Help my windows server root volume is full!

June 25, 2008 · Filed Under Microsoft, Windows XP · Comment

This morning my Cacti appliance warned me by email that the windows root volume was getting above the 90% threshold. I configured this a while ago for getting notified in front.

When installing and configuring this Windows server I didn’t plan the configuration in the right way and my free space for C:\ volume is limited. If you install a fresh server again think about having one volume using the complete physical RAID disk space and not having one 18GB disk as I used now. My main problem is that server has 4GB of RAM and paging file is sitting on C:\.

I was not able to move the paging file nor could I move the production virtual machine another volume. I went to C:\Windows and found a lot of blue directories which were used by the Automatic Updates. It used more than 500MB.

To safely remove Hotfix Backup files and the Add/Remove Programs Registry entries go to here and download the tool. Run the tool and remove all hotfixe backup files.

After you run the tool; go to c:\Windows and delete all blue marked directories. They all should start with $ sign.

Now we have on directory we need have closer look. Mine on this particular server grow to 600+ mb. Go to C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download and verify your size.

Stop the “Automatic Updates” service or run “net stop wuauserv” from cmd.

Delete all subfolders within C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download. Restart the “Automatic Updates” service. You can safely remote these. The procedure can be executed on a Windows XP or a Windows Server 2003 system.

Tags: clean, delete, hotfixes, remove, Security, Windows

Windows XP Administrator account login failure

May 18, 2008 · Filed Under Windows XP · Comment

I am sure many of us hit this problem before, but after 6 years working with Windows XP I forget to change default settings over and over. Most of our clients are sitting in some kind of domain structure and receiving all their settings from Group Policy, but you probably will also have workgroup clients. Today I am testing the remote installation of Symantec Antivirus 10.2 server and hit this Administrator account problem.

First I thought the password is wrong; ok try again no…; than I add the computer\administrator and tried again; no again setup message.

Logon failure: unknown name or bad password. for \\%COMPUTERNAME%\admin$

I went back to my Windows XP virtual machine and checked the setting in Windows Explorer / Tools menu / Folder Options / View tab / and uncheck “Use simple file sharing (recommended)”.