VMware: Stopping a Virtual Machine gone haywire

Sometimes a Virtual Machine can’t be stopped via the VIClient. The job just hangs. There are a number of options to stop your Virtual Machine from within the Service Console. Keep in mind that these are last resort options!

• Stopping the virtual machine by issuing the command vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/<datastorename>/<vmname>/<vmname>.vmx stop. This must be done on the ESX host where the Virtual Machine is running!
• If this does not work, one can issue the following command: vmware-cmd /vmfs/volumes/<datastorename>/<vmname>/<vmname>.vmx stop hard. This will try to kill the Virtual Machine instantly.
• A final solution is to kill the PID (process ID). Issue the following command: ps auxfww | grep <vmname> to locate the correct PID (BTW: this cannot be done via ESXTOP). The first number to appear in the output is your PID. The PID can be used to terminate the process by issuing kill -9 PID.

How To: Disable UAC (TweakUAC)

Meer info over UAC vind je hier: http://4sysops.com/archives/should-you-disable-uac-user-account-control-in-windows-vista/

In de volgende post wordt uitgelegd hoe je het e.e.a. uit kunt schakelen via de reguliere wegen: http://www.computerperformance.co.uk/vista/user_account_control.htm

Het uitschakelen van UAC kan ook via het nieuwe tooltje TweakUAC.

TweakUAC kun je hier downloaden: http://www.tweak-uac.com/download/ meer informatie vind je hier: http://www.tweak-uac.com/what-is-tweak-uac/

Source: ICT-Freak

What’s New in CTP of PowerShell 2.0

1. PowerShell Remoting

Windows PowerShell 2.0 provides support for executing Cmdlets and Scripts remotely. PowerShell Remoting allows managing a collection of remote machines from a single client. Managing remote computers using PowerShell 2.0, requires that PowerShell 2.0 be installed on all the computers taking part in the operation; that is the client computer and the computer(s) being managed.

For more information:

· get-help About_Remoting

· get-help Invoke-Expression

Enable Remoting: PowerShell Remoting feature relies on Windows Remote Management (WS-Man) technology. In order for remoting to work, make sure that the WS-Man Winrm service is installed and started. To verify that Winrm service is running, do the following: PS> get-service winrmSetup places a PowerShell script (Configure-Wsman.ps1) in $pshome folder that configures WS-Man settings. To configure WS-Man for PowerShell remoting feature, please run the configure-WSMan.ps1 script from PowerShell folder (run elevated for Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista SP1). This script does not start or stop WinRM service. & $pshome\Configure-Wsman.ps1

Known issue:

· To use Remoting Cmdlets and features, PowerShell must be started as administrator/elevated.

      · PowerShell 2.0 Remoting features will not work correctly on Windows Vista RTM. Please install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) Beta to enable PowerShell Remoting features.

2. Background Jobs

Continue At: blogs.msdn.com

Microsoft OCS 2007 Quality of Experience Monitoring Server

Overview

The QoE Monitoring Server is a new server role for Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition. It provides the information that you need in order to better understand the media quality that your users are experiencing in your Office Communications Server 2007 deployment. With QoE Monitoring Server, you can do the following:

• Gather statistics on media quality of locations or based on a grouping of subnets
• Proactively monitor and troubleshoot media quality of experience issues
• Perform diagnostics to diagnose VoIP user complaints
• View trends which can help you with post-deployment growth and measure results against the service level agreement

The QoE Monitoring Server collects quality metrics at the end of each VoIP call from the participant endpoints, including IP phones, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007, the Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 client, and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 A/V Conferencing Server and Mediation Server. These quality metrics are aggregated and stored in a SQL database. The data can then be used to alert you to abnormal media quality conditions and also to generate routine media quality reports.

 

Download at: www.microsoft.com

Insight for Active Directory v1.0

Introduction

ADInsight is an LDAP (Light-weight Directory Access Protocol) real-time monitoring tool aimed at troubleshooting Active Directory client applications. Use its detailed tracing of Active Directory client-server communications to solve Windows authentication, Exchange, DNS, and other problems.

ADInsight uses DLL injection techniques to intercept calls that applications make in the Wldap32.dll library, which is the standard library underlying Active Directory APIs such ldap and ADSI. Unlike network monitoring tools, ADInsight intercepts and interprets all client-side APIs, including those that do not result in transmission to a server. ADInsight monitors any process into which it can load it’s tracing DLL, which means that it does not require administrative permissions, however, if run with administrative rights, it will also monitor system processes, including windows services.

AD Insight works on Windows 2000 and higher.

Top of page

Related Items

The Sysinternals AdRestore utility enables you to restore deleted objects on Windows Server 2003 domains.

AD Explorer is an advanced Active Directory (AD) viewer and editor.

Download AdInsight (720 KB)

Click to Connect!

Create a handy button so your friends can easily add you to their contact list.

Buttons make it easy! Use the button builder below to create a button that fits your personal style or even just your mood. Add the button to your Windows Live Hotmail, Outlook and other email signatures, Windows Live Space, or blog, and your friends and family can simply click your button to add you to their contact list.

Safety Notice: Please note that the e-mail address associated with your Windows Live ID will be available to everyone who visits any publicly available web site you choose to place this button on.

http://www.gowindowslive.com/messenger/button/Default.aspx

The Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Windows PowerShell 2.0

The Windows PowerShell Team is pleased to release the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Windows PowerShell 2.0!

This release provides a “sneak peak” into the future, including key features that empower Windows administrators to: Run commands on a remote computer, or better, against N other computers. Use the new PSJob cmdlets to start remote jobs and retrieve the results, either individually or in-aggregate! Write real cmdlets in PowerShell script itself! Internationalize your scripts and their output, not to mention debugging those same scripts!

This CTP release helps developers to more easily layer their runtime or GUI on top of PowerShell, leveraging its cmdlets and remoting infrastructure.  It includes APIs to create and use a pool of Runspaces (engines) to run cmdlets. This release also presents very early looks at Restricted Runspaces (the ability to declare a script, cmdlet or variable public or private) and the Graphical PowerShell (a script editor and a Unicode-enabled console). These are just a few of the new features I think are interesting in Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP.  Additionally this CTP includes some simple updates… like new parameters to select-string (Context, AllMatches, NotMatch and Encoding) and new operators like –split and -join!

Last but certainly not least, V2 builds upon Windows PowerShell 1.0 by providing backward compatibility – your 1.0 cmdlets and scripts will run on this CTP (with the exceptions noted in the Release Notes – mostly new keywords/cmdlets). If a working 1.0 script doesn’t run on V2 and is not in the known list of exceptions, please tell us about it!

 

Selected New Features in Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP
(Please refer to Release Notes and Help topics for more details)

PowerShell Remoting

Graphical PowerShell

ScriptCmdlets

Restricted Runspaces

RunspacePools

Background Jobs

Data Language

Script Internationalization

Script Debugging

24 New Cmdlets

Parser Tokenizer API

New PowerShell Hosting APIs

Metadata APIs for Command and Parameters

 

What’s New in CTP of PowerShell 2.0

Creating a Bootable WinPE 2.0 USB Key

Creating a Bootable WinPE 2.0 USB Key

Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) 2.0 is a slimed down version of Windows (hence all the MiniNT references) that used to be the exclusive domain of OEM’s providers. Microsoft has wisely chosen to offer this to the masses as part of the Windows AIK. USB keys can be found just about anywhere these days for next to nothing. Combine the capabilities of WinPE with the portability of a USB key and you just made a very powerful troubleshooting, imaging, and data recovery tool. Here is a quick step by step on how to do just that:

Step 1. ) Get USB Key

You probably already have a few and if not you can purchase these just about anywhere, so I won’t tell you where to get one. You should get a USB 2.0 device of at least 512mb in size, but if you plan on putting a lot into a custom PE install or plan on using it to transfer data too then you are better served getting a larger size (2.0-4.0GB)

Step 2.) Download and Install the Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK)

This deployment oriented tool set contains Windows PE 2.0.

Step 3.) Format the USB key

Note: This must be done from Windows Vista

Start a command prompt and run the following. This set of commands assumes your USB key is detected as disk 1, you should double check that by doing a list of the disks before cleaning it. If you have multiple hard drives you could end up wiping your second drive using this command. You have been warned.

• Diskpart
• select disk 1
• clean
• create partition primary
• select partition 1
• active
• format fs=fat32
• assign
• exit

Step 4.) Setup Windows PE

• In this step you will create and customize WinPE for your disk. From the machine that you installed the Windows AIK go to the start menu and select "Windows PE Tools Command Prompt" from under the Windows AIK program folder.
• Run Copype.cmd x86 c:’winpe_x86
  • you can create an 64-bit version by changing the architecture from x86 to amd64
• Add customizations to WinPE
  • copy any tools you want available to the C:’winpe_x86’iso folder such as imaging tools if you want to use this for capturing images (imagex, wimscript.ini)

Step 5 .) Copy Windows PE to USB Key

Insert the USB key into the machine that you have WinPE on and run the following command to copy the contents to the USB Key

xcopy c:’winpe_x86’iso’*.* /s /e /f e:’

change c: to reflect the drive your files on and e: to be your USB key.

There you have it…a quick way to make a handy USB version of WinPE that you can take with you anywhere. These can be used in almost any modern computer that supports USB booting. More information on this and other great things you can do with Windows PE are located in the Windows AIK.

Workaround discovered for clean install with Vista upgrade dvd

Microsoft internal documentation reveals workaround for Vista Upgrade DVDs with no need for a previous version of Windows

Per Microsoft’s new licensing requirements for Vista, users are required to install a Windows Vista Upgrade from with Windows Xp. When this occurs, the Windows XP license is forfeited and the Windows Vista installation process can take place.

Now, however, this workaround allows users to perform a “clean install.” The process is a bit tedious, but is not hard are all to complete. Users have to perform these simple steps to perform a clean install of Vista without a previous version of Windows installed with an upgrade DVD:

1. Boot from the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD and start the setup program.
   
2. When prompted to enter your product key, DO NOT enter it. Click “Next” and proceed with setup. This will install Windows Vista as a 30-day trial.
   
3. When prompted, select the edition of Vista which you have purchased and continue with setup.
   
4. Once setup has been completed and you have been brought to the desktop for the first time, run the install program from within Windows Vista.
   
5. This time, type in your product key when prompted.
   
6. When asked whether to perform an Upgrade or Custom (advanced) install, choose Custom (advanced) to perform a clean install of Vista. Yes, this means that you will have to install Vista for a second time.
   
7. Once setup has completed for the second time, you should be able to activate Windows Vista normally. You can also delete the Windows.old directory which contains information from the first Vista install.
   

Windows NT Backup – Restore Utility

This download is a utility that runs on Windows Vista and Windows Server Codename “Longhorn” to restore older backups, made using the “NT Backup” application on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. NT Backup has been replaced in Windows Vista or Windows Server Codename “Longhorn” with different applications, which are not compatible with the .bkf files that NT Backup created.

You can use this utility if you made a backup using an older version of Windows, and now want to restore files from that backup on to a computer running Windows Vista or Windows Server Codename “Longhorn”. The utility requires that you also enable the Removable Storage Manager feature.

Get it here.