DPM 2012 SP1 and Exchange 2013 The replica is inconsistent.

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Christoffer Steding

After installing Exchange 2013 you need some kind of backup software to backup your Exchange server. I decided to use Microsoft Data Protection Manager 2012 SP1.

According to technet http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj651645.aspx
you need the following pre-requisites to install DPM 2012 SP1

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

• Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable

• Windows PowerShell 2.0

• Windows Installer 4.5 or later versions

• Windows Single Instance Store (SIS)

• Microsoft Application Error Reporting

Setup automatically installs the pre-requisites if they are not already installed or enabled.

When I started to backup my Exchange 2013 server I was getting an error that the replica of the Exchange databas was inconsistent. The baremetal recovery and system state backup worked fine.

The Error message:

The replica of db01 on SERVER.compit.local is inconsistent with the protected data source. All protection activities for data source will fail until the replica is synchronized with consistency check. (ID: 3106) Data consistency verification check failed for LOGS of  db01 on SERVER.compit.local. (ID: 30146)

The solution:

Install Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 on your DPM 2012 SP1 server. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679

Inactivate the alerts and Perform consistency check on the databas.

Have a nice day.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Deploy Windows Live Movie Maker / Live Essentials 2012

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Christoffer Steding

Microsoft has released a new version of the Live Essentials Suite. So it’s time to write a new Blogpost about the news and where you can download the full installer.

In Windows 7 and 8  Microsoft has decided not to include any of the Windows Live programs ( Messenger, Mail, Writer, Sky Drive, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety and Toolbar) if you have any user in your organization that want to use any of the programs you might want to deploy them using a MSI package or a script . But when you try to download the program from http://download.live.com you only get an .exe file that then will download the programs that you want to install.
To get the whole Windows Live package in one file use the links at the bottom of this page.

You now have the installer directly from Microsoft’s download site.

When you have downloaded the package install the features that you want to use on a test computer. When the installation has finished you will see that some of the programs have dependencies to each other. To get Movie Maker to work you have to have Photo Gallery installed. And to get Photo Gallery to work you need Microsoft SQL 2005 Compact edition. So don’t scratch your head to much when you see that Photo Gallery is installed even though you just selected Movie Maker

But where is the MSI?

The MSI file is located in C:\Windows\Installer
To find out exact what the files that you need is called you need to look in the registry.
Do a search for live in the following registry key.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Installer\
UserData\S-1-5-18\Products

Go through the folders that look like 5DD3EF3C1E293CE4DBB628D29DE99819 and look in the folder called InstallProperties until you find the right program. When you have found the program look for LocalPackage and there is the path to the MSI for that program.

If you are using the MSI to install the product remember the dependencies!!

Scripting the installation:

If you are more into scripting you can also do a scripted installation of the Windows Live Programs. To do that download wlsetup-all.exe the same way as above.

Here are the different command line options that you can play with:

Exampel: WLSetup-all.exe /AppSelect:Messenger /SILENT  /QUIET

Additional switches:

  • AppSelect:[ProductID]
  • log:log_location
  • NOToolbarCEIP (to not opt into Toolbar CEIP)
  • NOhomepage (to not set home page defaults)
  • Nolaunch (blocks all applications from running automatically after your installation is complete)
  • NOMU (to opt the computer into Microsoft Update)
  • nosearch (to not set search defaults)
  • q (for a silent/unattended install)

ProdID’s for the command line:
All
Familysafety
Mail
Messenger (Should not be installed is replaced by Skype)
MovieMaker
wlsync (Sky Drive)
Writer

User Experience

When you deploy a program in an enterprise environment you don’t want the user to answer any questions that can generate a support call because the user don’t know what to answer.

Add the following to the registry using Group Policy Preferences or a script.

Suppress the EULA

String Value:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Common TOUVersion=”16.0.0.0″

Skip Sign in to the Windows Live account in Photo Gallery

This is not required so why prompt the user to do it?

DWORD:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Photo Gallery
Value Name= SignInRemindersLeft
Value Data= 0

Don’t ask the user to change file associations for picture file types

Multi-String Value
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Live\Photo Gallery\Library

 DontShowAssociationsDialogExtensions

 .WDP
.BMP
.JFIF
.JPEG
.JPE
.JPG
.PNG
.TIF
.DIB
.TIFF
.ICO

 

Download the offline installation:

Arabic
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ar/wlsetup-all.exe

Bulgarian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/bg/wlsetup-all.exe

Catalan
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ca/wlsetup-all.exe

Czech
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/cs/wlsetup-all.exe

Danish
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/da/wlsetup-all.exe

German
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/de/wlsetup-all.exe

Greek
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/el/wlsetup-all.exe

English
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe

Spanish
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/es/wlsetup-all.exe

Estonian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/et/wlsetup-all.exe

Basque
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/eu/wlsetup-all.exe

Finnish
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/fi/wlsetup-all.exe

French
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/fr/wlsetup-all.exe

Gujarati
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/gu/wlsetup-all.exe

Hebrew
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/he/wlsetup-all.exe

Hindi
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/hi/wlsetup-all.exe

Croatian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/hr/wlsetup-all.exe

Hungarian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/hu/wlsetup-all.exe

Indonesian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/id/wlsetup-all.exe

Italian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/it/wlsetup-all.exe

Japanese
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ja/wlsetup-all.exe

Canada
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/kn/wlsetup-all.exe

Korean
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ko/wlsetup-all.exe

Lithuanian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/lt/wlsetup-all.exe

Latvian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/lv/wlsetup-all.exe

Malayalam
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ml-in/wlsetup-all.exe

Marathi
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/mr/wlsetup-all.exe

Malay
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ms/wlsetup-all.exe

Dutch
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/nl/wlsetup-all.exe

Norwegian (Bokmal)
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/no/wlsetup-all.exe

Polish
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/pl/wlsetup-all.exe

Portuguese (Brazil)
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/pt-br/wlsetup-all.exe

Portuguese (Portugal)
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/pt-pt/wlsetup-all.exe

Romanian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ro/wlsetup-all.exe

Russian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ru/wlsetup-all.exe

Slovak
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/sk/wlsetup-all.exe

Slovenian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/sl/wlsetup-all.exe

Serbian-Cyrillic
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/sr-cyrl-cs/wlsetup-all.exe

Serbian-Latin
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/sr-latn-cs/wlsetup-all.exe

Swedish
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/sv/wlsetup-all.exe

Tamil
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/ta/wlsetup-all.exe

Telugu
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/te/wlsetup-all.exe

Thai
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/th/wlsetup-all.exe

Turkish
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/tr/wlsetup-all.exe

Ukrainian
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/uk/wlsetup-all.exe

Vietnamese
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/vi/wlsetup-all.exe

Chinese (Simplified)
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/zh-cn/wlsetup-all.exe

Chinese (Traditional)
http://g.live.com/1rewlive5-all/zh-tw/wlsetup-all.exe

 

Posted in Deployment, MSI, Scripting | 3 Comments

Dell Equallogic password reset

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

Lost the Password ?

  • Turn off the Power to your EQL.
  • Connect the console cable and start Putty on your PC (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html)
  • Turn on the power by turning on all the power supplies.
  • While the member is restarting, press Ctrl/p when the following message appears on the console:

    Press Ctrl/p to enter setup mode.
    This will halt the boot process and allow you to enter commands to the boot monitor.

  • At the CFE> prompt, enter the following commands, which are case-sensitive and must be typed exactly as shown:

    CFE> setenv RESETPASSWORD 1 (enter)
    CFE> reload     (enter)


  • When the member restarts, the PeerStorage login prompt appears. After a short pause, the following message should appear:
    WARNING:Password recovery mode… Temporarily resetting grpadmin password.
  • If you get the previous message, log in the group using the grpadmin account and its factory-set password, grpadmin:

    Login: grpadmin
    Password: grpadmin

  •  At this point, you are logged in to the group with read-write permission and can perform any group administration task. At this point, you should set the grpadmin account password to a known value. Use the procedure described in the Modifying Accounts section in the Group Administration manual or use the following command:

    account select grpadmin passwd Enter New Password: xxxxxxx Retype password: xxxxxxx

If it dosen’t work try to connect you serial cabel to the other controller module.
Still dosen’t work give Dell a call and the can help you using the recoverpassword account.

Good Luck

Posted in Dell, VmWare | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Group Policy Preferences Regional Settings not saved.

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

When you are using GPO prefernces to set Regional Settings on computers or Citrix / Terminal Servers you might see that even if you change to the region
you want to use it is not saved the next time you open the GPO . And the name of the Regional setting is End User Default Local instead of the name of the region.
In my case Swedish (Sweden).

If you read in the GPO you see :
This option affects how some programs format numbers, currencies, dates, and time.
The enabled (green underline) selected locale will become the end-user’s default locale when this policy is applied otherwise all settings apply to the end-user’s default locale. the locale may be customized on subsequent property pages.

The keyword here is the green underline.
But how do you get the green underline?

The answer is simple when you know it. You need to use the F5 – F8 key’s

F5 – Mark all settings on the page as “green” (apply all)
F6 – Mark current setting as “green” (apply this setting)
F7 – Mark current setting as “red” (don’t apply this setting)
F8 – Mark all settings on the page as “red” (don’t apply).

Have fun GPO-ing

Posted in Active Directory, GPO, Windows Server | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Changing Windows edition on Windows 2008 R2 or Windows 7

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

 

Scenario:

 

You have installed a Windows 2008 R2 server Standard Edition after you are finished installing the server you change your mind and want it to be an Enterprise edition.

The first thing that will pop up in your head is I reinstall the server. It only takes an hour.

The easy way is to open cmd.exe as an administrator.

 

And run DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition ID> /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

To find the different editions run

Dism /Online /Get-TargetEditions

 

 

Now the server will restart two times.

Do not do this on a Domain Controller.

Read More:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744380%28WS.10%29.aspx

 
 

 

 

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MDT silent install.

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

To speed up the installation of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) and Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) and to get the same setup at all customers I use this PowerShell script to install the programs needed and to setup and configure the Deployment Share.

Thanks to Brandon Linton for the MDT Deployment Share Creator Powershell Script that I have modified to work for me, myself and I.

Thanks to Yannick Plavonil for the MST files to the silent WAIK installation.

The Script:

  • Installs .NET Framework 3.5.1
  • Installs Windows Deployment Services.
  • Installs Windows Automated Installation Kit.
  • Installs Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.
  • Configures the Deploymetshare.
  • Restarts the server.

Download:

Save the script in your setup folder (d:\source) together with
MicrosoftDeploymentToolkit2012_x64 .MSI and the extracted KB3AIK_EN.iso (extract to KB3AIK_EN) copy the mst files to the KB3AIK_EN folder.

Run the script and go and take a coffe.

Happy Deploying!

Posted in Deployment, Scripting | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

SYSTEM writer is missing in Windows 2008 and 2008 R2

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

Does your system state backup fail?

I have a couple of time seen that the system writer is missing in VSSadmin when the system state backup has failed.

To get the System writer back start a command prompt and write one row at a time and press enter.

Takeown /f %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\* /a
icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(RX)”
icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant “NT Service\trustedinstaller:(F)”
icacls %windir%\winsxs\filemaps\*.* /grant “BUILTIN\Users:(RX)”

Then type vssadmin list writers in a command prompt to check that you have the system writer back.

Posted in Windows Server | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Help Stop SOPA/PIPA

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Configure Windows 2008 / 2008 R2 core

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

Why should I run server core?

It is a minimal Windows Installation that can run specific server roles. This reduces the attack surface on the server. Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 core consumes less memory and CPU than a “regular” Windows 2008 installation does. And yes you can install antivirus software and other programs as long as you can install them silent.

How do I configure the server?

In 2008 R2 you can use the command sconfig to do basic configuration. This is the easiest way to configure the server.

 

In the 2008 version of server core you need to configure the server using script or third party software.
I like Core Configuration Console (CCC) that can be downloaded from http://www.nullsession.com/downloads
If you don’t want to use CCC you have some commands below to configure your server.

Configure Static IP address:

The following command configures the interface named Local Area Connection with the static IP address 192.168.0.19, the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, and a default gateway of 192.168.0.1:

“Local Area Connection” is the name of the network connection that you want to configure.
To find the name of your connection you can use ipconfig.

netsh interface ipv4 set address name=”Local Area Connection” static 192.168.0.19 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name=”Local Area Connection” address=192.168.0.11

netsh interface ipv4 add dnsserver name=”Local Area Connection” address=192.168.0.19 index=2

Disable Firewall:

netsh advfirewall set AllProfiles state off

Rename Server:
To find the current name of your server type hostname.

netdom renamecomputer server_name /newname:dc02

Restart Server:

shutdown /r /t 0

Join domain:

netdom join /d:compit.local dc02 /ud:compit\administrator /pd:password

Now when you have configured your server it’s time to start adding roles that you want on your server.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Core, Windows Server | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Update Username, time and computer model in the computer description field when user logon.

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Christoffer Steding

This script is good when you want to know who is using a specific computer and the model of the computer. The description is updated every time a user logs on to a computer.

To use the script create a new GPO or use an existing GPO and add the VB script as a logon script.
Link the GPO to the computers OU.
For the users to be able to update the description field you need to delegate the control to the users to do so. Follow the guide below.

You can download the script from this link.

http://www.compit.se/download/script/SetCompDesc.zip

Delegate control to users to write in the computer description field

Right click on the OU that you want to give the users the right to update the description field.
Choose the Delegate Control…

  1. Delegation of Control wizard will start .
  2. Add the Group that you want to give the right to.
  3. Choose to Create a custom task to delegate.
  4. Select Only the following objects in the folder
    Then select Computer objects
  5. Choose Property-specific and then select Write Description
  6. Read the summary box so that everything is correct and press Finish

 

Now you have Delegated the rights to the users to update the description field in the OU that you selected.

Posted in Active Directory, Scripting | Tagged | Leave a comment