Azure

Azure – How-To – Deleting Storage Account

Azure is a powerful Cloud based product from Microsoft that has made some great advancements and continues to add more functionality as more updates get pushed out. I recently went from a trial account to a full account, but wanted to clean up all of my testing storage data before starting a clean slate with my converted …

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MBP

Macbook Pro A1226 Display Fix

I have had fixed many odd/random PC issues over the last few years, but this one takes the cake on the weirdest fix I have ever applied that worked! I have a late model Macbook Pro (A1226) with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card in it.  This laptop has worked great since early 2008 …

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Task3

Exchange/PowerShell – Forwarding/Removing Email and Distribution Groups – Script

Were you ever in the position where you needed to forward email addresses to another user or group?  What about if you needed to also remove them distribution groups so you wouldn’t clutter up the forwarding address’s email box? I have documented the steps to setup these scripts and then also how to setup a …

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DiskFormat

Windows Server 2012 – Convert VHD to VHDX

With Windows 2012 comes new changes to the VHD platform.  There are some new great features that come along with the new VHDX format and the process to convert is relatively simple and just requires some time and space to make the convert happen. Some new features with the VHDX format illustrated in the TechNet …

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Expand

Windows Server 2012 – Expanding VHD Disk

We have seen that there are some great new changes that come along with Windows Server 2012 from Live Migration to better DR strategies with Replicas.  Some smaller details that could be taken lightly to some, but play a better role for others is the new changes that come along with VHD’s.  There are new …

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Azure – How-To – Deleting Storage AccountMacbook Pro A1226 Display FixExchange/PowerShell – Forwarding/Removing Email and Distribution Groups – ScriptWindows Server 2012 – Convert VHD to VHDXWindows Server 2012 – Expanding VHD Disk

Feb 28

Azure – How-To – Deleting Storage Account

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Azure is a powerful Cloud based product from Microsoft that has made some great advancements and continues to add more functionality as more updates get pushed out.

I recently went from a trial account to a full account, but wanted to clean up all of my testing storage data before starting a clean slate with my converted account.  The experience with Azure so far has been very streamlined and efficient and you can expect more posts that talk about other helpful tips or issues I ran into in the weeks ahead.

I started by deleted my test VMs and have had those successfully deleted from the account and my next step was to delete the Storage account.  Thinking it may be just as easy as deleting like the VMs got presented with an error when trying to delete the storage account:

StorageAcct1

 

 

Seeing that things will not be that simple the reasoning as you can see in the error message is there are still VHD disks in the account causing this message to appear.  To correctly delete your storage account, just follow these steps to accomplish this.

Select your storage section in the Azure portal on the left and then proceed to click on Containers.

StorageAcct2

 

You should then see a spot to navigate to vhds and that will show the left over data in question keeping you from deleting your storage account.  Below was the vhd volume causing the error:

StorageAcct3

 

Just select your vhds and proceed to click on Delete Blob on the bottom of the screen of the portal.

 

StorageAcct4

 

Once all your vhds are cleared out, you can go back to the main section of your containers and you could now select Delete Container.

StorageAcct5

 

As soon as that completes you could go back to the main storage account dashboard and select Delete and confirm your deletion and you should no longer have a storage account.

StorageAcct6

StorageAcct7

StorageAcct8

 

 

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Jan 24

Macbook Pro A1226 Display Fix

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Apple

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I have had fixed many odd/random PC issues over the last few years, but this one takes the cake on the weirdest fix I have ever applied that worked!

I have a late model Macbook Pro (A1226) with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card in it.  This laptop has worked great since early 2008 and finally the other day had a complete video failure.  I would hear the unit power up, but no display.  I tried plugging in to an alternative display, but still no luck.  I had a 4-5lb paperweight on my hands.

MBP

The official posting on Apple is located here that describes the machines in question and the article states that there was a warranty program that expired December 7th, 2012.  (Unfortunately about 2 months too late for me.)  A call into Apple after having an extended warranty to them would only discount my repair fee to about $310.

MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues

Searching around, the credit goes to an iFixit post that described a logic board last resort fix for these chips.

MBP A1226 Logic Board last resort fix for nVidia video chip

So following the steps listed in the link above, I attempted to “bake” the laptop and hope the solder points re-establish again.   I wrapped my laptop in a blanket face down and the battery attached and AC adapter plugged in.  I decided to start and wait 60 minutes.  To my surprise, I unfolded the blanket and after giving it a minute or two to cool down because it was extremely hot, the laptop booted up!

Sitting there in shock and amazement, I can’t believe the laptop posted and booted up.  So knowing it’s only a temporary fix, I will enjoy the limited life still in the MBP and consider reapplying the thermal paste trick (In the link above) if it completely shuts down for good.  Hope this helps some people out there that still have these MBP’s and if you found any other solutions, let me know!

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Nov 07

Exchange/PowerShell – Forwarding/Removing Email and Distribution Groups – Script

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Exchange 2010, Microsoft, PowerShell, Windows

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Were you ever in the position where you needed to forward email addresses to another user or group?  What about if you needed to also remove them distribution groups so you wouldn’t clutter up the forwarding address’s email box?

I have documented the steps to setup these scripts and then also how to setup a windows task to run them on your exchange server.

Setup PowerShell Script

We are setting up a powershell script to accomplish the following things:

  • Forward an email address to another email address
  • Remove that user from distribution groups while they are away to have a less cluttered inbox

To make this happen we have a few lines of code to make this script and makes this process fully automated for you.

First, open Notepad

In notepad put in the following lines of code:

Set-Mailbox  user -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $true -ForwardingAddress mail@email.com

Remove-DistributionGroupMember -Identity “Sales” -Member user@email.com     -confirm:$false

Remove-DistributionGroupMember -Identity “IT” -Member user@email.com -confirm:$false

Save this as addforwarding.ps1 and make it whatever name you would like with a .ps1 extension.

This would then be the first script to add the forwarding and remove the user from whatever distribution groups you specify.

The second script looks like this:

Set-Mailbox user -DeliverToMailboxAndForward $false -ForwardingAddress $null

Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity “Sales” -Member user@email.com
Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity “IT” -Member user@email.com

 

Save this as removeforwarding.ps1 and make it whatever name you would like with a .ps1 extension.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

This completes the scripts.  Now on to the Task Scheduler….

This task would be created for your first script and then you would follow the same exact process to create your second one, but under the Argument line, just specifc your different file name.

On your exchange server, open Task Scheduler and select Add Task

Add in your name for your script and pull down the drop down for whatever operating system you have.

Under the Triggers Tab, select your timing on when you want this script to run.

Under the Actions Tab, this is where you will insert the following commands and arguments:

Action: Start a program

Program/script:PowerShell.exe

Add arguments:

-PSConsoleFile "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Bin\ExShell.psc1" 
-Command "<Path to Script>"

Start In: C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0

This will then create your first script and just follow the same steps for your second and then you will have a script to make this go back to where it was without the forwarding.

I hope this helps everyone out who make want to make this process a bit more automated!

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Sep 21

Windows Server 2012 – Convert VHD to VHDX

Categories:

Hyper-V, Microsoft, Server 2012, Windows

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With Windows 2012 comes new changes to the VHD platform.  There are some new great features that come along with the new VHDX format and the process to convert is relatively simple and just requires some time and space to make the convert happen.

Some new features with the VHDX format illustrated in the TechNet Blog of Aviraj Ajgekar

  • New capacity up to 64TB.
  • Enhanced protection against data corruption during power failures by keeping track and logging updates in the metadata structures
  • Performance benefits with better structure with large sector disks.
  • Among many other benefits: TechNet

To compete the change, we need to follow these steps below:

Log into Hyper-V manager and select on the right hand side Edit Disk

Locate the VHD file location

From the menu, select the radio button for Convert and choose Next.

Select the format that you want to convert the VHD to.  We will select VHDX.

Select what type of disk you would like.  In our case we like the better performance of a fixed disk so that is what we chose.

The last step is to specify the location on where you want the converted disk to go.

The last step is a summary page and then the process begins to convert the disk and then you are well on your way to enjoying the new benefits of a VHDX disk for your VM in Hyper-V!

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Sep 21

Windows Server 2012 – Expanding VHD Disk

Categories:

Hyper-V, Microsoft, Server 2012, Windows

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We have seen that there are some great new changes that come along with Windows Server 2012 from Live Migration to better DR strategies with Replicas.  Some smaller details that could be taken lightly to some, but play a better role for others is the new changes that come along with VHD’s.  There are new options with VHDs and even a brand new format that brings many new features to the table.

A question that comes to mind if you have ever scaled out a VM and needed to upgrade to a new OS or just add more space is wondering how do I do that and is it possible?

With Hyper-V this is absolutely possible.  Whether it’s a Fixed or Dynamically Expanding disk, this is possible the steps on how to perform this is below:

Navigate to your Hyper-V manager and select Edit Disk

 

The second step is to find where that VHD or now VHDX file is located.

You get presented with the option to now convert your VHD to a new VHDX format or Expand.  Choose Expand.

Select your new size of your VHD or VHDX file and hit Next.

 

The last step is a summary page and click Finish to begin the process.

Depending on the disk size increase will depend on how long your time will take to expand.  This is extremely helpful to have this when you need a few extra GB to complete a software install or get more space for data for your Virtual Machine.

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Aug 30

Dell AppAssure – Turning Off De-Duplication/Compression

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AppAssure, Dell

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Anyone using AppAssure out there could notice that by default, compression and de-duplication is enabled and in most scenarios that is perfectly fine because you want your data to take up the smallest percentage possible of space.

However, there are times when this setup is not ideal because you may have other hardware appliances that may already enable compression (Riverbed, etc.).  In our situation we have Riverbed WAN appliances compression all of our iSCSI data so instead of compressing compressed data, this will now only get handled at the WAN level on our Riverbed appliances.  I still have de-duplication enabled to get the benefit of de-duplicating the data before it gets compressed with the WAN appliances, but this is a recommended practice by Dell and Riverbed.
To disable compression or also de-duplication on the newer versions of AppAssure 5 and above, you need to make this change in the registry.  To disable open up your registry editor (regedit):

Go to the following location in the registry:

HKEY_Local_Machine\Software\AppRecovery\Core\repository\(RepositoryID)\Specification

There should be REG_DWORD for EnableCompression and also EnableDedupe.

To disable whichever setting you choose, just change the value to 0.

The only other change that needs to get made is you need to restart the Core AppAssure service and then that should now be applied to the repositories you made changes to.

Hopefully this will clear up some questions that people may have on its location because in previous versions this was a setting you could just change in the interface.

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Aug 23

Windows 8: Network Drives Not Mapping – Group Policy Quick Fix for Now

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Windows 8

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It’s been a while since my last blog post, but I will try to keep things up to date now that things are less hectic!

A few days ago I got the opportunity to download the final version of Windows 8 and start using it on our network.  I got my machine setup and on the domain, but one thing I noticed was there were no mapped drives.  We run our mapped drives through group policy and I know a .bat file would make them appear, but if they aren’t working correctly in Group Policy something must be wrong.

We have our policy for mapped drives in group policy to be a Replace action, but also set the check box to Reconnect.  This works perfectly for Windows XP, Windows 7 and any other OS, but for any version of Windows 8 there have been issues.

I came across a TechNet post with a similar issue to mine and their recommendation was to uncheck the reconnect box and that should resolve the issue for now.  Since unchecking that box, the drives do in fact map correctly on logon, but to note there still may be issues if your machine disconnects off the network and you need to reconnect.

Hopefully Microsoft releases a fix for this issue soon so please visit the link below and make any additional posts in TechNet or feel free to comment on this blog post and I could keep everyone updated on my findings:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverGP/thread/64e01325-9b2f-477c-ab51-7b10692b583a

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Mar 12

VPN: Cisco AnyConnect Windows 8 Consumer Preview Error

Categories:

Cisco, Microsoft, Networking, Windows 8

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With the credit going to Daniel Noakes and his blog post, he has solved a potential problem with the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client and Windows 8 Consumer Preview.  Windows 7 did not have these issues on installation, but with Windows 8, one area within the registry gets modified causing issues that will give you an error code as shown below:

As Daniel mentions, an event log may get logged in event viewer, but the Cisco Any Connect VPN Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64 isn’t enabled.  While this adapter should normally be disabled when not in use, I noticed in my case that I didn’t even have any VPN adapter in my network connections.

The root of the issue is in the registry for this one.  If you navigate to the following location you will notice under the DisplayName string value is incorrect.  It has some additional data in the string that talks about a .ini or .sys file and that shouldn’t be in that string value.  So modifying the DisplayName to say this:

Cisco AnyConnect VPN Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64

 

The full path along with the correct string value should be:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\vpnva]
“DisplayName”=”Cisco AnyConnect VPN Virtual Miniport Adapter for Windows x64″

 

**Windows 7 Fix**

For Windows 7 machines, the registry key was under “ControlSet001? instead of “CurrentControlSet” folder.

Full path in registry – [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\vpnva]

 

Once you restart the client by closing out of the Cisco AnyConnect VPN client, you should then see that you would be able to connect using your client and also looking in network connections should now show the adapter correctly and you should be ready to go!  Thank you again Daniel for the initial find and your blog post.

 

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Mar 01

Fix- Windows 8 Consumer Preview – .NET Framework 3.5 Feature

Categories:

Microsoft, Windows, Windows 8

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Typing this post right now from Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I have had a successful installation yesterday, but only really got caught up in one or two issues that needed to be addressed.  One that I am sure some of you are running into are applications requiring the .NET Framework prior to .NET Framework 4.  I was trying to install Fences on my desktop to organize icons and ran into this along with TweetDeck as well.

I would get a notification after the installation would complete or trying to run the program that I needed to enable .NET Framework 3.5. in order to run the application.  Thinking back prior to other operating systems, no problem, I would just download through Windows Update or download directly from Microsoft and get that fixed without an issue.  With Windows 8 now, that isn’t quite so easy.  By default, Windows 8 comes with .NET Framework 4, but no other ones.  So, you can enable this in one quick way to solve it permanently or if that doesn’t work I have discovered two other possible ways to enable this.  I will outline the three methods below:

Option 1 Enabling Through Programs and Features

Open Control Panel.  Click on Programs then Programs and Features.  Select Turn Windows Features On or Off.  Check off .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0).


You will then get notified that you can only connect to Windows Update or cancel to enable the feature.

Giving it some time to download, you should then receive a success window after the changes are completed.
Well what if that doesn’t work?

As some of you may be figuring out with the new installs or upgrade of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, you may get an error message:

0x800F0906 – Windows could not download necessary files from Windows Update. Check your network connection, and try again by pressing ‘Retry’ button below.

If you do receive this error message, there are a few possible solutions for this.  The first thing to consider before anything is if you are connected to WSUS server.  If you are, please take a look at this Microsoft forum link to see about either denying that machine from updates temporarily or making some changes to your WSUS server:

Windows Update WSUS – 0x800F0906

Then you would retry option 1 to see if that works.

___________________________________________________________________________________
Option 2 – Mounting Windows 8 ISO

So you are not connected to a WSUS server and you are still getting issues with trying to enable features, well there is still some other ways to get this working!

Option 2 is finding your Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO and mounting that on your machine.  Find out what drive letter that got mounted to because this is important for the command line you will be running.  Once that is found out, open up and elevated command line and enter the following code to copy the files from the \sources\sxs folder of the mounted ISO to a new folder on the C Drive:

xcopy g:\sources\sxs\*.* c:\dotnet35 /s

This will copy the those files to a new folder labeled dotnet35 on your C Drive.

Next now copy the following code and paste that into your command line (Make sure this is an elevated command prompt – Run as Administrator)

Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:c:\dotnet35 /LimitAccess

*(Note: This make take some time to install)*

That should then run the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool and you should then get .NET Framework 3.5 installed through this method.  If the progress bar gets to 100% then you can go back into Program and Features and the check box for .NET Framework 3.5 should now be checked.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Option 3 – Installing from Windows 8 ISO Disc (method that worked for me)

So you tried option one..you got the 0x800F0906 error, option two gave you a progress bar to 65% like this:

[===========================65.8%====== ] and then if fails with a source files can’t be found? This is the same process I went through yesterday, and then this option 3 did the trick for me!  I actually burned the ISO to a disk and I am sure you can attempt to do this with the mounted ISO as well, but what I did differently was I literally copied all the files from the Windows 8 DVD and pasted them in the dotnet35 folder on the C Drive.

Once I got all those files copied over, I then went again into an elevated command prompt and copied the same code as above:

Dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:c:\dotnet35 /LimitAccess

This then took a considerable amount of time more (10-15mins) and then made it past the 65.8% and successfully installed the .NET Framework 3.5.  Whether, there was a source file in that sxs folder missing from my mounted ISO that i xcopied over, or it just required another file from somewhere else in the ISO copy, this solved my issue for me.

I hope this post can help you out to get those applications that may not be working for you in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and if you have any additonal fixes, please let me know and I can add or make any changes to this post.  I hope everyone is enjoying Windows 8 and expect a review of Windows 8 coming up on jeffnaperski.com soon!

 

 

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Feb 24

Microsoft’s Private Cloud – Download, Explore, and Get Rewarded ($20 Microsoft Store Credit Promo Code)

Categories:

Cloud, Hyper-V, Microsoft, Networking, Windows

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Looking to learn more about the Microsoft Private Cloud environment?  The following link below gives you a great opportunity to explore the Microsoft Private Cloud without having a full test environment setup.

http://www.microsoft.com/business/en-us/MicrosoftPrivateCloudOffer/

Just a brief overview taken from the Microsoft Private Cloud page:

  • “A new model for IT delivery.  It turns a datacenter’s infrastructure resources into a single compute ‘cloud’ and enables the key benefits of cloud computing.”
  • Pooled resources for provision your applications and resources dynamically.
  • Usage Based to meter what resources are actually used to allow your customers to pay for only consumed resources.
  • Scalable to meet your business requirements
  • Easy automation for the creation of Virtual Machines/Services and a whole range of different different platforms. (Multiple hypervisors, including VMWare, Citrix and all Microsoft products)
  • Delivering new functionality to take your existing hypervisor/IT environment to a whole new level of reliability, scalability and viewpoint on how your environment can build a great foundation for the future of how your applications should be available.

To receive the $20 Microsoft Online Store Promo Code, you need to:

  1. Download Microsoft’s Private Cloud Evaluation Software with Promo Code “CLOUD” at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9799890
  2. Complete the TechNet Virtual Lab titled “System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager: Building your Cloud Infrastructure” at http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9799891

This will get you one entry into the sweepstakes into winning a Lenovo W520 Laptop with a 2nd gen. Intel Core i7 processor with 32GB ram and also if you are one of the first 5000 to enter the sweepstakes, you will then receive one $20 Microsoft Store promo code.

I have just completed this lab, and it’s a great way to get to know how System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager for the cloud environment a little bit more and get your mind thinking towards how will you be prepared for the new changes in cloud environments.

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