Welcome to my blog. Hopefully here you will find some interesting and detailed articles relating to Windows Home Server, Home Computing and General IT.
Copy the below code to your machine and edit the $folder line to match the location of your PortableApps you can check you have the correct folder by doing a dir with it and ensuring all your portable apps come up.
To undo what the script does then remove the folder “%appdata%\microsoft\windows\Start Menu\Programs\Portable\“
No warranty or suchlike – for information only. Publication requires leaving a comment with a reference to each article and source must be provided with all use
[Read More]All sorts of things mess around with file dates and of concern to me was a number of home videos I transcoded that ended up with new file creation dates that I wanted to retain against the original write time. We can handle this in Windows with a little PowerShell. I’ll assume here that all files are in the same path and without their extensions, all files have unique names.
[Read More]I have a P2000 G3 Storage Array that I wish to use with System Center 2012 VMM SP1. Both support SMI-S, so configuring should be straightforward right?
Make sure you are running the latest version of the P2000 Firmware, you can get it from hp.com
First create a new user on your P2000 using the web control panel, smiuser. In VMM create a new Run As account with the same credentials.
Then go to Fabric, and right click on Storage->Arrays and select to add your P2000. You need to use the following settings:
[Read More]DUN, or Dial Up Networking is what we all used to do in the 90’s to get onto the internet. Using a Modem and the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) you could dial-in to another computer or your ISP to transfer data in the digital domain. Today hardly anyone uses Modems over the PSTN, but some systems still require to be able to dial over the telephone network. With leased lines, cable and DSL you may find you do not have a traditional phone line available or accessible to utilise. However, the internet is everywhere and VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) has been around a long time so why not use a modem to dialup over a VOIP line.
[Read More]I have a P2000 G3 Storage array that I wish to use with System Center 2012 VMM SP1. Both support SMI-S, so configuring should be straightforward right?
Make sure you are running the latest version of the P2000 Firmware, you can get it from hp.com
First create a new user on your P2000 using the web control panel, smiuser. In VMM create a new Run As account with the same credentials.
[Read More]
CrashPlan is brilliant. Don’t let me tell you though. Bing! it and decide. Anyway you will find it you have to back up a large number of files, say in the region of 200,000 then you will need some more memory assigned to the Java Virtual Machine that runs CrashPlan. I am talking about windows here and this is the info I got back from support. You may find this useful if after a while CrashPlan seems to bomb out or keep on preserving with something and not really getting anywhere, i.e. constant file analysis or so on. Here is the info: Running Notepad or any other text-editor as an Admin, edit the CrashPlan engine’s CrashPlanService.ini file to allow it to use more java memory:
If you played the Window Server Launch sweepstakes game you may be having trouble finding out who won. My final position was something like 160th, so I think I was in with a 1:50 chance of winning. Not too bad. Though because I’ve still not heard anything yet, and that it’s been 2 weeks since the game has finished, I don’t think I have won.
To request a list of winners who received a prize worth $25.00 or more, send email with the subject line “Windows Server 2012 Virtual Launch Winners” to [email protected] by October 30, 2012.
[Read More]If you are creating unattended.xml files to use to perform automated installations of windows then you will at some point want to test it. This is fine if the destination system has a keyboard and monitor but in my case the system I am targeting does not, a HP MediaSmart EX490.
The simplest way I found on Windows 8 to do the testing was to use the Hyper-V role. Normally I prepare a USB stick with the Microsoft USB/DVD Download Tool and then copy the autounattend.xml file to the root of the USB disk. However, during installation Windows will search for an autounattend.xml or unattend.xml on other removable devices. Using this we can setup a Hyper-V VM with two DVD drives. One with the installation media in the other with just the autounattend.xml
[Read More]Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 is a free version of Windows Server 2012 that only supports the Hyper-V role. You can use this to install on bare metal to give you a hyper visor that can support virtualisation. In this article I will be looking at how you prepare an image and configuration file (autounattend.xml) to target a server for a hands off installation.
Download the ISO, install the DVD tool but when you come to install the ADK only install the Deployment Tools: 
You will need to run the Windows System Image Manager: 
First mount the ISO on a local drive or open it in another program to extract the install.wim file from the sources folder. Save this file to your local hard disk. From the File Menu select New Answer File… then choose Yes to Open a new Windows Image: 
Select the Windows install.wim Image that you copied from the Sources folder earlier: 
Then select yes to create the catalogue file. This will take a few minutes. At this point you could use the USB/DVD download tool to create your bootable USB drive. A 2GB USB Drive will do fine for this. When the creation of the catalogue file has completed you will need to add a number of configuration options from the Windows Image section in the bottom left of the Windows System Image Manager window to the Answer File. You do this by opening the Components Tree and right-clicking on a Component with the mouse and selecting the appropriate phase to add it to. You will then see the Answer File populate with the Configuration Option that you can edit later. I will details the Configuration Options you need to add to your answer file to enable an unattended install of Windows Hyper-V Server 2012. Add the following to 1 windowsPE:
It’s not so easy to find, but Microsoft has released the Linux Integration Services ISO for Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. It also supports older instances of Hyper-V.
Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.
Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.
[Read More]