Platform: Windows Vista Beta 1
As a followup to the "magical shift-f key" post I did a while back, I tested it out today on a Windows Vista Beta 1 install. I was able to do the Shift-F10 trick to get a command prompt and thus run taskmgr, but the Shift-F11 wouldn't give me any detail about what was being installed. So, this little hack "half" works for Vista.
Monday, July 11, 2005
Platform: Windows (Tested on XP)
Ever heard of IEXPRESS.EXE? Neither had I, so I ran it. It's a simple app that develops self-extracting packages that are like Microsoft patches. The app can be used to created Cabs, extract files, or extract and run a .EXE after extraction. In a small network, it could be a very easy and cheap way to distribute something. This app was just automatically on my system, using XP Pro SP2.
Ever heard of IEXPRESS.EXE? Neither had I, so I ran it. It's a simple app that develops self-extracting packages that are like Microsoft patches. The app can be used to created Cabs, extract files, or extract and run a .EXE after extraction. In a small network, it could be a very easy and cheap way to distribute something. This app was just automatically on my system, using XP Pro SP2.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Platform: Windows XP, Nero Burning ROM, Windows Media Player, Windows Mobile
From our buddy Mr. Wizard: A while back I read an article that disabling the IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service will improve performance in Ahead Nero because Windows was conflicting for access to the burner. I disabled it, didn't really notice a big difference but left it disabled. A few weeks later I found that I lost the ability to sync my Windows Media Player 10 to my Dell Axim. WMP wouldn't see the Axim at all. Googling didn't turn anything up, but the event log had an obscure message saying the
ImapiService couldn't start that coincided with my trying to sync. I re-enabled the IMAPI service, and everything works great again.
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From our buddy Mr. Wizard: A while back I read an article that disabling the IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service will improve performance in Ahead Nero because Windows was conflicting for access to the burner. I disabled it, didn't really notice a big difference but left it disabled. A few weeks later I found that I lost the ability to sync my Windows Media Player 10 to my Dell Axim. WMP wouldn't see the Axim at all. Googling didn't turn anything up, but the event log had an obscure message saying the
ImapiService couldn't start that coincided with my trying to sync. I re-enabled the IMAPI service, and everything works great again.
Screen and transfer your cell phone calls. CallWave…It’s what’s next for your cell phone. Try it risk-FREE!
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Platform: Windows Server 2003 and XP
I've always been a bit irritated that Microsoft's "improvements" in their installers in the recent desktop and server OS's were nothing more than removing of details. This past week I was doing an in-place upgrade of a 2000 server to 2003. I plopped the disc in after checking compatibilities (I resolved all of them) and fired up winnt32.exe. Well, we were stuck at "24 minutes" remaining. The drives kept blinking in unison, like there was some activity. I was patient, far more patient than I normally am. Anyhow, the installation of 2003 appeared to be hung. Eventually I threw the power (shudder!) on the install. I was suspecting hardware issues, so I disabled some stuff (NIC, etc.). I restarted the upgrade (basically, turn the machine back on and it restarts the setup from the first reboot). It got stuck again at "24 minutes remaining." Panic starts to set in (it's a production document management server). First rule of giving up--you never give up, you try something else. Much Google time ensued. Eventually, I ran across this jewel of a tip: While running the installer of 2k3 or XP, you can hit shift-F11 to bring up a dialog of WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON. This doesn't work during all stages of the install, mind you, but when it's copying files or "configuring your server" you'll actually see what's hanging up. In my case, this machine was absolutely stuck on the frontpage extensions for the IIS installation (a frequent problem for 2k to 2k3 upgrades). So, it's stuck, how do you fix it? Well, it turns out Shift-F10 will bring up a command window (or DOS box, if you're old school like me). Ah-hah! From here we can use taskmgr to bring up task manager. I noodled through the running apps, and I found one that was running that seemed like the one (appcfgwiz.exe or something like that, I forget the exact). I kill that, the configuration of frontpage extensions stops, and the install completes. I don't need the extensions, and the machine came up without any other issues I could identify. Keep those magic keys ready--you'll need them someday. This is reported to work in XP as well. I don't see why you would disable this on 2003 server. I mean, if you're smart enough to be upgrading or installing 2k3 servers, shouldn't you be smart enough to watch the details?
I've always been a bit irritated that Microsoft's "improvements" in their installers in the recent desktop and server OS's were nothing more than removing of details. This past week I was doing an in-place upgrade of a 2000 server to 2003. I plopped the disc in after checking compatibilities (I resolved all of them) and fired up winnt32.exe. Well, we were stuck at "24 minutes" remaining. The drives kept blinking in unison, like there was some activity. I was patient, far more patient than I normally am. Anyhow, the installation of 2003 appeared to be hung. Eventually I threw the power (shudder!) on the install. I was suspecting hardware issues, so I disabled some stuff (NIC, etc.). I restarted the upgrade (basically, turn the machine back on and it restarts the setup from the first reboot). It got stuck again at "24 minutes remaining." Panic starts to set in (it's a production document management server). First rule of giving up--you never give up, you try something else. Much Google time ensued. Eventually, I ran across this jewel of a tip: While running the installer of 2k3 or XP, you can hit shift-F11 to bring up a dialog of WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON. This doesn't work during all stages of the install, mind you, but when it's copying files or "configuring your server" you'll actually see what's hanging up. In my case, this machine was absolutely stuck on the frontpage extensions for the IIS installation (a frequent problem for 2k to 2k3 upgrades). So, it's stuck, how do you fix it? Well, it turns out Shift-F10 will bring up a command window (or DOS box, if you're old school like me). Ah-hah! From here we can use taskmgr to bring up task manager. I noodled through the running apps, and I found one that was running that seemed like the one (appcfgwiz.exe or something like that, I forget the exact). I kill that, the configuration of frontpage extensions stops, and the install completes. I don't need the extensions, and the machine came up without any other issues I could identify. Keep those magic keys ready--you'll need them someday. This is reported to work in XP as well. I don't see why you would disable this on 2003 server. I mean, if you're smart enough to be upgrading or installing 2k3 servers, shouldn't you be smart enough to watch the details?
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Platform: Windows Server 2003 or Windows XP
As a cross platform guy, I spend a lot of time wishing this OS has that OS's feature, etc. Occasionally, I find myself looking for a basic lsof function in Windows. 'lsof' is the "list open files" function on Linux and UNIX type systems. For my particular need today, I was assessing which files are open on a Windows Server 2003 box and how to deal with them in a backup. I did some Google searching and eventually found out the command "openfiles" was added to the most recent Microsft OS's. To determine local file's that are open, go to a command prompt and use this command. One warning: You first have to issue a "openfiles /local on" command to enable a system global flag called 'maintain objects list' and reboot (yes, it's Microsoft). Then after reboot you can issue "openfiles /query" to see them. Note that openfiles will tell you which files are opened from remotely without the use of this flag, giving you the same information you would get from Computer Management -> Shared Folders -> Open Files. More details are available at the Microsoft Server 2003 Techcenter.
As a cross platform guy, I spend a lot of time wishing this OS has that OS's feature, etc. Occasionally, I find myself looking for a basic lsof function in Windows. 'lsof' is the "list open files" function on Linux and UNIX type systems. For my particular need today, I was assessing which files are open on a Windows Server 2003 box and how to deal with them in a backup. I did some Google searching and eventually found out the command "openfiles" was added to the most recent Microsft OS's. To determine local file's that are open, go to a command prompt and use this command. One warning: You first have to issue a "openfiles /local on" command to enable a system global flag called 'maintain objects list' and reboot (yes, it's Microsoft). Then after reboot you can issue "openfiles /query" to see them. Note that openfiles will tell you which files are opened from remotely without the use of this flag, giving you the same information you would get from Computer Management -> Shared Folders -> Open Files. More details are available at the Microsoft Server 2003 Techcenter.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Platform: Windows XP SP2 or Windows Server 2003 SP1
Occasionally, your IP stack can get really goofed up. When trying odd antispyware apps that hook into the IP stack, sometimes things just plain go wrong, not to mention the spyware that needle in there. There is an easy way to clean this up. Issue the command:
netsh winsock reset catalog
and this clears out all the things that are hooked into the IP stack.
Occasionally, your IP stack can get really goofed up. When trying odd antispyware apps that hook into the IP stack, sometimes things just plain go wrong, not to mention the spyware that needle in there. There is an easy way to clean this up. Issue the command:
netsh winsock reset catalog
and this clears out all the things that are hooked into the IP stack.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Platform: All Windows
As a system administrator (or frankly, power home user with big drives), one of the more tedious tasks is managing drive space. Now that we are in an era of half-terabyte drives, giant databases, media files, etc, it's often very difficult to figure out where all that space went. A very powerful visualization tool is the use of treemaps. A typical treemap application takes a data set and represents it graphically, with the size (or date) of data scaled relative to the other datasets. With a tool that does this based on drive space usage, you can quickly locate that 1GB memory.dmp file you forgot about after the last BSOD, or find that .iso image of Windows 2000 you no longer need, etc. A fantastic implementation of this is SequoiaView from the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in the Netherlands. This free application is fabulous for graphically representing drive space usage on Windows.
As a system administrator (or frankly, power home user with big drives), one of the more tedious tasks is managing drive space. Now that we are in an era of half-terabyte drives, giant databases, media files, etc, it's often very difficult to figure out where all that space went. A very powerful visualization tool is the use of treemaps. A typical treemap application takes a data set and represents it graphically, with the size (or date) of data scaled relative to the other datasets. With a tool that does this based on drive space usage, you can quickly locate that 1GB memory.dmp file you forgot about after the last BSOD, or find that .iso image of Windows 2000 you no longer need, etc. A fantastic implementation of this is SequoiaView from the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in the Netherlands. This free application is fabulous for graphically representing drive space usage on Windows.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Platform: All Hardware
Here's a trick I came up with a week ago. If you work in any sort of data center or high server density server room, it's always very difficult to identify a noise from a particular fan or hard drive. Last week our phone system had developed a drive with a head or bearing problem, but there were no log entries on the machine to identify the drive. Since the drives are hot swappable, it was no big deal to pull the drive out while the system is running. This system has high-availability requirements, too. The problem here was that the drives are closely packed together, and the high pitched sound coming from the bad drive was such that it made it very difficult to identify which drive was the problem one. One potential solution is a stethescope. I did not have one immediately available to me. Another solutions which I did have available was to use an inexpensive sound level meter. I have an older version of the Radio Shack model 33-4050 that I keep in my toolkit (I used to install car stereos and consider myself a home theater enthusiast as well). Using the sound meter on the A weighting, I could move the meter up and down across the array of drives and find the one making the loudest noise. That one was the bad one, and I was able to easily identify it where my ears failed me.
Here's a trick I came up with a week ago. If you work in any sort of data center or high server density server room, it's always very difficult to identify a noise from a particular fan or hard drive. Last week our phone system had developed a drive with a head or bearing problem, but there were no log entries on the machine to identify the drive. Since the drives are hot swappable, it was no big deal to pull the drive out while the system is running. This system has high-availability requirements, too. The problem here was that the drives are closely packed together, and the high pitched sound coming from the bad drive was such that it made it very difficult to identify which drive was the problem one. One potential solution is a stethescope. I did not have one immediately available to me. Another solutions which I did have available was to use an inexpensive sound level meter. I have an older version of the Radio Shack model 33-4050 that I keep in my toolkit (I used to install car stereos and consider myself a home theater enthusiast as well). Using the sound meter on the A weighting, I could move the meter up and down across the array of drives and find the one making the loudest noise. That one was the bad one, and I was able to easily identify it where my ears failed me.
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