TK Computer Solutions

To export DHCP reservations, from the source server run the following command substituting in your servers information:

netsh dhcp server [ip address] scope [scope address] dump > C:\DHCP_reservations.txt

Open up the file located at C:\DHCP_reservations.txt  in a text editor, do a Find -> Replace for the source server IP, and change that to the destination server IP.

On the destination server copy the text file that you just created to the C: drive of the new DHCP server that you are migrating to and make sure your scope is already created, and then run the following command:

netsh exec C:\DHCP_reservations.txt

If you do a refresh on the DHCP server and recheck the scope you should now be able to see your imported reservations.

Office 2010 is not rearmed for activation  after you run a sysprep therefore the Office 2010 installation that has been installed on an image and deployed to multiple computers ends up keeping the same installation ID on multiple workstations. Therefor the issue at hand is that even though you have Office installed on more than 5 computers it does not increment your KMS client count. If your Office KMS doesn’t reach the minimum of 5 clients your Office installations will fail to activate.

If you are researching this issue you have more than likely come upon the error below:

0xC004F038 The software Licensing Service reported that the computer could not be activated. The count reported by your Key Management Service (KMS) is insufficient. Please contact your system administrator. – Office Deployment Support Team Blog

There is a nice easy fix that I found via Microsoft TechNet blog that you can run as a startup script which will rearm the installs on your stations to get KMS working. You don’t have to use this as a startup script but that is one option. The other option is to manually run this script on about 6 computers that you are having activation issues with. You can download the script from the link below. Once you have 6 computers rearmed and activated I would recommend using the Microsoft Volume Activation Tool to enforce the Office 2010 activation on all other workstations having the activation issues.

Office 2010 Rearm Script (Click to download)

You may think that your Office KMS is working but in reality it may not be functioning at all. This issue kind of caught me by surprise because Office 2010 is nice and quiet about its not needing to activate until the 25th day after you do the initial install. After the 25th day a  timer runs out and it then it starts prompting the user to activate via the screenshot below.

To figure out how many different activation requests you actually have you can run this on your KMS server with an admin elevated prompt:

cscript slmgr.vbs /dlv bfe7a195-4f8f-4f0b-a622-cf13c7d16864

You can also look at the KMS event logs on the server just to see if there are multiple stations requesting activation with the same ID.

You should also check out the link below for Office KMS tips and tricks:

Volume Activation Tips and Tricks – Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering – Site Home – TechNet Blogs

Windows 7 x64: USB Fix

If you are experiencing issues with your USB devices after running all of your Windows updates you will need to check your device manager to actually see what devices are in error. In order to see if your USB devices are in error you can right click on your “My Computer” icon on your desktop or in your “Start Menu” and select “Manage” and then select “Device Manager”. In the device manager under “Universal Serial Bus controllers” you will be able to see if you have devices in error. Through many hours of research I have found a way online in which you need to edit a registry key to regain functionality of all your USB devices.

To edit the registry you need to click on the start menu and in the search field type the word regedit and hit your enter key.

IMPORTANT: Please backup your entire registry prior to making any changes to any of the keys because accidents do happen and changing something in the registry can lead to system instability if you do not know exactly what you are doing. If you haven’t made changes to a registry before you may want to hire someone to make the changes for you. You can backup your registry by right clicking on the “Computer” icon at the top of the registry and clicking on “Export”. I recommend saving the backup of the registry to the root of your C: drive. Once you have backed up your registry you are ready to continue with the following steps below.

Navigate to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\

Under the classes registry key you need to navigate around and find the key called: {36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000} under this key you may find a key call UpperFilters. Please note before you make changes to this registry key you need to look at the right side of the screen and verify that you see a registry key called “Default” and under the data side of the key you see that it is named Universal Serial Bus controllers. If you do find a key called UpperFilters right click on it and rename it to UpperFiltersOld and then restart your computer. If everything went as planned and there aren’t any other hidden problems all of your USB devices should now work.

This is the end of the USB Fix tutorial however other devices can experience similar issues such as video drivers. So ANYBODY getting that error for any devices could try a similar series of steps. Find the Class object for your problematic device (looking at the ‘(Default)’ and ‘Class’ keys under those similar entries) and move/delete those UpperFilter and/or LowerFilter keys.
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You can fix Stop 0x000000ED (UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME) Blue Screen Error by running the CHKDSK command in the Recovery Console. This particular Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) means there is a critical error in the NTOSKRNL that is preventing Windows from booting normally.

The following procedure should help you correct the issue assuming you have not made any recent changes in the BIOS or have attempted to configure RAID. If you have done either of those, set the BIOS back to default and revert the RAID settings back to Autodetect.
To Fix Stop 0x000000ED
(UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME)

You will need a Windows disk, as you have to run a command from the Recovery Console. You will boot to the Windows Disk and follow the prompts until you get to the part where it asks if you want to run the Recovery Console. Press R on your keyboard to launch it.

If you’re asked which installation you’d like to log into press 1.

Type in the Administrator’s password when prompted to and hit enter. If you have no admin password setup just press enter.

At the command prompt type chkdsk /r and press enter. The disk checking process will begin and Windows will repair any errors it finds. This entire process can take a long time to complete. When done type exit and hit enter to restart the computer.

If this corrects the problem, be sure to take the opportunity to backup any important data and then run Windows Update.

Click the link below to read about how you can protect yourself while being on the internet:

Sophos How to Stay Safe Online

Windows 7 SP1 has been released to the general public as of Feb 22nd, 2011.

Most users have their computers set to automatically update. However some users may not and I wanted to instruct those that do not how to check and make sure that they are obtaining current updates.

Please note:

If you are installing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 your computer must be directly connected to AC power. Desktop computer users won’t have anything to worry about however laptop users will need their laptops to be directly connected to a power cord. It is extremely important that you do not interrupt the update process once started because it could make the computer unstable and possibly blue screen or not boot properly the next time you turn the computer back on. When installing a service pack it may appear that your computer has froze but actually hasn’t. Within a service pack are a great number of updates all rolled into one package which in turn takes a longer time to complete the install.

Directions located below instructing you how to configure your computer to automatically update daily:

1. Click on the “START MENU” and the click on “CONTROL PANEL”
2. Click on the “WINDOWS UPDATE” icon.
3. On the left hand side of the screen click on “CHANGE SETTINGS”
4. Under important updates select the best update method for you. Most people want their computers to update automatically so I will instruct you on how to configure them to do so. Click on “INSTALL UPDATES AUTOMATICALLY (RECOMMENDED)”, select “EVERYDAY”, and then select a convenient time for the install to take place daily.
5. Then click on “OK” and now we can check for updates.
6. On the left side of the screen click on “CHECK FOR UPDATES” and install all critical ones and any optional ones that you want to be installed such as driver updates or other noncritical programs that you want installed. You may have to repeat this last step more than once if your computer is out of date on updates.

Here’s how to do it:

Launch the Virtual Infrastructure Client. If you don’t have it, just http:// to your VMware ESX host and grab it from the front page.

Go to the Configuration tab of your ESX Server, then click on Virtual Machine Startup/Shutdown.

By default  automatic startup is disabled. To enable it, click on “Properties…” on the far upper right of the window.

You’ll now see this window:

Check/Tick “Allow virtual machines to start and stop automatically with the system”.

Now, this is the bit where I nearly cried…

You know you want to “enable” your Guest OSes to automatically boot, but how? I tried clicking and dragging, right clicking for a context menu to enable “Automatic start up” and gave up.

Turns out, you need to click on the Guest OS you’d like to enable, and then click “Move Up” until it sits underneath the “Automatic startup” title. Argh!

FileMaker Server is incompatible with Java 6 Update 10 (or later) on Windows. This applies to both Windows XP machines and Windows Server 2003 machines. This issue also affects Macs but I haven’t written out the steps to fix the issue yet but if you reference the steps below as you are working on the MAC you can more than likely figure it out. To configure Java settings on the Mac you have to go into Applications > Utilities > Java.

Known Issues:

Java 6 Update 10 or newer is installed prior to installing FileMaker Server 9:

• The deployment wizard will not launch after installation of FileMaker Server.

FileMaker Server is installed, and successfully deployed before Java 6 Update 10 is installed:

• The FileMaker Server Admin Console (UAC) will launch. However, after a few minutes of activity, an Admin Console lost connection error will appear.

Workaround:

1. Open Java from the Control Panel.
2. Go to the General tab at the top of Java window “Temporary Internet Files” and click “Settings” then “Delete Files” check all the boxes and click “Ok”
3. Go to the Java tab.
4. Click “View” in the “Java Application Runtime Settings” section.Uncheck (disable) All Java 6 updates except update 7 if update 7 is not installed you will need to download it from this link that contains the link to the J2SE Runtime Environment Java 6 update 7.
5. Check (enable) Java 6 release 7.
6. On
7. Click Ok to commit changes.
8. After you have done this test your ability to access the database.
9. If you have further issues still you may need to uninstall all versions of Java from your Windows control panel and just leave Java 6 update 7.

Note: This workaround applies to users accessing the FileMaker Server Admin Console via a remote machine as well.

Is your Facebook account sending out random messages that you didn’t send?


There are certain applications that you have authorized to post to your profile which are the culprits for this Facebook SPAM. I will instruct you on how to edit your Facebook authorized applications below:


1)    Login to Facebook
2)    At the top right hand corner of the site click on “Account” then click on “Privacy Settings”
3)    Near the bottom left hand corner of the site you will see a section labeled “Apps and Websites” and under it you will click on “Edit your settings”
4)    On this page you will see where it says “Apps you use” and to the right of it you need to click on “Edit Settings”
5)    You should now be looking at all the programs that you have authorized.
6)    To remove unwanted apps you just need to click on the “x” to the right hand side of the app.
7)    To edit settings of individual apps you will click on “Edit Settings” for each individual application and from that point you can control multiple features that the application uses. You can specify here what you alloweach application to do such as post on your wall along with what kinds of information you allow the application to have access to.
8)    Any applications or games that you don’t use anymore I recommend removing along with any applications that are sending out random messages on your behalf.

FOR NETWORK & SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATORS ONLY

FYI for those that don’t know:

This is good information to know if you have a server crash and want to migrate the data and services to a new server inconveniencing your users as little as possible. We had a server crash that housed an entire buildings DHCP, PXEboot, software repository, and network printers. All functions except printers were an easy move. Microsoft Print Migrator 3.1 served as a very useful tool to migrate the queues but then you have the issue to deal with being that the queues are pointing to the new server and all computers that have installed printers are directed to the old server. Below you will find out how to have a server respond to multiple DNS names. It would seem straight forward by just assigning multiple DNS names to an IP but there are a few more steps to make it work.

How to make a Windows 2003 or newer server to respond multiple DNS names in a domain:

1. One of the servers must be joined to the domain.
2. Preferably there is more than one NIC in the server to balance the load.
3. In DNS manually create an “A” Record and its associated Pointer Record to the IP that you want the secondary name of the server to reply to. The new DNS records will populate out to all your DNS servers.
4. You must also create a registry key that disables strict name checking so that the server will respond to both of the names.
5. Open up a command prompt and run regedit
6. Locate HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
7. In the left side of the window “right click” on Parameters and “left click” on New and then select DWORD and make the Name of the new value to be DisableStrictNameChecking and then open the new key and then change the decimal value to 1
8. If this was an older server that crashed or your decommissioning you must remove the active directory computer account for the non physical server.
9. If you find that when you ping the new name or run an NSLOOKUP on the name and are not able to get a response from it you may have to repair the network connection on the computer you are using to test the connection to the new server name.