We had an extended power outage the other day, where the battery backup on the servers ran out and everything shut down. That’s not great, because you always want to have at least one DC up and running at all times. But there were many other problems after the power outage, and I finally tracked them down. DFSR, SYSVOL, and NETLOGON were not running correctly on the 2012 servers, causing them not to be domain controllers anymore, so the only DC was the old 2008 R2 one that was on the road to being decommissioned. After much researching, I found some links that explained how to get it all working again.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947022
Oct 12
22
Export and Import DHCP Scope
I was researching how to change the Subnet Mask of a DHCP scope on a Windows 2008 server. It turns out you can’t change the subnet without deleting the scope and recreating it. If there are a lot of customizations to the scope, though, like reservations and scope options, it’s no easy task to delete and recreate the scope. Luckily I found one page that explains how to export the scope to a text file, make changes, and then reimport it. The whole process takes only a couple of minutes, and you end up with a deleted and rebuilt scope that has all your customizations intact.
WindowsTricks.in explains the commands.
Use the below command to export the scope configuration
Syntax:
C:\>netsh dhcp server \\”Server name” scope “scope subnet” dump>c:\dhcp.txt
Example:
C:\>netsh dhcp server \\Test01 scope 192.168.1.0 dump>c:\dhcp.txt
That creates a text file you can edit to change the Subnet, and whatever else you want changed. Then you have to delete the scope from the DHCP manager, and reimport the text file to create a new scope with the settings you specified.
C:\>netsh exec c:\dhcp.txt
I did it and it was exactly as easy as it sounds. After renewing my lease, the clients had the new DHCP scope. In all, it was a painless operation.
When you are transferring your Outlook installation to a new computer, it is simple to move your mailbox folders. You just need to find and copy the PST file and move it to the new computer. But that is only half the battle. That moves your folders, but it does not move your account settings, all that info about your POP servers and logins. Recreating that can be a pain sometimes, and time consuming.
There is a way to copy all of that info in one go. It’s not quite as simple as moving a PST, but it’s not bad if you know what you’re doing. All of that info is stored in the registry, under the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles\Outlook. All you have to do is export that key from the old computer, and import it on the new computer, and all of your account settings will copy over.
Starting with Outlook 2013, the registry key has changed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\<version>\Outlook\Profiles.
Jun 12
28
IE Requires www. to Go to a Site
I had an interesting and obscure problem today with a solution that was buried deep in the registry. Which is what this blog is all about! IE8 on Windows XP would go to www.google.com, but it would not go to google.com. I just got a message instead.
Microsoft Internet Explorer Cannot find ‘google.com’. Make sure the path or internet address is correct.
It was happening with other sites too; it would go to them if I included www, but would not go to them without. I knew there had to be some setting or registry entry that was screwed up, but I didn’t know where to look.
Finally I found the solution on the Maxthon support forums. It was a registry entry indeed. Under this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\URL\
There are two subkeys, DefaultPrefix and Prefixes. In each of these is a (Default) value that should be set to http://. On the computer that was not working today, one of them was (value not set). I changed it, and it started working right away.
May 12
9
No Internet After Virus Removal
I had a problem with a computer where after cleaning off a virus there was no internet access, and no network connectivity at all. When I tried to ping localhost, it said:
Unable to contact IP driver, error code 2.
When I tried to do ipconfig, I got:
An internal error occurred: The request is not supported.
Additional information: Unable to query host name.
After some digging through event logs and Google, I found the problem. The virus had damaged some drivers, specifically c:\windows\system32\drivers\IPSec.sys. That file was completely missing, so when I replaced it and rebooted everything started working again.
The original post where I found the solution is here. If that doesn’t work there are instructions to completely reset TCP/IP.
May 12
2
Error 0×8007005 Access Is Denied
I had a problem today when I was trying to schedule a Windows Backup on Windows XP. The user had no password, so when I entered the credentials to run the scheduled task under, I got a 0×8007005 Access Is Denied error.
After some searching I found the solution at forums.support.roxio.com/topic/18334-windowxp-scheduled-task-problems.
- Open regedit (click start, run, type regedit, press enter or click OK), in the left pane tree navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
- Click on that key in the left pane to show its contents in the right pane.
- See if there is a value called limitblankpassworduse
- If it exists, make sure its data is 0 (if not right cdick on it, click modify and set it to 0)
- If it does not exist, right click in the right pane, click new, DWord value, name it limitblankpassworduse
and set its data to 0.- Close regedit.
After that I was able to schedule the task with no problems, and it ran fine.
Mar 12
12
No DVD Drive Listed in Windows 8
I’ve been installing and playing with Windows 8 lately, including setting it up to be my main daily use computer. Everything has gone fairly smooth except for my DVD drives. The drives did not show up after a clean install; they weren’t in Windows Explorer, they weren’t in Disk Management, they weren’t in Device Manager. Not even showing up as an Unknown Device without any drivers. They were just nowhere.
I finally found the solution, in a registry entry. I don’t know if this is a bug in Windows, or just a glitch in my installation. But I put this entry into the registry, and my DVD drives started working immediately. I think I had to rescan Device Manager, but I didn’t have to reboot.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Controller0]
“EnumDevice1″=dword:00000002
I set the value to 2 because I have 2 drives. If you only have one drive you can just enter 1.
Aug 11
20
Boot From VHD: Change the target VHD
There is a whole tutorial that could be written about booting from a VHD in Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2. This is not that tutorial, and I am probably not the one to write it. But I did want to make a note of this because I know that I’ll forget it the next time I need it.
To change the VHD that you’re booting from, you just have to make a couple of changes to the BCD. Boot from a Windows PE disc or a Windows 7 disc in System Recovery, and get to a command prompt. Then you enter these two commands. Notice that they’re almost exactly the same.
bcdedit /set {default} device vhd=[C:]\myvhd.vhd
bcdedit /set {default} osdevice vhd=[C:]\myvhd.vhd
Obviously you’ll replace myvhd.vhd with the VHD you want to boot from.
Aug 11
13
Group Policy Preferences
Group Policy preferences is something new in Windows Server 2008. It used to be that adding group policies for things like mapped drives, printers, and Control Panel settings was a pain, and you had to drill down several nested layers all over the place to change anything. But with Group Policy preferences, all these common settings are now lumped together in one place, easy to change. It’s a really handy way to easily do what used to be a lot harder.
The problem is, these settings only get applied in Windows 7. Anything older, even Vista, will just ignore them unless you install the Group Policy Preferences Client Side Extensions. To install them you can look for them in Windows Update or just download them and install them manually. CGross at MSMVPs even has advice on how to use Group Policy to install the Client Side Extensions.
Posted in Windows 2008 Windows Server by .
Jun 11
1
Event ID 27
I was getting Event ID 27 on a server. The error read:
Time Provider NtpClient: The response received from domain controller <host dns name> is missing the signature. The response may have been tampered with and will be ignored.
This sounds likes a scary message, with warnings that the response has been tampered with, but like many messages it just means that there was some glitch and the servers aren’t syncing correctly anymore. I found the solution at EventID.net, and it’s pretty simple. Just open a command prompt and run this command:
w32tm /resync /rediscover
After that the time synced correctly. Others have said that unregistering and reregistering the time service works as well.
w32tm /unregister
w32tm /register
Time syncing isn’t a vitally important issue, but computers do slip out of sync sometimes, and especially in a domain there can be consequences for getting too far ahead or behind. Good to make sure that the time service is always working correctly.