCopy -DeleteExistingFiles", and the process would complete. I would then show up as "healthy" with a "Get-StorageGroupCopyStatus" for a minute or so, and then fail. Checking the event log we got:

Event ID: 2059
Source: MSExchangeRepl
The log file 404149 for is missing on the production copy. Continuous replication for this storage group is blocked. If you removed the log file, please replace it. If the log is lost, the passive copy will need to be reseeded using the Update-StorageGroupCopy cmdlet in the Exchange Management Shell.

It wouldn't make sense straight away, as the database on the active node was "up to date" and shouldn't need those log files. After some research, I found that this was a result of the failed backup process. When we deleted the log files on the active node, we'd broken the replay log process (as we'd deleted log files that were created after the last time the database was backed up).

Given that we're using a backup solution that backs up the databases from the passive node, I had to use NTBackup Utility to do a normal backup on the database. Once this completed I was able to use the Update-StorageGroupCopy command to get the database replication back to a healthy state. In theory this process should work on a Standby Continuous Replication
SCR cluster as well.

Set Printer Share Comment to the Port Name

2009-04-06T10:10:00.002-05:00

We use an asset tag naming system to target all of our printer ports to the physical printers. The queue names are abstracted from the actual printer it's self. All of the printers have a DNS name that is their asset tag plus the SCCM site code of the location that they're currently located in. The only problem with this is that it creates a bunch of extra clicking to determine what printer a queue is actually pointed to (okay, so its like 4 extra clicks to get the port name, but its still tedious). The work around we came up with is to set the comment tag on the printer to the port name of the printer. To do that we use the following bit of PowerShell code that runs on an hourly basis on the server. It was tested on Windows Server 2008, but should work just fine on Server 2003:

$printers = Get-WMIObject -Class "Win32_Printer" -NameSpace "root\cimv2" -computername "."
ForEach($printer in $printers){
$printer.Comment = $printer.PortName
$printer.Put()
}

Mounting CD and DVD in SuSE in Hyper-V with the Linux Integration Components Installed

2009-03-25T07:58:00.004-05:00

SuSE Enterprise 10 SP2 works great on Hyper V, the performance (especially once you get the VMBus drivers installed) is near-iron, and the integration between SuSE and AD is great. It's the perfect setup for running a few Linux servers in a mostly Windows shop.

The only problem that I had getting the CD/DVD drive to mount. Once you get the VMBus drivers working properly, when you boot with the XEN kernal the CD Rom drive will show up as a Hard Disk to Linux. This will prevent SUSE from automatically mounting the CD/DVD drive when you swap out the discs (or upon boot). The solution is to mount the CD/DVD rom manually; to do that, do the following:

Open up Terminal
Make a directory as a mount point for the drive ( "mkdir /media/cdrom0" )
Mount the drive by typing in: "mount -t iso9660 /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0"

This is assuming that the DVD drive for the Virtual Host is on IDE Controller 1 location 0. If it is on another channel, you'll have to change the /dev/hdc line of the mount command to the correct value:

IDE Controller 0, Location 0: /dev/hda
IDE Controller 0, Location 1: /dev/hdb
IDE Controller 1, Location 0: /dev/hdc
IDE Controller 1, Location 1: /dev/hdc

Update: Found one more issue. When using YaST2 to configure the network interface, make sure that you use the "Traditional Method with ifup" and not "User Controlled with Network Manager". Otherwise it will continually fail to setup the network adapter without providing any relevant error messages.

HP Proliant Support Pack on Server 2008: Server Core

2009-03-09T13:49:00.002-05:00

We had some problems early on with the initial version of HP's PSP on our HP DL380 G5s and Server Core. The problems seem to have been resolved in the latest (8.15) version of the PSP. To install it, simply extract the PSP to a directory and run the setup.exe from the command line in Server Core. You'll get the standard HP GUI to guide you through the installation (or you can use setupc.exe for the commandline driven installation). The only "note" is that you'll have to install the SNMP service before hand by using the command "start /w ocsetup SNMP-SC".

HyperV and Failover Clustering Qwerk

2008-07-28T14:48:00.003-05:00

Setting up a HyperV failover cluster on Server 2008 Datacenter edition, we kept having an issue with VM's configuration object getting stuck in "Offline Pending" when moving the virtual machine between servers. Additionally, we were getting an error when trying to add additional Virtual Machines to the cluster:

"An error was encountered while loading the list of available virtual machines. The value cannot be null Parameter name ManagementObject" . With an EventID # 1183 error as well.

After banging my head over this issue, it turns out its rather simple. The Failover Cluster Management MMC doesn't automatically add the drive that the Virtual Machine Configuration is stored on as a dependency to the Virtual Machine Configuration object. It's strange because it does add it to the Virtual Machine object its self. The result is that the cluster service can offline the disk that the configuration is stored on before it's done writing to the configuration file, causing the problems.

The solution, of course, is to add the virtual disk as a dependency of the Virtual Machine Configuration:
Update:
If you've already deleted the VM Configuration, you can add it back by right clicking on the Virtual Machine Group in the Failover Cluster Management MMC, choosing Add Resource -> More Resources -> Add Virtual Machine Configuration. Alternatively you could reload VM on one of the cluster nodes and then go through the process to make it highly available again.

Update x2:
Microsoft has fixed the root problem in the Hyper-V Failover Cluster Management Hotfix; more info here:
http://hypervoria.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-failover-cluster-hotfix-now-public.aspx

SCCM 2007 & KB948109

2008-07-24T09:20:00.000-05:00

We've got a single System Center Configuration Manager 2007 server running all of our SCCM roles, as well as running MS SQL 2005 Express Edition SP2. When we installed the latest MSSQL update, KB948109 , we found that it completely hosed the security on the SQL instance. It appears that this is a rather widespread problem, in generally it looks like this update is wroght with issues. Luckily, running SCCM's Repair Site wizard on the server followed by a reboot cleaned up the mess. The more you know.

Excel 2007, Vista, and Synergy

2008-04-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

I've found a problem with the awesome, cross platform, multi-monitor program Synergy. When using it with Windows Vista (which, technically isn't supported but seems to work reasonably well), you can't disable the Scroll Lock key in Excel. If you pull up the Virtual Keyboard from the Ease of Access tools, you can see scroll lock turning on and off, but Excel 2007 doesn't seem to care. The solution is to: turn off Synergy, hit Scroll Lock, turn Synergy back on. The developer has expressed that he is working on the project again, so hopefully we'll see the filter driver fixed in Synergy 2.0.

Active@Boot Disk and Active@Undelete

2008-03-04T10:18:00.000-06:00

So it turns out, the instructions I posted last year for getting Active@Undelete on a Windows Deployment Services system work just as well for getting the Active@Boot Disk on there as well. The only difference is that you have to use the Active@Boot Disk Creator first to generate the ISO image so that it will include your serial number and registration info.

Exchange Backups

2007-11-25T12:25:00.000-06:00

Awesome. We're about half way through moving from our janky Exchange 2003 servers to our Exchange 2007 Ultra Clusters... and the Exchange 2003 server decides to take a digger last night. Not just a digger (lost three! less then a year old SCSI3 disks in a 0+1 array in a matter of 2 days), but we don't have current backups... Using Active@Undelete to try and recover some data. It's a blast and a half. At least we've got affect people backup with a dial-tone mailbox on our hot spare 2003 box.

Moral of the story: nightly incremental backups are your friend.

Active@Boot Disk on Windows Deployment Services

2007-04-11T10:47:00.000-05:00

We use a toolset from Active@ called UNDELETE. It's a nifty little program for recovering files off of hard disks that have been wiped, have a broken partition, etc.

One of the nicest features is the ability to use the program from a Windows PE 2.0 ISO to boot a machine and recover files. While this is nice, network booting it is a a much nicer solution that doesn't require you to have a CD on you at all times. After some tinkering, I've gotten it to sucessfully PXE.

What you need: Windows Server 2003 SP2 Windows Deployment Services server and the BootDiskEnt.ISO from the Active@ Boot Disk.

Process:

Mount the BootDiskEnt.ISO using your favorite ISO mounting utility.
Navigate to "X:\Sources\" (where X is the drive letter where you mounted the ISO
Copy the Boot.WIM file over the the deployment server.
On the deployment server, open up Windows Deployment Services MMC
Expand the tree to : Windows Deployment Services -> Servers -> Server Name -> Boot Images.
Right click and select "Add Boot Image".
In the wizard, click Browse and select the Boot.WIM file. Click Next until you complete the wizard.
It will take a few minutes to load, once it does you should see "Active@Boot Disk" listed as a boot image.
To use it, simply boot the system from the WDS server over PXE and select "Active@ Boot Disk" from the list of available boot images. It will boot just as if you had loaded it off of CD.

Powershell RTM is Hot.

2006-11-27T20:33:00.000-06:00

I'll post more PowerShell scripts in the future, but the basic idea here is that PowerShell is awsome. Makes AD and Exchange managment cake. Can't wait to see what SMS 4.0 does with it. As an added bonus, you can now lord your Object Orientated Shell over the heads of those pesy 'Linux' people and their 'Bash'.

RTM is out here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/msh/download.mspx

Logon Script to Set Windows Default Log on To Domain

2006-07-24T10:49:00.000-05:00

Simple little Visual Basic script today. It writes the registry key to specify which Domain Windows will choose for displaying in the GINA Log On To drop down box. It allows you to specify two different choices, a primary and an alternate, but you can always comment out the alternate if you wish.

' NAME: setLogonTo.vbs
'
' AUTHOR: Charles Wastell
' DATE : 7/24/2006
'
' Updates
'
' 7/24/06 - Initial Revision
'
' COMMENT: Changes the default Logon To at the Gina login box to the default domain.
' You can comment out lines 27 and 43 if you only have one domain to logon to.
'
'
'
' **********************************************************************************
' Variable Declarations
' **********************************************************************************

Dim defaultDomain, defaultAltDomain
Dim WshShell

' **********************************************************************************
' User Customizable Section
' **********************************************************************************

defaultDomain = "YOURDOMAIN"
defaultAltDomain = "YOURSECONDARYDOMAIN"

' **********************************************************************************
' Variable Initialization
' **********************************************************************************

Set WshShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")

' **********************************************************************************
' Write Reg Keys
' **********************************************************************************

On Error Resume Next

WshShell.RegWrite "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\DefaultDomainName", defaultDomain ,"REG_SZ"
WshShell.RegWrite "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\AltDefaultDomainName", defaultAltDomain , "REG_SZ"

WScript.Quit

Windows Command Line CDP Capture Utility

2006-07-20T10:47:00.000-05:00

Cisco Discovery Packets (CDP) will give you a lot of valuable information if you can capture them: they will give you your IP, the switch your on, and the port on that switch you're connected to. When combined with a database that maps switch ports to datajack, you can directly locate where a computer is on your network.

The only problem is that capturing this little buggers is tough in Windows: CDPR will do it, as will Ethereal, but both require WinPcap to be installed. Luckily I found version of TCPDump for Windows thats built on the WinPCap SDK; this means the little 400k utility can capture CDP packets on a machine without any additional tools. You can get it from micoOLAP here. The manual page for WinDump (version of TCPDump that needs WinPCap ) can be found over here.

The final step is getting TCPDUMP to capture the CDP Packet. Command line we're using it "tcpdump -nn -v -s 1500 -c 1 ether[20:2] == 0x2000" (from another blog). It takes up to 60 seconds (depending on switch settings), but eventually pulls down the CDP Packet. I'll see if I can't wrangle up some VBS Login scripts to run it in a bit.

-Charles

Brother MFC-8440 Multifunction Windows Server 2003 Fax, Print, and Scanner Drivers

2006-07-12T17:56:00.000-05:00

Brother International does not support their line of multifunction printers in Windows Server 2003. Well, they do support the print functions, but if you want to use the Fax or Scanner functions you are SOL. I would guess it has something to do with them offering a nice network fax and scanner driver as an optional but expensive accessory, but I digress. I wanted to share the Fax Machine off our Brother MFC-8440 printer with the rest of our IT Department, but being that it wouldn't work with 2k3, and XP doesn't allow you to share faxes.

So what I did was methodically combine the Windows XP Drivers with the Windows Server 2003 Drivers so that I was using the most up to date file versions, then edited the associated INF files so that it would install. After some tweaking and some wall to head interaction, it's working great and we can fax from any of the computers in our office using the wonderful Microsoft Fax Services. The driver files are available here: http://www.alwaysnetwork.com/wss/brother-mfc-8440.zip.

While editing the drivers, I think I have made the correct changes so that it will work with Vista, but I am unable to check as I don't have any Vista boxes laying around. Also be aware that these drivers, while tested on my systems here, come with no guarantee that they won't hose up your system and come with no warranty what so ever.

-Charles

Override Adobe Creative Suite 2 Minimum Requirements

2006-07-05T09:35:00.000-05:00

Adobe Creative Suite 2 checks the system that you are installing it on in order to see if it meets the minimum requirements for running it. Of course it will run on systems that don't meet the minimum requirements, just not well. By default it wants at least 384 megs of RAM, 1024x768 screen resolution, and 1.5 GB of hard drive space: if you system doesn't meet these requirements it won't install, giving you some cryptic message about getting a better computer.We ran into issues where users "needed" to upgrade to CS2 from CS to resolve version errors between them and other departments.

To get CS2 to install we had to "edit" the requirements so that it would install on their machines. The process is to do this is relatively simple: copy the contents of CD1 to a directory on your PC. Open up the setup.ini file in the root directory in your favorite text editor. Under [Requirements] there are a list of 5 different types of checks that the setup file will do: RAM, Administrative Rights, OS, Screen Resolution and Hard Drive space. Simply edit the various values to a point sufficiently low enough for your computer. Our [Requirements] section is setup to allow installs on machines with 100 megs of RAM, 640x480x16bit screen resolution, and 1.5 GB of space on the drive. A copy of our requirement section is below. Once you have made the changes, simply save the ini file and burn the contents back to a CD. You can now use this to install off of rather then the original disk.

[Requirements]
Requirement1Type=RamRequirement
Requirement1MsgFailure="$$$/ACS/ReqCheckFailureRam=The Adobe Creative Suite 2 needs at least 384 MB of RAM\ninstalled in your computer in order to run properly. Adding even more\nRAM will increase performance. Please add more RAM to your\ncomputer and then restart the installer.\n\nThe minimum system requirements for the Adobe Creative Suite are:\n\t- Windows 2000, XP\n\t- Pentium III processor or better\n\t- 3 GB of hard disk space\n\t- 384 MB of RAM\n\t- 1024x768, 16-bit color monitor"
Requirement1MsgSuccess=
Requirement1Value1=100

Requirement2Type=AdminRequirement
Requirement2MsgFailure="$$$/ACS/ReqCheckAdminFailure=Administrative privileges are required to install the Adobe Creative Suite 2.\n\nPlease quit the installer, log in as an administrator, and run the installer\nagain to continue installation."
Requirement2MsgSuccess=

Requirement3Type=OSRequirement
Requirement3MsgFailure="$$$/ACS/ReqCheckFailureOS=The Adobe Creative Suite 2 requires that at least Windows 2000\nor Windows XP be installed in order to run properly. Please upgrade\nyour operating system and then restart the installer.\n\nThe minimum system requirements for the Adobe Creative Suite are:\n\t- Windows 2000,XP\n\t- Pentium III Processor or better\n\t- 3 GB of hard disk space\n\t- 384 MB of RAM\n\t- 1024x768, 16-bit color monitor"
Requirement3MsgSuccess=
Requirement3Value1=5

Requirement4Type=ScreenRequirement
Requirement4MsgFailure="$$$/ACS/ReqCheckFailureScreen=The Adobe Creative Suite 2 needs your monitor to support a\nresolution of at least 1024x768 with 16-bit color in order to run\nproperly. Please connect a compatible display device to your computer\nand then restart the installer.\n\nThe minimum system requirements for the Adobe Creative Suite are:\n\t- Windows 2000,XP\n\t- Pentium III Processor or better\n\t- 3 GB of hard disk space\n\t- 384 MB of RAM\n\t- 1024x768, 16-bit color monitor"
Requirement4MsgSuccess=
Requirement4Value1=640
Requirement4Value2=480
Requirement4Value3=16

Requirement5Type=HardDiskSpaceReq
Requirement5MsgFailure="$$$/ACS/ReqCheckFailureMinFreeSpace=1.5 GB of space must exist on your startup disk to start installation\nof the Adobe Creative Suite 2. Please delete unneeded files to free\nup additional disk space and then restart the installer.\n\nThe minimum system requirements for the Adobe Creative Suite are:\n\t- Windows 2000,XP\n\t- Pentium III Processor or better\n\t- 3 GB of hard disk space\n\t- 384 MB of RAM\n\t- 1024x768, 16-bit color monitor"
Requirement5MsgSuccess=
Requirement5Value1=1536

RIS Welcome.OSC Featuring Vi Clippy (aka Vigor)

2006-07-03T08:56:00.000-05:00

Everyone loves Clippy. And where better to have Clippy then on the Welcome screen for Remote Installation Services? With that in mind, below is the source code for using Vi Clippy in your Welcome.OSC file on your RIS server (it's under \RemoteInstall\OSChooser\ ). The Welcome.OSC template used to build Vi Clippy was from Server 2k3 SP1, but it should work on any RIS server.
Screen shot:

Source:
Download it here

Outlook 2003 SP2 Hotfixes Breaks the Lotus Notes Domino Connector

2006-06-30T08:55:00.000-05:00

We're still running Domino Server 6.5 and using Notes R5 client on our domain for political reasons. Given how wonderful Notes is, the IT Office staff uses Outlook 2003 with the Lotus Notes Data Connector (available from MS for free). It works great, and means we don't have to use Lotus Notes in the office.

Recently we found that users who were setting up new Outlook Profiles using the Notes Connector were having issues with Outlook spitting out a "Unable to open your default email folders. The server is not available. Contact your administrator if this condition persists." error when the user tried to use their new Outlook profile. Looking at the Outlook log files it was showing "Error in CABProvider::QueryInterface failed, E_NOINTERFACE (0x80004002)". The odd thing was that anyone who had an Outlook profile that had already been setup and used for awhile was not having this issue, even on the same machine.

So after doing some research it turns out that some of the latest hot fixes for Office 2003 SP2 break the Notes Connector (only the olconn2.exe , which hasn't been updated since 2004). Specifically they are KB916521 , KB892843, and KB913807. There may be a couple of other roll-up hotfixes that break it, but these are the latest once I could track down. The kicker is that you can't just remove these hotfixes, you actually have to uninstall Office 2003 SP2 and the Notes Connector. You then have to reinstall both, making sure to disable Office Update from installing these hotfixes until after you have created the profile. Strangely, the older Notes Connector (olconn.exe) has been recently updated on 5/9/2006 and apparently works with all of the latest hotfixes (albeit only for Outlook 2002).