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devmgr_show_nonpresent_vista_devices
I presume you’ve heard of the environment variable devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices.
When this variable is set from a command prompt in Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server and then devmgmt.msc is launched from the same command prompt, you’ll see a massive list of devices in Device Manager when you enable the View Hidden Devices option.
This allows you to get rid of all those USB sticks devices that have been attached once because a driver needed to be installed. It allows you to get rid of any hardware that once was in the system. It’s neat!
Now there’s Vista. And when I do the same in Vista, there’s no luck at first. I’ve found out that this has to do with the UAC (User Account Control) feature.
This feature ensures that components that can issue a system-wide change, will need to be allowed to do so by confirming the action before it is actually made.
The problem is that when this change is approved by an admin, a seperate “admin” session is opened and the change is made from there. This means that you “lose” the environment setting.
Device Manager is a component that makes UAC kick-in, so the environment variable will be unavailable to Device Manager. Of course you could disable UAC, but that’s like leaving your car doors unlocked in the middle of Amsterdam. Not recommended!
The solution I found was to simply include the environment variable into the System properties. Since then it worked like a charm.
What does the D in DHTML stand for?
Have you also ever encountered the problem where you want to write an urgent mail in the middle of the night at your company’s Outlook Web Access when the following happens when creating a new email:
And there’s the infamous Red X!
This is irritating. I tried moving it in a trusted site in IE, but alas; didn’t work. The problems lies deeper.
Check %PROGRAMFILES%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Triedit folder for the following files: DHTMLED.OCX and TRIEDIT.DLL.
If they don’t exist, get them from the Windows CD (they are in \I386) to this folder using the expand command; and remember the last letter in the compressed file is replaced by an underscore.
If they are in fact at the forementioned location, unregister the files using the regsvr32 /u command.
If you have gotten them from CD or unregistered them (re)register them using the following commands:
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\DHTMLED.OCX”
regsvr32 “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\TRIED.DLL”
This should fix her right up! If not, try a reboot first, although it worked for me without doing that.
This DHTML… What does the D stand for? Dynamic or Darn?
Vista released; SP knocks it down.
As most of you know, Microsoft has recently (finally!) released Vista to the Manufacturing. This means it will see the light pretty soon now.
As is tradition at the Redmond giant, this will most likely be the 15th, as that is the historical day of a release of a Windows OS.
I got my hands on one of the first RTM’s and enjoying every bit of it. The cool thing: you will not need a product key to install any of the products!!
Microsoft has made a strategic point by making the product shareware like; try before you buy. You can evaluate every product (and there are quite a few), even the Ultimate version, for 30 days!
It looks and feels great! It runs smoothly on my Dell Inspiron 9400 (Centrino Duo @ 1.6GHz with 2GB of memory).
Now, the minor point I’m about to mention is probarly an attempt from Microsoft to boycott socialism, or the other way around: IE kept crashing the website of the Dutch Socialist Party (www.sp.nl). The page itself opens just fine, but every link you click knocks IE right out.
So, just vote for the other guys! Or not? You decide! As said, it might be the SP that’s doing the boycotting.
Certified!
Today I got myself the latest of my certificates: VCP.
For those of you that just got out from under a rock not knowing what that is, it stands for VMware Certified Professional.
Basically, this means you can get yourself an VMware-based virtual infrastructure, and you manage to ruin it, you call me, and for a huge fee I will make your virtual systems run smoothly again 
.
So, in addition to my MCSE logo, this is what you’ll be seeing when you get an email from me:
For tips on getting certified yourself, just leave me a comment or drop me an email (rob@amsterdam-ict.eu).
Limiting memory on Microsoft’s Database Engine (MSDE)
Hi!
Just ran into a problem that caused a virtual machine to almost come to a complete stop at 100% memory use.
Cause: The two MSDE instances running on that particular machine. One for WSUS and the other for Virtual Center.
Now, it seems that by default MSDE is configured to use as much as a zillion MB’s of memory. Since you probarbly don’t have that, and neither do I (sadly 
). So, I had to try and find out a way to limit the memory, just as is possible in SQL Server.
… And I found it! …
Just as in SQL Server, the configuration of your MSDE Server is stored in database “master“. Although it is not visible to you when looking at the directory in which you installed MSDE, it is there, part of the instance.
Just do the following. Cut the text below and put it in a text file called SQLMemoryLimit.sql:
USE master
EXEC sp_configure ’show advanced options’, 1
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDEUSE master
EXEC sp_configure ‘max server memory (MB)’, 64
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDEUSE master
EXEC sp_configure ’show advanced options’, 0
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE
Next, use the following from a Command Prompt at the server that’s running your MSDE:
osql -E -S servername\INSTANCE -i SQLMemoryLimit.sql
Repeat this for every MSDE instance, and restart their services.
You’re done!
Good weekend!
Rob.
Let’s get Virtual
Finally, I got around to migrating the physical infrastructure at the office to ESX. Before yesterday, our infrastructure was designed around three Windows 2003 servers.
Right now there’s only one big box (well, two actually, but about that later) running the latest version of VMWare’s fantastic product called ESX 3 and Virtual Infrastructure 2.0.
These are a few of the challenges that arise when you want to virtualize your infrastructure.
1. VMWare only works with specific hardware. It is very picky on the stuff you put into your machine. Check the compatibility lists that are available on www.vmware.com. For guarranteed performance you’ll need to buy stuff like ProLiants, eServers, or other pricy equipment.
2. IDE and SATA are not supported for the VMFS (VMWare File System) that contains your virtual disks. It is not a problem installing ESX itself, but what’s the use if you cannot setup virtual machines.
3. For more than two machines you’ll need a huge amount of memory. Memory and disk I/O is the crux in stable and smooth virtualization.
So, what did I do to get this bunch running on relatively cheap hardware and SATA disks?
I bought myself the ASUS K8N-DRE Server Board (without the SCSI option) which allows you to place dual Opterons for Socket 940. This board only works with Registered ECC memory, which will cost a bit more, but it is doable. For now I have 2 gigs (which is not really enough actually), a CD-ROM player and a 20GB PATA disk for installing ESX.
Next, I took an old mainboard (MSI K8MM) with a Athlon64 processor (but you can probarbly do with less), a VIA RAID SATA controller, 1MB of system memory and an old 3GB IDE disk. This machine I fumbled away under a closet without housing. I stacked up my two 300GB SATA disks from one of my former Windows boxes and connected them using the SATA controller. Now, all I need is an OS and an iSCSI Target!
Let’s talk about this “disk array” box first.
It contains Linux; Fedora Core 5 to be precise. You install it with only the minimum set of components (that’s what I did to make it fit on a 3GB disk), so deselect everything during the install, especially X Windows, KDE and Gnome. You’re not going to need it.
Once up and running, first upgrade the kernel, install kernel-development and install the gcc library. You’ll need this to recompile (make) the new kernel. Do this:
- Type yum install kernel kernel-devel gcc and press Enter. This will upgrade your kernel to a supported level and also install the accompanied development files as well as the gcc compiler. In total there will be around 12 packages to install/upgrade.
- Reboot your Fedora box
- Log back in as root and put the iscsi-target-0.4.13 into your home folder. You can get it at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=108475
- Run tar zxf iscsi-target-0.4.13.tar.gz to unpack.
- Go to the iSCSI Target subfolder using cd iscsi-target-0.4.13. This is important!
- Export the KERNELSRC variable to the system by typing: export $KERNELSRC=/usr/src/kernels/. . ./i686 and press enter (you need to replace . . . with your kernel version. The TAB-key can help you out here).
- Next type make && make install or type make first and make install when it has finished. If you get errors, you’ll need to find other spots on the internet to make it work. For me, this did the trick. There are loads of info on IET so you shouldn’t have to search long.
- Copy the ietd.conf from the etc subfolder to /etc using the following command: cp etc/ietd.conf /etc
- Edit the /etc/ietd.conf file so that it contains the disks you want to present as LUN’s. vi is the tool for this. If you are now familiar with vi (just like me), just learn the I (Insert) function to start editing, and Esc-wq (Write Quit) and Esc-q! (Quit, Don’t save). You’ll manage!
- To test if iSCSI works, type /etc/init.d/iscsi-target start. You should get an OK.
If your system hangs, there is probarbly a problem with the assignment of the device. Check the correct devicename using tools such as fdisk. - Check to see if you can connect to the iSCSI target from any Windows server. You’ll need the free iSCSI Initiator that is downloadable from the Microsoft Download site: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=12cb3c1a-15d6-4585-b385-befd1319f825&DisplayLang=en
- Once everything works, just add iSCSI Enterprise Target to the startup by entering chkconfig –add iscsi-target
- To activate it automatically for runlevels 3 and 5 type chkconfig –level 35 iscsi-target on
- Type reboot, disconnect your keyboard, video and mouse and off you go!
For every — in this text, you should enter two minus-symbols (WordPress appears to f*ck this up).
Now we have the iSCSI Target setup and running!
Installing ESX is something I’m sure you’ll figure out yourself.
The only pointer I can give you is that you need a seperate VMKernel adapter to connect to your iSCSI target.
I would suggest using Incoming Authentication in ietd.conf, to use a username and password that’s not easy to guess. You need to enter this ID and password in the iSCSI Initiator in ESX to get things to work.
Good luck. Post your comments if you have questions or updates.
Rob.
Hello! And Welcome to the show…
Hi everyone.
A warm welcome to my weblog. This blog is an addition to my personal blog that let’s you peek into parts of my private life and of my partners’.
I work for a large British company that helps corporations work more efficiently and provides customers with high-availability solutions using modern technologies such as VoIP, clustering, SAN’s, and so on. My job is to advice these customers how to implement certain parts of their business into their infrastructure. Finally, it’s my job to realize this advice and to bring it to a production state.
I specialize in the x86 area, where my assignments have been to implement systems running Windows, Linux, Oracle, SQL, IIS, Apache and VMWare at various companies, it being small businesses, large enterprises, or government agencies.
This blog is dedicated to trying to help out people that are facing certain challenges in getting systems that run either VMWare or Microsoft products to blend in to other aspects of your ICT infrastructure.
As this blog is in a startup fase, I would appreciate any comment or suggestion you might have.
That’s it for now! Hope to see you back soon.
Regards, Rob.