Category Archives: Microsoft

All Microsoft Products (Exchange, SQL, Windows, Server)

Microsoft, Miscellaneous

Windows 7

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If anyone out there knows me, they know that I’m not really the biggest of Windows fans. Heck, I’ve probably been anti-Microsoft for most of my life thus far. I grew up on Apples (Macintosh) and then slowly attempted to gain knowledge of Linux systems (I still have a FreeBSD 4.1 CD somewhere). I didn’t actually own a Windows system until 2001 – at which time I was running a 1.4GHz AMD Athlon with 512MB RAM a 20GB HD and Windows 2000 Professional.

Then I moved onto building a crap-load (technical term here) more systems and slowly making my way up the chain. Heck, here’s a timeline if I can remember them all:

Mac OS 6.1 (Finder 4.5 I believe) was running on my first computer a MacSE (Retired)
8.9" BW Screen, 8MHz, 1MB RAM, 20MB HD, 720KB Floppy

Mac OS 7.5 was my first color computer on a PowerMac 7100/80AV (Retired)
14" Samsung CRT, 80MHz PowerPC, 16MB RAM upgraded to 48MB, 700MB HD upgraded to 2.1GB, 2X CD-ROM upgraded to 12X CD-ROM, 1.4MB Floppy, 10Base-T

Mac OS 8.1 was our first internet-enabled computer on a PowerMac G3 233 (Retired)
15" ViewSonic CRT, 233MHz G3, 128MB RAM upgraded to 384MB, 4GB HD upgraded to 20GB, 16X CD-ROM upgraded to 4x2x24 CD-RW, 1.4MB Floppy, 100MB Zip, 100Base-T

Mac OS 9.1/OSX 10.1 was my college computer on a G4 450 Gigabit Ethernet (Retired)
15" no brand LCD, Dual 450MHz G4, 256MB RAM upgraded to 1.25GB, 20GB HD upgraded to 3X 80GB, 8X DVD-ROM upgraded to 12X CD-RW/DVD Combo, 1000Base-T

Mac OS 9.1/OSX 10.1 on my first portable system – an iBook G3 (white one) (Retired)
13.1" LCD, 800MHz, 256MB RAM upgraded to 768MB, 20GB HD, 24X CD-ROM, 100Base-T

Redhat 6? on my first non-Mac system repurposed Sony unknown Model (Sold)
14" Samsung CRT on KVM, 233MHz Intel Pentium II, 32MB RAM upgraded to 64MB, 2.1GB HD, 100Base-T

FreeBSD 4.1 on my first non-GUI computer home built system (Retired)
No monitor, 350MHz AMD K6-2, 128MB RAM, 20GB HD, 12X CD-ROM, Dual 100Base-T

Windows 2000 Professional on a home built system (Sold)
15" no brand LCD via KVM, 1.4GHz AMD Athlon, 512MB RAM, 20GB HD, 24X CD-RW, 1.44 Floppy, 100Base-T

Mandrake 8 on a home built system (Broken/Trashed)
No monitor, 450MHz AMD K6-2, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, 100Base-T

Windows XP on a home built system (LAN Source Server)
17" ViewSonic LCD, 1.6GHz AMD Athlon, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, 24XCD-ROM, 100Base-T

Windows XP on a Compaq V5000 CTO laptop (Sold to Family)
15" LCD, 1.8GHz AMD Athlon, 256MB RAM upgraded to 2048MB, 20GB HD upgraded to 120GB, 12X DVD-ROM, 100Base-T

Windows XP on a home built system (Repurposed – see next)
17" Viewsonic LCD on KVM, 2.6GHz Intel P4, 512MB RAM upgraded to 2048MB, 120GB HD upgraded to 2x 120GB and 400GB, 12X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows Server 2008 on a home built system (Primary Domain Controller)
No Monitor, 2.6GHz Intel P4, 2048MB RAM, 2x 500GB and 2x 750GB, 12X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit on a home built system (Gaming Rig)
19" Samsung LCD, 2.5GHz Intel Core2Duo, 4096MB RAM, 500GB HD, 24X CD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows XP on a home built system (Media Center)
42" Toshiba TV 1080P, 2.5GHz Intel Core2Duo, 1024MB RAM, 1TB HD, 24X CD-ROM, 1000Base-T

Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit on a home built system (Work Computer)
21.5" Acer LCD and 19" Dell LCD, 2.5GHz Intel Core2Duo, 8192MB RAM, 500GB HD, 24X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T

Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit and Ubuntu 9.04 64bit dual boot on an HP NX6245 (Primary Laptop)
14.1" LCD, 2.2GHz AMD X2, 3072MB RAM, 120GB HD upgraded to 320GB, 16X DVD-RW, 1000Base-T, 802.11g

Windows XP on an Asus eeepc (Family Laptop)
10.1" LCD, 1.6GHz Intel Atom, 2048MB RAM, 160GB HD, 100Base-T, 802.11g

I know there’s at least 2 more that I’m missing, but one I sold and I am pretty sure that the other one broke and I chucked it away.

Oh, now that I read my title I see the point I was trying to make: I’ve had a lot of computers and a lot of experience with computer operating systems. That being said, here is how I would rate them:

Gaming:
1.) Windows XP Pro
2.) Windows Vista/7
3.) Windows 2000 Pro
4.) MacOS 8-9
5.) MacOS X
6.) Any Linux

Business (No issues connecting to AD or a domain):
1.) Windows XP Pro
2.) Windows 2000 Pro
3.) Windows Vista/7
4.) Linux
5.) MacOS X

Entertainment/Movies:
1.) MacOS X
2.) Windows Vista/7
3.) Mac OS 8-9
4.) Windows XP Pro
5.) Linux
6.) Windows 2000 Pro

Battery Usage/Portability:
1.) Windows Vista/7
2.) Linux
3.) MacOS X
4.) Windows XP Pro
5.) MacOS 8-9
6.) Windows 2000 Pro

Speed (Startup/Apps loading/Internet usage):
1.) Windows 7
2.) Windows 2000 Pro
3.) Linux
4.) Windows XP Pro
5.) MacOS 8-9
6.) MacOS X

Some of these results are skewed as I haven’t been able to play with the latest and greatest. The last Mac I used was a dual 1.25GHz G4 with 1.5GB RAM. Nice machine, but no comparison for gaming to a Windows machine. Overall it depends on how you want to use your computer.

Server:
Linux

Gaming Station:
Windows

Graphic Design/Video Editing:
Mac

Business Computer:
Windows

***EDIT***
Windows 7 was installed on my work system September 10th 2009 and thus far has exceeded all of my expectations. I have yet to have the system crash and almost all of my applications continue to function correctly under Windows 7 64bit. I’ve had to reboot the system 4 times total – and three of them were after installing software that required a reboot. The fourth was rebooting for an extended weekend (I can just hear a greenie now…) Otherwise, with 8GB TAM this thing is flying.

Microsoft

Menu Popup Delay Windows XP, Vista, 7

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If you’re anything like me, you hate to wait for anything – especially your computer. The computer should be waiting for me, not the other way around!

The menu delays in Windows have always aggravated me. I want the menu to pop up almost as soon as the cursor is over it. Now I must admit that the delay is VERY HELPFUL to older and younger peoples. If I tried to teach my grandmother using my preferences, she’d wiggle the cursor all over the screen and never be able to select what she wanted. The same goes for my 6 year old niece – the young and old don’t have the fine control over motor functions at the same level as the middle aged.

You may argue with me saying “I’m not middle-aged and I can run circles around you with my mouse!” That’s all besides the point. Point is, here’s how to do it:

Reminder: Any actions you take in the registry could adversely affect your system. I am not responsible for you breaking your system. The following directions worked for me, and if you follow them correctly they should also work for you.

Open up the registry editor
Start > Run > regedit
Navigate to HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
Find the MenuShowDelay key
Set the Value data to be any number you want. The numbers are measured in MS (milliseconds) and the default is 400. I set mine to 1.

Microsoft

Activesync, Exchange 2003, ISA2004

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I just started a new job (after being fired the last day of my honeymoon from another company), and one of my tasks was to get people with iPhones the ability to sync with the Exchange server. IMAP and POP were already opened up, but those aren’t actually using Activesync abilities. I wanted push and not pull technology!

After working with Exchange 2007 for so long it takes a little time to get used to 2003 again. So bear with me.

Open up the Exchange System Manager
Under Global Settings, right click on Mobile Services and select Properties
MobileServicesProperties
Make sure that you select the bottom two check boxes.

Then, on your ISA server, you must create the rule to allow mobile outlook access to:
/*
You may already have something like /exchange/*, /owa/* etc, but you do need the entire directory to be allowed access.

Microsoft

7zip Batch File and Rotate File Names

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Here’s the scenario:
Customer has a syslog server (Kiwi’s free syslog server) running on Windows2003 Server on a crappy 100GB server. They wanted a way to rotate the logs (free version does not allow for automatic rotation) and compress the logs. Every hour the syslog file grows by 7MB. That might not seem like a lot, but each month that’s 5.2GB and every year it’s 61GB. OK, maybe that’s not a lot to you, but on a 100GB server it adds up quickly.

I compressed a test log of 46MB. It compressed to 8KB. Wow, eh? 7Zip is free, you can download it using sourceforge so it’ll run on Windows or linux.

I wrote up a batch file to auto grab, compress, and name the file after the date. You’ll need to add the 7z variable to the system path to make things easier (system variables, under path add C:\program files\7-zip)

@echo off
7z a c:/%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%-%date:~10,4%-syslog.7z c:/test/
pause

As a breakdown, the first line turns off writing the commands on the executed script window.
7z is the executable, a is add files, the date spits out month-day-year followed by -syslog.7z, c:/test/ is the path you want compressed
Pause just makes it so you have to hit enter to close the command window

Obviously change the c:/test/ to something you want to backup. You can also use c:/test/test.jpg as a specific file name.

Microsoft

Awstats Scheduled Task 0x1 Error

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After installing Perl, Awstats, IIS6.0 and all the available Windows Updates on a system, I mapped drive shares on several other webservers. I mean, why install perl and awstats on each individual server when I can have a virtual machine ready and waiting and have no downtime on the production sites?

So I had the batch script file setup to update the stats every 5 minutes for 24 hours of every day (288 updates a day):

@echo off
cd C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\awstats\cgi-bin
awstats.pl -config=myconfig -update

I saved it as Test.bat, opened up the batch file to test it out and it ran AND updated perfectly. Yay, that wasn’t too difficult.

But then I created an automated task in Windows. Run it every 5 minutes. Error 0x1 every time. WTF??

It’s because “Perl is an interpreted language, and you cannot define a task priority or a maximum CPU usage value when you run a Perl program” (thanks Devx.com!). You have to start the command first.

So the finished code should look like this:
@echo off
cd C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\awstats\cgi-bin
start awstats.pl -config=myconfig -update

Try to run it again, works when just opening the BAT file. Then try it automated. 0x0!

Linux, Microsoft

VMWare Server High Processor Usage

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We have VMWare server 2.0 installed on a few servers for testing purposes. In fact, our entire development infrastructure is on 3 different VMWare server 2 servers.

One of the guest OSes was running Windows 2003 Enterprise R2 SP2 with a SQL server (2005 of Microsoft) and a web server (IIS6). The system process ended up using anywhere from 20 to 75% of the CPU usage. So what was causing this?

I started with the usual suspects – services that shouldn’t have been running. Nothing helped on that end.

Then I grabbed a copy of Sysinternals’ ProcessExplorer. It showed that I had anywhere from 20 to 75% use from Interrupts/Hardware Interrupts. What exactly is a hardware interrupt? It is when a piece of hardware needs to wait for the CPU in order to finish it’s task. If you’re using a CD-ROM drive in PIO mode instead of DMA you will see quite a few more hardware interrupts. But I wasn’t using a CD-ROM. It was just an idle server.

Quick search around the block and I removed the USB controller on the VMWare config side. That lowered the interrupts by about 8%. Not a heck of a lot, but it was something.

Then I took the advice of another technician – change out the generic AMD flavor of network card for the more robust Intel driver.

Download the intel driver (http://support.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-006120.htm)
Shutdown your VMWare guest OS
Edit the .vmx file
Add Ethernet0.virtualDev = “e1000” somewhere in the ethernet ‘section’
Turn your machine back on
Your machine will now find new hardware. If it doesn’t auto install that’s no big deal since you downloaded the drivers already and you can then install them.

Now my interrupts are below 30 with an average around 12. That’s quite a bit more usable.

Microsoft, Networking

Configure Cisco To Work With Windows NLB

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Cisco switch, Microsoft Windows Network Load Balancing.

As part of our new site roll-out we’re using quite a few servers. Some are running in tandem while others are complete backups just in case. Basically, for every function we’re running at least 4 servers (2 load balanced front-facing, 1 backup, and 1 dev/testing).

Using load balancing is a little more tricky on our environment.

On the test environment, which is strictly a vmware server with a crap-load (technical term) of virtual machines, the Microsoft Load Balancing works without any problems. Create a virtual IP, point both servers to it, and away you go.

Unfortunately for us this didn’t work so well on the live production servers. Why? The servers required multicast load balancing. Cisco switches don’t work well with multicast load balancing. The router refuses to learn the ARP for the IP address if it’s coming from a multicast MAC. I had previously switched the servers to unicast, which solved the problem within the Cisco switches, but then the applications would not function on the servers.

One must create a Static ARP Entry on the gateway switch.

For this exercise I have a switch (192.168.1.245) and a server (192.168.1.173) and a client (192.168.2.202) all of which are Class C /24 255.255.255.0 addresses. You will need to know the IP of your server’s Virtual IP (the one for load balancing) and the MAC address of the virtual IP. Easy way to find this is to open a cmd window and type the following:
arp -a 192.168.1.173
OR you can open the network load balance manager and find it listed on the first screen under MAC/physical address.

Now we need to configure your switch

Telnet to your device
Type in your password
Go to enable mode
en
Configuration terminal
config t
arp 192.168.1.173 0100.7f5e.ad01
end
wr mem

Now your pings should work.