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2017-05-19T11:14:00.000-04:00

Democrats

2016-02-14T20:51:00.001-05:00

Here we have Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

I prefer Bernie Sanders. Unfortunately what he feels are important will not be passed by Congress. Hillary Clinton brings in too much baggage and I don’t believe her to be POTUS material..

Like I felt in the Canada Election (anyone but Harper) in this election Anyone But Trump

Republicans

2016-02-14T20:45:00.001-05:00

The Republican Candidates have me worried. It looks like Donald Trump will get the nomination. He is leading in most of the polls.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump reminds me a lot about Adolf Hitler. In fact, he scares me if he was elected as president.

Of the remaining, I prefer Marco Rubio.

Install Ddeveloper

2014-08-07T01:59:00.001-04:00

Hurricaine Katrina Mayor sentenced to 10 Years

2014-07-10T02:41:00.000-04:00

Add a watermark to an Outlook Message

2014-06-26T00:22:00.003-04:00

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Add a watermark to an Outlook Message

2014-06-26T00:22:00.001-04:00

iframe width 459 height 344 src //www.youtube.com/embed/SKvIGzO3i2I frameborder 0 allowfullscreen> /iframe>

Installing Remote Desktop Services on Windows Server 2012

2014-04-01T23:10:00.001-04:00

Sarah Churman: Hearing for the first time

2014-02-01T21:49:00.001-05:00

Install PowerBuilder 12.5

2013-08-30T22:36:00.001-04:00

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Cloudberry Labs

2013-07-07T03:55:00.002-04:00

I can't say enough good things about Cloudberry Labs. Their products are rock solid and extremely useful I use them for managing Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web services. Cloudberry Drive is used in our environment for world-wide secure file sharing vis-a-vis either Amazon S3 or Azure.

Windows 8: My Views

2013-07-05T20:03:00.000-04:00

Windows 8 has got a lot of buzz in the last year.. Now that 8.1 preview is available I wonder how much peoples impressions will change.. If at all. I've been using Personal Computers since the dawn of the PC. My first "PC" was an Altair 8080 which I had to put together from a box of parts, my display device was a Model 28 teletype, so I've been around the block a few times. My Impressions of Windows 8 are very favourable.. I like it as much as if not more than Windows 7, do I want to go back. No.. I've had to adapt and overcome many times in my lifetime. My opinion is if you don't like it, you are not forced to use the new operating systems. If you want you can still run Windows 98. Every time Microsoft makes a change there are thousands of users that reject the change and want the old ways back.. There are choices that YOU can make.. Use it and accept the new changes or NOT use it and use something else.. Apple is always looking to sell more computers and the linux distro's would love a higher market share. One of the AA motto's comes to mind to paraphrase : Change what I can, Accept what I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference. As for the Windows 8 start menu replacements, the same thing occurred when Microsoft got rid of Program Manager. Personally I resisted the change to any form of Windows for a long time and used Desqview or OS/2 for multitasking environments. Traditional PC sales are declining and tablets are on the increase. Have you ever tried to use the traditional start menu on a tablet, it is not nice. How often are you in the start menu? How often do you see the metro desktop? Myself perhaps .001% of the day. Was it a jarring change? Yes, does it really matter to me.. NO.. I tried start8/classic shell and removed them within a few days. I am more upset about Technet going away.. so I have to pay more for Action Pack

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2013-07-05T19:37:00.001-04:00

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Create Symbolic Links, Hard Links and Directory Junctions in Vista/Win 7/8 with MKLINK

2012-11-24T10:55:00.001-05:00

For Unix-like or Linux system users, symbolic link is a common feature in use almost daily. Symbolic link (aka soft link) or symlink as it often shortened to, is a special type of file or file-system object that serves as a reference or points to another file, UNC or directory, known as target. In Windows Vista, symlinks feature has been added to NTFS filesystem and can be created by using MKLINK command. In previous Windows operating system, the closer thing to symbolic links is NTFS junction point, or worse, Windows shell shortcut (.lnk) file.
Symlink in Vista, unlike .lnk shortcut in desktop or Windows Explorer, allow user to access files within the symbolic link created itself via explorer, the console and etc. And symbolic link also differ from NTFS junction point which can only link to folders and volumes, in which symlinks can point to a file, a UNC, a folder or a volume, as well as able to span file systems.
Symbolic link is useful when you have a lot of folders and files are scattered all over the directory tree, and you need to manage them from a single location. Another scenario is that you have a deep nested file that you want to access quickly instead of traverse through one branch by one branch. And furthermore, for programmer, symlink provides a static file path that can be point to a ever changing object without affecting the functionality of the program. In all these situation, symbolic links can be created at a convenient location which point to the ‘real’ objects.
As mentioned, to create a symbolic link, use MKLINK command line tool. MKLINK can be used to create a hard link or directory junction too. Hard link is essentially giving another name or label to the objects, while NTFS directory junction point is used to redirect the whole folder to another folder as if it’s the original folder itself. Junction point is used extensively in Vista to provide support for old directory structures for user profiles (i.e Documents and Settings) to point to the new user folders located inside Users directory.
Syntax and Options of MKLINK
MKLINK [[/D] | [/H] | [/J]] Link Target
/D – Creates a directory symbolic link. Default to file symbolic link.
/H – Creates a hard link instead of a symbolic link.
/J – Creates a Directory Junction.
Link – Specifies the new symbolic link name.
Target – Specifies the path (relative or absolute) that the new link refers to.
Examples and Usages of MKLINK
Note: Only Administrators can use MKLINK to create symbolic links unless override by using secpol.msc, so you need to run Command Prompt with elevated privileges, or else you will get “You do not have sufficient privilege to perform this operation.” error.
To create symbolic link called foo to reference to c:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe:
C:\test>mklink foo c:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe
You will see the following result:
symbolic link created for foo <<===>> c:\Windows\System32\notepad.exe
If you type dir in commnd prompt, you will see the following listing:

Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 2211-7428
Directory of C:\test
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <DIR> .
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <DIR> ..
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <SYMLINK> foo [c:\Windows\system32\notepad.exe]
1 File(s) 0 bytes
2 Dir(s) 69,238,722,560 bytes free
To create symbolic link to a folder, simply use /D switch:
C:\test>mklink /d bar c:\windows
symbolic link created for bar <<===>> c:\windows
Results of dir command:

Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 2211-7428
Directory of C:\test
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <DIR> .
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <DIR> ..
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <SYMLINKD> bar [c:\windows]
04/14/2006 11:24 AM <SYMLINK> foo [c:\Windows\system32\notepad.exe]
1 File(s) 0 bytes
3 Dir(s) 69,238,722,560 bytes free
MKLINK cannot use to delete symbolic link. To remove a symbolic link, simply delete them as if you’re removing a normal file. For example, to delete the foo symbolic link created above, enter the following command:
C:\test>del foo
To remove the bar symbolic link to a folder created above, use the following command:
C:\test>rd bar
http://www.mydigitallife.info/create-symbolic-links-hard-links-and-directory-junctions-in-vista-with-mklink/

Install Windows PowerShell for single sign-on - Office 365 for enterprises

2012-07-24T00:17:00.001-04:00

Install Windows PowerShell for single sign-on - Office 365 for enterprises

Configure Folder Redirection

2012-05-05T13:25:00.001-04:00

Without Folder Redirection, users might/will save data on their local profile on their computer. If they accidentally delete such a file, you don’t have a backup of it (unless you take backups of workstations which I doubt…).

Configuring Folder Redirection is fairly easy, but you should get it configured correctly.

In this step-by-step I will just use a domain controller (DC) to store the user folders. I always strive to keep DCs dedicated and don’t mix other roles to them. If you don’t have the HW or budget I guess you don’t have a choice.

Open up the “Share and Storage Manager” (that came along with Win2008, which in fact is a great tool).

In the Action frame, choose “Provision Share”:

Click “Browse” and “Make new folder”. Give it a meaningful name like “FolderRedir” or similar:

Edit the NTFS permissions:

Remove the inheritance so it don’t get permissions from its parent folder:

Permissions:

Administrators: Full Control, “This folder, subfolders and files”
System: Full Control, “This folder, subfolders and files”
Users (or a group containing the domain users): READ & Execute + “Create folders / Append data”, “This folder only”
Creator Owner: Full Control, “Subfolders and files only“

Give it a share name and make it administrative (add a $ at the end of the share name):

Enable “Access-based enumeration” (optional). This feature will only list folders the user has access to when browsing:

Set the share permissions:

Domain admins: Full Control
Users (or a group containing the domain users): Full Control

If you use DFS, you should consider placing the folder redirection on the DFS for redundancy. If you don’t have it, just click Next:

Hit Next and Create the good stuff.

With the share and NTFS permissions in place, you have to create a Group Policy Object (GPO):

Open the Group Policy Management Consol:

Create a new GPO, and give it an informative name. I.e. “GPO_FolderRedir”.

Navigate to “User Configuration – Windows Settings – Folder Redirection”. You now have to decide what you want to redirect. You can redirect all, or just a few. “Documents”, “Desktop” and “Favorites” are handsome to pick if you don’t pick all.

If all your users should be on the same share, you should use the “Basic” setting. If you have different shares for different domain groups you can use the “Advanced” setting.

Set “Root Path” = the share path you created earlier.

On the Settings tab, untick the “Grant the users exclusive rights to Documents” if you want domain admins to have access to the redirected folders. If you don’t untick it now and the folders are created, unticking it at a later time will not give domain admins access to the already created folders. You have to take ownership on the folder to gain access. If a user logs on the redirection will not work as the user has to be the owner.

Now you can link the GPO to an OU (not a Container like “Users”) where the users resides.
When the users logs on, the folders are created automatically and the permissions are set correctly. If the user saves i.e. a Word document to My Documents, it’s saved on the file server.

If you have terminal server users, folder redirection in conjunction with Roaming Profiles is a m.u.s.t!

SBS Migration - Active Directory replication is taking longer than expected

2012-04-11T16:23:00.000-04:00

Source

Whilst migrating from SBS 2003 server to SBS 2011, I was receiving a message saying “Active Directory replication is taking longer than expected”. I clicked “Wait” a couple of times, but nothing was happening.

To try and find out what was going go; I pressed CTL-ALT-DELETE and loaded up task manager, then clicked on file selected run and entered "notepad.exe". Once notepad loaded I opened up the installation log (found in C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server) and saw that the section below kept being repeated in the logs:

Setup: DsGetDcName returned: 0
Setup: DsGetDcName returned name: sbs03.domain.local
Setup: Expected name: sbs08.domain.local
Task:       There are 0 pending replication operations.
Setup:       Attempting LDAP bind.
Setup:       Bind successful
Task: Waiting for replication to finish

First of all, I made sure all the correct services were running on the source server:

Computer Browser
File Replication Service
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Workstation

Then after trawling the web, I found that there is one registry key on the source server, and two on the destination server that need to be changed.

On the source server:
Load regedit and change the following key:
HK_LM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTFrs\Parameters\Backup\Restore\Process at Startup – change the BurFlags key to decimal 4.

On the destination server:
Press CTRL-ALT-DELETE, load task manager, then click on file select run and enter regedit to change the following keys
HK_LM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\NTFrs\Parameters\Backup\Restore\Process at Startup – change the BurFlags key to decimal 2
HK_LM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netlogon\Parameters – change the SysVolReady key to decimal 1.

Next restart stop and start the File Replication service on both the source and destination machines. (On the destination machine hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE, click on file, select run and enter services.msc)

The migration should then continue as normal.

Hello, world! - ASP.NET Tutorial

2012-01-28T16:49:00.000-05:00

Hello, world! - ASP.NET Tutorial

Where can I download IE8 for Windows 7

2012-01-16T19:19:00.001-05:00

For starters, let me emphasize that this question is asked on a regular basis, and there are a few myths surrounding this scenario. The simple answer is that there isn't a stand-alone download for IE8 on Windows 7 (and unfortunately, the Vista version of IE8 will not work). The only way to get IE8 back is to remove IE9 using one of the following methods:
Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> View Installed Updates (on the upper-left)
Scroll down until you find Windows Internet Explorer 9. Highlight and click the Uninstall button.
As an alternate method, you can open up a command prompt with full admin rights... Start -> cmd -> Ctrl+Shift+Enter -> acknowledge the UAC prompt. Within the elevated command prompt, paste in the following, run it and then reboot:
FORFILES /P %WINDIR%\servicing\Packages /M Microsoft-Windows-InternetExplorer-*9.*.mum /c "cmd /c echo Uninstalling package @fname && start /w pkgmgr /up:@fname /norestart"
In the event that method still doesn't work, execute a System Restore to a point prior to when you installed IE9:
Windows 7 System Restore
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html
If that doesn't work and you have also installed Windows 7 Service Pack 1 already, you may need to weigh your options. If you really don't like IE9, you would potentially need to temporarily uninstall SP1, then uninstall IE9, ensure that IE8 is working, and then re-install SP1.
Finally, you would want to ensure that IE9 isn’t automatically installed again by Windows Update, so you should probably use the Internet Explorer 9 Blocker Toolkit:
Disable Automatic Delivery of Internet Explorer 9
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh180754.aspx

Setting up a Data Center Guidelines

2012-01-02T21:04:00.001-05:00

Tier 1
Single path for uplink, servers, power & cooling distribution w/o redundant components & may not have an engine generator, guaranteeing 99.671% availability (28.8 hours of downtime).

NOTE: The data center must be shut down for annual predictive maintenance & repair work. Operation errors or spontaneous failures of infrastructure components will cause a data center disruption. An example of a Tier 1 data center may be a small businesses where IT is intended for internal business processes.

Tier 2
Tier 1 + Single path for cooling distribution w/redundant components & has UPS & engine generators but their capacity design is N+1, w/o single power path, guaranteeing 99.741% availability (22 hours of downtime).

NOTE: Maintenance of the critical power path & other parts of the site infrastructure will require a shutdown of computer processes. An example of a Tier 2 data center may be internet-based companies w/o serious financial penalties for QoS commitments.

Tier 3
Tier 1 + Tier 2 + Multiple active power & cooling distribution paths, but only one path active, which has redundant components, and is concurrently maintainable. Dual-powered equipment & multiple uplinks, guaranteeing 99.982% availability (1.6 hours of downtime).

NOTE: This topology allows for any planned site infrastructure maintenance activity w/o disrupting the computer systems operation in any way. An example of a Tier 3 data center would include companies that span multiple time zones or whose IT resources support automated business processes.

Tier 4
Tier 1 + Tier 2 + Tier 3 + Multiple simultaneous active power & cooling distribution paths, has redundant components, and is fault tolerant. All components are fully fault-tolerant including uplinks, storage, chillers, HVAC systems, servers, etc. This fault-tolerant architecture provides the ability of the site infrastructure to sustain at least one worst-case unplanned failure or event with impact to the critical load. This typically includes a System+System topology. Everything is dual-powered, guaranteeing 99.995-99.999% availability (at most 0.4 hours of downtime).
NOTE: Typically, the better Tier 4 Data Centers include the following:
Location

Strategically located on Airport power grids to prevent rolling blackouts as airport grids are the last to go and are more protected.

They have 3-day fuel reserves on-site and same-day contracts with fuel providers for helicopter transports.

Data Replication

In addition to all the redundancy & backups within the data center there are real-time site-to-site replications generally in different geographical regions & climates. This way if one data center goes down completely the end-users never know.

Multi-tenant platform security

Multiple redundant, enterprise-class firewall systems integrate firewall, VPN and traffic management to prevent unwarranted intrusions and ensure only authorized users access the environment. IDS (Intrusion Detection System) to detect malicious network traffic and computer usage that often cannot be caught by a conventional firewall.

Physical Security

Dedicated, full-time security staff monitoring & guarding the data center 24x7x365 w/sophisticated pan/tilt closed-circuit TVs, led by a CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) analyst. Secure access is strictly enforced using the very latest technology, including electronic man-trap devices between lobby & datacenter, bio-metric authentication, motion sensors, & controlled ID key-cards. Security guards are stationed at every entrance to the site.

Every employee, regardless of their role, undergoes a rigorous background check.

Employee access to passwords, encryption keys and electronic credentials is also strictly controlled.

Compliance

SAS70 Type II certification. It is a rigorous certification requiring an independent auditor to validate, in their opinion, that the controls and processes in use are effective over its one year evaluation period.

SOC 2 & 3 are the new version reports of SAS70 Type II, which are being phased out as of 6/15/11. They more directly address all of the 5 concerns: Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, & Privacy.

PCI DSS. This assures credit card payments processed through a hosted site are secure from fraud and data compromise.

NOTE: Examples of a Tier 4 requirement include companies who have extremely high-availability requirements for ongoing business such as E-commerce, market transactions, or financial settlement processes.

Aspects to consider in Data Center Site Selection:
Location

Earthquake Zone

Flood Plains

Hurricanes or Tornadoes

Proximity to Major Highways

Proximity to Railway Lines

Proximity to Hazardous Areas

Proximity to Airports or Flight Corridors

Infrastructure

Availability of Electrical Capacity

Availability of Diverse Power Feeders

Utilities Expansion/Upgrades

History of Outages

Water

Diverse Source Supplies

Water Storage

Communications

Availability of Diverse Carriers

Availability of Diverse Services

Physical Security

Alarms & Monitoring

Economics

Land

Construction

Utilities

Labour

Communications

Staffing

Accessibility

Public Transportation

Recreational Facilities

Housing

Amenities

Aspects to consider in Data Center Site Evaluation:

Electrical

Utility Service

Lightning Protection

Power Backbone

UPS Systems

UPS Batteries

Engine Generator

Load Bank

Critical Power Distribution

Grounding

Mechanical

Raised Floor Cooling

UPS Cooling

Mechanical Plant

Support Systems

Contamination

Fire Detection & Protection

Physical Security

Alarms & Monitoring

Standards & Compliance

SOC 2 or SAS70, Type 2

TIA-942

PCI DSS

There are a few different ways to rank the aspects that comprise a data center. Syska Hennessy Group offers a method, unlike the four-tiered system from the Uptime Institute, which examines 11 different aspects of performance & measures them on a scale from 1 to 10.
Below are the 11 items that Syska Hennessy Group ranks:
1.      Power
2.      HVAC
3.      Fire & Life Safety
4.      Security
5.      IT Infrastructure
6.      Controls & Monitoring
7.      Commissioning & Testing
8.      Operations
9.      Maintenance
10.      Operations & Maintenance Procedures, And
11.      Disaster Preparedness.
Here are some good references: http://uptimeinstitute.com and http://www.syska.com
In the meantime while you are figuring which route you want to go down, you might want to look into SonicWALL’s CDP (Continuous Data Protection) offering. They have two flavors: a) you can host the data yourself or b) you can use their data center and have them carry the liability. The great thing about their solution is that it’s a policy-based backup, Site-to-site LAN-to-WAN or LAN-to-LAN w/Universal system recovery (BMR) and offsite/DR backup all-in-one with central management and remote management should a local site location go down. It has built-in AES 256-bit encryption in data transit & at rest. It uses fileset backup methodology combined w/data de-duplication & advanced granular versioning & trimming to efficiently capture catalogues and preserves each backup in chronological versions while excluding duplicate data. Bandwidth throttling…point/click recovery…the list goes on. We have had a lot of success with the deployments we have made. More info: http://www.sonicwall.com/us/products/Backup_Recovery.html
Hope this helps!

8 Is Enough: When Bad Things Happen to Good OSes

2011-11-10T22:47:00.001-05:00

The first time I installed Windows 8 on my main desktop, a Core 2 Quad-based Dell Optiplex 755 tower PC with 8 GB of RAM, it didn't go so well. Windows 8 installed fine, but after getting all my core applications installed, I started experiencing seemingly random system freezes, which required me to manually shutdown the PC and restart. It happened pretty frequently, so frequently that I quickly gave up and went back to Windows 7 on that PC.(That didn't go so well either, and while I was curious how or whether Windows 8 might have contributed to the problem, it took some doing to get Windows 7 reinstalled on that PC again. I've come to believe that this was the first sign of what is now a complete SSD failure and was not at all related to installing Windows 8. In fact, Windows 8's issues may have been tied to that faulty SSD as well.)

Since then, as previously described, I've reinstalled Windows 8 on my PC, using a different SSD. And I've reinstalled my set of core apps, configured things as I want, and pretty much transitioned cleanly to the new OS. I wrote about this previously as well, but one point I'd like to make here is that this process still takes a long time. And that makes it hard to even consider doing it all over again.

If you've been following along for a while, then you know this is where the fun starts.

Windows 8, inexplicably and seemingly randomly, began spontaneously restarting. I'd open a new email and Gmail and--boom!--the screen would go dark and the PC would reboot. I'd click a hyperlink in a web page, same thing. There was no rhyme or reason to it, but Windows 8 would unceremoniously reboot from time to time.

Leaving aside the happy news that Windows 8 reboots quite quickly for a moment, this is obviously troubling. I record two podcasts every week, for example: What if it decided to give up the ghost in the middle of recording? Or what if I lost or scrambled some critical data because the PC died at just the right moment? This lack of trust is what doomed my first Windows 8 install on this PC.

This situation was a bit different, however. The system was rebooting without warning, not just freezing up. Maybe there was a different issue causing it.

At least I know where to look: The Event Viewer, which still exists in Windows 8, of course, as a traditional MMC-style application. (Use Start Screen Search to find it.) Here, you can examine various system events, and after a crash like the kind I was experiencing, you can find out exactly what happened.

For the full story, you'll want to examine the Details tab, which can be copied to the clipboard in XML format if needed. But in my case, the EventData contents--"LMS Service cannot connect to HECI driver"--was enough information. These terms seemed familiar for some reason. After a bit of research, I discovered that LMS stands for "local manageability service" and HECI is "Host Embedded Controller Interface (HECI)." So it was likely a driver issue related to Intel's management chipset, which is common to many PCs these days and used in businesses to remotely manage PCs. It's also something that doesn't need to work properly in a consumer's PC.

And sure enough, for this particular PC, there are two Intel-related drivers I've set aside on my home server because they're hard to find and install, even on a shipping OS like Windows 7. And that's partially because Dell only provides Vista-level drivers for this machine. And these drivers need to be installed in compatibility mode to work properly in Windows 7.

I did so in Windows 8 as well--we all desire that clean Device Manager, after all--but in this case, doing so was apparently a mistake. So I uninstalled the driver, leaving an ugly hole in Device Manager. But it would be worth it is the sudden reboots stopped.

That was Wednesday.

I woke up this morning, sat down in front of the PC and clicked on an email message. Bang! The screen went black and the PC rebooted again.

Sigh.

OK, back to the drawing board. When the PC booted up, I immediately went to Event Viewer. The time was 9:07, so the actual crash--and whatever caused it--must have happened at 9:06, given the speed with which Windows 8 boots. And sure enough, starting at 9:06:32, there are a couple of Critical issues. One particularly pertinent error, "Windows failed to resume from hibernate with error status 0xC00000BB," is followed by a few post-crash errors noting that the PC had rebooted.

Hm.

Here's the thing. Microsoft has said repeatedly that Windows 8 will be fully compatible with any PC that can run Windows 7. And as you may be realizing, too, my particular PC is a Vista-era PC, and it was never brought up to date with Windows 7 drivers. (And really, damn Dell for that.) I've been kind of mulling over in my head whether it wouldn't make more sense to move to a more modern PC--say, one based on a second-gen i3, i5, or i7 processor, given that the Core 2 Quad processor in my current PC is already two generation behind. But the OS compatibility issue may end up being the more daunting one. And that's a shame, because this system performs quite well regardless of its supposed obsolescence.

You know, aside from the spontaneous rebooting thing.

So I'll keep troubleshooting this, and I'm open to any ideas you may have. I did look at the Power Management control panel and noted that Hibernation was already disabled. But I turned off something called "hybrid sleep," which I believe combines the old Sleep and Hibernation modes. We'll see how that goes.

Barring a miracle stay of execution, it may be time for a new PC, or at least a newer PC, for daily use. I'm not going to give up on running Windows 8. But it may need to occur on a different box.

8 Is Enough: Post-Setup Configuration

2011-11-10T22:46:00.003-05:00

Every Windows power user has a default set of steps they perform right after installing Windows, which involves configuring Windows the way they want it, downloading any pending Windows Updates (a painful multi-step process today), setting up a backup regimen, installing key applications, and the like. I'm no different, and over the years I've honed the post-Setup configuration with each passing Windows release, as well as the set of applications I install. This is changing, again, with Windows 8, and will change even more as useful Metro-style apps become available.

For now, with the Windows Developer Preview, we're pretty much stuck with installing and using "classic" desktop-style applications, not newer Metro-style apps. So the list of stock applications I install hasn't changed, yet, compared to what I use with Windows 7. I'll discuss application compatibility in a future "8 is Enough" article, but the short version is that it's been pretty successful overall, with just a few notable exceptions. Ditto for hardware compatibility.

Post-Setup configuration is another matter entirely, as this process has already changed dramatically since Windows 7, and I expect the Developer Preview experience to closely match that of the final shipping version of Windows 8. (There will be some differences, of course. Microsoft will make changes to Windows 8 based on feedback, and some configuration options--like themes--just aren't available yet in this earlier preview build.)

A couple of notes up-front:

User accounts. You can now choose between an old-fashioned local user account and signing in with your Windows Live ID. I recommend the latter, if you have one, since it comes with some additional functionality. I'll write more about this in the future, and as the feature develops.

Security software. Windows 8 ships with the equivalent of Microsoft Security Essentials built right in, so there's no reason to download and install this software separately (or trigger the download through Windows Update). Windows 8's security software is now managed through the reinvigorated Windows Defender, which also provides real-time protection against malware too.

Two places for configuration. As with Windows 8 itself, the Windows 8 post-configuration tasks (and any future configuration) occur through two separate user experiences. That is, there are separate Metro-style and desktop versions of Control Panel, each of which provides different options. You'll want to examine and use both.

OK, so you've installed Windows 8 and you're staring at the new Start screen in disbelief. Now what? Per the first article in this series, you may want to cull unwanted tiles from the Start screen and organize the remaining tiles in a way you like. There's a lot less reason to do this now than will be the case in the future (remember, few Metro-style apps are available right now), but I don't like how every single shortcut that's added to the Start menu during application installs is also plastered as a tile on the Start screen. You may want to spend some time cleaning it up. (I did.)

Windows Update

As with Windows 7, it's probably a good idea to get Windows Update up to date first. You can access a minimal version of Windows Update through the Metro-style Control Panel, but you're better off just hitting the desktop and launching the classic version first. Of course, there's no obvious way to do this, since the old Start menu is gone. That's OK, since Windows 8 includes a new version of Start Menu Search, which I call Start Screen Search.

From the Start Screen, simply start typing (no need to tap the Windows key first): windows update. As you can see below, the new Search experience appears when you type, and by default, you'll see a list of apps and applications that meet the criteria of your search.

For windows update, there aren't any apps or applications, but there are some Control Panel choices. So click the Settings choice to change the search results list from apps and applications to Control Panel. You'll see something like this:

Click "Check for updates". The Windows desktop will appear, with the classic version of Windows Update. So install any pending updates, restart as need, rinse, wash, and repeat.

Device manager

Once that's done, it's probably a good idea to check and make sure that all of the devices attached to your PC are correctly identified and provided with an up-to-date driver. In Windows 8, as with previous Windows versions, the best way to do so is via Device Manager. The process for finding and launching this interface is similar to how we found Windows Update: Use Start Screen Search, this time with the search term device man. You see Device Manager located under Settings.

If there are any missing device drivers, remember that Windows 8 is fully compatible with Windows 7 drivers, so the process for finding and installing them is the same as it is with that OS.

Application install

Once the system is properly configured with updates and your hardware is working properly, it's time to install whatever applications you typically use. (In the future, this will involve installing Metro-style apps as well.) There's nothing unusual about this process per se, and it should work as it does in Windows 7. (Again, there are a few application compatibility issues I've seen; I'll discuss this in a future article.)

Control Panel (Metro)

You should spend a bit of time examining each setting in the new Metro-style Control Panel.

Some of the notable settings include:

New account protection options. While you can and should protect your PC and user account with a password (mandatory for Windows Live ID-type accounts, of course), you may want to make the logon process simpler, especially if you're using a touch-enabled device. So in addition to standard alphanumeric passwords, Windows 8 supports two new alternatives: Picture password and PIN logon. With Picture password, you can optionally configure a photo that you'll use as the basis for some touch gestures (two touches and a swipe). Apply these gestures over the photo to logon. With PIN login, you can use four numbers to logon, instead of your full password, similar to how you can access your bank account with an ATM card. Neither of these approaches replaces your account password. Instead, they are used to make logging in simpler.

Wireless. Windows 8 supports an Airplane Mode, similar to that feature on a smart phone. This option only appears on PCs with wireless networking capabilities, and only makes sense on portable computers.

Location awareness. Cribbing from another smart phone feature, Windows 8 can also relay your location information to compatible (Metro-style) apps. Note that this feature is disabled by default because of privacy implications. You can find it in the Privacy settings area of Control Panel.

PC Reset. This is one of Windows 8's greatest features. It allows you to completely reinstall Windows in just minutes and, optionally, restore all of your data (documents, photos, music, and so on) and other personal files, and Metro-style apps and their settings. This can be found in General.

Sync PC. If you logon with a Windows Live ID, you can optionally sync configured settings to the cloud (in SkyDrive) and then reapply those settings anytime you logon to another Windows 8-based PC. Synced settings include personalization (colors, background, and lock screen), themes (background image, sounds, and other desktop configurations), ease of access, language, apps settings, web browser (IE history and favorites), and more.

Homegroup. If you use homegroup sharing as I do, you'll want to enable this feature, logon to your homegroup, and then configure which homegroup features (documents, music, pictures, videos, and printers and devices) your PC shares.

Control Panel (Classic)

In the Developer Preview, the classic Control Panels appears to look and work just much that in Windows 7. There are a few differences, including a few new control panels like Location Settings (previously called Location and Other Sensors), File History, Language (previously part of Region and Language), Region (previously part of Region and Language), and Taskbar (previously Taskbar and Start Menu). There are also some control panels missing since Windows 7, including Backup and Restore* and Getting Started. (Desktop Gadgets is present in the Developer Preview but could be removed, as Microsoft is not supporting this feature further.)

(*Note: Windows Backup is actually available in the Developer Preview. Just choose Restore Windows 7 Backups and then click Set up backup.)

Configuring Startup Applications

In previous versions of Windows, you would use different tools and methods to prevent applications from auto-starting when Windows booted. In Windows 8, this is now consolidated in the new Task Manager. To find this interface, right-click on an empty area of the taskbar (in the Windows desktop) and choose Task Manager. You'll see a window like the following:

Click the More Details button to expand the view. The window will change to resemble this:

Click the new Startup tab to view the Startup process management functionality. As you can see, each application and process that auto-starts when Windows boots is listed here. (Note that no Metro-style apps are listed. According to Microsoft, Metro-style apps cannot be auto-started at boot time.)

To prevent any of these items from auto-starting at boot, right-click and choose Disable. Repeat for each item you'd like to prevent auto-starting.

Final thoughts

At this point, you should have a fairly clean and well-configured Windows 8 PC on your hands. Of course, there's a lot more going on here, and additional worries around hardware and application compatibility that could prevent this from happening fully. I'll look at these issues, and other related Windows 8 Developer Preview concerns, in future articles in this series.

Q: How do I shut down Windows 8?

2011-11-10T22:46:00.001-05:00

A: By design, this is meant to be difficult to figure out, because why would you want to turn it off?
All joking aside, there are numerous ways to shut down Windows 8 using the GUI. (The old command-line shutdown.exe is still an option as well, which you can run from the Run box, Win+R, or by using a normal command prompt.)
Here are some other options:
• If you log out of the machine, you will see power options enabling shutdown (see screen shot below).

• Select Settings on the Charms bar (Win+C), then shut down via the Power button. You can also open Settings directly by pressing Win+I.

• Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, then use the power button in the bottom right corner.

• Most new machines will also let you just push the power button on your machine, which will either power off, hibernate, or put your machine to sleep depending on your power configuration.

Q:How can I deploy Windows 8 to a Virtual Hard Disk on my Machine for easy Dual-Boot?

2011-11-10T22:45:00.001-05:00

A: Windows 7 introduced the ability to install an OS on a physical box to a virtual hard disk (VHD), and the process is exactly the same for Windows 8. I’ve done this for both Windows 8 client and Windows 8 server.

Just replace Windows 7 with Windows 8 media.

If this is an existing machine, and you want to dual boot rather than wipe the disk, then don't perform the first three blocks of commands. The process will be as follows:

1. Boot from the Windows 8 media (USB, CD, etc.).

2. At the Install screen, press Shift+F10 to open a command prompt.

3. Start diskpart and create the VHD file you want to install to:

create vdisk file=c:\wind8.vhd maximum=8000 type=expandable

select vdisk file=c:\win8.vhd

attach disk

create partition primary

format fs=ntfs label=”Windows 8” quick

4. Exit diskpart, and when you install Windows 8 you’ll be able to select your VHD volume (ignore the warning that you won't be able to install).

Windows Backup Tips

2011-11-10T22:11:00.001-05:00

windows backup with windows7/server2008r2 uses the disk guid so you can use either wbadmin to change the backup when you change disks and yes it does try and do incremental backups at least for the 'file backup' part.. Windows backup has 2 parts (file and image) . Image for system/boot drives and file for the rest is the normal backup scenario. Images are always full backups, depending upon how you have configured Windows Backup
You have two options: you can use the command-line WBADMIN to perform backups to a drive letter and schedule it via task scheduler, and you can swap drives out as much as you want, or you can configure the GUI with a backup schedule and add the extra targets via a command at a prompt.
To use the GUI + adding targets via command line:
1.) Label your drives starting from 1 with some fancy stickers using hearts and stars.
2.) Attach drive 1 to the server.
3.) Configure the WSB GUI to use your drive 1 as the target, specifying whatever source needs you have. (Note it will format the drive and label it Servername_BLAHBLAH_Disk_01.)
4.) Safely remove drive 1 from the server, then attach drive 2 to the server.
5.) Make sure disk management is able to see the drive.
6.) Jump to a command prompt, and type: wbadmin get disks > c:\disks.txt.
7.) Open c:\disks.txt and check for the GUID of the disk you want to add as a target, highlight the GUID, then copy it to clipboard.
8.) Go back to your command prompt and type: wbadmin enable backup -addtarget:GUID (Note: immediately after the colon, paste in your GUID including the squiggly brackets.) and push enter.
9.) It will verify that you indeed are adding a target, and indeed do want to format this next drive and it will label it Servername_BLAHBLAH_Disk_02.
10.) Repeat steps 4 through 9 for all your drives.

Note:

1.) The first drive it finds at time of backup, it will use for its backup, then consider the job complete; don't plug in two USB drives and expect WSB backup to both of them one after the other.
2.) It will maintain full/incremental status on each target drive independently, and they're never reliant on each other AT ALL. It doesn't care if you leave the same drive connected for a year then swap out to a different disk, or never even use one of the drives you've added to the target pool. (This makes month-end or yearly drive rotations insanely easy to implement.)
3.) If you need to perform a restore, you go to recover and pick your date/time, and it will display which drive is needed, so if you've labeled your drives correctly, then it's very simple to find which drive has your goods.
4.) If a drive dies in your rotation, you have to relabel them all when you replace the drive from what I understand. (If you need them to be sequentially labeled because you're OCD like me.) Perhaps it's possible to use the powershell commands to fix the naming schemes of the target drives, but it's never been that big of a deal for me to do, so I've relabelled them all.
5.) If your target drives are nearing capacity, it'll automatically purge old incremental history (effectively moving the last 'full' date to more recent and removing the previous incremental) and it does this well. However, if you make significant changes to your server while your target disks are near capacity, WSB will only purge up to 1/8 of your target disk capacity before it will fail with an 'out of drive space' message, and you'll have to manually purge the VSS copies on the target. (This is extremely rare, but I have seen it on small target drives.)
My solution is as follows. I delete ALL of the VSS copies on the volume on a schedule. It's a shotgun approach but I'm not using VSS for anything else on the machine the backups are performed on. If the backup shadows always have the same identifier you can probably be more specific.
Another way to force a full backup is to delete the VSS shadow copies
Step 1: Create a script for DISKSHADOW. I called mine delete_shadows.dsh and placed it in the root of C:\
Step 2: Place "delete shadows all" without the quotes in that file and save it.
Step 3: Create a new scheduled task and set it to run as SYSTEM. Set it to trigger daily on a schedule that's convenient.
Choose "Start a program" as the action. Set it to run "diskshadow" with the arguments "/s c:\delete_shadows.dsh".