Albal's Blog

PowerCLI has a function to remove a USB device from a host, Remove-UsbDevice. However, what if you need to add a usb device to a VM.  Well you can with a bit of PowerCLI magic.  This solution assumes the device you wish to add remains in the same USB port and that the VM will be on the same host as the USB device of interest.  If you wish you can hack around to insert the host ID and change from path: option to pid: and vid: options.  You can read more about the option at VMware pubs.

Windows Live Writer is a great blogging App if you like to do things on the computer and out of the browser.  It is part of the Live Essentials Pack and works fine with Windows 8 or Windows 8.1.  For a list of all the language versions of Live Essentials go here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-live/download-windows-essentials

You will need to have .NET 3.5 Framework installed – but it should prompt you if you haven’t

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

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

HOW CAN YOU FIND OUT WHO 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.

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