Sam.McGeown.co.uk

GFI Backup – Home Edition: Free backup for home users!

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (sammcgeown) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:27:15 +0100

Why should a home user backup? Most don’t, most people just have their photos, music and video collection on a single hard drive, maybe an external drive or even a USB key. Unfortunately, no-one ever thinks about what they’d do if their drive were to fail, losing all their precious holiday snaps, their slightly embarrassing music collection, or perhaps their family finances. But stop and think for a second – can you really replace those holiday snaps? What about your music collection – do you want to spend 3 days importing all your CDs or DVDs? Or maybe your personal finance app – is that something you could afford to lose?

With my little preachy bit out of the way, I’ll come to my point – GFI have released their own home backup software, and from what I can see, it’s pretty good. Installation is dead simple, and then you’re presented with your main screen:

Simple enough, Backup lets you…well…backup, Restore, funnily enough, lets you restore, Sync is a handy tool for syncing data across several sources, and finally My Tasks lets you modify previously configured Backup, Restore and Sync tasks.

Backup

Configuring Backups is as simple as selecting What, Where and When – What do you want to backup? Where do you want to back it up to? When do you want to back it up? There are some nice features over the bundled-with-Windows NTBackup

email notifications
backup to an FTP site
backup registry keys
backup email applications
backup user settings (i.e. your AppData folder)
“stacked backup” that keeps versions of your data
zip compression
aes encryption

In my test the pre-scan element of the backup took a while, but the actual backup itself was pretty speedy. I backed up my website (about 3000 files, 10mb) in 54 seconds to an external USB drive.

Restore

Restoring is just as easy, you can select to restore the entire backup, or individual files and folders. Both work well and are intuitive. I restored the same web folder back to my hard drive in an incredible 9 seconds.

Sync

I’ve not tested comprehensively, but on the surface it looks like a great piece of home software, which I’ll be using to do some off-site backups at home. And it’s free, which means you can’t go far wrong – nice one GFI!

Download GFI Backup – Home Edition here

Using AC97 audio with Windows 7

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:29:00 +0100

Like thousands of other IT pros out there, I'm testing Windows 7 out on my laptop - since I don't want to mess around with my main PC, it's running on some older kit. The problem with that is that there aren't many Vista drivers around for the hardware - why would there be, it's not even supposed to be able to run Vista?! It does, however, run Windows 7 very admirably (just one of the many improvements).

The only problem was the sound card, the only drivers available from Dell for the onboard sound were for XP, which crash in both Vista and 7. The sound card is compatible with Intel's generic AC97, so it didn't take long to find a Vista compatible AC97 driver from RealTek which will run any AC97 hardware, regardless of the actual manufacturer.

Internet Explorer or Services.msc problems after McAfee Uninstall

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:34:00 +0100

I'm in the middle of rolling out Sophos as a replacement to the incumbent McAfee at work. One interesting thing that I found as I rolled out to some test users was that they were unable to log on to one of our internal systems using NTLM (integrated authentication). Instantly the roll out of Sophos was blamed - and I can understand why - the problem did not occur until Sophos was installed.

But the truth is that in it's dying breath McAfee had one last laugh and had un-registered jscript.dll and vbscript.dll. I can say that now because I've spent a morning with Sophos support and been on the brink of abandoning our roll-out until I looked into one of the side symptoms.

Sophos was ruled out as the cause because a) it did not effect ALL the Sophos test machines, just ones where McAfee was uninstalled b) with Sophos disabled (services and browser add on) the problem did not go away c) Uninstalling Sophos did not solve the problem. It did however, point me in the right direction - during the uninstall there was an error message, the fix for which was to re-register jscript.dll (clue #1)

When I opened Services.msc, the Extended view simply showed a blue frame - Standard view was fine. One of the fixes for this was to re-register jscript.dll and vbscript.dll (clue #2).

Clue #3 came when I googled McAfee and jscript.dll, rather than blaming it on Sophos. A myriad of pleas for help from McAfee users with stuffed browsers, update issues and the like.

The Solution

Download and run the McAfee Consumer Product Removal tool (http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?lc=2057&id=TS100507)
Reboot if required
Open a command prompt (Start > Run > "cmd")
Type the following commands in one at a time, hit enter and acknowledge the result
- Regsvr32.dll jscript.dll
- Regsvr32 vbscript.dll
Reboot again

On successful completion of this, you should be back up and running.

Now, let me take this opportunity to say that McAfee is a resource hogging, trouble making screwed up piece of software which I pray to God that I never have to support again. </rant>

Why not to use Dell Connection Point Manager, or any Dell 3G wireless software

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:08:00 +0100

I have to support about 20 laptops with 3G connections in them, they're all Dell and range from D800s with PCMCIA 3G data cards, D830s with internal Dell Wireless 5520 Modems and some newer E4200s with internal Dell Wireless 5530 Modems. Both the D830s and the E4200s are shipped with Dell software to manage the connections. The D800s use Vodafone Mobile Connect, and have never, ever, caused me a problem.

The Dell software on the other hand, is a nightmare. The most common issue is the classic "Sim Card Not Found", which occurs most of the time. I have spent literally hours on the phone to Dell support and our telecoms provider trying to get someone to help. I have flashed firmware on the cards, upgraded BIOS, installed countless versions of the drivers and generally wasted a LOT of my time. We even got as far as replacing all the SIM cards with various different versions just to try and get a connection.

The final insult was when we ordered the new E4200s and they just would not connect to 3G. They'd connect to 56k WAP ok, intermittantly not recognise the SIM, but never actually manage 3G. After yet more hours of support calls and useless flashing of firmware, I struck gold.

The solution? Vodafone Mobile Connect. Bin the Dell connection manager software, it's unstable, buggy and does not work. Even on laptops we COULD get a connection, it crashed frequently. Not only that, but VMC has features far beyond the Dell solution. I don't know if other providers have their own software, or whether it's any good, but I can hazard a guess it will be better than Dell's.

New look and feel, revised categories and a traffic milestone!

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:22:00 +0100

Just a quick note to mark the fact that I've updated the look and feel of the blog - hopefully with a bit more space and cleaner lines. It's still teething, so report any bugs you see! I've had a bit of a cleanup of the categories to remove some of the less "category" like ones - they were being a bit blurred with the tags.

Lastly, I'm really quite amazed to say that my blog is now well over 100 visitors a day on a weekday, so thank you for visiting! (Now if only a few more clicked on the adverts, It would start to recover some of the cost of hosting!)

As ever, let me know what you think!

Sam

How to force the removal of Folder Redirection from specific user accounts

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:14:00 +0100

We have a folder redirection policy in place for all of our users in combination with a roaming profile policy - this policy is applied to the OU that contains our users. Unfortunately this policy was accidently linked to the root of our domain too, causing our Domain Admin users to be redirected too - something we do not want. When the mistake was discovered, the policy was unlinked, but the redirection remained (despite being set to revert when users fall out of scope). I tried re-applying the policy, modifying the out of scope policy and then moving the Domain Admin user out of scope, but it failed to remove the folder redirection.

In the end, the solution was straight forward enough:

Create a new OU (I used "Temp") and move the affected user(s) there:

Create and link a new Group Policy Object to the new OU. Name it something descriptive so you know what it is in future - Folder Redirection Removal.

Edit the group policy, drill down to User Configuration > Windows Settings > Folder Redirection and right click - properties on each folder you want to reset. Set the setting to “Basic – Redirect everyone’s folder to the same location” and set the target folder location to “Redirect to the local userprofile location”.

Select the settings tab and make sure the Policy Removal setting is set to “Redirect the folder back to the local userprofile location when the policy is removed.”

Set that for each folder you want to reset. Close the Group Policy Object Editor, and GPMC. Log onto the user's account on each computer you want to remove the redirection on - in my case, several servers. Check the location of the redirected folders to make sure it’s been removed. Once you’re sure, you can move your user back to the correct OU.

VMWare Server: The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF).

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:02:00 +0100

Having just rebooted my laptop, I clicked on the link to open VMWare Infrastructure Web Access in the my browser and was slightly puzzled by the "page cannot be displayed" error. I figured it was probably the VMWare Server Web Access service not starting for some reason, so I opened services.msc and checked it out. The Web Access service was actually running, but the Host Agent service was not, so I tried to start it - it failed. Dutifully opening Event Viewer for some more information I found the error:

The VMware Host Agent service terminated with service-specific error 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF).

Great. Thanks for the elaboration. Time to check the VMWare logs, (c:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMWare Server\) - the most recent of which contained the following entry:

[2009-02-18 10:55:27.908 'App' 4408 info] Trying hostsvc
[2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 panic] error: not well-formed (invalid token)
[2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 panic] backtrace:(backtraces not supported)
[2009-02-18 10:55:27.948 'App' 4408 info] Win32 service stopped

A bit of Googling pointed me in the right direction, "not well-formed" refers to the XML config files which are stored in c:\ProgramData\VMWare\VMWare Server\hostd, after that it was just a case of opening each one in turn until I found the malformed one. I backed it up and replaced it with a default version, and lo and behold, my services started!

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007: [0x80070533] Logon failure: account currently disabled.

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:19:00 +0100

Just a quick note on a little error I had installing OCS 2007. We have a lot of users that are set up to run services for applications - as such we have a fairly tightly controlled group policy regarding the permissions required to run as a service. This causes the error above to occur because the newly created users aren't given permissions to run a service. The solution is to add the newly created users to our Application Service group.

I added the RTCService user after the first installation failed, and ran again. It will fail a second time because the RTCComponentService is not created at the time the RTCService user causes the installation to fail the first time. Add the RTCComponentServiceto the group and it will install without any issues.

Powershell script to zip all .bak files in a folder structure, then delete the .bak

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:37:00 +0100

Our development SQL server is a monster...there are many many databases, and hundreds, if not thousands of backup files. With each patch tested on the software we sell, there is a new backup. With each client deployment, a new database. With each new major version, a new database. Backups of the new databases inevitably occur, and so we have more files, in more folders - most of which need to be kept in case of roll-backs, bugs or deployment issues.

This all adds up to a bit of an administrative nightmare, especially since the backups eat away at my storage at a phenomonal rate. Zipping the .bak files is great, but since each DB has it's own backup folder, it can become a bit of a nightmare to go through, zip and delete the .baks. For my first real foray into using PowerShell, I decided I'd write a script to take the legwork out of it for me.


# Powershell Script to recurse input path looking for .bak files, Zip them
# and delete the .bak.
function out-zip {
  Param([string]$path)
  if (-not $path.EndsWith('.zip')) {$path += '.zip'}
  if (-not (test-path $path)) {
    set-content $path ("PK" + [char]5 + [char]6 + ("$([char]0)" * 18))
  }
  $ZipFile = (new-object -com shell.application).NameSpace($path)
  $input | foreach {$zipfile.CopyHere($_.fullname)} | out-null
}
$FileCount =0
$FilesZipped =0
$FilesDeleted =0
$InputPath = $args[0]
if($InputPath.Length -lt 2)
{
    Write-Host "Please supply a path name as your first argument" -foregroundcolor Red
    return
}
if(-not (Test-Path $InputPath))
{
    Write-Host "Path does not appear to be valid" -foregroundcolor Red
    return
}
$BakFiles = Get-ChildItem $InputPath -Include *.bak -recurse
Foreach ($Bak in $BakFiles)
{
write-host "File: $Bak" -foregroundcolor Yellow
$ZipFile = $Bak.FullName -replace ".bak", ".zip"
if (Test-Path $ZipFile)
{
    Write-Host "$ZipFile exists already, aborted." -foregroundcolor Red
}
else
{
    Get-Item $Bak | out-zip $ZipFile
    if(Test-Path $ZipFile)
    {
        $Response = read-host -prompt "Please wait for zip to complete then type c<enter> to continue..."
        if($Response = "c")
        {
            $FilesZipped++
            Remove-Item $Bak.FullName
            if(Test-Path $Bak.FullName)
            {
                Write-Host "File not deleted, manually remove $Bak.Fullname" -foregroundcolor Red
            }
            else
            {
                Write-Host "OK" -foregroundcolor Green
                $FilesDeleted++
            }
        }
        else
        {
            Write-Host "File delete aborted by user" -foregroundcolor Red
        }
    }
}
$FileCount++
}
Write-Host Files found: $FileCount
Write-Host Files Zipped: $FilesZipped
Write-Host Files Deleted: $FilesDeleted

Obviously, this is not something I'd recommend you running lightly without serious testing on your own systems - that said, I hope it helps! I make no warantee or any kind of promise that you won't lose data by running this! It's just an exercise in PowerShell for me.

Windows update or installer fails to install with error "You do not have permission to update Windows Server 2003. Please contact your system administrator."

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:22:00 +0100

I was just installing PowerShell on one of my Windows Server 2003 servers, when I encountered the error "You do not have permission to update Windows Server 2003. Please contact your system administrator." Odd, especially considering that I was installing as the Domain Administrator, and that user should have more than enough permissions. A little bit of digging led me to MSKB 888791 which shows the permissions that are required in Group Policy to install the update. Check that your applicable GPO has the following permissions for your user:

Back up files and directories
Restore files and directories
Manage auditing and security log
Take ownership of files or other objects
Shutdown the system
Debug programs

Once I found the missing permission (in this case, an Exchange 2003 installation had removed the "Manage auditing and security log" permission) and added it back in, I ran the command "gpupdate /force", logged off and back on again on the offending server and retried the installation. The error disappears and the installation is a success!

Windows Vista Local Area Network Connection “Authentication Failed”

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:35:00 +0100

If you’re getting a error on your LAN connection it’s possible that your network connection is attempting 802.11 authentication on your wired network. Unfortunately, it seems that Vista/Server 2008 both attempt it before reverting. As far as I can see, it’s not causing any issues, other than irritating me with a “failed” and a red question mark.

Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to fix! The authentication is handled by the Wired AutoConfig service, so it’s just a case of disabling it. Navigate “Start”, then click “Run” (or just hit Win + r) and type “services.msc”. Click “OK” and the Services console will fire up.

Now if you scroll down to Wired Autoconfig and configure it as below (Stop the service, then select “Disabled” as the startup type).

Alternatively, you can enable 802.11 on your Windows Domain…but that’s another story!

Dell Latitude E6500 blue screen of death on XP install/downgrade/reinstall

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:39:00 +0100

I've just had a frustrating few days trying to downgrade 4 Dell Latitude E6500 laptops to XP. The problem was, whenever you booted to the XP cd you would get to the point just before you agree to the license and then hit a blue screen with a SATA error code. It seems that the bundled driver for the SATA storage controller incorrectly identifies it and causes a fatal error as it's loaded.

The solution is fairly specific and needs to be done exactly in the order prescribed below. You will need a USB floppy drive, and a blank floppy disk.

Firstly, go to Dell's support website and select the downloads for your E6500 laptop (if you enter your service tag, you might find that there are no XP downloads available -use the product select instead).
Download the LATEST BIOS - at the point of writing that's A11.
Also download the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver.
Plug in your USB floppy, insert the disk and format it. Extract the storage manager driver, and then copy the extracted files onto the floppy. Unplug the floppy
Now run the BIOS update, follow the on-screen instructions, let it reboot and flash your BIOS.
Reboot, and on the BIOS screen, hit F2 to enter into the BIOS setup.
Move down to System Configuration, then SATA operation. Make sure it's set to IRRT.
Move through the BIOS and disable Parallel, Serial, and any other devices that aren't needed. Switch the NIC to Disabled. Also go down to Miscellaneous Devices and ensure USB and the Modular bay (i.e. CD/DVD) are enabled. Disable everything else.
Plug in your USB floppy, and insert the floppy containing the drivers from earlier. Also put your Windows XP install CD in the CD/DVD drive. Save your BIOS changes and then reboot.
On the BIOS screen, hit F12 to bring up the one time boot menu. Select your CD/DVD ROM device.
*IMPORTANT* The blue windows installer screen will come up and you have a few seconds to hit F6 to specify that you want to use a 3rd party driver for storage.
Once you've hit it, wait for the next screen, which will be asking for your driver. Hit S and specify the Intel SATA driver needed. There were 4 drivers in the list for my laptops, trial and error will find the right one. It should say that Windows already has a driver for that device - do you want to use the new one? Well of course you do, the old one blue screens. Hit S to accept it and at the next screen, hit ENTER to continue.
After that, it's plain sailing - just don't forget to enable all of your devices once you've installed XP!!!

SSH remote console to ESXi server

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:43:00 +0100

Having recently installed an ESXi server, I am getting to grips with the management and administration of it, one of the things that I wanted to be able to do was connect to the remote terminal through SSH.

I downloaded my SSH client of choice, PuTTY, and set about connecting, however the server refused the connection. It seems that SSH is not enabled out of the box for ESXi and you need to go through some steps to get there - I found some helpful hints here.These are the steps that I took, based on the advice and some other research.

Go to the ESXi server console screen and hit "Alt+F1". This will switch you to a screen that looks like a log.

Type "unsupported" - you won't see it enter on the screen, just type it blind, followed by the enter key.

You'll see a nice warning, followed by a prompt for the root password. Type your root password and you'll now be at the comand prompt.

Now to edit the inetd.conf. Type "vi /etc/inetd.conf" which will open the conf file in the VI editor. If you're a Windows admin VI will seem a bit strange...just follow the instructions and you'll be ok!

Type "/ssh" to find the line responsible for the SSH config.

Move the cursor using the arrow keys over the # symbol at the beginning of the line, and then press "x" to delete it.

Now type ":wq!" to save the file and quit VI.

Back at the command prompt you can type "/sbin/services.sh restart" to restart the management services.

Next if your server is not running any VMs you can just restart it...if not you will need to identify the process ID for inetd.

Type "ps | grep inetd" which returns the process ID

Type "kill -HUP <process ID>" with the process ID you've just identified.

Type "exit" to log out of that console, and do another "Alt+F1" to switch back to the ESXi home screen.

Back on your SSH client you should be able to log in successfully.

Major office move completed!

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:38:00 +0100

If anyone visits here regularly, rather than by google search, you'll have noticed that I haven't posted much lately. This is because of a major office move at work which I have been managing from the technical side of things, and moving a 25 server operation isn't an easy job. I've upgraded the entire network infrastructure throughout from SOHO to enterprise products.

Normal service will resume shortly!

Cisco ASA - ASDM "cannot load configuration"

sam.nospam@nospam.mcgeown.co.uk (SamMcGeown) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:55:00 +0100

I was configuring our new Cisco ASA 5510 firewall today, as part of a major infrastructure upgrade. I'm pretty comfortable with the Cisco IOS, but I still prefer the GUI for the basic set up, using command line to tweak the finer or more complex configurations. However, straight out of the box, I had a very hard time getting the ASDM to load. Being familiar with the PDM from the PIX range of firewalls, I should have guessed the problem straight away. Essentially, whatever problem you're having with the ASDM, whether it's not loading, not reading the configuration or whatever, the answer is likely to be "uninstall your current version of Java, google java 1.4.2, install it, try again". It was the same with the PDM, and guess what? It's the same with the ASDM.