- Problem -

After installing Windows 7 (beta or RC) you can’t connect to a Linksys wireless router on some network cards. You may be able to see and connect to other wireless networks, but not specifically configured Linksys devices.

- Solution -

Open an Internet Explorer browser page on a working network computer and connect to your wireless router config page. This is at http://192.168.1.1 by default with a default blank username and password of “admin”.

Click on the Wireless tab and configure the settings on the page as listed below:
- Wireless Network mode should be mixed
- Provide a unique name in the Wireless Network Name (SSID) box in order to differentiate your network from your neighbours network… Write this down as you will need it to connect.
- Set the Radio Band to any one of the listed options (11-2.462GHz is a common one)
-Wireless SSID broadcast should be Enabled

Click on Save Settings…
Click on the Wireless Security tab under the Wireless one:
-Change the Wireless security mode to WEP, WPA or WPA2. Any should work, however make sure your other devices are compatible… ie. Nintendo DS only works with WEP.
-WEP selection will give you an option to put in a “passphrase” and generate keys, this is the recommended method if using WEP.
-If using WPA you can put anything in the “key” field.

NOTE: Write down the wireless key you used as you will need that to connect later.

Click on Advanced Wireless Settings tab (this is the important bit for Windows 7)
-Change the Beacon Interval to 75
-Change the Fragmentation Threshold to 2304
-Change the RTS Threshold to 2304
Click on “Save Settings”…

NOw you should be able to go to the Windows 7 computer and see the wireless network listed. Just provide windows with the security information that you configured earlier and you should be all set.

( copied from here )

“Configuring Updates Stage 3 of 3 0%”

Use your OS disk to access the Vista repair tools.

Even for those without an OS disc, Vista has repair tools built in.

To access them, boot the computer, but when you see the “Microsoft (C)” with the moving lines, hold the power button until it shuts down.

Now windows thinks it didn’t boot properly, and when you turn it back on, you should get the option to run Windows Startup Repair.

Choose this. When it loads, cancel the scan it starts (it won’t find anything anyway), and choose the text on the bottom that says something like “Show advanced repair options.” which should get you to a command prompt option. (Some folks are saying that it asked for the user, and they changed from the Administrator to their user account in order to get access to a few more tools, including a command prompt where you can run fixes).

You can also get to a command prompt via holding down, or repeatedly clicking, F8 as the computer begins its reboot. - select safe with command line.

note that this may take a few runs through the reboot F8 routine as my initial runs still ended up with the forever loop. Which is why the OS disk route - if your machine came with or you later bought such a disk - is preferred. If you are lucky ebough to have a restore point established, that option appears to work on a little less than half the machines I’ve run into.

Once you have the command prompt the need is to remove a file “pending.xml” that is causing the forever loop

Instead of deleting the “pending.xml” files from the c:\windows\winsxs folder I renamed it, so that it can be put back later if needed.

This seemed to do the trick for me. But if it still hangs on “Stage 3 at 0%” with reboot and hang again forever cycle continuing, just do a repeat of the F8, and select safe mode w/networking. Stage 3 may well continue and finish normally (it didn’t for me) but in any case after the second “safe” reboot a boot to normal windows was possible for the folks I was helping.

If you have and ESX servers on a US Department of Defense network, or need to meet their security requirements, there is a very helpful admin out there with a solution. There is a simple shell script that will patch most of the findings from the Unix SRR tool.

You can check out his blog: http://www.intrasection.com/pjmorr/2008/05/12/script-to-allow-esx-to-pass-a-disa-security-readiness-review/

Or, visit the VMTN Community Forums post he made: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/145435

- Problem -

When you insert a CD/DVD-R/RW in your burner drive in Vista, it tries to create a new CD session. This causes you to be unable to read the other session already on the disk.

- Solution -

1. Launch registry editor (Start Menu > Run > regedit.exe).
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Explorer\CD Burning\Drives.
3. Select the correct Volume subkey (or all to disable on every drive).
4. Find and modify the IsImapiDataBurnSupported DWORD to 0.
5. Close the registry editor.

-Problem-

When cloning a virtual machine in virtual center it gives an error on the customization page that says: Windows customization files not installed.

-Solution-

You need to install the sysprep tools from your windows cd (same version as VM) to your virtual center server. Here is how you do that.

1. Browse the windows CD (or DVD) that is the same version as the VM you are trying to clone.

2. On the CD go to the \SUPPORT\TOOLS folder

3. Open the DEPLOY.CAB file and copy the contents to your virtual center server in the “C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\sysprep\<version of OS>” folder. Making sure to put the files in the correct OS folder for the sysprep you are copying.

-Problem-

Windows Vista can’t connect to a Windows XP computer file share. You keep getting a logon unsuccessful error message even though you are using a correct username/password.

-Solution-

Method 1:

NOTE: This method is for Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise versions only. For Vista Home versions see the second method.

1. Open Administrative Tools. (In Control Panel after clicking on “Classic View” on the left side bar)
2. Click Local Security Policy. (click continue on security dialog)
3. In the left pane, click the triangle next to Local Policy.
4. In the left pane, click Security Options.
5. In the right pane about 3/4 the way down, double click “Network security: LAN manager authentication level”.
6. Click the drop down box, and click Send LM & NTLM - use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.
7. Click OK.
8. Restart the computer.

Method 2: (required for home editions of Vista, not recommended for novice users)

1. Open the Start Menu.
2. In the white line (Start Search) area, type regedit and press Enter.
3. Click Continue on the security dialog.
4. In regedit, go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
5. In the right pane, right click LmCompatibilityLevel and click Modify.
NOTE: If it doesn’t already exist, create a DWORD value named LmCompatibilityLevel
6. Set the value to 1
7. Reboot

Repairing “Orphaned Snapshots” in Vmware ESX Server v3.5.

This issue seems to be caused when running a VCB on the VM while it is running. Most notably this seems to be a bigger issue with database servers running in VM’s.

-The Problem-

While running a VCB job a snapshot is created and then should be deleted afterwards. If the process of removing the snapshot fails under certain conditions it can leave what Vmware calls an “orphaned snapshot”

When your snapshots get orphaned, the VM continues to save any new data into a “snapshot disk”. This disk will be physically separated from you VM’s normal disk image file, and will not actually show up as used space on the data store free space calculation. This in turn can cause your data store to become full and not allow your VM to power on correctly.

You can verify if an orphaned snapshot exists in your VM if you look at the virtual disk in the VM settings and see a disk file location that looks like ???-000001.vmdk. This is the snapshot disk being used as the disk image.

-The Solution-

All of the below steps are done from the Infrastructure Client and the command line console. Please read through them and understand each step before you begin, as once you start you must finish.

1. Check to see if you have any snapshots in the snapshot manager. If you do not, continue to step 2. If you do, use the delete all option and see if this resolves the issue (if not go to step 2).

2. Shut down and power off the VM (if it is not off already). You should not shut down the VM with any active snapshots present.

3. After the VM is fully powered off, create a single snapshot of the VM and do not power up after this step.

4. Browse your data store for the VM and look for the numbers on you .vmdk files. The most recent snapshot should only be a few megabytes, and you want the one that is right before that.

5. Go to the command line console and edit the .vmx file for your VM in the data store container. Look for a section similar to the following for each of your virtual disks.

scsi0:0.present = "true"
scsi0:0.fileName = "???-00002.vmdk"
scsi0:0.deviceType = "scsi-hardDisk"

You want to edit the “scsi0:0.fileName =” section to the same file name that you found in step 4. You have to repeat this throughout the file for each virtual disk on your VM.
Save the .vmx file, overwriting the original.

6. Now, this is going to be a long process if the .vmdk files are large (over 20 gigs) and could take several hours. During this process you may loose connectivity to your ESX server on the infrastructure client. What you need to do is run the command below from within the VM’s data store container.

vmware-cmd <your .vmx file> removesnapshots


7. After the previous step is completed check your VM settings in the infrastructure client and verify that your virtual disks are now pointing to the original .vmdk file (does not contain -00001 etc.). If everything completed successfully you should be able to power up your VM.

8. After the VM is powered on and you verify operation, you can delete the last numbered -0000x.vmdk that was created from your snapshot in the third step (should only be a few megabytes). This file should have been ignored by the snapshot removal because you changed the .vmx file.

On my system I noticed the infrastructure client became unresponsive after checking the VM settings (hung on reconfigure virtual machine) and would not let me power on the VM. I had to run service mgmt-vmware restart to restart the management services so I could power it on.