Category: Microsoft

ADK for Windows 8.1.

News. Teched is coming… New version of ADK & MDT 2013

Here is a quick summary of the changes in ADK for Windows 8.1. MDT 2013 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2 requires ADK for Windows 8.1.

Windows 8.1 Image Size (Preview)

  • Windows 8.1 Preview Code Image (x86), 2.13 GB (WIM), 7.65 GB expanded on disk.

WinPE 5.0

  • Profiling in WinPE 5.0 is removed
  • WinPE 5.0 x64 supports 4 TB of RAM (still 64 GB for x86)
  • Scratchspace set automatically to 512 MB when having more than 1 GB of RAM, otherwise 32 MB

USMT 6.3

  • Support for Windows 8.1
  • You cannot use USMT 6.3 to migrate settings from Windows XP to Windows 8.1
  • Supports Office 2013 (hotfix available for USMT 5.0).

Windows 8.1 Upgrade / Update

  • You are likely to have more free space available on the disk after upgrading Windows 8 to Windows 8.1
  • Windows 8.1 upgrade time, less than 20 minutes

Misc. Updates

  • Export compressed recovery image (/Export-Image)
  • Cleanup base components when superseded. (/StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase)

Active Directory Replication Status Tool

The Active Directory Replication Status Tool (ADREPLSTATUS) analyzes the replication status for domain controllers in an Active Directory domain or forest. ADREPLSTATUS displays data in a format that is similar to REPADMIN /SHOWREPL * /CSV imported into Excel but with significant enhancements.
Specific capabilities for this tool include:

    • Expose Active Directory replication errors occurring in a domain or forest
    • Prioritize errors that need to be resolved in order to avoid the creation of lingering objects in Active Directory forests
    • Help administrators and support professionals resolve replication errors by linking to Active Directory replication troubleshooting content on Microsoft TechNet
    • Allow replication data to be exported to source or destination domain administrators or support professionals for offline analysis

System Requirements

Supported Operating System

Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Vista, Windows XP

      • ADREPLSTATUS does not install on server core installs of Windows
      • Windows 2000 not supported due to lack of support for .NET Framework 4.0

    Domain membership requirements:

      • Must be joined to the Active Directory domain or forest you intend to monitor

    .NET Framework requirements:

      • .NET Framework 4.0 (you may be prompted to install .NET Framework 3.5.1 first on Windows Server 2008)

    Required User Credentials:

      • Target forest/domain user account

    Supported DC OS versions that can be monitored by ADREPLSTATUS:

      • Windows Server 2003
      • Windows Server 2003 R2
      • Windows Server 2008
      • Windows Server 2008 R2
      • Windows Server 2012

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Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 3 (SP3) resolves issues that were found in Exchange Server 2010 SP3 since the software was released. This update rollup is highly recommended for all Exchange Server 2010 SP3 customers.
For a list of changes that are included in this update rollup, see KB2803727.

Download

Active Directory Accidental Deletion – Prevention

Accidental deletions in active directory can cause havoc and unfortunately. This may have been avoided and secondly could have been fixed in less than 10 % of the actual time spent if the environment was using one of the latest features that we included in Windows 2008 R2 ( Active Directory Recycle Bin ). Most critical situations arise due to accidental human /tool interference or configuration and it is important to be able to come out of such situations within minimal down time, Accidental Deletion in Active Directory is one such situation.

Powershell Enable Protected From Accidenta lDeletion:
Get-ADobject -Filter * -SearchBase “DC=wardvissers,DC=local” | Set-adobject -ProtectedFromAccidentalDeletion $true

unknown device – ACPI/ACPI0004/CPUSCK0 ACPI/ACPI0004/CPUSCK0 on a HP Z420

Customer wanted to deploy Windows XP 32bit on a HP Z420 machine.
For this machine is a driver pack. I imported this driver in to MDT.

After deploying I had a unknown device – ACPI/ACPI0004/CPUSCK0

I could not find any driver. The windows device manager show still “unknown device”.

Solution:
Under: Advanced –> Bus Options you will find the setting “Legacy ACPI CPU Tables”
This settings is default disabled. Enable it en unknown device is gone!!

Windows 7 and Windows 8 Optimization Guide for Horizon View Virtual Desktops & Antivirus Best Practices for Horizon View 5.x

VMware released two great documents!!

Windows 7 and Windows 8 Optimization Guide for Horizon View Virtual Desktops

Antivirus Best Practices for Horizon View 5.x

Error while installing WebComponents.msi

 

When configuring certificates for a lync 2010 environment, I noticed that I made a typo. Failing to correct the problem via the topology builder, I had to uninstall the lync software. After correcting my typo, the installation failed to install. This was the error I got:

image

After doing some digging I noticed also an event in the eventviewer
:image

Opening the log file as mentioned in the event, it turned out I had something to do with an duplicate entry in the applicationhost.config.

image

As stated in the error it had something to do with a duplicate entry at line 421. Opening the applicationhost.config learned that line 421 didn’t had anything to do with lync. The trick was to find OCSAuthHelperModule:

<add name=”OCSAuthHelperModule” image=”C:\Windows\Assembly\GAC_64\Microsoft.Rtc.Server.WebInfrastructure\4.0.0.0__31bf3856ad364e35\Microsoft.Rtc.Server.WebInfrastructure.dll” preCondition=”integratedMode,runtimeVersionv2.0,bitness64″ />

After deleting this entry, the installation went good!

%Windir%\System32\inetsrv\config\

Special thnx to Techsps

KEMP LoadMaster v7.0-4 firmware is now available with Edge Security Pack

Kemp announced  Firmware release LoadMaster 7.0-4. Here are the details below. Watch out for more announcements on some of the features in the coming weeks.

New Features and Feature Enhancements:
  • Edge Security Pack – A range of new security features has been added to the LoadMaster.
  • Sub-VS Support – The LoadMaster now supports the creation and management of sub-VSs.
  • Graphical Metrics – There is a new dashboard home screen with the capability to display graphical performance information.
  • New License format – A new license format has been introduced
  • Oracle VirtualBox VLM – A new VLM package, to support VLM installation within an Oracle VirtualBox environment is available
  • MIBS files have been updated
  • SID and revision information included in IPS logging
  • VLAN Separation per Interface
  • Support for larger TCP window sizes
  • ‘Kill switch’ is now supported on all LoadMaster versions
  • LM-R320 has its serial number visible on the WUI
  • The Netconsole Host interface is configurable via the WUI
Issues Resolved:
    • Issue with SMTP STARTTLS when a client sends an EHLO is resolved
    • Issue with ACL whitelist allowing other IPs is resolved
    • Issue with switching VS types under load is resolved
    • Some reboot issues have been resolved
    • An issue with caching on Firefox has been resolved
    • The “-“ character is now allowed in the DNS Search Domain field
    • Issues with the MIBS have been resolved
    • A circular routing problem has been resolved
    • SNMP trap Source IP has been changed to pre 5.1-48 behaviour
    • SSL renegotiation can be toggled on/off
    • SSLv2 is no longer used for LoadMaster initiated SSL connections
    • An issue with Not Available Redirection XSS has been resolved
    • The Default IP is now displayed on the WUI when DHCP fails
    • An issue with VS Specific insert X-Clientside header being overwritten by system default has been resolved
    • The “-“ character is now allowed in the User Login field
    • An issue with the Fail on Match functionality has been resolved
    • An issue with Maximum Cache Size has been resolved
    Known Issues:
      • Quick setup Help appears automatically if no IP address is configured on the LM if a VLAN is configured on eth0 and no IP address is assigned to the underlying interface (eth0)
      LoadMaster version v7.0-4 supports the following hardware:
      • LM-2000
      • LM-2200
      • LM-2500
      • LM-2600
      • LM-3500
      • LM-3600
      • LM-5300
      • LM-5500
      • LM-Exchange
      • LM-R320
      • VLM-100
      • VLM-1000
      • VLM-Exchange
      NOTE – ESP is supported on select LoadMaster models and new VLM installations.

      Learn more about LoadMaster 7.0:

      Manual

      Full Release Notes

      Full Documentation

      Convert VHD to VHDX

      VHDX is the new and default format of virtual hard disk (VDH) that is provided by Windows 8 Client Hyper-V and Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. There are many reasons to favor VHDX files over VHD files, including:

      • scalability to 64 TB instead of 2040GB
      • better performance by offering 4 K sector matching
      • protection against data corruption during power outages
      Using PowerShell to Convert to VHDX

      You can dispense with the time-consuming wizard by using PowerShell. This will be extremely useful if you need to use a script to automate lots of VHD conversions across many virtual machines. The following snippet will convert a VHD to a VHDX:

      Convert-VHD –Path d:\VM01\Disk0.vhd –DestinationPath d:\VM01\Disk0.vhdx

      When you create a new VHDX file (not converted) it has a physical sector size of 4 K. A converted VHDX file has a physical sector size of 512 Bytes. You can change the physical sector size of a converted VHDX by running this piece of PowerShell before you power up the virtual machine:

      set-vhd d:\VM01\Disk0.vhdx -PhysicalSectorSizeBytes 4096

      Now you have a virtual machine that is using the best kind of virtual machine storage, the VHDX format virtual hard disk

      The above instructions do not finish the job. The next essential set of steps are:

      1. Open the settings of the virtual machine.
      2. Replace the VHD with the VHDX.
      3. Start and test the virtual machine.
      4. Delete the VHD file.
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