So I was burning a bunch of .iso’s today and ran into a weird issue.. All of a sudden my burning software was telling me I didnt have a burner anymore.. Checked in “My Computer” and saw the drive as CD-ROM even though it had a blank DVD-R in the drive.. So I Ejected the disc a few times and still no change..

Now Im not one for rebooting my computer but this computer has been hibernated about 30 times without a real-reboot.. So not wanting to reboot the computer I poked around trying to solve the issue.. I figured out a quick fix. This might not work for all people but it did the trick for me..

goto “My Computer” or I guess “Computer” as its now called in Windows 7
Right click the DVD-RW drive (now called CD-ROM), click properties
Click the Hardware Tab, Now if you move the popup window around your screen so you can see the “Computer” window behind it watch what happens next..
Click “Properties”
Click the “Driver” tab
Click the “Disable” Button, at this point you should have seen your drive disappear on the “Computer” window.
Now click the “Enable” Button, should be the same button that was labeled “Disable” before
You should now see your DVD-RW drive as it would normally have appeared in the “Computer” window..
And it should be working properly now!

So im sitting here writing (more like learning) jQuery code for a project im working on.. and I was running in to an issue with IE7.. Heres what was going on and how I fixed it.

- my primary page index.php has a function defined that captures click events on different images and executes a $.ajax which sends a request to my proc.php page.
- proc.php accepts arguments and processes a MySQL UPDATE query and then returns what it processed.
- the function on my primary page then takes the response html and depending on the response changes the image that was clicked to a new image that relates to the html response.

this was working fine in Firefox with Firebug but in IE7 it would only work on the first click then I had to refresh the page to be able to click the image again and get same result. Turns out IE7 was caching the result and not processing it again even though the script was telling it too. so a work around I found was to add the following to the top of my proc.php


header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
header("Cache-Control: no-cache");
header("Pragma: no-cache");


This more or less tells the browser don’t cache this page, and this page is old so you need to re-fetch it anyhow.

There is probably more ways to do this.. but this one worked for me!

The other day I was trying to access the c$ share on a Windows XP Pro desktop from my Windows 7 workstation in a workgroup environment (not a Active Directory Domain).. and kept getting Access Denied when i knew the username and password was right.. was trying using “administrator” and “computername\administrator” as usernames still nothing.. Confirmed it working with a different Windows XP computer.. So I knew it was something to do with the Windows 7 PC..

So I spent a few days fighting with this one.. doing everything from changing workgroups on both computers to adding accounts to both computers to making countless fix’s in the registry and local security policy’s on both computers.. I even ran system updates.. then finely on like page 30 of like my 20th search on google for an answer on this one I found it.. and it was so simple!

So here it is..

On the Windows XP computer do the following..

- Start the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Local Security Policy snap-in (Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Local Security Policy).
- Expand the Local Policies branch.
- Select Security Options.
- Double-click “Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts.”
- Select “Classic-Local users authenticate as themselves”, and click OK.
- Close the snap-in.
- Reboot the system for the change to take effect.

On Windows 7
*if* you have already tried accessing the Windows XP computer before applying above fix you should reboot the Windows 7 PC to avoid issues.. otherwise if you rebooted recently and haven’t tried accessing the Windows XP computer.. Wait for it to finish booting back up and access it just like you been use to doing it with windows 2000 and xp for years.

I have confirmed this working on 3 different networks. Just to make sure all the other random registry and Local policy changes i made trying to get things working were not needed..

I have also learned this fixed remote admin functions.. I was playing with DameWare NT Utilities on the network (from my Windows 7 workstation) and noticed i was having similar issues with it on Windows XP computers.. When I applied the above fix to each Windows XP computer. Like magic everything started working in DameWare!

So I had some issues creating email addresses the other day on a clients Exchange 2007 server. It was giving me the following error "An Exchange 2007 server on which an address list service is active cannot be found." So I thought I would share with everyone how you resolve this issue.. As crazy as it seams this is a very easy fix.

Make sure your logged in as a Domain Admin on your Exchange Server. Goto Services and find the service named “Microsoft Exchange System Attendant” if its stopped Start it.. if its started stop it then start it again. This should resolve the issue.

I was setting up a WSUS server for the first time the other day and was trying to trouble shoot a issue with a PC that didn’t seam to be registering with the WSUS server.. Found the following command to be useful.

[code]
wuauclt.exe /resetauthorization /detectnow
[/code]

There is a log you can skim through to check for error messages and such located at
c:\windows\windowsupdate.log

So I ran into this issue I needed to find out if SP2 was installed on a Exchange 2003 Server I was working on for a client. The issue was this server was a SBS (Small Business Server Edition) So when you clicked Help>About on Exchange Manager it only would give you 6.5.7638.1 and nothing about SP2 or anything.. After some research I found the following and figured I would share it.

Exchange 2003
6.5.6944 = Exchange 2003
6.5.7226 = Exchange 2003 SP1
6.5.7638 = Exchange 2003 SP2
6.5.7638.1 = Exchange 2003 SP2 + some Exchange Patches Installed

Exchange 2007
8.0.685.24 or 8.0.685.25 = Exchange 2007
8.1.0240.006 = Exchange 2007 SP1

So I ran into this issue the other day..

Scenario: My client has a Server 2003 PC and the C:\ was running low in diskspace started looking around to see what big files were on the system.. to my dismay I found c:\windows\system32\wbem\logs\Framework.log to be 600MB and growing slowly.. After some research on Google to check my theory that this file was way too big.. I found that this is a common issue in Server 2003 and has to do with a permissions issue on c:\windows\system32\wbem\logs folder.

Fix:
Set the permissions on the %systemroot%\system32\wbem\logs folder (example c:\windows\system32\wbem\logs ) so that the Network Service account has the Delete permission.

Locate the %systemroot%\system32\wbem\logs folder, right-click on the folder, and then select Properties.
On the Security tab, click the Advanced button.
Select the NETWORK SERVICE account from the Permission entries list, and then click Edit.
Locate the Delete permission, and then click to select the Allow checkbox.
Click OK three times.

delete the Framework.log file and you should be set

So I was working on a clients server today (Windows Server 2003 SBS) that was very low on diskspace on the C:\ .. 634MB actually..

Was sorting through all the folders to figure out where the space was.. To my supprise 4GB of disk usage was in C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5 which as anyone who works with computers knows is where friking IE caches websites and downloads. So the quick fix for this is to delete the contents of the folder.. but this is kinda a pain to manualy go into these folders and clear them out for 15 users and even harder if you do it the long way and login each one a click "Delete files" in IE for each account..

So I found this nice little script online someone made and though I would share it.. Credits to whoever wrote it.. Save the code in notepad as cleanup.vbs and then run it.

[Code]

On Error Resume Next
Const HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE = &H80000002
strComputer = "."

Set objRegistry=GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & _
strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

strKeyPath = "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList"
objRegistry.EnumKey HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, strKeyPath, arrSubkeys

For Each objSubkey In arrSubkeys
strValueName = "ProfileImagePath"
strSubPath = strKeyPath & "\" & objSubkey
objRegistry.GetExpandedStringValue HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, strSubPath, strValueName, strValue
Dim Fol:Fol = strValue & "\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5"
If objFSO.FolderExists(Fol) Then
Set f = objFSO.GetFolder(Fol)
Set fc = f.SubFolders
For Each f1 in fc
f1.delete
Next
End If
Next

[/Code]

So I ran into an issue today on a Windows 2003 server today.. Client wanted to run IIS and Apache on the same server.. I figured this wouldn’t be an issue because you can tell IIS to use one IP add another IP to the Network Interface and then tell Apache to use the second IP.. Well this turned out to be something far more complex.. First off even when setting IIS6 to listen on only one IP.. it STILL listens on all IP’s available so as this story would pan out Apache wouldn’t start because it couldn’t bind to the IP address on port 80 because it was already in use by IIS but I found the following trick to get around the issue.

Please note you should schedule a small block of time to do this as it requires a server reboot.. so figure the amount of time you will need is how ever long it takes your Server to shutdown and reboot +5-10min

Configure IIS to only listen to the one IP and make a note of that IP.

Open a command prompt (Start>Run "cmd" > Hit Enter)
Then type the following at the black screen: net stop http /y
This will stop all IIS and IIS related services

Next, run the httpcfg.exe this can be found on your Windows Server 2003 CD-ROM under
\support\tools\support.cab if you double click this file it should let you open it like a folder and copy the httpcfg.exe file to somewhere on your computer (example C:\temp)

At that command prompt you had open move to C:\temp or wherever you put the httpcfg.exe file
cd c:\temp

then type the following command
httpcfg set iplisten -i :80
For replace this portion with the IP address you set in IIS earlyer.. so if that ip was 192.186.0.102 then your command would be the following..
httpcfg set iplisten -i 192.168.0.102:80

If the command is successful, you will see the following message at the prompt.

HttpSetServiceConfiguration completed with 0

In some situations it will be necessary to reboot the server after this change but you can try to start the IIS by
net start w3svc

Change to following folder cd\IntePub\AdminScripts and enter run the following command:
cscript adsutil.vbs set /smtpsvc/1/DisableSocketPooling true

So this is an old yet common issue I ran into today at work.
Walked in to work this morning and before I even got to mydesk my phone started ringing, A client called in saying their computer wont do anything and when I asked them what was on the screen they said it was a Blue screen that said "Unmountable Boot Volume"

Official Microsoft KB artical on this is KB 555302

Cause:
1.The file system is damaged and cannot be mounted.
2.You use a standard 40-wire connector cable to connect the UDMA drive to the controller instead of the required 80-wire, 40-pin cable.
3.The basic input/output system (BIOS) settings are configured to force the faster UDMA modes.

Fix:
If it be the connector cable problem then replace the 40-wire cable with an 80-wire UDMA cable.
If it’s a BIOS settings problem then load the ‘Fail-Safe’ default settings, and then reactivate the most frequently used options such as USB Support.

If it’s a damaged file system case then:-
1.Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.
2.When the “Welcome to Setup” screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
3.If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.
4.When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
5.At the command prompt, type chkdsk /r , and then press ENTER.
6.At the command prompt, type exit , and then press ENTER to restart your computer.
This takes a bit longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.

If it still happens try hitting F8 and a screen should pop up before loading Windows giving you the option to select Last Known Good Configuration select it and hit Enter..

This should resolve your issue in most scenarios..

If the above process fails to restore the system then in the number#5 step use fixboot command instead of the chkdsk /r command.

If this doesn’t work you should check the cabling or consider Reformatting.
If this Issue Persists after Reformatting run tests on the Memory and Hard Drive.