Last week after about two years away I had to do some more work on Windows Deployment Services and found myself writing a guide on how to add Windows Updates to an offline WIM file in WDS. It’s really simple so thought I’d share it here.
So it’s been a while since I had to use Windows XP and for security I’ve made sure that all my servers (Windows 2008 and R2, naturally) are "more secure" by only allowing computers that support Network Level Authentication to connect. Unfortunately I recently had to use a machine that was locked to Windows XP, which kind of scuppered me when I needed to do some remote administration in a hurry. Luckily, I remembered that Windows XP does support NLA – you just need to know how to configure it.
For the last week or so I’ve been playing around with Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Virtualization component of Windows Server 2008 R2. For those of you that haven’t used or heard of RD-V, it’s Microsoft’s free VDI offering, utilising Remote Desktop to initiate a connection and spin up a dedicated Hyper-V Virtual Machine for the user. Anyway, one thing that really bugged me was that I couldn’t get Aero Glass to work, no matter what I did. Everything I read said it should work, but it didn’t. Why not? Well, the answer was both simple and irritating. Aero Glass remoting doesn’t work under anything other than Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate.
This annoyed me immensely – why not include it in Windows 7 Professional?
Yesterday I had an interesting problem I had to fix. As you may or may not know, using Hyper-V within Failover Clustering sometimes requires the use of volume GUIDs for storage if you have more LUNs than drive letters available (like we do). What you may not know is that these GUIDs can, under some circumstances, change – completely screwing up Failover Clustering’s ability to move virtual machines between nodes.
In my last post I wrote about how to install Windows Server 2008 R2 into a VHD for dual-booting purposes. Well, recently I broke my laptop and had to rebuild my boot loader. Anyways, adding an existing VHD to the Windows 7 boot loader is a doddle.
First, copy your current boot loader:
bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Boot Description"
This will generate a new boot entry and print out the GUID. You’ll need this! Next, you’ll set the VHD path for the OS to use.
bcdedit /set {GUID from last step} osdevice vhd=[DriveLetter:]\PathToVHD\VHD_File
bcdedit /set {GUID from last step} device vhd=[DriveLetter:]\PathToVHD\VHD_File
That’s it! Reboot your PC and your VHDs should be bootable. Remember though, you can only boot Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 VHDs like this.
I’ve been using Windows 7 as my primary OS on my laptop (a nice shiny new Dell Studio 17) for a little while now. I’ve found it almost as stable as Vista, definitely faster and some of the new features are very useful – the wireless connection stuff is much better for example. However, the lack of any hypervisor-based virtualization product with it means I have to use Windows Server 2008 for many work-based things.
Now, with both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, you can boot from a VHD file. Why is this great? Well, my laptop only has one disk partition and I can’t be bothered to resize it (and no, using DISKPART doesn’t work – I have 0B available to shrink). It also means that I can stick in my USB stick with the Windows Server 2008 R2 install files on, open a command prompt (using SHIFT+F10 when the first dialog box pops up) and type:
diskpart
create vdisk file=D:\VHDs\Win2k8R2.vhd type=expandable maximum=32768
select vdisk file=D:\VHDs\Win2k8R2.vhd
attach vdisk
exit
I can then continue the install – it does complain about not being able to boot from this volume, but don’t believe it. Just press next and the whole thing works like a dream.
One really annoying thing about the VMware Tools installation is that it reverts the video mode back to 640×480 for Windows Server Core installations; barely enough space for the command prompt. This can be fixed very quickly. Run regedit (one of the few GUI tools in Server Core) and find the keys DefaultSettings.XResolution and DefaultSettings.YResolution. Hint: they’ll be in a subkey of HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\. Change these values from 640 and 480 respectively (another hint: change the value from hex to decimal!), reboot and you’re good to go.
I’ve found myself using Windows Server 2008 Core quite a lot recently, and apart from using the GUI CoreConfigurator I’ve realised that I’m often completely forgetting a whole bunch of commands related to Server Core setup. Now nine times out of ten I’m working from a prepared Sysprep image with Group Policies setting everything I need; but every so often I forget or am setting up a test lab and need these commands. Anyways, here’s a list of codes that I use very often.
Well, with Windows Server 2008 actually being released today I thought I’d put down in writing how I configured a server for one of our branch offices here. I decided that for a small office we’d need DHCP, DNS and a domain controller. However, this being a branch office with no IT function within it, this gave me the perfect opportunity to play with the Windows Server 2008 Read-Only Domain Controller (RODC) role within a Windows Server 2008 Core installation.
If you’re managing a large number of users, you might sometimes have to create Outlook signatures for these users. Doing this manually can be a right pain in the arse, so I decided to write a quick script which, when executed (HINT: set it to run at logon in Group Policy), will automatically create a signature called ‘Default’ for Outlook 2003 and up to use. Disclaimer: I’ve only tested it on Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 running on a domain so if it doesn’t work, sorry…
