Tech Spot

For those of you who create Windows server templates (for me, in VMware ESXi 3.5), ever spin up a new VM only to be greeted by the Windows activation process or the 30-day grace period out of time?  It's maddening because one of the options apparently allows online registration, but you can't get to the TCP/IP settings to enable the network to be able to do it!  And I hate trying to call up the activation line, to the point where it's easier to fish out an older or different server image and try again. What worked for me:   c:\sysprep\sysprep -activated –reseal –mini Here are some links and notes for more information: Sysprep Tools and Settings   (description of parameters including command-line and sysprep.inf answer file) How to use the Sysprep tool to automate successful deployment of Windows XP  (more command-line params) How Sysprep Works   (check out the section Resetting Windows Activation; for Vista, 7, Server 2008 read up o...

I just installed Ubuntu 10.04 (Netbook Edition) -- perfect for my ancient Fujitsu laptop (Intel Celeron with 512 MB RAM), but don't consider it as anything other than a starter distro.  If you plan on using it standard out-of-the-box, you shouldn't experience the following issue.  I had a need to install gcc but it's not included by default.  Running sudo apt-get install build-essentials will install it but you'll likely see this error: E: Encountered a section with no Package: header E: Problem with MergeList  /var/lib/ apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_lucid-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. A work-around is to simply rename (or move the offending list file to /tmp) and try running apt-get again (e.g. sudo mv var/lib/ apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_lucid-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages /tmp/ . )

What a huge snafu.  Yahoo! users on Comcast (and possibly other ISPs) are not able to reach www.yahoo.com or any of the numerous services (most important being mail.yahoo.com).  I did a 'dig' trace on their DNS and it seems they host their own DNS.  Not all bad as the IP addresses seem to be in different geographic areas.  However, the first two are failing for me.  I wonder if Yahoo! would be better served by outsourcing DNS to one of the Anycast DNS providers such as Dynect or UltraDNS.  Of course, with the sheer number of lookups, it may be very costly! yahoo.com. 172800 IN NS ns1.yahoo.com. (68.180.131.16) yahoo.com. 172800 IN NS ns2.yahoo.com. (68.142.255.16) yahoo.com. 172800 IN NS ns3.yahoo.com. (121.101.152.99) yahoo.com. 172800 IN NS ns4.yahoo.com. (68.142.196.63) yahoo.com. 172800 IN NS ns5.yahoo.com. (119.160.247.124) The mess on Twitter: ‎ ITArtillery ‎ : 4 out of 5 of  Yahoo's  DNS server are having is...

I was able to use the free  StarWind Software's V2V converter to convert a vmdk flat file created in ESXi (3.5) to VHD format for Virtual PC.  I had tried another converter made by Prowess (SmartVDK) but this would not recognize the flat vmdk files; neither did the VMDK2VHD tool by vmToolkit.   I have not tried WinImage but others have reported success with it. Make sure to keep the .vmdk descriptor file (usually under 1 KB in size) -- you would use this as the Source disk, not the -flat file directly. There may be some BSOD or driver issues - see  Jerome Laban's blog on how to resolve this.

If you've read Doug Steele's write-up  to enable DSN-less connections in Access, it works great with Trusted Connections.  But what if you're using SQL Server authentication instead, and don't want to store the password or credentials in the code? You can set the  DB_ATTACHSAVEPWD property like such (see Doug's article for the full code): tdfCurrent.Connect = "ODBC;DRIVER={sql server};DATABASE=" & _ DatabaseName & ";SERVER=" & ServerName & _ ";Uid=" & myUserName & _ ";Pwd=" & myPassword & ";" tdfCurrent. Attributes = DB_ATTACHSAVEPWD Then go ahead and run the macros or forms to use the table(s) in question.  Doug states that the username and password will be stored in plaintext in the Connect property, but if you run the FixConnections sub from a debug window, and then run a macro or form, this should save...

I had a piece of C# vendor code to install for authentication: IDictionary userInfo = new Dictionary (); userInfo.Add(Agent.TOKEN_SUBJECT, sAMAccountName); userInfo.Add(“domain”, domain); Kept getting errors: CS0246: The type or namespace name 'Dictionary' could not be found CS0305: Using the generic type 'System.Collections.Generic.IDictionary ' requires '2' type arguments Turns out the vendor did not specify which classes to include, so I had to do a bit of digging.  I found some posts that said Dictionary was no longer being used in .NET 2.0 (not sure about that).  To resolve this, make sure you import the following in order to instantiate a Dictionary object with 2 params: using System; using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; ASP.NET, .NET 2.0

Anyone getting this same issue?  Basically when browsing finance.yahoo.com or perhaps some other Yahoo! sites, Firefox 3.6 waits for a response from query.yahooapis.com for several minutes before rendering the page. I've found one manual workaround, is to just hit Escape or stop the page request, then refresh right away.  It'll usually load the page right up.

This solution may apply to anyone trying to extend a primary boot volume in Windows 2003 Server (mine happened to be the R2 Enterprise edition, but may apply to prior versions of 2003 Server).  I was following VMware KB  1007266  to extend the boot volume on this Windows 2003 guest VM on ESXi (3.5).  This is a separate issue from the Microsoft KB # 841650 . Everything was fine when I attached the newly extended VMDK file to my helper VM.  But I kept getting the "The volume you have selected may not be extended" error and couldn't figure out why.  It turns out I didn't read the KB carefully enough.  Make sure you assign a drive letter in the Windows Disk Management UI first! Before assigning a drive letter: DISKPART> list disk   Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt   --------  ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---   Disk 0 ...

If this update keeps showing up on Windows Update but can never install because you're somehow missing the file PROPLUS.MSI - you may be able to complete it finally!  It's an important update and ranks as a high security thread on Secunia PSI. Go to this site, http://www.billynda.com/ and save the file "Proplus.msi" (you may have to right-click on it and choose Save link as...).  Remember which directory you saved it to so you can browse to it again during the XP installation. Now run Windows Update again and start the updates.  When it asks you for the PROPLUS.MSI file, browse to the location where you saved it.  The update should complete.