Archive for June, 2009

Windows Wallpaper: How to disable branded wallpaper?

Jun 26th

If you using a OEM Windows installation often there will be a wallpaper set when you login from the console or with Remote Desktop services. For me this is annoying when using RDP session as it is slow to render the wallpaper bitmaps over the internet connection or WAN.

I prefer the disable this.

Example

Open RegEdit and navigate to HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop and check Wallpaper key. To disable the wallpaper just delete this or use a script.

reg delete "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Wallpaper /f

If you are managing Dell servers with OEM installation than there is also the large bitmap wallpaper and using the script above will disable it.

console, disable, login, remote desktop, remove, wallpaper, Windows

Tools: ImgBurn without Admin Permissions

Jun 9th

Posted by Ivan in ImgBurn

1 comment

Recently ImgBurn was scripted to be deployed on to enterprise managed clients. Non of those clients have users as local administrators. With Nero you could install NeroRights to provide such privileges but with ImgBurn this is not possible. To solve this problem small GPO change locally or GPO in the domains can be done.

CreateFile Failed! – Device \\.\CdRom0 (D:\)
Reason: Access is denied.
Errors were encountered when trying to access a drive
This drive will not be visable in the program
You need Administrative privileges to use SPTI

Start gpedit.msc as administrator , Local Policies, Security Options and configure “Devices:Restrict CD-ROM access to locally logged on user only” to Enabled. Log in as user

ImgBurn found 1 drive now without local administrative permissions on Windows XP Sp3.

administrator, imgburn, permissions

Veeam: Veeam Monitor Free Edition 4.0

Jun 9th

Posted by Ivan in Veeam

1 comment

Veeam Monitor 4 for VMWare Veeam released latest version of their “Veeam Monitor 4.0 Free Edition for VMware” which is free monitoring tool for ESXi hosts.

The Veeam Monitor Free Edition is an easy-to-use VMware monitoring solution designed to meet the day-to-day needs of VMware administrators who need real-time performance monitoring and alerting. Built from the ground up specifically for the virtual world, Veeam Monitor provides a bird’s-eye view of key performance metrics across your virtual ESXi infrastructure.

With Veeam Monitor, you can view real-time resource usage data for any virtual infrastructure object or collection of objects, as well as known infrastructure events, all on a single screen. This allows you to finally see your virtual infrastructure as a unified entity, not just a collection of isolated hosts and guests.

There are some limitations but fair enough to monitor and manage my ESXi hosts. I don’t have Virtual Center servers to manage my branch server ESXi systems and Veeam Monitor Free Edition will do all that for me know.

For more information click on the links below: