Note: before you start please make sure you are running Windows 7 Enterprise or Windows 7 Ultimate version

• Start Computer Management
• Click Disk Management  and right click
• Click Create VHD
  
• Enter the VHD filename and location; the Virtual disk size and set the format to fixed size. The disk will be encrypted so you need to set it fixed. Click OK.
  
• New volume is created now. Please initialize the disk, create new SIMPLE volume, choose drive letter and format it as NTFS.
  
• After following the steps new disk should appear in Windows Explorer.
• Go to Windows Explorer and right click on the new created drive. Choose Turn on Bitlocker…
  
• Check Use a password to unlock the drive and type your password. Click Next
• Save the recovery key to a secure location. I would recommend to print it out and keep this somewhere offsite! Click Next
• Click Start Encryption to encrypt the VHD disk.
• Depending on the selected size the VHD disk will be encrypted.
  

If you running on a installation of Windows 7 Enterprise of Windows 7 Ultimate than Bitlocker to Go is available for you and you can secure your DATA with the proposed solution. I am not going to share this VHD with other operating systems like OSX or Linux, but If I would need to access the secured volume with non windows 7 based system I would always use a virtual machine based on Win7.

Today with a co-worker  we were working on sequencing Project 2010 and at some point during the installation we’ve got the following error message.

Error 1920. Service  Office Software Protection Platform (osppsvc) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

Microsoft Project  2010 uses the Office Software Protection Platform (SPP) service that basically is the same activation technology that is used to activate volume editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. This service in contained in the Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V. Before you sequence Project 2010, this service must be installed and configured on the sequencing server. It must also be installed on any client computers that you want to stream Project 2010. For more information please read Prescriptive guidance for sequencing Office 2010 in Microsoft App-V.

To download Microsoft Office 2010 Deployment Kit for App-V click here.

Example of the my “Windows XP Mode” virtual machine settings. As you can see no floppy.

Microsoft guys created a script which still allows you to attach a VFD file, but you still need to create a VFD file from scratch before you can continue. Download the Floppy Drive Scripts.zip.

C:\Scripts\vm>cscript FloppyDrive.vbs
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.8
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Missing command-line argument

Usage: FloppyDrive.vbs /vm:”Name of virtual machine to be started”

                       /action:info       – to display information about the current floppy configuration
                               disconnect – to disconnect any attached floppy disk or floppy disk image
                               vfd        – to attach a virtual floppy disk image
                               physical   – to attach a physical floppy disk

                       /floppy:name       – where name is either the full name and path for a virtual
                                            floppy disk or the letter of a physical disk to attach

After running FloppyDrive.vbs you see that there a action to attach a vfd file. After providing right parameters I got the following message:

cscript FloppyDrive.vbs /vm:"Windows XP Mode" /action:vfd /floppy:"C:\mklinks\floppy.vfd"

Attaching C:\mklinks\floppy.vfd to the floppy drive.
C:\Scripts\vm\FloppyDrive.vbs(113, 3) (null): The system cannot find the file specified

The script does not create my floppy drive and therefore I installed the WinImage tool.

Create new file and save the file as floppy.vfd.

Now I re-run my FloppyDirve.vbs script and the file was attached.

If I open the VMC file now I can see my virtual floppy has been added to the configuration. Without the VB script this can be added manually and will perform same actions as the script.

<floppy id=”0″>
            <pathname>
                <absolute type=”string”>C:\mklinks\floppy.vfd</absolute>
                <relative type=”string”>..\..\..\..\..\..\..\mklinks\floppy.vfd</relative>
            </pathname>
        </floppy>

The Export-Mailbox cmdlet exports all message types, including messages, calendar items, contacts, distribution lists, journal entries, tasks, notes, and documents. However, the Export-Mailbox cmdlet does not export rules.

To export data from a .pst file, you must run the Export-Mailbox cmdlet from a 32-bit computer that has the 32-bit version of the Exchange management tools and Outlook 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) or Outlook 2007 installed.

Well all prerequisites were in place; I opened the Exchange Management Shell and run the following command line:

[PS] C:\Documents and Settings\admin>Export-Mailbox -identity user1 -PSTFolderPath c:\user1.pst

Confirm
Are you sure you want to perform this action?
Exporting mailbox content from the mailbox ‘Gaag, van der Rob’ into .pst file ‘c:\gaagr.pst’. This operation may take a long time to
complete.
[Y] Yes  [A] Yes to All  [N] No  [L] No to All  [S] Suspend  [?] Help (default is "Y"): y
Export-Mailbox : Error was found for User1 (user1(at)networknet.nl) because: Error occurred in the step: Moving messages. Failed to copy messages to the destination mailbox store with error:
MAPI or an unspecified service provider.
ID no: 00000000-0000-00000000, error code: -1056749164
At line:1 char:15
+ Export-Mailbox <<<<  -identity user1 -PSTFolderPath c:\user1.pst
    + CategoryInfo          : InvalidOperation: (0:Int32) [Export-Mailbox], RecipientTaskException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : DFCFF30D,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.RecipientTasks.ExportMailbox

The export failed. After reading some posts on Google I found the solution myself. I tried to export my own mailbox which worked fine so the problem has to be within the permissions set. To get full access run the Add-MailboxPermissions cmdlet.

Add-MailboxPermission -identity user1 -Accessrights FULLACCESS -User admin 

Export-Mailbox -identity user1 -PSTFolderPath c:\user1.pst 

With these steps I can develop a procedure to backup mailboxes when they are removed from the system.

Not connected. No Connections are available after checking my adapters.

Microsoft released new tool named DISM.exe (Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool) which ships with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

DISM enumerates, installs, uninstalls, configures, and updates features and packages in Windows images. The commands that are available depend on the image being serviced and whether the image is offline or running.

Open elevated command prompt and query all available features “dism /online /get-features /format:table”

WirelessNetworking is disabled. To enable this feature execute “dism /online /enable-feature:WirelessNetworking”

dism enables the WirelessNetworking feature and after I check my available wireless network connections the WIFI networks are not shows.

The Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool allows you to create a copy of your Windows 7 ISO file on a USB flash drive or a DVD. To create a bootable DVD or USB flash drive, download the ISO file and then run the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download tool. Once this is done, you can install Windows 7 directly from the USB flash drive or DVD.

To download the tool please click here. Run the setup, next and install.

Start the “Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool” shortcut from the menu.

Browse the iso file and click next.

Choose USB drive or DVD.

Select your removable drive and click Begin copying.

That’s it! Insert the USB drive and power the system, change the boot order and select the removable drive.

I installed the latest version of Adobe Reader 9.2 today and followed the instructions I found on the following links:

• http://www.joiningdots.net/blog/2007/05/sharepoint-2007-and-adobe-pdf.html
• http://blogs.msdn.com/ifilter/archive/2007/03/29/indexing-pdf-documents-with-adobe-reader-v-8-and-moss-2007.aspx

Searching with some keyword of the PDF files the result returned nothing. PDF files were not index.

Reviewed the Crawl log and found failing messages for PDF files:

Crawled (The filtering process could not process this item. This might be because you do not have the latest file filter for this type of item. Install the corresponding filter and retry your crawl. )

I also tried to add the path system variable to the Adobe Reader installation folder and did another full index but this did not help.

The solution for the problem was changing two registry entries:

• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf and change Default Reg_Multi_SZ value to

{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

• Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.pdf and change Default Reg_Multi_SZ value to

{E8978DA6-047F-4E3D-9C78-CDBE46041603}

After these registry entries have been modified run iisreset; “net stop osearch” and “net start osearch”. Re-run the full index crawler on your content.

Thanks to the community I got the PDF icon and the PDF search working on the Sharepoint 2007 platform!

Within these subfolders there are several documents stored. For example within the “Form” subfolder where form documents are stored based on word or PDF files. All those subfolders within the “Information Technology” document folder hold several documents. The challenge I had is to create a table of content page which showed all those subfolders with their document content. I created a new page based on “Blank Web Part Page” and add the “Information Technology” document library which showed all the folders.

I could change current view and change the “Folders” option to show all items without folders but still this solution didn’t help. I wanted to filter individual “Document Library” subfolders and their content.

I tried all possible options with this “Information Technology” webpart to filter for a subfolder but nothing which helped me. Than I learned from Laura Rogers here how to insert a “Data View Web Part” and filter the content within a “Document Library”.

Some steps to achieve this:

• Create new ASPX file and attach your masterpage (Format menu –> Master Page –> Attach Master Page..)
• Create new custom content for PlaceHolderMain

   

• Drag your “Document Library” in the content area you want to show

   

• Make sure you are in the table and in the taskpane go to “Data Source Details” and click the Current Data Source link.

• Change the scope level to RecursiveAll
  
• We are done now and all documents will be shown stored in this “Document Library”. Now we can filter the path for specific Sharepoint subfolders. Click on the chevron of the data view and click Filter.

  

• The Filter Criteria window is shown and you can set all different type of criteria. Enter the subfolder you want to show. In my case the Form folder.

   

• Save the ASPX file and check it out.

The result:

Hopefully by now you get the picture how to customize the data view webpart. You can change all columns and insert hyperlinks were needed.

After leaning that Qnap released their v3 firmware I download and installed the binaries on my NAS box. New SABnzbd+_0.4.11 QPKG package was released and I download it and wanted to install this plugin and solve my problem.

As the screenshot above shows the process of installing this SABnzbd+_0.4.11QPKG plug-in/package hanged at 50%. I reboot the NAS box, disabled SABnzbd+, reboot, removed Python package and reinstalled Pyton and SABnzbd+_0.4.11 but nothing helped. I even renamed the file as suggested in the support forms; still it did not helped. Tried with IE7 with WIndows XP; still it stopped at 50%.

Until I found a post that SABnzbd+_0.4.11 package may have a bug and try to go back to a earlier version. That’s what I did.

I found a post how to install the SABnzbd+_0.4.11.qpkg package without the web interface. Use putty.exe or ssh (mac/linux) and 22/ssh port and login. Go to your share where you stored the package and run it.

[/share/Qtemp] # sh SABnzbd+_0.4.11.qpkg
Install QNAP package on TS-NAS ...
qinstall.sh
SABnzbd+.tgz
4852+1 records in
4852+1 records out
qinstall.sh: line 79: qpkg.cfg: No such file or directory
Installation Abort.

As you can see it failed. Make sure you installed the IPKG QPKG package to run the following commands. Wget is needed to download remote files (ipkg install wget).

Update: 2 November 2009 –> I changed wrong hyperlink to 0.4.9 version and added unzip step

[/share/Qtemp] # wget http://ftp.qnap.com/QPKG/TS-109/SABnzbd+_0.4.9_TS-109.zip 
[/share/Qtemp] # unzip SABnzbd+_0.4.9_TS-109.zip
[/share/Qtemp] # sh SABnzbd+_0.4.9_TS-109.qpkg
Install QNAP package on TS-NAS ...
qinstall.sh
SABnzbd+.tgz
4794+1 records in
4794+1 records out
Link service start/stop script: sabnzbd.sh
Set QPKG information to /etc/config/qpkg.conf
SABnzbd+ 0.4.9 has been installed in /share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/SABnzbd+.

Wow my SABnzb+ is working again and I can access the web interface on port tcp 8800. SABnzbd+_0.4.12 is released and no QPKG package so far but now I can do that from SSH shell.

[/share/Qtemp] # wget http://surfnet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/sabnzbdplus/SABnzbd-0.4.12-src.tar.gz
[/share/Qtemp] # tar -vxzf SABnzbd-0.4.12-src.tar.gz
[/share/Qtemp] # /etc/init.d/sabnzbd.sh stop
[/share/Qtemp] # cp -R SABnzbd-0.4.12/* /share/HDA_DATA/.qpkg/SABnzbd+/
[/share/Qtemp] # /etc/init.d/sabnzbd.sh start

After two weeks no GUI interface I found a solution how to get my SABnzb daemon up and running with the latest version.

Follow the hyperlinks below to get this done in your Sharepoint 2007 configuration:

• Icons are not displayed for Adobe PDF documents that are listed in the search results when you search your portal site in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or in SharePoint Server 2007
• Sharepoint 2007 and Adobe PDF

Windows  Server could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

Last time I had this error I was not able to fix this problem without reinstalling the OS. No recent backup of this VM and I run out of my options  to get this VM up and running again.

What I did than:

• Shutdown the VM
• Shutdown another working VM
• Mount the virtual disk of the failed Windows installation on the second VM and boot.
• After Windows was boot of the second vm I assigned a disk letter of the failed Windows instllation.

I went to E:\Windows\System32\config and got the following error message.

\Windows\System32\config is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.

I than right clicked on the volume; went to properties and opened tools tab. I clicked “check now” to repair the volume. After 9% I got warning volume and the process stopped.  I was lost again. But than I remembered one tool which I tried than.

chkdsk e: /f

After the process and check & fix were finished I was able to access all folders. I than shutdown the VM disconnected the virtual disk and boot the development SQL server. After 5 minutes the machine was up and running. This saved me at least couple of days of work to restore the configuration and make everything working.

Windows showed me the warning ” Windows-Registery Hive Recovered”. I was again being able to logon on the server and make sure proper backup was in place now. Same can be done with physical disk but make sure you install the HDD into another machine!

I had the prerequisite of keeping the MAC address of this VM. I first read this post I found with google. http://zealkabi.blogspot.com/2008/09/vmware-esx-server-3x-procedure-to-set.html

I first tried it manually but got the famous error message “The MAC address entered is not in the valid range. Valid values are between xx:xx:xx:xx:xx”

 Then I removed the vm from ESX inventory; download the vmx file and changed the ethernet0.addressType to static and ethernet0.Address = “01:0C:29:B0:27:E1″ with Notepad++.I deleted original file from the Datastore and upload the vmx file back. I started the vm again and got the message below:

Please specify a static Ethernet address for ethernet0. Failed to configure ethernet0

Without additional setting in the vmx config file you won’t be able to assign a static MAC address in the range your require. To disable mac address checking before boot add the following line in the vmx file.

 ethernetX.checkMACAddress = “false”

Thanks to Jason Nash I fixed this problem.
http://jasonnash.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/disabling-mac-address-checking-in-vmware/

My working config changes:

ethernet0.checkMACAddress = “false”

ethernet0.addressType = “static”

ethernet0.Address = “00:0C:29:B0:27:E1″

This is my instrcution how I reset my “admin” account password for WordPress 2.7.1:

• Open a linux shell and run where password is your own one: 
  echo -n password | md5sum
• Open phpmyadmin and open your wordpress database; run following sql (please change the database to yours):
  UPDATE ’name-your-database’.'wp_users’
  SET ’user_pass’ =’ 5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99′ WHERE  ’wp_users’.'ID’ =1 LIMIT 1 ;
• You can also run mysql; select the database with “use name-your-database;” and run the UPDATE sql from above.

Event Type:        Error
Event Source:      MsiInstaller
Event Category:    None
Event ID:          10005
Date:              3/10/2009
Time:              12:17:06 PM
User:              NETWORKNET\Ivan
Computer:          IVAN-VM01
Description:
Product: SMS Advanced Client — Error 25100. Setup was unable to create the WMI namespace CCM
The error code is 80041002

 To fix the problem see my cmd script below which was used by the local IT contact: 

@echo off
REM Ivan Versluis
REM Date: 2009/03/11
REM Description: FIX WMI Database for SMS Client
c:
cd %windir%\system32\wbem\
mofcomp cimwin32.mof
mofcomp cimwin32.mfl
net stop winmgmt
rmdir /s /q repository
rmdir /s /q Logs
mkdir Logs
net start winmgmt
rundll32 wbemupgd, UpgradeRepository
rundll32 wbemupgd, CheckWMISetup
rundll32 wbemupgd, RepairWMISetup
pause

 

See my worklog how I got the module configured and working with Ubuntu JeOS 8.04 and Apache2:

• sudo a2enmod rewrite
• sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
• Change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All for <Directory /> and <Directory /var/www/>
• sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart to restart Apache2 services

That’s it!

• NTLDR is missing Press Crtl+Alt+Del to restart

Oeps my boot record was missing or something went wrong during the import. Therefore I mounted the Windows Server 2008 DVD and boot from it.

Click “Repair your computer”

Make sure “System Recovery Options” finds a Operating System and click Next.

Systems recovery tool is started and click “Command Prompt”

Since Windows 2008 or even with Windows Vista (not sure ) the Windows Setup includes some new tools. We are going use the bootrec.exe.

Execute the following commands:

• bootrec.exe /FixMbr
• bootrec.exe /FixBoot
• bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd

Close “Command Prompt” and click Restart

Windows Server 2008 boot now and I was able to login. Changed the network settings and reboot with success.

Related links:

• How to use the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment

The message above was shown. My installation of the application succeed but after the reboot it started asking for the application printer which was not installed because of the missing files. I uninstall the application and started again but now with some hints where to find the files.

If you encounter that these files are missing please follow my guides below:

Start “Command Prompt” and type dir unidrv*.dll /s to search for these files. I was lucky and I found mine hidden somewhere(C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86) on the harddisk .

If you can’t find the files than open the following file if available C:\WINDOWS\Driver Cache\i386\sp2.cab and extract the two dll’s.

This fixed my problem and without downloading un-trusted DLL’s from the Internet. You can search for these files but be sure what you are downloading from the web.

VMWare ESX allows you to extend the virtual disk size on a running virtual machine. How to extend the virtual disk size? Right click the virtual machine in the VI cleint; choose settings and go to “Hard Disk 1″ and type new disk size. Click OK.

Example of my new  Disk Configuration in “Disk Management”. To extend the virtual disk we need to go to diskpart and extent the volume.

I opened command prompt and opened diskpart; selected the volume and run extend.

The volume you selected may not be extended.
Please select another volume and try again.

My virtual hard disk was full and I was not able to extend my basic disk with the additional 2GB I added to this configuration.

Thanks to Kalpesh Prajapati post I was able to find a solution to my problem.

Follow these steps to extend your virtual machine basic hard disk:

• Shutdown the virtual machine
• Extend the virtual disk size
• Add the harddisk to another virtual machine and start it up (second virtual machine)
• Open command prompt and start diskpart.exe
• list volumes and select the volume with the disk problem
• extend the disk

Make sure the volume has a drive letter assigned otherwise same warning will be returned. Virtual machine was started again without any problems and two additional gigs of disk space.

Links:

• Arne Fokkema posted another way how to perfom these actions on a basic disk. It should be easier if you download the additional ExtPart.exe tool from Dell. Extend the OS disk the easy way (ExtPart.exe)

• Download the latest version from here–> cmsmadesimple-1.4-full.tar.gz
• Extract the file with 7z and upload the content to your webserver by using ftp,sftp, ssh.
• I am using WinSCP to the files to my linux box. I dragged the files from left pane (my c drive) to right pane where the current CMSMadeSimple files were located. At some point I was asked to overwrite files and I clicked yes.

• Go to your admin page.

• I have couple of warnings I need to solve like removing the install directory and the “Site Down for Maintainance” message but most important is that you perfom the CMSMS schema upgrade. Click Start Upgrade Process.
• Verify your config.php is writable.

• I checked my config file from ssh console and the permissions were not configured as required.

root@ubuntu-jeos-7:/var/www/cmsmadesimple-1.2.5/hubo-roneijgelsheim/site# ls config.php -all
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 5829 2008-08-06 10:16 config.php

• To fix this problem I executed: chmod 777 config.php; chown www-data config.php and chgrp www-data config.php
• I went back and click “Try Again” in the Upgrade System wizard.

• The schema version was upgraded to 31 and now I could finish the upgrade by clicking on the last step.

• Setup Finished all required steps in the upgrade process and my website was up and running and up to date.
• I fixed my other two warnings and my site is now secure, updated and most important the process went very smooth.

a) Explore2fs which is a simple tool and I don’t need to install any low level system drivers. Explore2fs only operates in Read-Only mode.
b) Ext2IFS which is a pure kernel mode file system driver Ext2fs.sys, which actually extends the Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista (x86/x64) operating system to include the Ext2 file system.

I want to have full read-write mode on my linux volumes and I installed option b.

• Go to http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html and download Ext2IFS_1_11.exe
• Run the setup file and walk though the installation wizards.
• In the Drive Letters Wizard choose your linux partition and assign a drive letter. I used drive L:

Drive L:\ is now mounted in READ/Write mode from my Windows Vista SP1 x64 operating system.