Another quick tip. I’m currently working in Afghanistan doing IT contracting and we use a system of Canopys to avoid running cable all over base. Occasionally the Canopys will detect weather radars or mobile radar systems and shut down for 30 mins. the way we get around that is setting the Region Code to Other. that will force them to ignore radar interference and not shut down for 30 mins.

recently my company has had some issues with some individuals deleting and altering files then claiming they never touched them (or even worse blaming the IT dept for removing their files). If you have users trying to blame their problems on computer errors or magically deleted files you should turn on auditing! File and Folder access auditing is a wonderful component of general auditing that will keep records of file access, deletions, etc etc. Here is how to turn it on.

In these examples i will be using Windows Server 2008 R2 but these same steps work all the way back to 2003 server., we should start by defining a local policy or group policy on the file server. i went with group policy, so that adds a couple extra steps. first open up your group policy management tool and create a new policy (or add the following to an existing one)

Edit the Computer configuration > Policies > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Local Policies > Audit Policy > Audit Object Access

Then check “define these policy settings” and check the Success and Failure boxes:

Hit ok and we should be done with the policy side editing. its pretty much the same to do a local policy instead of a group policy, but instead go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative tools > Local Security policy > Local Policies > Audit Policy > Audit Object Access. then make the same changes. If your using group policy make sure the policy is applied to the file server you want auditing enabled on.

Now that we have enabled auditing we need to specify the folders/files we want to audit. To do this go to your file server and select the folder you want audited, right click and go to properties. Click the “Security” tab then the Advanced button, then the Auditing tab. This part will require administrative privileges, make sure you are loged in as an administrator. Now in this box add whoever’s access attempts you want audited. i chose to add everyone.

Now click Edit (or ok if this is the first entry) to open the “Auditing Entries” box. Here you should select which actions you want audited. i chose everything just to cover all the bases, but over time you may want to edit this down until you get only the information you need.

Use the drop down at the top to make sure auditing is applied properly (for most uses make sure it says “This Folder, Subfolders and files” as in the picture)

Click OK and auditing is enabled for the specified Folder/users!! You can check the results of the auditing in the Security section of the event viewer! An easy way to find these auditing result sin the event viewer is to look for the Task Category of “File System”.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions please post them in the comments and i will do my best to answer them!

The official term for those annoying pop up dialog boxes is “bubbles tips”. Had i known that i would have found the solution alot faster, so i figured i should make a post and tag it with all the terms i searched for to make life easier for everyone. So here’s how to get rid of those annoying little notifications that pop up near the clock in windows XP.

Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then press ENTER.

Locate the following subkey:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

Right-click the right side pane, create a new DWORD value, and then name it EnableBalloonTips.

Double-click EnableBalloonTips, and then give it a value of 0.

Close Registry Editor.

Log off Windows, and then log back on.

Enjoy!

I finally got Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager up and running so i can start backing up all the Hyper-V hosts on my cluster and ran into a little error. Hopefully this article will be out of date shortly… that’s assuming Micro$oft patches this issue….

Anyway Heres the problem i ran across. I had already installed agents on all the hosts of my cluster. went into DPM, selected the cluster and all the VMs i needed to back up were listed, but when i tried to select them to backup i got this:

One or more prerequisites for protecting this data source is missing.

Ensure that the following prerequisite software is installed on all the nodes in the cluster:

Windows Server 2008 with

Knowledge Base article 948465 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948465)

AND

Knowledge Base article 971394 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971394)

- OR -

Windows Server 2008 R2 with

Knowledge Base article 975921(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975921)

AND

Knowledge Base article 975354(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975354)

If you have already installed the required prerequisite, refresh the agent status in the management tab and try again.

ID: 31314

One or more prerequisites for protecting this data source is missing.Ensure that the following prerequisite software is installed on all the nodes in the cluster:
Windows Server 2008 withKnowledge Base article 948465 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948465)        ANDKnowledge Base article 971394 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971394)        - OR -Windows Server 2008 R2 with Knowledge Base article 975921(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975921)         AND Knowledge Base article 975354(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/975354)  If you have already installed the required prerequisite, refresh the agent status in the management tab and try again.

ID: 31314

Since i was using R2 I used the bottom 2 links, Requested the Hotfixes, and installed them. Its a relativity simple process, but some kinks are: you MUST install these hotfixes on ALL cluster hosts or shit gets fucking crazy! you may also get the error that some or all of the hotfixes are already installed, If so that means that they came down in a regular update (Its a good thing) in which case all you need to do is refresh the agents in the Management tab of DPM then recreate your protection group.

May seem like a useless post as the solution if referenced in the error report. But their KB leaves that last part out. Hope this helps someone!

I recently noticed that out domain time was drifting about 5 seconds a week, not a big deal for a while but if it gets too out of sync we would start having Kerberos issues, so better fix it now before we start seeing problems. Here’s what i did to get our domain back on the proper time (and keep it that way)

First off go to your DCHP serve, open DHCP, select ipv4, right click “Server Options”,Check 004 Time Servers and type the IP address for the server you want to be the time server (strongly recommend you use your Primary Domain Controller)

Now open up your PDC, and run “CMD” as an administrator and type the following commans:

w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:”0.pool.ntp.org 1.pool.ntp.org 2.pool.ntp.org”,0×4 /syncfromflags:MANUAL

net stop w32time
net start w32time

w32tm /resync /rediscover

That will set round robin time checks with 0.pool.ntp.org,1.pool.ntp.org,and 2.pool.ntp.org. the second set will restart the time service, and the third forces a sync. you should be all set and as your computers renew their dhcp leases they will start getting their time from your time server! if you need to force a computer to update its time you can use the “w32tm /resync /rediscover” command.

If you want to use a different time server just replace the *.pool.ntp.org with one of these servers

Enjoy!!

If your exchange 2010 server is stuck on Applying Computer Settings during boot up it could be any number of things! First off make sure that noone recently disabled IPv6, that can screw up alot of things. if that has recently happened boot into safemode with networking, and re-enable IPv6. Another cause could be if someone has brought up another exchange server on your domain. You really hafto get the configuration perfect on the new exchange server before rebooting the original. otherwise the original willnot boot properly. if this may be the cause just shut down the new server and reboot the original. once it safely boots up you can bring the new one back up aswell.

Another possible issue is that your server was never placed in the proper groups. Check to make sure your exchange server is a member of the following:

Domain Computers, Exchange Domain Servers, Exchange Enterprise Servers, Exchange Servers

It may be different if your on a forest, but this is what solved the problem for me! If you have anything to add or need any help please comment!

Ive run across this issue several times, and with several installs. the story always goes like this, Cannot install X software because the system is waiting to reboot. and obviously a reboot doesn’t clear it or i wouldn’t be posting about it. The software that prompted me to post this was SQL server 2008.
Heres how to fix the error. we need to open up Regedit by clicking start (then run) and typing “regedit” and hitting enter. Now navigate to the following key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager
\PendingFileRenameOperations

There will probably be several files listed in there, just edit the key and delete them all. Then restart the installation of whatever software it was, and it should get past that step!

Ive been playing with converting some of our physical servers into virtual machines lately using the System Center Virtual Machine Manager. its actually surprisingly easy! but occasionally on some of our web servers i would get the following errors:

Error (3154)
An internal error has occurred trying to contact an agent on the server.
(Internal error code: 0x8099319E)
Recommended Action
Ensure the agent is installed and running. Ensure the WMI service is installed and running, then restart the agent.

and

Error (2910)
VMM does not have appropriate permissions to access the resource on the server.
(Access is denied (0×80070005)
Recommended Action
Ensure that Virtual Machine Manager has the appropriate rights to perform this action.

It turned out this was due (for the most part) to port 443 being used by apache and other programs, If anything is listening on 443 it will throw a wrench into the P-V process. so you can try killing apache and all, and sometimes that works. i killed everything listening on port 443 then ran a “NETSTAT -ANB” to see if anything else was listening, came up that nothing was. so i ran it again and it failed. If your experiencing anything similar here is the solution:

1. Open Regedit.exe. on the physical machine (Not the SCVMM server)
2. Navigate to the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Server\Setup
3. Change the DWORD value “P2VBITSTcpPort” to a port number less than 32768. (i used 32485, but aslong as its a unused port you’ll be fine)
4. Restart the Virtual Machine Manager P2V Agent service.
5. Retry the job on the SCVMM server

That will change the default port that the Virtual Machine Manager P2V agent uses. If you have any questions let me know! Hope this helps!

Ive been running windows 7 for a while now, and decided to pull some data off of old hard drives. I plugged in one of my ata drives though a usb device and the disk management said it was an invalid disk. i tried taking it off line and bringing it back online and that just crashed disk management. I did have the option to convert it to a basic disk but that would wipe all data! So here’s what i did to fix it and keep my precious data!
First i downloaded HxD its a free Hex editor. once its installed open the problem disk by clicking “Extras” then “Open Disk” Make sure you open the right disk! your disk management will list your disks starting with 0, this tool will start with 1. this is very important as you could seriously fuck shit up if you don’t do this proper . Also, the default option is to open the disk read only, your going to want to uncheck that when your ready to fix your “Invalid disk”.
So we’ve got the broken disk open, scroll down to offset 1C0(the row) and look in the 02 column. that cell should read “42″ which means Dynamic disk, Change it to “07″ and save changes. if your using this drive externally unplug it and plug it back in. otherwise reboot your computer.
That should have re initialized the disk and it will now be readable. if not go into disk management and take the disk offline then bring it back online. and the best part No Data Loss!!! Hope this helps!

A while back i had users complaining that they no longer had their drop down address list when they were sending email in outlook. You know that list that drops down when you start typing the name of your intended recipient? If your not using folder redirection this is how to move that list form one computer to another:
First off go to the computer that already has the auto complete list on it. close outlook and go to:

For Windows XP: “C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\”
For Windows 7: “%appdata%\Microsoft\Outlook\”

show hidden files and locate the .NK2 file (it’ll prob be called Outlook.NK2). that’s the file containing the auto complete address list. Just copy this file to the same directory on the new computer (If your switching to 7 follow the windows 7 path above) and the list will be transferred! Enjoy!