A handy script to reset the local Administrator password for all the workstations or servers in an OU.
The script text around the #==== I typically like to have in a separate script but you can of course have this all as once script if that’s what you want.
#=============================
Clear-Content C:\servers.txt
Get-QADComputer -SearchRoot “OU PATH HERE” | ForEach-Object {add-content -path C:\servers.txt -value $_.Name}
##============================
So I have been looking to see how it would be possible to hang on to Internet Explorer 6 / 7 /8 on Windows XP running under Windows 8. The technology I decided to explore was Client Hyper-V. Hyper-V is the server element and Client Hyper-V is what runs on Windows 8. Microsoft removed XP mode which allowed you to run Windows XP under Windows 7.
This blog will outline the installation and the configuration steps to install Client Hyper-V running on Windows 8. The Guest OS running in Client Hyper-V in this blog will be running Windows XP SP3 along with Remote App for Windows XP. Although this blog is aimed at Windows XP it could be adapted for any OS.
Install Notes
Before starting the Client Hyper-V install you would need to perform a critical check. You must ensure that the BIOS in the target workstation supports Virtualisation and that it is configured. Please check with the OEM to see if a BIOS upgrade is available to support Virtualisation.
The BIOS must support VTx & VTd. Failure to check the above will result in you unable to install the Hyper-V Platform
The screenshot below is based on a HP Elite 8300 SFF. You will see that Data Execution Prevention , Virtualization Technology (VTx) , Virtualization Technology Directed I/O (VTd) and OS Management of the Embedded Security Device are enabled.
Once you have set the above settings you must cold boot the workstation. This means you must shutdown the workstation and give in 30 seconds before switching back on again. You can’t simply change the settings and reboot
Had a weird issue in SCCM 2012 SP1 the other day. I had created a whole bunch of applications and at some point the SCCM client crashed. When I then tried to delete or change the application I was prompted with the following message
The following objects are not available and will not be edited
Cannot edit the object which is in use by
I decided to take a peek around in SQL and see what I could spot. I connected in to SQL and browsed the SQL database.
VMware have released VMware Converter 5.1 standalone.
Some of the key features are ,
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
I have had a need to install Windows 8 on a vSphere 4.1 environment. It is worth pointing out that Windows 8 on vSphere 4.0 /4.1 is not supported and to run this you need to be on ESX 5.0 / 5.1
There is no Windows 8 option to select when you create a new guest OS. I selected Windows 7 64bit and have also tried Windows 2008 R2. On selecting either of said OS choices and attaching the CDROM to the Windows 8 ISO. You are then presented with a screen like below with the following error message
Your PC ran into a problem that it couldn’t handle. and now it needs to restart.
You can search for the error online: HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So for sometime now I have wanted to see or check how long it is taking for my scripts to run. I have seen all manner of examples on the internet with some more complicated than others. Now I can’t take full credit for the example below but I hope that it might be a clear example of how to achieve such a thing.
$ScriptStart = (Get-Date)
Do something here maybe Get-QADComputer
$ScriptEnd = (Get-Date)
$RunTime = New-Timespan -Start $ScriptStart -End $ScriptEnd
“Elapsed Time: {0}:{1}:{2}” -f $RunTime.Hours,$Runtime.Minutes,$RunTime.Seconds
Also what if you want to send the message via email. Add the below code to your script
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
As you will know the Get-QADComputer command is very powerful in returning all computers. Typically I have been using
Get-QADComputer -SearchRoot “OU PATH DN HERE”
The above command will return all computers in that OU and everything in all sub OU’s. What if you would only like to return the workstations from the top OU and not the sub OU’s
Hi Guys.
Just putting a reminder out there for this
In November 2011, the CA/Browser Forum (CA/B) adopted Baseline Requirements for the Issuance and Management of Publicly-Trusted Certificates that took effect on July 1, 2012. These requirements state:
“As of the Effective Date of these Requirements, prior to the issuance of a Certificate with a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) extension or Subject Common Name field containing a Reserved IP Address or Internal Server Name, the CA shall notify the Applicant that the use of such Certificates has been deprecated by the CA / Browser Forum and that the practice will be eliminated by October 2016. Also as of the Effective Date, the CA shall not issue a certificate with an Expiry Date later than 1 November 2015 with a SAN or Subject Common Name field containing a Reserved IP Address or Internal Server Name. As from 1 October 2016, CAs shall revoke all unexpired Certificates.”
All.
So I am continuing to explore Windows 8 and get to grips with Microsoft latest and greatest. One area that has been pretty stable and consistent is how you activate Windows. You would normally goto activate, change the product code and you was done. With Windows 8 this seems to be more tricky and not as clear and straight forward.
As you can see my Windows 8 is not activated
All.
It would seem that Copy & Paste between Windows and a vSphere 4.1 and later guest is disabled by default for security reasons. I understand the reasons behind it however should you wish to enable this then follow the instructions below.
Right click on the VM guest and select edit
Click on the Options Tab and then click on Configuration Parameters
You then need to add two new rows to the configuration and give both items a value of false
isolation.tools.copy.disable false
isolation.tools.paste.disable false
All.
When cloning a VMware guest you may get an error at about 90% which states
Number of virtual devices exceeds the maximum for a given controller
The Solution:
To work around this issue. When performing the clone of the VMGuest dont tick the Edit virtual hardware (Experimental) check box
The clone of the VM will then proceed and complete as normal. VMware has confirmed this as a bug and is fixed in vCenter 4.0 Update 3
All.
I was faced with an issue this week where for some unknown reason the o2 SMTP server that I have been using for the last four years decided to stop working. For reference I was using smtp.o2.co.uk
I spent a few hours hunting around on the internet looking for free or very cheap SMTP relays. Some of the sites looked good, some were expensive and some looked a little dodgy. I stumbled across a site called Mandrill and they seemed to have what I was looking for plus maybe a bit more. The website offers a free service where you are entitled to send up to 12,000 emails per month. Now I don’t send thousand and thousand of emails a month so this was perfect. Also it seems like I can obtain some detailed information on the emails that are sent per day / month / year for example any links that have been clicked, bounce backs etc. The installation was a little tricky but really it came down to waiting for DNS records to propagate. DKIM and SPF we will come on to later.
I will step you through how I configured my Exchange Server to work with Mandrill and get everything setup
All.
There may be a time when you need to change the Exchange 2010 SMTP Send Connector from the default port 25.
First open the Powershell shell with the Exchange snap-in and issue the command Get-SendConnector
All.
Below is some code that will export a list of AD users from a specified OU. I only needed a list of SamAccountName, sn for LastName and givenname for FirstName and then export it out to a CSV file. You can of course keep adding all the properties you wish but for what I was doing I only needed three.
Get-Qaduser -SearchRoot “FULL DN TO OU” |Select-Object SamAccountName, sn, givenname | Export-Csv C:\ListOfUsers.csv
Hope this will be of help to someone
All.
I had a need to update an AD attribute to all workstations in a specified OU. The code I came up with is below.
Get-QADComputer -SearchRoot “FULL DN TO THE OU HERE” | foreach {set-qadcomputer -identity $_ -proxy -objectattributes @{‘ATTRIBUTE NAME HERE’=”ATTRIBUTE VALUE HERE”}}
I did post a similar post last year where it would update an attribute for all users in a Security Group.
Update based on Security Group
Hope this will be of help to someone.
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here,
Here is a one line Powershell to see who is logged on to a Workstation or Server
(Get-WmiObject Win32_ComputerSystem -computerName “COMPUTER NAME HERE”).UserName
Hope this will be of help
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So something that has bugged the helpdesk guys at the firm I work at for many years is that fact that you can’t RunAs explorer when you have IE7 installed. I have just come across the undocumented switch of /separate.
To run explorer like you did when Windows XP had IE6 installed then issue the command below.
runas /user:domain\username "explorer /separate"
Hope this will be of help to someone
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
Below is a script cobbled together that will delete all files from the users local Temp and Temp Internet files.
# Create an Array based on each user profile
$LocalXPProfiles = Get-ChildItem “C:\Documents and Settings\” -Name# Exclude All Users profile
$LocalXPProfiles = $LocalXPProfiles -ne “All Users”
# Removes temporary files from each user profile folder
ForEach ( $ArrayProfile in $LocalXPProfiles ) {# Remove all files and folders in user’s Temp folder
Get-ChildItem “C:\Documents and Settings\$ArrayProfile\Local Settings\Temp\” -recurse | remove-item -force -recurse
# Remove all files and folders in user’s Temporary Internet Files. The -force switch on Get-ChildItem gets hidden directories as well.
Get-ChildItem “C:\Documents and Settings\$ArrayProfile\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\” -recurse -force | remove-item -force -recurse
}
Hope this will be of help
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
A little tip that you may or may not know about. Within Windows if you want to screen shot say a pop up message and not the whole screen you would tap on your keyboard Alt and PrtScn
However say you are RDP’d in to a server and want to grab that error message or just the application window. Well what you need to do is tap Ctrl , Alt , and the minus key -
This will then grab only the window that you want and not the whole remote desktop. Pretty cool eh? Of course if you are using something like Snagit then you can do this with that application but sometimes you just need to work with Windows standard copy and paste. This certainly makes documentation quicker.
Just to recap Ctrl Alt -
Hope this will be of help to someone
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here,
So having booted Windows 8 for the first time I wanted to know how to shut it down and reboot it. Easy once you know!
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here,
So I am starting to look at Windows 8 purely for experience and knowledge and will blog things as and when I find stuff. I had built a Windows 8 Pro machine and the first thing I wanted to do was add it to my AD Domain. Please follow the guide below.
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here,
19-NOV-2012 updated to include DCUI in colour
So if you are working on HP servers then there is a good chance that you will have iLO which as you know will (depending on the licence) allow you to watch the boot up sequence on a server but if running vSphere 5 allow you to see the Direct Console User Interface or DCUI for short. Now what about if you are running vSphere on say desktop hardware? Well, help is at hand via Putty.
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here,
So I am pleased to say I have passed my VMware Certified Professional VCP 5 exam today. My passing score was 344 with a pass mark of 300.
I cant say anything about the exam as I am under the NDA agreement but I will say that the fast track course that I did with QA does not prepare you for the exam at all. You cannot rely on what you are being taught on the course to pass the exam. It really does come down to experience with the product as well as course time and study.
I will say study and study for this one and know the VMware exam blue print
Bye for now!
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So today I had a need to grab all EventID 4 from a remote computer. Below is the script I used to achieve this.
$MachineName = “COMPUTERNAME-HERE”
Get-Eventlog -Logname Application -computer $MachineName `
| Where-Object {$_.EventId -eq ’4′} `
| Format-Table MachineName, TimeWritten, Source, EventID, Message -auto
Hope this is of help
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So was trying to run the VMware converter to perform a P2V migration. When opening the Converter, filling out the details I was presented with an error message
A general system error occurred: Crypto Exception: error:02001005:system library:fopen:input/output error:unable to load C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\ssl\rui.crt
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So I had an interesting issue when building some new ESX hosts. After the Host was built I tried to log in via the console and was presented with the message below
Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0×97 on isa0060/serio0)
Use ‘setkeycodes e017 ‘ to make it known
I took a look on google but it only turned up bugs in some flavours of Linux and not VMware. As a test I swapped the keyboard and the problem went away.
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So I had a need to ping a subnet to see what IP address were alive and which were dead. First you need to download the CMDLET from LINK and then import it in to your command window or script. To ping a subnet and as an example use.
Ping-Subnet 192.168.0.0 -Mask 255.255.255.0
I also like gridview so you could use
Ping-Subnet 192.168.0.0 -Mask 255.255.255.0 | Out-GridView
Hope this helps someone in the future.
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
Here is a little script to reboot a remote workstation
$MachineToReboot = Read-Host “Please enter workstation name”
Restart-Computer $MachineToReboot -Credential WALLACETECH\
Write-Host “Workstation” $MachineToReboot “is rebooting” -ForegroundColor Green
ping -n 60 $MachineToReboot
Update:
I was asked to add a ping to the script which is a great idea. I have used -n rather -t and specified 60 so that the script will stop and not continue to run. Of course change this value to fit your environment but 60 should be fine even for most WAN links
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here/
Windows PowerShell 3.0
Some of the new features in Windows PowerShell 3.0 include:
DOWNLOAD
•Workflows
Workflows that run long-running activities (in sequence or in parallel) to perform complex, larger management tasks, such as multi-machine application provisioning. Using the Windows Workflow Foundation at the command line, Windows PowerShell workflows are repeatable, parallelizable, interruptible, and recoverable.
•Robust Sessions
Robust sessions that automatically recover from network failures and interruptions and allow you to disconnect from the session, shut down the computer, and reconnect from a different computer without interrupting the task.
•Scheduled Jobs
Scheduled jobs that run regularly or in response to an event.
•Delegated Administration
Commands that can be executed with a delegated set of credentials so users with limited permissions can run critical jobs
Hi Guys, WallaceTech here.
So I have been updating some core software in a clients build. It was time to update Adobe Flash Player and normally you could use /s or /silent or -silent to install the software without user intervention.
It would seem that Adobe have changed the command line switch so now to install both applications you need to use the -install switch
install_flash_player_10_active_x.exe -install
install_flash_player_11_plugin.exe -install
Hope this helps someone in the future
