just tidbits in my travels - gumptravels

Lenovo Thinkserver Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu

2015-09-24T20:41:00.000-07:00

When trying to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard, I cancelled (red X after installation started) the first installation because I accidentally chose the wrong partition when starting the installation, so this brought me back to the install menu, I tried to delete all the partitions and start repartitioning (I wanted a 50gb, 50gb, and remainder (467GB or something, from the 600GB Raid I had). It would not let me delete the 467GB partition, and showed it was using a little bit of space. It said the partition was in use, so I assumed that since I hadn't rebooted since cancelling the installation, that the first install had left it in use. So I proceeded to go back to the first install menu and chose Repair instead (no reboot in between yet). Using diskpart I tried to delete the partition once again, and I couldn't. There was a folder and a winPE swap file on the partition. At this point I figured I had to reboot to get any further.

I rebooted, proceeded through the install steps to the partitioning screen again, was then able to delete the partition, but when trying to create a new partition, it created it, but didn't put any of the regular special partitions in front of it... I knew something was wrong at this point, and after creating a new 50GB partition, there was a message at the bottom of the install window stating "Windows can't be installed on this drive. (Show Details)" and clicking details showed the next error window:

Windows Setup
Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu.

At this point I'm starting to get frustrated. I go into the windows repair options, run a command prompt, run diskpart, delete all the partitions (if any), try a "select disk 0" or whichever disk you are trying to use ("list disk"), "clean disk". I'm thinking this is going to cure everything.

I reboot back into the windows install but get the same message at the partitioning screen.

I'm stumped, googling doesn't find too much, other then one entry for SAN's and similar systems where a flag may have to be set manually to allow windows to install to the disk (over-riding a security/safety feature), I try using diskpart to see if I can set this option but can't find a way, and try setting Boot Disk to yes using diskpart, but can't seem to do that or find how to do that either.

I revert back to trying to re-initialize the RAID-10 I've created on the 720ix raid controller that's built into the Lenovo Thinkserver TD350 server, this doesn't seem to help. I try resetting the Virtual disk (erasing it), etc etc

Finally 2 hours into this endeavour I go back into the TDM (Thinkserver Deployment M....), and stumble upon the deployment tab/menu option that allows me to pick all my Windows options (partition, windows key, admin password, etc) and proceeds to do an automated install of Windows onto the Raid (one minor issue, it wouldn't let me create a partition smaller than 67GB for installing on, and I had only chosen one role (Hyper-V)... I was planning to do it with 50GB, oh well.

Before stumbling on the automated deployment tool in the bios, I was prepared to attempt clearing the Raid using Linux (in case windows MBR or something was still on the drive)... I don't really think this would have helped, but I was grasping at straws at this point, and wondering what had changed from the initial successful attempt to install windows (which I so wrongly chose to cancel apparently), and now... at this point I had reset bios settings, tried to see if there was a specific option to set the raid controller to a bootable device (thinking this was causing the error message during the partitioning and install phase)...

All I know is that at this point, the automated deployment I did from the Bios seemed to get things back in order again... I can't explain why it was failing to allow me create new partitions and continue the installation.

Windows 10 upgrade local Search not working, Cortana search not working, local search index failing

2015-09-03T09:37:00.002-07:00

After a fresh upgrade from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro on a laptop, I had a OneDrive.exe crash message that I wanted to save to research later, so I went to load up Snipping Tool to grab a copy of it, but I couldn't find Snipping tool using the Search bar beside the start menu. The search menu would provide some web results, but nothing local that I could see. I took a brief look through the Start Menu All Apps list and couldn't find Snipping Tool either, so I figured it may be missing from Windows 10 for some reason so I headed for some google searching to figure it out.

After researching Snipping Tool on Windows 10, everything pointed toward it being included by default, and it should just "be there"... eventually I stumbled across something that said to look under All Apps > Windows Accessories > Snipping Tool ... and there it was.. awesome, one issue solved and I get my screen shots of the OneDrive error.

This brings us to the issue at hand... why didn't the Search bar find Snipping Tool in the menu? After a bunch of research, I tried a few things, tried the troubleshooters (built-in, etc), nothing worked until I did this:

Traverse to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\
Rename the "Search" folder to "Search.old" or something similar
A new Search folder should appear almost immediately if the Windows Search Index is trying to generate a new index (you may need to trigger this otherwise)
eventually after the search index was recreated, my Search bar beside the Windows 10 Start menu now works and successfully found my beloved Snipping Tool, among other things obviously.

Notes:
There was something in the windows event viewer logs mentioning
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\edb.log

SearchIndexer (5628) Windows: Error -1811 (0xfffff8ed) occurred while opening logfile C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Search\Data\Applications\Windows\edb.log.

This is what led me to the folder we renamed, I saw files being created and deleted in real time while the index was trying to rebuild, but it could not rebuild and had other related error messages in the event log (none super helpful).

Caveats: I don't know if this will have any repercussions, but it recreated the folder in question, so I assume it will be okay.

RSYNC escaping local filenames to deal with "The source and destination cannot both be remote."

2015-07-07T11:46:00.001-07:00

I was having issues rsyncing a local file to a remote web server, I'm assuming it was because there was colons in the filename of the local file.

I tried single quotes and double quotes to escape it, and backslashes to escape the colons manually, none of which worked alone or together.

After a little googling, I came up with trying the ./ in front of the file, mixed with the manual escaping of each colon using backslashes, this worked!

rsync -aP ./mysql.servername.com.sql.2015-07-04T02\:45\:59Z.gz 'root@servername.com:/root/backups/'

Figured I would share it as I had to go through a couple articles (and actually found it in the comments of an article).

Windows 8 Create a Recovery Drive fail, wipes all partitions on target drive, not just partition/drive letter you specify

2013-09-15T14:11:00.002-07:00

Just thought I would document an unexpected behavior while creating a Windows 8 Recovery drive. Scenario: - had a 750GB USB External drive attached that had 5+ partitions on it, including a couple empty 150GB NTFS partitions - I had a Windows 8 machine that I wanted to "create a recovery drive" for - attached the USB drive, one of the 150GB empty partitions was drive letter G: - started Windows 8 "Create a Recovery Drive" from Start > Apps > Create a Recovery Drive - it quickly scanned the system for available target storage drives - it listed a few drives, I chose the G: drive as I had verified it was an empty 150GB NTFS partition - it promptly deleted *every* partition on the drive, created a 32GB Fat32 partition at the beginning of the drive, and copied the "Recovery Partition" (I checked that checkbox ON during he Create Recovery Disk steps - luckily I didn't have anything important on the 750GB external drive (I think! .. with age, my memory isn't 100% anymore you know) I was not expecting it to wipe the entire physical drive, only the G: drive I had pointed it to Wow.. thanks Microsoft.

ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04 kvm guest can't boot after upgrade

2013-08-19T12:12:00.001-07:00

After upgrading a virtual machine from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04, the upgraded guest couldn't boot. I had left the 2.6.38.x kernel on, and it seemed to allow the machine to boot just fine.

The 3.2.0.x kernel would just boot to busybox, whether I chose regular mode or recovery mode. The kernel messages didn't seem to show any errors during bootup, but it just jumped to busybox after loading the network driver (in busybox, run dmesg, then continue to use SHIFT&PAGEUP to scroll backwards to see the kernel messages).

I tried googling for a bit without much success, but I decided to try installing the linux-image-generic kernel instead of using the linux-image-virtual image that was already installed.

The virtual machine managed to bootup just fine after this change. I tried googling some more for answers, for the differences between linux-image-generic and linux-image-virtual, and only came up with the answer that they are pretty much the same, minus extra drivers and such. I'm not sure which driver was missing, but it won't kill me to run the linux-image-generic image I guess.

If anyone knows a way to track down what driver might be missing in the linux-image-virtual images, I don't mind troubleshooting it a little more to try and help ubuntu developers maybe add the missing driver to the virtual images. I'll provide the qemu virtual machine definition below in hopes it may help suggest what might be missing from the linux-image-virtual images.

WORKS:
ii linux-image-2.6.38-16-virtual 2.6.38-16.67~lucid1 Linux kernel image for version 2.6.38 on x86/x86_64
ii linux-image-3.2.0-51-generic 3.2.0-51.77 Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 SMP

DOESN'T WORK:
ii linux-image-3.2.0-51-virtual 3.2.0-51.77 Linux kernel image for version 3.2.0 on 32 bit x86 Virtual Guests

<domain type='kvm'>
  <name>server2</name>
  <uuid>195bcf90-2aa5-5e9f-db88-eeeeeeeeeeee</uuid>
  <memory>1310720</memory>
  <currentMemory>1310720</currentMemory>
  <vcpu>1</vcpu>
  <os>
    <type arch='x86_64' machine='pc-0.12'>hvm</type>
    <boot dev='hd'/>
  </os>
  <features>
    <acpi/>
    <apic/>
    <pae/>
  </features>
  <clock offset='utc'/>
  <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff>
  <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot>
  <on_crash>restart</on_crash>
  <devices>
    <emulator>/usr/bin/kvm</emulator>
    <disk type='block' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source dev='/dev/bigvg/server2_root'/>
      <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x04' function='0x0'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='block' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source dev='/dev/bigvg/server2_swap'/>
      <target dev='vdb' bus='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='block' device='disk'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source dev='/dev/bigvg/server2_space'/>
      <target dev='vdc' bus='virtio'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x06' function='0x0'/>
    </disk>
    <disk type='file' device='cdrom'>
      <driver name='qemu' type='raw'/>
      <source file='/mnt/storage/iso/ubuntu-10.04.2-server-i386.iso'/>
      <target dev='hdc' bus='ide'/>
      <readonly/>
      <shareable/>
      <address type='drive' controller='0' bus='1' unit='0'/>
    </disk>
    <controller type='ide' index='0'>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x01' function='0x1'/>
    </controller>
    <interface type='bridge'>
      <mac address='52:54:00:d5:ee:ee'/>
      <source bridge='br0'/>
      <model type='rtl8139'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x03' function='0x0'/>
    </interface>
    <serial type='pty'>
      <target port='0'/>
    </serial>
    <console type='pty'>
      <target type='serial' port='0'/>
    </console>
    <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/>
    <graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes' keymap='en-us'/>
    <video>
      <model type='cirrus' vram='9216' heads='1'/>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/>
    </video>
    <memballoon model='virtio'>
      <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x07' function='0x0'/>
    </memballoon>
  </devices>
</domain>

Posts I used to learn how to insert code snippets in my blogger posts:
http://www.craftyfella.com/2010/01/syntax-highlighting-with-blogger-engine.html

http://www.opinionatedgeek.com/dotnet/tools/htmlencode/Encode.aspx

http://www.restlessprogrammer.com/2013/02/adding-code-snippets-to-your-blog.html

Windows 7 Pro with XP Mode

2012-12-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

This isn't always obvious to people who get Windows 7 (unfortunately it requires Professional or Enterprise or Ultimate to support XP Mode directly), but you can have a Virtual XP Pro installation that you can either run as a second virtual computer simultaneously as Windows 7, or, can use specific apps that are only installed on the virtual xp (known as XP Mode integration or so). Here's the info you need: Microsoft download page: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

Samsung SGH-i727R Root and upgrade from ICS to Jelly Bean

2012-12-12T22:47:00.001-08:00

Download Odin3 v1.85
Download Odin tar.md5 recovery image (CWM or TWRP)
Download and Install Samsung Kies (this provides the correct drivers for the phone)
Reboot computer to allow Samsung Kies drivers to complete installing
Download SuperSU-0.93-Busybox-1.20.2.zip and copy it to your phone using USB storage mode (/downloads folder works well )
Unplug phone from computer
power off phone
Reboot phone into ODIN Download mode by following the next steps

phone should be powered off to start with
while holding down volume key, press and hold power key
release power key when phone vibrates
release volume key when black screen appears, or download warning screen appears
to enter download mode, accept the warning by pressing the volume up key (the warning should mention to press Volume up to continue into Download mode)

run Odin on the computer

uncheck all options except Auto Reboot (important!)
click on PDA button to choose your tar.md5 file (CWM 5.5.0.4 or TWRP 2.2.0.2)

connect phone to computer using usb cable
Odin should recognize the phone (a few visual cues), nothing should change on phone's screen
click on the Start button in Odin
the Odin log window should show success, and it will reboot your phone (assuming you selected the auto reboot checkbox)

Root your phone

shutdown phone
while holding volume up AND down together, press and hold the power button down
release the power button when the phone vibrates
release the volume buttons after the Samsung screen flashes and then goes to a black screen
wait for CWM or TWRP to load (up to a few seconds of black screen first)
choose install zip from sdcard
choose instlal from internal memory (or external if you put SuperUser on the external card
browse to and highlight the SuperUser file and press the enter button
with CWM you should see in the log lines that it was successful
with TWRP you have to press the bottom middle button on screen to see the log to see if it was successful
return to main menu and choose to reboot the phone
run SuperSU#, accept its offer to update its files
close SuperSU
reboot into recovery mode (if doing this via Rom Manager, SuperSU will ask you to give Rom Manager root permissions to reboot the phone, Grant Rom Manager access, you may get an "internet not connected" or similar error message, simply choose okay for the boot process to continue, or it may continue without interaction and they are just warnings while processes are being killed during the shutdown process)

Backup your phone's stock ROM before installing any custom ones

reboot into recovery (CWM in this example)
choose backup current ROM
choose Backup to internnal SD card (or external, whatever floats your boat)
this will take up to a few minutes
reboot phone
when booted up again, take a copy of the backup file over to your computer for safe keeping

Install custom Jelly Bean 4.1 or 4.2 ROM

Download your preferred Jelly Bean 4.1 or 4.2 ROM from xda-developers
save it to your internal or external sd card on the phone
boot into recovery mode

Notes:

I did all of the above steps with no SD Card installed and no SIM card installed, Wifi was on, Airplane mode was not enabled
Always do things with a near full battery
wipe data / factory reset, TWICE (x2)
wipe cache partition, TWICE (x2)

I'm publishing this post, it's been sitting in draft for quite a while, and I don't know what (if anything) may be missing, I forgot to finish it while it was fresh in my mind. I've since given the i727r phone back to it's owner.

HTC Raider LTE ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) Update goes to white HTC Screen

2012-07-10T20:24:00.001-07:00

HTC Raider LTE ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) Update goes to white HTC Screen

notes:
- phone is a Rogers HTC Raider LTE
- I cellular unlocked / carrier unlocked the phone months ago before this
- I HTC Dev unlocked the phone
- The phone is S-ON / Security-ON still, as I haven't S-OFF'd it yet

I went to do the Rogers ICS 4.03 update that was finally released on July 7th.

- downloaded the update over wifi
- initiated the ICS update
- during the update, the phone showed a download/progress bar several times in between reboots (at least 4 or 5 reboots, and new progress bars)
- it seemed to be stuck on a white HTC screen
- after waiting about 30 minutes for the update to finish (while still on the white HTC screen), I finally pulled the battery
- tried booting the phone several times
- started researching on the net
- came to the conclusion that I should try re-locking it first
- installed HTC Sync for this phone (including all 4 pieces of software and drivers that it suggested), no reboot of the desktop was necessary
- installed Android SDK
- second stage of Android SDK prompted to install the 4.1 (API 16) kit, I didn't install this, instead, I made sure to pick and install the following from the SDK Manager:
- Under Tools: Android SDK Tools
- Under Tools: Android SDK Platform-tools
- Under Extras: Google USB Driver
- once again, no reboot of the desktop was required
- plugged my HTC Raider into USB on my computer
- held-down VOLUME-DOWN button while pressing and holding the POWER button until I saw something on the screen (should be HTC boot menu for Fastboot, Recovery, Factory Wipe, etc, etc)
- after it finished loading (it tries to run any updates on the internal (or SD?) flash cards first, I then chose the FASTBOOT option
- I opened a command prompt in windows (right-clicked and ran as administrator)
- ran "cd \Program files (x86)\android\android-sdk\platform-tools" to change to the correct directory where my android SDK tools were installed
- then ran "fastboot oem lock" which returned with:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>fastboot oem lock
...
(bootloader) Lock successfully...
FAILED (status read failed (No such file or directory))
finished. total time: 0.115s

- I then either powered off the phone or it rebooted, I don't remember
- I then held-down VOLUME-DOWN button while pressing and holding the POWER button until I saw something on the screen (should be HTC boot menu for Fastboot, Recovery, Factory Wipe, etc, etc)
- this time I chose Recovery.. I should have just booted it normally instead, I don't think I needed to choose recovery, but I'm including it here for completeness
- it then continued to show a black screen with a small phone and three green arrows (2 arrows circling another green arrow), and a progress bar
- I continued to watch it (the phone was still plugged into my computer USB cable)
- it got to the end of the progress bar, and sat there, I got a little impatient and was googling while I was waiting, and someone had suggested (on another phone model) that during their update when it stopped on a similar screen, they unplugged their USB cable from the phone, and it continued on, so I did the same, I don't know that it really needed to be unplugged... your mileage may vary, maybe having just waited a littler longer, it might have continued on anyways.
- the phone continued to reboot
- it eventually started showing a more light-green/bluey colored arrows (the first hint that the ICS upgrade is continuing!! yay!)
- it continued to do this for a bit, and eventually got to a new screen saying it was updating components or packages (I forget the exact words)
- it eventually finished updating and I was able to use the phone again
- I had one touchwiz (I think) crash fairly quickly after the update.. but everything has been alright since then (these touchwiz crashes were common when I was using/reorganizing my Producteev todo lists, so I can always try that again and see if I have more crashes)

Anyways... maybe this will help some people out.

Windows XP Update KB2481109 won't install

2012-03-09T12:05:00.002-08:00

Ran into a few computers that would continually try to install Windows Update KB2481109 and fail. The logfile in c:\windows\KB2481109.log (or .txt?) mentioned that it didn't have the correct prerequisite.

Researching led to suggesting to install KB969084 first, and then try the KB2481109 update again if it comes up.

KB969084 is available here, or just google it:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=20609

I followed this method and it fixed the problem on several Windows XP machines.

Ubuntu Server 11.10 black screen no video after install

2012-02-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

After installing Ubuntu Server 11.10 x64 on a freshly built server, after the eject disc and press Enter to reboot option, the system reboots, goes through grub, then shows a black screen, then shows nothing but a blank / black screen.

Thinking it was locked up at first, I decided to try my luck with a CTRL-ALT-DEL (control alt delete), and was greeted with the system rebooting, posting, going through grub, then black screen again. I first thought it was an issue of needing to use the new GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=KEEP, but I decided to google it, and found the post that my post title links to, and it suggested adding the nomodeset kernel option. I'm not sure if the other option might have worked as well, and if it is/would be a better solution... I didn't need to try it as the nomodeset option worked, and its very similar in how to go about fixing it anyways (editing the grub config).

Following the linked to poster's description (a good description for newbies) of what to edit in Grub didn't quite match the new grub menu / editing selection of Ubuntu 11.10 during bootup (I didn't see splash or quiet options that he mentioned in this new interface / menu), but I simply added the nomodeset to the end of the line that loads the kernel and its options.

After successfully booting, edit /etc/defaults/grub and add nomodeset to the following option in grubs config file for future boots:

sudo nano /etc/defaults/grub

add / update the following: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"

then run "sudo update-grub"

Now during bootup, the screen still goes blank temporarily, but then comes back and works as normal.

Windows 7 Backup fails saying it skipped files

2012-02-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

Using Windows 7 built-in backup system with the automated settings is simple... sometimes too over-simple, and lacking for easy adjustment.

Certain programs you install create their own user account on Windows 7 (and Vista or XP I assume). In my case, I was working on a system that has two programs installed that Windows 7 Backup complains about, Logmein Remote support Software and Quickbooks (2010, 2011, 2012 are all the same I believe).

When the Windows 7 Backup runs, it completes, but gives you a system warning saying that it has failed since it wasn't able to backup certain files (listed below in my instance).

C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Contacts
C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Searches

The article I've linked to in the title had a response from someone mentioning a microsoft Knowledge base (KB) article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979281

I used one of the Resolutions listed for Scenario 2, the 1st bullet point / resolution says:

- Create the missing LocalLow, Contacts, and Searches folders that are listed in the error message.

So I simply traversed to one folder below the folders listed in the error messages about files being skipping, and created new Empty folders with names that match the error message names (I had to provide / confirm administrative privileges to continue and take ownership to get into the folders).

I created new empty folders the same as the following:

C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Contacts
C:\Users\LogmeinRemoteUser\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser20\Searches
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Contacts
C:\Users\QBDataServiceUser22\Searches

I then re-ran the backup and it didn't complain about files being skipped anymore, and now I can assume/presume that when (if ever) there actually is an error about a file being skipped, I will get the system warning message, and I will know there's a real problem instead of "ignoring" the warnings and never looking too closely since it used to warn after every backup saying the backup had either not finished successfully or had completed with errors (skipped files).

Troubleshooting Outlook 2000 Won't Start

2012-01-25T14:51:00.000-08:00

This information is what I referenced during my research, which the poster also copied from an unreferenced source:

A couple things and posts I found while researching Outlook 2000 not starting:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Try starting Outlook once with the /safe command line switch for example from the Start > Run > type "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Outlook.exe" /safe with the quotes and the space before the forward slash. Note your path to outlook.exe may be different. If Outlook starts this way then the most common causes for the locking up are:

1. Corrupt messages in your Inbox.
2. Corrupt or damaged Toolbar.
3. Damaged view.
4. Add-in causing the error.

Resolution
For No.1 remove the first or last message in your Inbox depending on how you sort the Inbox.

If it is No 2 then renaming outcmd.dat (with Outlook closed) should clear the toolbars, search your hard drive for a file called outcmd.dat and rename it to outcmd.old then start Outlook (if this doesn't cure your problem then you can rename the file back to outcmd.dat and regain any customization of the Toolbars).

For No. 3 the running the /cleanviews command line switch will reset all views to default for example from the Start > Run > type "c:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Outlook.exe" /cleanviews with the quotes and the space before the forward slash. Note your path to outlook.exe may be different.

For No. 4 go to Tools > Options > Other > Advanced Options > Add-ins and uncheck all the add-ins. Close and restart Outlook, then add the add-ins one by one (closing and restarting Outlook each time) until you get to the problematic add-in. Depending on the add-in you may be able to remove it completely via Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and then re-install a
fresh copy. If after a re-install you are still getting problems with the add-in then uninstall it again close Outlook do a search for a file called extend.dat and rename it to extend.old and repeat the installation of the add-in.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another one:

How to find and run the Inbox Repair tool in Outlook

Let me fix it myself
The Inbox Repair tool is automatically installed with all English-language Microsoft Outlook installation options depending on your operating system.

For Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 2000:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\NT

For Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\95

The Inbox Repair Tool installs automatically during Microsoft Outlook 2002 and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 setup. Unlike the Microsoft Office 97 version of the tool, Microsoft Office 2000 does not place the Inbox Repair tool on a menu. To use the Inbox Repair tool, locate one of the folders by using Microsoft Windows Explorer, and then double-click the Scanpst.exe file.

Quickbooks 2010, 2011, 2012 Statements for Clients without active balances

2012-01-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

We had needed to print a "statement" of account for a client that didn't have any outstanding balances. I think by default Quickbooks won't print/create a statement for a client that has a $0 balance, so I just had to figure out how to get it to print all charges and payments to the client during a time range.

Choosing the "Create Statements" on a client, then choosing "Statement Period from: xx/xx/xxxx to xx/xx/xxxx", under "Select Additional Options / Do Not Create Statements " uncheck "with a zero balance" and uncheck "with a balance less than 0.00" and any other options you might want to change.

This should produce a statement of charges and payments for a client between the specified date range.

fi.

HTC Amaze solid amber - orange - red light - won't turn on

2012-01-23T00:30:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to post about a power-on issue I had with my HTC Amaze 4G from Telus (same model as T-Mobile, and similar hard-ware to the Telus SII X (same cpu)).

Scenario: I forgot to plug my HTC Amaze in before falling asleep. In the morning when I woke up, it was at 9% battery. Since I didn't need it right away, I thought I would just shut it down, and plug it in later to charge it up and continue using it. I tried to do just that... I pressed the power button until I got the menu that offered "shutdown" .. I chose that, and thought it was shutting down. I wasn't able to get it to power up later, and during some of my troubleshooting, I saw a recovery screen (but no backlight.. I barely noticed it because of the backlight not being on), which I used the volume up/down buttons to select shutdown from the menu and power button to select/press enter on the selection. After this moment, I never saw anything on the screen of the Amaze, no buzz, no backlight, no recovery without backlight or otherwise. I tried different Key combinations such as volume down + power button, then I tried volume up + power button... all with no result.

Long story short: I had been trying to plug it in all day to charge using a usb cable plugged into a computer. This did not work to recover the battery from its discharged power state. I finally rectified the situation when I went to bed again (and decided to try fiddling with it again before taking it in for warranty), and it ended up finally "charging" when I plugged it into the HTC provided wall charger. I later read online that USB cables plugged into computers or other "small" power sources (I'm assuming 5 volts and 500mah) that it just "trickle charges" (according to another HTC manual for another similar phone). The HTC wall charger has a higher output (don't have it here right now to check if it outputs higher volts, or just higher amps, or both). Once I finally got the charging light to be on solid amber / orange, I was able to turn on my HTC Amaze 4G without any problems like usual. When I finally got booted up again, it showed the battery charging, and only had a 4% charge at the time.

I'm assuming that when I chose "shutdown", it either failed to shutdown, or HTC's (proprietary?) feature of providing for faster boots by doing something that seems closely related to a "suspend", and ran the battery right dead, and the usb cable plugged into my computer, and into my cigarrette lighter was unable to actually charge the battery up in order to turn it on again... only using HTC's wall charger did it get enough juice to bring the battery back to life.

fi.

Windows Easy Transfer 7 Attempting to Reconnect

2010-12-01T22:49:00.001-08:00

Using Windows 7 Easy transfer on a new pc (Win7 Pro x64) to try and get files and settings off of an older Laptop (XP Pro x32).

Using the Network method (10/100 wired).

After choosing files/settings to transfer (defaults in my case), choosing the destination user account, and destination drive for the files (default for C: drive (no choices for OS drive (C:))), and a blank formatted partition (target O:) for the secondary laptop source drive D: from the drop-down menu (advanced options), and entering the transfer code, starting the transfer, the transfer began. Unfortunately, the laptop is old and frail, and keeps heating up and crashing during the transfer process. Seemingly (as far as I've been able to tell from looking, and searching google) Windows Easy Transfer for windows 7 is missing the resume function as described in Windows Easy Transfer for Vista documentation (as shown in the 4th picture here, unless its missing due to using the network method? I don't have an easy transfer cable to try to see if it makes this option available, nor did I have time to try an external hard-drive destination for the transfer to see if it shows up then.

So... I'm stuck either doing a manual transfer of the data piece by piece (or rsync using a live linux disc or something), or attempting a full image dump using something like acronis (assuming it doesn't crash, or I'll have to pull the drive and do it with the laptop drive plugged into another machine).

Sucks... why did microsoft either remove the Resume option of Windows Easy Transfer, or limit it to only easy transfer cable transfers or hard-drive transfers (if such is the case... maybe someone can tell me if the resume is there for them in these 2 (transfer cable and external hard-drive) transfer modes with Windows Easy Transfer for Windows 7).

edit: what I ended up doing, (so far, middle of transfer so far) is setting the laptop up so it is getting even more airflow, have it beside an open window (and its -5 C outside), and a fan blowing on the laptop directly.

realistically, I don't normally use the Windows Easy Transfer, but the client wanted his new desktop PC to be as similar to his old laptop as possible (a common request these days).

flashplugin-nonfree: Package is in a very bad inconsistent state

2010-05-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

I had some issues upgrading/removing flashplugin-nonfree on an ubuntu 8.04 desktop system, it came to be in a state where dpkg/apt/aptitude would say:

Package is in a very bad inconsistent state

and something about trying to reinstall it before removing it. However, it was an endless loop, and I tried several iterations of remove, reinstall, force remove, etc, but finally ran across the post I've linked to, and did the following to fix/remove it (I didn't try re-installing it, as I didn't need it):

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/flashplugin-nonfree.prerm
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq flashplugin-nonfree
sudo dpkg --purge --force-remove-reinstreq flashplugin-nonfree

This finally fixed it, and made it so aptitude/apt/dpkg wouldn't complain while installing/upgrading other packages now, and only needed to run once, not multiple times like it did during some updates because of the above error.

Linux Crashes, JFS doesn't FSCK on reboot, requires manual fsck

2010-05-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

I had been having some issues with a machine getting hard-shutdown on semi-regular occasion when its UPS battery backup was failing, and we had some brown-outs. Every time the server would boot back up after power was restore, it wouldn't automatically fsck one of the tertiary JFS file systems, and I would have to login manually to do it after each power up if it was shutdown improperly.

I had googled before, and read the fstab docs, but none of the changes I had tried were working. I decided to give it another go tonight, and found the article I've linked this post to, at it was as simple as changing my fstab as follows:

OLD:

/dev/sdc1 /drive3 auto defaults,rw,noatime 0 0

NEW:

/dev/sdc1 /drive3 auto defaults,rw,noatime 0 2

And that fixed it so it would run FSCK automatically during bootup if the system wasn't shutdown nicely, even on the tertiary partition.

http://www.techspot.com/guides/253-take-ownership-windows-files/

2010-04-16T13:35:00.000-07:00

Take Ownership of Windows 7 and Vista Files with a Shortcut

Handy information for Windows 7 Users facing "take ownership" issues on files and directories.

ddrescue dd_rescue gddrescue gnuddrescue myrescue ... which to choose?

2009-09-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

I hadn't done a recovery in a while that needed special attention, and ended up wasting a bunch of time fiddling the the ddrescue variants before I found the one I had used in the past.

I fumbled around with dd_rescue for a while thinking that it was the one that I had wanted, since I thought I had remembered using the one that had a dash or underscore in the name previously. Unfortunately after having left it running over night, I found that it was not the one I was expecting, since I cancelled (CTRL-C) the command in the morning, and then tried to continue by simply entering in the same command again, only to find it repeated copying the same areas it had already done, so it wasn't being "smart" ... even though I had told it to use a logfile, and a bad block bbfile. This sent me on a search trying to see if I was running it wrong, or was missing something. Then I ran across a comment on the digg article talking about dd_rescue (2006), that happened to mention

"Dave Burton Says:
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:56 am

Rakesh,

Here’s a better link:
http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=ddrescue
(That link finds both ddrescue and dd_rescue.)

The program described in this article is Garloff’s original dd_rescue.

The program which I very much prefer is Diaz’s newer GNU ddrescue."

This twigged my memory, as well as reading the rest of the comment, it pointed out that gddrescue (diaz's) provided for "remembering" what blocks it had recovered so it doesn't try to go over the same area twice.

I promptly installed gddrescue using "apt-get install gddrescue" and then tried to view the man pages, of course using "man gddrescue" ... however, this is where some of the ddrescue confusion comes in, "gddrescue" simply uses ddrescue for its binary and for its man pages... (confusing), since "dd_rescue" actually uses a package name of "ddrescue" (apt-get install ddrescue), while using dd_rescue for its binary and man pages (once again, confusing).

gddrescue (package name=gddrescue, binary=ddrescue, man=ddrescue) is the one I wanted all along (hence why I'm now writing a blog post so I don't forget in the future).

I had also tryed "myrescue", it has a really good concept, however, its execution leaves a little to be desired... I tried using it on a 200MB partition (that had no errors), and then used dd, dd_rescue, gddrescue on the same partition, all to different output files. After "rescuing" the partition 4 times, I compared all the output files to each other, the first obvious difference is the file size of the myrescue image was 1024 bytes smaller than the other 3 files. The "other 3" files are the same as each other according to diff, while the 4th (myrescue) file is tagged as being different from the others (obviously, if its size isn't even the same). I also noticed that if I used a different block size (larger generally), that when myrescue reached the "end" of the partition, it never "completed" while still using a bunch of cpu processing time, and just never letting go, or saying it was "done". I'm guessing there's a bug in there somewhere regarding end position or something like that.

Thats the end of the post for now.

edit:
Some useful links:
- Ubuntu DataRecovery Howto, do it yourself
- Comment regarding which ddrescue to use, reminding me that it is GNU ddrescue (the gddrescue package, but 'ddrescue' binary) that I found most useful in the past
- A nifty looking ubuntu image (iso or memory stick) already setup for data recovery (removing the need for internet to download most tools you would need for recovery work), and providing a lower over-head environment (command line only, no GUI), but also offers a repository that you can use to add the same recovery tools to an already installed or live copy of ubuntu, which you might have a GUI on already.

notes:
- for first run of gddrescue, it may be wise to add the --no-split (or -n) option, as described in the texinfo manual, it says:

--no-split: Do not try to split error areas. Allows a fast recovery of the non-damaged part of the file.

- after the first run, or if the first run is having issues, you may want to try the following:

hdparm -a0 -A0 /dev/bad-device

and then re-running ddrescue using the logfile you hopefully told it to use on the first (and any successive) runs of ddrescue, this command will disable any read-ahead that the hard-drive tries to do on your behalf, but also brings your copying rate to a dismally slow speed (100k-200k/sec in my case of recovery on an 80gb laptop drive attached directly by ide), so you may want to try your luck without disabling it at first

- check the texinfo manual for some data recovery execution examples as well

VMWare Server 2.0 2.0.1 2.0.x DNS via NAT broken

2009-08-11T16:24:00.000-07:00

scenario:
- created a Linux machine (Ubuntu 8.04.3) hosting VMware server 2.0.1
- two network cards, one to WAN (DSL), one with NO ip address used to bridge a physical network (wireless access points) to the captive portal "fenced" network
- created a virtual guest using downloaded VM image of pfSense 1.2.2 (and tried 1.2.3 beforehand) which is running Freebsd 7.0
- created a second virtual guest using Ubuntu Server 9.10 beta as a client for testing the pfSense captive portal
- scenario worked during testing off-site and after the installation on-site at clients location

- intermittent issues began cropping up with either slow, or no internet access for the kiosks using the captive portal, or the wireless guests
- a reboot of the Linux host machine seemed to "fix" the issues
- issues came back a few days later, or maybe sooner, but were not as apparent

- I start troubleshooting the issues using the Ubuntu server guest VM, and find that I can ping hosts directly by IP on the Internet, but not by their hostnames... DNS requests fail almost all the time
- I login to the pfSense via SSH and try some ping tests... once again, direct IP addresses work, while domain names do not resolve and fail
- I try changing to different DNS servers, doesn't help
- I try using nslookup on the Ubuntu server guest VM, issuing the "server ip.ip.ip.ip" command to switch to a known working DNS server, and issue a lookup for a domain such as www.google.ca or www.yahoo.ca which promptly (or not so promptly) fails after a few seconds
- I try the same nslookup command on the Linux Host machine, which works perfectly fine.
- I start googling for VMWare issues with NAT networks (which is what the pfSense WAN network was using with VMware to get to the internet
- I find some issues in the forums at vmware, but the ones I found were mostly issues with Windows XP Host machines, which had a work-around editing the NAT config file for vmware and setting the DNS lookups to ordered instead of burst
- I look into this file, on the Linux host, and I find the dns section, but am told by a comment in the file that this section is ignored by Linux Hosts, and only used with Windows... what luck (not) :/
- I continue googling trying to narrow it down to vmware server issues since many of the issues were related to VMware Workstation I believe.. but really get nowhere
- I start thinking of new ways to avoid using the NAT networking in VMware
- idea1: install a 3rd physical network card into the Linux Host machine, provide NAT services via Linux on this interface, and bridge the pfSense WAN network to this interface
- problem with this idea.. server is a 3hr round-trip drive away from me
- idea2: switch to KVM for virtual hosting instead of VMware
- problem with this idea.. server processor does not support AMD-V or Intel VT.. I don't mind swapping the CPU out, but once again, 3hr round-trip not desirable
- idea3: switch to XEN for virtual hosting instead of VMware
- problem with this idea.. time, and working on a server remotely is slightly more dangerous if I break something mid-work, once again, 3hr trip to fix if I do break something
- idea4: try putting a virtual network interface or "alias" interface (nothing to do with VMware) on the primary NIC that attaches to the internet on the Linux Host machine, give it a private subnet address different than any other physical or virtual network currently in use (192.168.50.1), and enable forwarding on this virtual interface on the Linux Host and bond the pfSense WAN nic in VMware to this physical interface, set the pfSense WAN to static IP (192.168.50.129) and gateway of the Linux Host's alias IP of 192.168.50.1
- problem with this idea.. don't know if it'll work, somewhat risky playing with networking on remote server, seems complicated
- I went ahead with this idea after weighing the other ideas.

- after choosing idea4, I went ahead and implemented the changes, setting up the virtual alias of eth0:50 with an IP of 192.168.50.1, enabled IP forwarding manually for testing, then later in the sysctl config plus 2 other settings related to forwarding, created a small script to run the 4 iptables rules that implement the masking/masqing/masquerading/NAT redirection functions of linux
- I modified the pfSense WAN IP to be static 192.168.50.129 netmask 192.168.50.0/24 (255.255.255.0)
- I adjusted the pfSense virtual guest's first virtual network card to be bridged to the Linux Host's primary network card (default network name in VMware is "Bridged") which is used as the WAN interface in pfSense
- maybe some reboots involved since things weren't working initially
- also made a correction to my pfSense netmask, since I mistakenly chose /32 initially instead of /24 netmask
- can now ping from pfSense interface to linux host's eth0:50 ip of 192.168.50.1, and vice-versa
- can ping outbound from pfSense to the internet
- nslookup requests from pfSense work
- switch to the testing guest Ubuntu Server VM, and reboot it to get a new lease from the pfSense captive portal, probably not required, but reboots are the order of the day it seems
- nslookup requests from the testing guest using the captive portal work
- call client to have them test using their Kiosks
- wait to hear from client, and continue to test with testing guest to see that the intermittent issue side of things doesn't crop up again

- waiting to know if it all worked out

VMware Server 2.0 (free) gotchas

2009-07-25T01:04:00.000-07:00

Just a couple gotchas I figure I would document for my own use later and for anyone else that finds it using google.

Gotcha1: USB Devices in VMware guests

Using VMware Server 2.0 (free), I ran into my first requirement of needing a USB Software Dongle Key to work inside a virtual machine running Windows XP. All the documentation kept mentioning the steps of a) add a USB Controller to the virtual guest inside the VMware Server control web interface (this was the easy part) and then b) Enable the USB Device in the web interface on the VM.

I for the life of me couldn't find where it meant there was somewhere to enable the specific plugged in USB device that you had plugged into the Host machine, allowing it to work on a specific guest... after much googling and not coming up with something, I finally noticed a new button on the VMware guest page in the web interface, to the right of the regular 4 buttons (Stop, Pause, Play, Restart), a new button appears with the USB Icon, and you can enable/connect the USB Device to the VMware guest by clicking on it, and checking off the appropriate USB device... as simple as that. (gee whiz)

Gotcha2: Adding Datastores to VMware 2.0 (free)

I was trying to determine how to add additional datastores to VMware Server 2.0 to no avail... everything kept mentioning or even showing pictures of the screen with the boxes to fill in, but nothing mentioned how to get this screen up in the first place, or at least not enough for me to clue in and I was unable to find it... after googling for a while, I went back to the web interface, and eventually lucked out (and apparently I am blind... or was very tired), and determined that if you just click on the Server in the list on the far left of the web interface, on the far right is your standard options such as "Create Virtual Machine", "Add Virtual Machine to Inventory", and... you guessed it, "Add Datastore" ... not sure how I missed that one... but I actually didn't "SEE" it until I clicked on the one original/default datastore that was added during configuration, from the list/display window in the middle of the web interface with the server selected... which showed some additional options for that datastore (rename, refresh, remove datastore).. and I finally saw the "Add Datastore above all those new options.

So, I guess the 2nd one wasn't really a gotcha... just more of a blind mistake or I was more tired than I originally thought. Anyways, a heads-up for anything that may be blind like myself.

Gotcha3: VMware Server 2.0 (free) 64-bit Host, but unable to successfully use 64-bit Guests

I am using some second-hand HP DL585 G1 servers with 4 x Opteron 848 2.2Ghz CPU's in them... I totally forgot about having earlier checked if they had VT/AMD-V capabilities months earlier (they don't with this cpu revision of CG or C0 (I forget which C* they are, but anything C* generation or older do not work ie. stepping CG does not, but E1, E4 or E6 does support it))

So, off to HP's site to see if there are firmwares that work with the E* revision cpu's, and then off to Ebay to try and poach some.. since they seem to be quite reasonable prices.. assuming they work with my server(s). Just for anyone else that might be trying to run older gen Opteron's without AMD-V support, and trying to setup 64-bit virtual guests unsuccessfully.

fi.

Windows Update fails in Vista using Shaw Internet using "Automatically Detect Settings"

2009-07-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

If you've got Vista installed on a PC or Laptop computer, but your Windows Update is failing (I can't remember with what code off-hand, as I'm not typing this the same day/week I ran into this problem, though I will update the post if I run into it again, or feel like re-creating the problem), simply try the following:

In Internet Explorer 7 or 8, open the Tools Menu (press the ALT key once if the menu bar is hidden), choose Internet Options down at the bottom of the Tools Menu, Choose the Connections Tab from the list of tabs across the top, Choose LAN Settings down near the bottom right of the window, and make sure to UNCHECK "Automatically Detect Settings".

Problem should be solved, simply try Windows Update again, this has fixed the error for me on several machines... I don't know if its my local shaw proxy server that is being detected, and failing for some unknown reason.. but, thought I would blog about it since its happened several times in the past, and seems to be better to simply disable the proxy anyways.

fi.

edit: apparently i have an older post in my blog that describes this exact issue, including the error codes... and here I was thinking my blog could act as my memory on some things... go figure :p

"Grub hard disk error"

2009-07-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

short story:

- installed ubuntu server 8.04.2 LTS on machine using 160gb IDE drive (hda), including a single /boot partition and an LVM partition for root (/) and another LVM partition for swap.

- installed new 500gb Sata drive into machine

- created similar partition schema (partition 1 = 250mb /boot partition (sda1)), (partition 2 = logical of the rest of the space (sda2=extended info, sda5=data partition that was created inside the extended partition

- used dd to copy hda1 (250mb /boot) to sda1 (new 250mb /boot)

- made sda1 bootable using cfdisk

- added sda5 partition to main volume group using pvcreate

- used pvmove to tell LVM to move anything on the /dev/hda5 physical volume

- after ~4 hours (150gb @ 12mb/sec average, since its slow due to using atomic writes, etc), it was done moving all data off of the old 150gb physical volume

- used vgreduce to remove the hda5 physical volume from the main volume group (since nothing is on that partition now (well, technically its probably got all the data if you wanted to try recovery of some kind, I don't believe it writes 0's or anything to it during a pvmove))

- tryed using grub to re-install to new hard-drive (sda), all messages seemed to be fine

- shutdown machine and removed the 160gb IDE drive

- got "Grub hard disk error" ... with no other useful information, or ability to "enter" grub

- attempted to manually fix grub using rescue mode of ubuntu server install CD

- googled for a while

- didn't find anything that really helped me, but some useful information none-the-less

- then realized one of the options in the rescue menu was "reinstall grub" or something to that effect, I chose to re-install to (hd0) (thats hdZERO)

- I then chose to reboot the system

- Magic happened, and grub loaded correctly, and then promptly loaded Ubuntu Server for me, along with my VMWare instances that were set for autostart.

- Problem solved... why my manual grub flailing around didn't fix anything (tried many different things between grub-install, setup-grub, setup (hd0), etc, I have no idea why, but I'm happy that this route worked for me

Windows Vista CBS.Log and SFC Scannow failure

2009-06-19T16:13:00.000-07:00

original error after running sfc /scannow:

windows resource protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix
some of them. details are included in the CBS.log
windir\Logs\CBX\CBS.log

C:\windows\logs\CBS\CBS.log

links:

how to take ownership of files in windows vista

well written howto on troubleshooting/repairing windows vista

Examples of taking file ownership/permissions:

C:\>takeown /f "C:\program files\windows sidebar\settings.ini"

SUCCESS: The file (or folder): "C:\program files\windows sidebar\settings.ini" now owned by user "Owner-PC\Owner".

C:\>icacls "C:\program files\windows sidebar\settings.ini" /grant Owner:F
processed file: C:\program files\windows sidebar\settings.ini
Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files

http://jsbi.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-recover-boot-failure-in-windows.html

http://forums.wincustomize.com/?postid=348387

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/86959-access-vista-install-dvd-files.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928228

Set Grub Default to Windows or Last Selected Choice

2009-06-01T12:14:00.001-07:00

I was installing a used hard-drive in a friends computer after his drive failed, so had to re-install windows, etc. I took the opportunity to install Ubuntu Linux on the last 6 gigs of the hard-drive as well, in case he is ever having troubles (virus, root-kit, etc) with Windows, he can boot to linux if he still needs to get on the Internet, etc.

I wanted to make it so Windows would be the default on the grub menu. This in itself is actually rather easy, just setting the 'default' option in grub to the line number that Windows shows up in the Grub boot menu. This becomes a problem later in "life" if Ubuntu is updated, and a new kernel is installed in addition to the old kernel, this changes the line that Windows will show up on. One way around this was to move the lines that add Windows to the grub menu up to the top of the menu.lst, therefore it shouldn't change (hopefully)... but I came up with a better suggestion with a little more digging on google. Instead, I simply enabled the usefulness of the savedefault option in Grub, so that any grub menu options (kernel options/operating systems) that have the savedefault in their list of commands would change the default O/S to THAT O/S. If you don't have a "default 0" option, thats fine, just make sure you add the new "default saved" option to your config somewhere in the global area (near the top area).

** The lines with #XX in front of them have been replaced by the respective following line of each of them.

# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
# WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not change this entry to 'saved' or your
# array will desync and will not let you boot your system.
#XXdefault 0
default saved

## should update-grub adjust the value of the default booted system
## can be true or false
#XX# updatedefaultentry=false
# updatedefaultentry=true

## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options
## can be true or false
#XX# savedefault=false
# savedefault=true

If my friend ever goes into Ubuntu, it will change the default to Ubuntu, but all he has to do to get it to default back to windows again, is simply choose to boot into windows again from the grub menu, and it will then default to windows again. Problem solved.

One other option could be to remove the savedefault from any menu entries that you don't want to make changes to the default O/S menu choice during boot-up, if you happen to boot that entry once in a while and don't ever want it to be the default.