September 2008 - Posts

• My Antivirus Scheduled Scans post was picked up by Tech Republic!

  To me, getting published by Tech Republic is a huge deal.  Last year, I stopped working full time as a Windows System Analyst to work for myself as an independent contractor. This exposure for me is HUGE!  See the post at the link below: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=607 Posted Sep 30 2008, 05:43 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Optical drive not detected on Dell laptop when Hot-Swapped from Modular Bay

  While I was working on upgrading my laptop, I put the DVD/RW drive back in and Windows would not detect it properly.  It saw the drive in Device Manager along with the Virtual Drive which gets mounted with Magic ISO. I shut the laptop down and verified in the BIOS, sure enough the drive was present.  I reloaded the BIOS defaults and let the hardware re-detect.  There I had a lock-up which also required me to remove the battery and restart the computer. The BIOS gave an invalid configuration error which stayed on screen for quite some time before going into the BIOS.  I thought I was going to need hardware service at this point but it did continue and I was able to proceed with my troubleshooting. So, the BIOS was successfully reset to defaults and I was able to save a current configuration.  I shut the laptop down and put the main battery back in.  All was good.  Now for Windows. Windows still did not see the device properly as far as making it an accessible drive.  The same two ! marks were present in Device Manager.  Time to do something we don't do that often.  Check the Registry.  This is a long process where we search the Class keys listed under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class. The last time I have had to do this type of troubleshooting was in 1999 with a COMPAQ DeskPRO that had known issues with the hard drive numeration when you would switch the mounting from Desktop to Tower orientation and back... OK, found the class.  It is: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.  It shows that it is talking about the CDROM so I know I have the right one.  Now, before we do anything else, back up the key by exporting it to a .reg file in case we make things worse.  There are 2 approaches from here: 1. Delete the entire Key and reboot and let detection do the rest. (You may need to restart in Safe Mode to delete the entire Key.) 2. Consult a Backup and see what is different. I happen to have a Backup since I use Windows Backup and Recovery to image my entire PC weekly so off I go to check the backup registry.  OK, I see 2 differences.  The LowerFilters value is different and there is no UpperFilters value. I backed the registry key so I deleted both values and restarted the computer. Windows starts, first thing I checked My Computer.  I have 2 drives!  They're back.  I checked in Disk Management, and my optical drive is there.  In Device Manager, all looks good for the 2 drivers as well.  Now let's try reading some data. Bob's your uncle!  That works. Now let's try writing data.  Err...  drive not detected.  OK, so I re-installed Roxio and we are now good to go.  Problem solved! So much for Hot-Swap...  I guess I'll stop the device before removing it like USB keys. Posted Sep 30 2008, 07:55 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Need to Re-Install reporting in OpsMgr 2007? Read this first!

  Uninstalling Operations Manager Reporting is relatively simple, you do it through Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel.  There is a little more to it though... Firstly:  Take note of the Application Pool settings for the ReportServer and Reports visrtual directory in IIS Manager and all configuration settings within SQL Reporting Services configuration.  Screen shots are best used for this task. Once Reporting has been removed, you must delete these databases: (Use Transact-SQL or SQL Server Management Studio) OperationsManagerDW ReportServer ReportServerTempDB When deleting the databases make sure to check the option to close any existing connections or it may error on you.  Once complete now to delete the Application Pool and virtual directories in IIS. Open IIS Manager.  Expand the Default Website.  Access the properties for the ReportServer virtual directory.  Map this from the ReportServer Application Pool to DefaultAppPool.  Repeat for the Reports virtual Directory.  Now expand Application Pools and delete the ReportServer Application Pool.  Lastly, delete the ReportServer and Reports virtual directories. Next Access the Support Tools folder from the OpsMgr install media and copy resetsrs.exe to the hard disk.  Open a command prompt and launch resetsrs.exe. The Syntax is: resetsrs SQLinstance <Enter> If you left default when installing, the command will be: resetsrs MSSQLSERVER <Enter> Enter the account name with Admin access to SRS when prompted and the password. This should actually re-create the ReportServer, ReportSeverTempDB databases as well as the ReportServer Application Pool, and the ReportServer and Reports virtual directories. Confirm that both virtual directories are configured to use the ReportServer Application Pool. Now run SQL Reporting Services configuration.  Make sure that all elements are configured as they were previously.  You will likely at a minimum need to re-configure the Web Service Identity. To test make sure that you can access the http://SRSSErvername/reports and http://SRSServername/reportserver web pages, if yes, you're in business re-install Operations Manager Reporting and Bob's your uncle! Posted Sep 29 2008, 10:51 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Mad Scientist fever, time to experiment with upgrading my Dell Latitude D820 part 1

  As part of my preparation for delivering the TechDays08 demos, I need to configure my laptop with 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.  I would like to configure my laptop as dual boot with Windows Server 2008 but I don't have a lot of free space on my existing internal hard drive and upgrading the OS itself from Vista Business to Server 2008 is not an option for me right now. I have been researching my options.  I can replace my current hard drive which is 100GB with a larger one that I can partition.  I could also configure the system to boot from an external USB hard disk which I may yet try.  Then, I remembered at purchase, it was possible for me to forgo the DVDRW drive in place of a second internal hard drive in the modular bay. After contacting Dell, I received disappointing news.  Firstly, it took talking to 2 technicians to discover that there even used to be a part for this upgrade.  The part is no longer available and nobody even knows what the part number is so I can search it from another source. To the Community!  I spent a whole of 2 Google searches and hunting through forums to discover a thread where someone had indeed upgraded their system with such a drive.  I even found the part name:  Modular drive Caddy.  After more Google searches, I discovered a merchant in Austin, TX who caries the part.  http://www.parts-people.com.  I called them up and spoke with Ben who confirmed that this part is absolutely compatible with my D820 even though Dell makes no mention of it.  The p/n is: 4P124.  The assembly accommodates an IDE drive as the DVDRW was IDE, this is a sacrifice but we'll see if the performance is tolerable. I'll continue this post when I receive the caddy and have a hard drive to install with it. Posted Sep 25 2008, 03:13 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• 401 HTTP return code in Web Application monitor test even if you can get the page successfully

  While configuring monitoring of a web site for a customer, I was perplexed by a 401 (unauthorized) HTTP return code.  This error was present even when I attempted to configure the monitor using a browser recording session.  Within the session itself, I was able to successfully authenticate and access the site which generates a typical HTTP return code of 200 as expected. The test itself indicates in a prompt that it may fail even if you can successfully get the page to load.  The test does not however, go into why this is the case. This was particularly frustrating in my case as I was creating the Web Application monitor in SCOM to generate a client perspective view which was only one of the components in a distributed application.  So, this test showing up as failed consistently caused my entire distributed application to track as Critical because of the configured relationships and the way health rolls up in Operations Manager. After researching Microsoft resources, it turns out that if anonymous access is disabled on the web site you are accessing due to the way IIS evaluates authentication, this behavior is expected. In Operations Manager, the default evaluation for a Web Application is to generate a Critical Alert if an HTTP return code of 400 or anything above comes back. In IIS, even if anonymous authentication is disabled for the site, it is still evaluated and will always return a 401.  The aggregated results (The outcome) will succeed but the 401 return code will cause the test to fail... There are 2 ways to work around this issue.  First, anonymous access to the site can be enabled.  This is not always practical.  Second, the evaluation criteria can be modified to alert on anything above an HTTP 401 return code.  Effectively, this nullifies your ability to be alerted to any actual 400 or 401 return code issues but the test will now succeed. Alternatively, monitoring the web application can be performed based on content and not HTTP return codes.  As for myself, I used the second work around to get this functional. Posted Sep 24 2008, 09:25 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• CPE Extensions presentation made the MyITForum newsletter

  Wow, I gave a presentation last week on System Center Operations Manager Cross Platform Extensions and it was well received so I posted my slides. I have been communicating with the folks at MyItForum about replicating blog content and I was happy to see they are interested in receiving content from my blog. It turns out that they liked my post on Cross platform extensions so much, they included it in their newsletter.  I am totally stoked!  For a geek trying to make it in this industry, this is Tony the Tiger grrrrreat! http://www.myitforum.com/absolutenl/nls/20080923.htm Posted Sep 23 2008, 09:57 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Self-Study Group Review session for the 70-643 exam

  Last night we completed the review session for the 70-643 self-study group.  I have included a link to my original post in the 70-643 forum at the http://owsug.ca web site. Good luck on the exam! http://owsug.ca/forums/thread/1419.aspx Posted Sep 23 2008, 09:38 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• OpsMgr Cross platform extensions presentation

  I gave a presentation to the Ottawa Windows Server User Group on Thursday, September 18 last week.  The presentation was very well received and I was asked to post my slides.  Here they are: Posted Sep 22 2008, 10:47 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Operations Manager 2007 SP1 Discovery never ends

  A colleague and I were troubleshooting an issue on a customer site where the discovery of available Windows Computers to have an agent deployed to them would never end.  While we got around the issue by installing the agents manually on the servers to be monitored this is hardly practical for large data centers. We came to a stand still and needed a solution when faced with getting the Cross platform extensions for Operations Manager to work.  For those unfamiliar with Cross Platform extensions, Microsoft is making these available to monitor Unix based computers with an agent in the same manner as Windows based computers in operations Manager 2007. Currently, you can install Cross platform extension agents manually on Unix servers however there is a portion of the installation which still relies on the discovery wizard to validate the installation before the system information will be inserted in the OpsMgr database and data warehouse so that it can be monitored. We found the solution after an exhaustive search of Microsoft sources and although this can be accomplished using SQL Server Management studio, my colleague John Hann wrote a TSQL script to enable the broker on the OpsMgr database. Here is the script: USE master; GO CREATE ENDPOINT BrokerEndpoint     STATE = STARTED     AS TCP ( LISTENER_PORT = 4037 )     FOR SERVICE_BROKER ( AUTHENTICATION = WINDOWS ) ; GO ALTER DATABASE OperationsManager SET ENABLE_BROKER   Enjoy all! Posted Sep 21 2008, 06:21 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• TechDays08 are here!

  As part of being open and transparent – and wanting to have some fun, the Microsoft Canada Audience team thought it would make sense to give you access to all of our information about TechDays Canada 2008 so you can use it as a reference. We don’t want to stand between you and your audience when it comes to sharing information about the event. We’ve seen some great posts out there from D’Arcy and Miguel, so we thought it best to give all the information out for those that want to leverage it. Heck, even our boss John Oxley has a post out there now, have you read it? Connect you with the information: Full Track information, session titles and detailed abstracts are available as well as a schedule for both the one day and two day events. Get them and other updated information as it changes from our SkyDrive online public storage located here. Have Some Fun: If you want to get some creative graphics, useful links and other “bling” to use however you see fit (banners, blog badges, email signature etc) we’ve created a page with some sample work on our blog that you can either directly link (so you don’t have to host) or copy and store locally. The download page and basic instructions can be found here. All that we ask is that you enable them to be hyperlinked to the following URL http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9458049. Tagging Requests for Visibility: Speaking of blogs and online conversation – if you would like to be part of the communications, aggregates and get some more visibility to your blog / audience / post we’ve setup the Technorati Tag TechDays_CA. If you tag you blog posts with this tag and ping technorati, you will be included in aggregate feeds about the event and contribute towards the conversation. For the Tweeps: If you are using twitter – we request that you use #TechDays_CA as the hashtag (Information on hashtags and how to use them can be found here). Likewise, be sure to follow http://twitter.com/techdays_ca for both personal tweets and relevant aggregate feeds including up to the minute changing information. For those Photographers: here’s the flickr group, come join up and share your photos leading up to and during the TechDays events. You can also tag your photos with the TechDays_CA tag to gain some more visibility online. We’ll be featuring “picture of the day” randomly from the group on the blogs as well as referencing pictures on our Facebook fan page. Facebook Aficionados: the official fan page can be found here. Spread the word!   Technorati Tags: TechDays_CA Posted Sep 16 2008, 02:00 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Confirmed Presenter for TechDays08!

  The deal is sealed.  I am a presenter for TechDays08! I will be presenting: Toronto (October 29-30) Building High Availability Infrastructures With Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering - Infrastructure Track Virtualization Chalk Talk - Virtualization Track   Montreal (November 6-7) Building High Availability Infrastructures With Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering - Infrastructure Track Security in a Virtual World - How to Lock Down Your Virtual Environments - Virtualization Track Virtualization Chalk Talk - Virtualization Track   Ottawa (November 27) Building High Availability Infrastructures With Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering - Infrastructure Track Security in a Virtual World - How to Lock Down Your Virtual Environments - Virtualization Track Virtualization Chalk Talk - Virtualization Track   Come out and have some fun!  Visit http://www.techdays.ca for more information. Technorati Tags: TecDays_CA Posted Sep 16 2008, 01:54 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Mail merge automation fails in MS Word when linked with a data source

  I stumbled on a strange issue yesterday while working at a customer site.  The automated mail merge was failing in Word 2003 when called from my script. After performing some research, the reason for the failure was an interactive prompt waiting for a response.  If I has used vbscript, I suppose I could have suppressed the alerts but I do not want to suppress all alerts, just this one. The prompt was introduced in all versions of office after office XP SP3 as a security patch. For further information, refer to the following link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825765 The workaround involves editing the following registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options You then need to add the DWORD value SQLSecurityCheck and set this to 00000000 You can do this remotely using registry editor by using the Connect to Remote Registry option.  The difference is that this will only grant you access to the HKEY_Local_Machine (HKLM) or the HKEY_USERS (HKU) keys. The key here, is that the HKEY_Current_User key loads its' information dynamically from the HKEY_Users key using the GUID of the connected user.  Information saved to the HKEY_Current_User key is saved also to the HKEY_USERS key and vice versa. So, using the HKEY_USERS key, if you know the GUID for the connected user, make the change to their key and save.  If you do not know the GUID of the connected user, expand each GUID past \Software\Microsoft\ and only the GUID for the connected user (or users who have connected interactively) will show the full path.  Make the change at that point.  Agreed that in the case where the computer is shared, the change may need to be made several times...  Use Copy & Paste to facilitate the change in that case. This change takes effect immediately and only requires you to close and open Word to work. Posted Sep 04 2008, 02:44 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Event Tracing for Windows or ETW logging for OpsMgr

  In some instances, we require as much detail in logging as humanly possible to help troubleshoot an issue.  To this end, we utilize debug level logging. In Operations Manager SP1, this feature is installed by default.  It is situated in the OpsMgr program folder under tools. To start the verbose logging, stop the health service on the OpsMgr system and issue the command starttracing.cmd VER .  Then start the health service again. The log files themselves are stored in the %windir%\Temp\OpsMgrTrace folder.  They will be in .etl format which are not directly readable.  From there, we issue the command: formattracing.cmd.  This will format the log files so that they are readable. For console issues, the UI log would be of interest whereas for agent issues look to the agent log. In the OpsMgr_install_folder\Tools directory there is a txt file with the logfile name which contains details about what gets logged to each. Posted Sep 03 2008, 11:30 AM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Virtual PC Console seems to have disappeared and will not display

  This issue has plagued me for several months so I finally decided to do something about it. Virtual PC 2007 used to work fine when the console was opened, all was well.  Suddenly and without warning, I would launch Virtual PC and the Console would no longer appear. The Console was still accessible via the system tray as shown below: From here you can right click and use the console options.  However the Console window is nowhere to be found.  I applied SP1 when it came out but this did not resolve the issue.  I also tried reinstalling the software to no avail.  Here is an interesting fact:  I connected an external screen one day when I was working on presentations and low and behold!  The console was there... I was ecstatic!  The next time I shut down the system and started it back up guess what?  Lost again... I started searching on this issue and located an article discussing a .NET issue and the options.xml file.  I had a .NET issue as well in my event logs so I figured let's give this a shot.  I backed the file up first before making changes.  Also, Virtual PC must be closed or you cannot save changes to options.xml. In Vista, the file is located under: C:\users\%username%\appdata\roaming\Microsoft\Virtual PC\ Here is what I found: So I modified the <left_position type = "integer"> to 10 as well as the <top_position type="integer"> to 10. After saving the file, I started Virtual PC.  Bingo!  Problem solved. Here is the latest options.xml file after moving the console around the screen a bit... Posted Sep 02 2008, 05:47 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate

• Interesting facts about the new Intel and AMD CPUs

  I was reading some documentation in the latest PC Gamer Summer 2008 issue today.  Both new CPUs offer blinding speeds. The new Intel Quad-Core CPU is actually 2 Dual-Core CPUs which talk together in a single chip.  Whereas the AMD Phenom (pronounced "fee-nom") processor is four CPUs working independently.  According to the manufacturer documentation in comparison, the independence is preferred, however the actual benefits are questionable as this information is not unbiased. In terms of computing power, the desktop platforms and server platforms can compare in power potential.  While servers will likely remain with their current status due to other factors such as being modular in their components while the external parts (ie power supply, hard disk) may have the ability to be "hot swapped".  Enterprise customers require these features to maintain high availability. The desktop systems typically have been moving to a more concentrated approach where all components you would ever need are situated on the motherboard.  There will always be a market for more niche and ultimate performing peripherals but for the most part, my last statement holds true. Both Intel and AMD CPUs have feature sets which allow for 128-bit computing.  The delays in this coming to market, will be based on operating system and application support.  Both processors are getting smaller, cooler and more powerful as the years go by. In the desktop market, AMD has had more success in their ability to recycle hardware to be used with the new processors where Intel has been known to re-architect motherboards and require new chip sets each time a new processor comes out. Both companies are still neck and neck with their feature sets.  A selection being based mostly on brand loyalty is quite common when choosing a platform for the next computer.  Although memory available to go with the motherboards available for Intel's systems can function faster out of the box can be a factor but AMD has been known for its' ability to "overclock" components like memory, CPU, and even front side bus among AMD enthusiasts.  Overclocking components will make them run at higher speeds than indicated on the manufacturing specifications.  Care must be taken when undertaking this process as the  components tend to run hotter and may not endure the same life span as when operating under the recommended specifications. Posted Sep 01 2008, 09:26 PM by Rantings of an IT Pirate