I installed a Windows Deployment Server today and while setting up the PXE boot options I hit a road block. No where in the MS documentation that I’ve come across is this info given. All the tutorials I’ve watched all install a DHCP server on the same servers as WDS. I was only able to find the reference here.
For future reference the DHCP settings are:
OPTION 66 = IP OF WDS Server
OPTION 67 = \boot\x86\wdsnbp.com
I came across the following error while trying to add a mail enabled group to a Public Folder:
1st I tried changing the group from distribution to security, but, I still got the same error.
Then I found this post. Turns out the GUI doesn’t completely change the object. You need to run the following command from the Exchange Management Shell (Exchange 2007 for me):
Set-Distributiongroup–identity
In my case it was:
Set-DistributionGroup -identity AmbCare
You can read the linked post for the command for Exchange 2010.
This is great news for Small Business owners.
We have more good news to help keep your Windows 7 Professional PC secure. If you haven’t already seen it, today we announced that small businesses will be able to download and install Microsoft Security Essentials on up to 10 PCs for free. Microsoft Security Essentials is a no-cost antimalware service that provides real-time protection to address the ongoing security needs of genuine Windows PCs, helping to protect from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats.
I’ve been using Microsoft Security Essentials on my home systems and as my free AV installation of choice for all client PCs needing anti-virus protection. Now I can recommend it to Small Business owners too. Kudos to Microsoft for this decision.
Now that I read the title of this post, it sounds a touch dirty…
I had created a couple generic Win2k8 R2 VMs last week with 25GB OS drives. I hadn’t decided which services would be running on the boxes and 25GB would be more than enough for most applications. The only problem was that I had decided to install Sharepoint 2010 Foundation on one and SQL 2008 R2 on the other and both require 80GB of disk space. Good thing XenServer 5.6 and Window Server 2008 R2 make it easy to increase the disk size.
In XenCenter 5.6 select the virtual disk from the storage tab of the virtual machine, click Properties, select Size and Location, then increase the size of the disk.
Super simple, eh? This feature has been available for quite some time, v4.1 I believe, via the CLI but was exposed to the GUI in v5.6.
Now you need to extend the partition in Windows. Right click My Computer select Manage, select Disk Management, right click on the disk you want to extend, and select Extend. This starts the Extend Volume Wizard. Follow the prompts to complete the process. By default Win2k8 R2 extends the partition to the maximum available space available. So this wizard is just about clicking next, next, finish.
Take a look at the Citrix KB article for more info and additional instructions for the CLI procedure and how to extend a partition in Linux operating systems.
Note: Windows 2003 and XP are not able to extend the partition while the OS is running. You need to attach the disk to another VM and use DiskPart to extend the volume.
DH.com turns 4 today and I’d like to mark the occasion by going back to my 1st post and updating it.
Here we go…
1. A computer is nothing to be afraid of. So, go ahead and explore the file system. Aside from deleting any files located in c:\windows, or c:\program files, there isn’t to much that can go wrong by going into My Computer and taking a look around, Trial & error work for you as a small child, why not as an adult.
2. Beware deals that are “to good to be true”. Shop around, ask friends, and take your time. Quite often the mega deals large retailers put on are marked as refurbished . Depending on the store this can mean anything from the entire unit has been repaired (i.e. laptops) to some or all of the parts inside the case were repaired.
3. Do not purchase a computer that comes with a copy of Windows installed without making sure you actually paid for the operating system. Often small retailers will sell you a system that comes with Windows XP, but not give you the installation CD. This is illegal and you can report this behavior to Microsoft. A copy of XP Home can be found online for as little as $100 CAD.
4. Anti-virus/Anti-spyware. Today an unprotected PC can be infected in less time than it takes to boil water. Invest in a good anti-virus(AV) program and keep it up to date. There are a number of good programs to choose from and even a free one . In addition to AV protection it is a good idea to install a anti-spyware (AS) program as well. Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware is free and I recommend its use. It will root out the ad- and spy-ware on your PC that you get from surfing the web.
5. Use an alternate browser and email client. Internet Explorer 6 and Outlook Express have long been the target of virus writers and hackers. The Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client and more secure than IE6 and Outlook Express and are quite easy to use. Although the main draw for me to Firefox are the extensions that have been developed to extend Firefox. Opera is highly regarded by those who use it and the new Internet Explorer 7 has been improved but it still lacks in web standards.
There you go, my top 5 (updated!) tips for a new or prospective computer owner.
I needed to RDP into my desktop at work to complete a couple of tasks while at home but didn’t have RDP enabled on it. I connected to our VPN and RDP’d into one of the servers. I then connected to my desktops registry via regedit’s “Connect Network Registry” feature.
The key I needed, fDenyTSConnection, was in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server.
I changed the REG_DWORD value from 1 (Remote Desktop disabled) to 0 (Remote Desktop enabled), then remotely rebooted my PC, shutdown -m \\%PCNAME% -r.
After the reboot I was able to log in via the domain admin account. Once logged in I added my domain account to the users allowed to utilize remote desktop.
A customer was concerned with an error they were seeing when booting their XP Home PC. Windows would continue to load correctly but the error still had them worried. I suggested they bring it in for me to take a look.
Invalid Boot.ini, loading from C:\Windows
The problem was caused due to a corrupted boot.ini file which is usually located in the C drive. Since I had a copy of XP Home I tried to rebuild the boot.ini as per the instructions below.
See Microsoft KB289022 for more info on boot.ini.
A bit of a controversy over a recent Microsoft IE 8 advertisement. While it has caused many a Maude Flanders “think of the children” diatribe, I think it is actually quite funny.
Take a look for yourself.
With the recent update to the IMF signatures for Exchange 2003 I got caught in a never ending circle of installation prompts. The new update would install, then last months update would ask to install and so on and so on. After realizing what was going on I went in search of answers. The 1st thing to try was to reset the Windows Update Cache. It can be done by plopping the code below in to a bat file and running it on the offending server.
net stop bits
net stop wuauserv
regsvr32 /u wuaueng.dll /s
del /f /s /q %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\*.*
del /f /s /q %windir%\windowsupdate.log
regsvr32 wuaueng.dll /s
net start bits
net start wuauserv
wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization /detectnow
This did not solve the issue for me. I turned out that my WSUS server did not mark the old IMF update as declined. Once the old update’s status was changed to declined the update cycle was stopped dead in its tracks.
I came back from my extended leave to find that my workstations and servers had not checked into the WSUS server for months. After a bit of detective work the issue came down to the SelfUpdate virtual directory in IIS was missing. The Microsoft help page details how to fix the issue but wasn’t completely helpful. More on that later.
Here is what I did to get my clients checking in again.
Check the folder permissions on the SelfUpdate directory, located at C:\Program Files\Update Service\SelfUpdate. Make sure the permissions like this;
| Group | Permissions |
| Administrators | Full Control |
| System | Full Control |
| Domain/Users or Local/Users | Read&Execute, Read, List Folders |
| IUSR_ComputerName | Read&Execute, Read, List Folders |
In my case the IUSR_ComputerName permission was missing.
After adding the correct permissions I looked for the re-installation msi, Selfupdate.msi. The only problem is that the SelfUpdate re-installation msi was not found on my WSUS server. Turns out in the recent WSUS update to 3.1 this installer can become corrupted and not installed on the server.
To get the Virtual Directory back I would have to install it by hand. Here are the settings you need to create it;
Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Right click on the “Default Web Site” and choose;
After completing these steps I ran “wuauclt /detectnow” on each of my servers. I left the workstations to check in on their own.
Within 12 hours the number of missing clients had gone from nearly 200 to less than 50. Once everyone logs in on Monday morning this number should dwindle to nothing.
