Turning On a Stubborn Network Discovery

On my Server 2008 virtual machine, there were some exercises that required Network Discovery to be on. However, whenever I tried to turn Network Discovery on in the Network Settings page, it simply wouldn't turn on. I could check the radio button and click apply, it would process that for a bit, then close the submenu as if it had turned it on, but the light would be gray, not green. I searched the internet for hours, turning on services, opening ports, disabling the firewall (this turned on network discovery, but besides being a security risk also made other configuration problems) but nothing I tried worked. I was at my wit's end.

Then I stumbled across this obscure thread on Microsoft's Technet, in which the last poster described a stupidly simple way to fix this. I tried it, and it worked like magic.

Other members of the class having the same problem tried it, and it worked only after turning on several services mentioned in other threads, notably, DNS Client, Workstation, Server, SSDP Service, and Remote Procedure Call.

Edit: After doing this, I was unable to turn on printer sharing. It was acting the same way as Network Discovery had been. I discovered that somehow, I had lost access to the printer! When I right clicked on the printer and selected Properties, it displayed the warning "You do not have access to this printer. Only the Security tab will be displayed." As I was logged in as Administrator, which was the account that had added the printer, I was a bit confused how that came about. I finally got around it by granting "Everyone" full control to the printer. Since that was insecure, I then deleted it and re-added the printer. I was then able to enable printer sharing in the Network and Sharing Center.

Some kinds of mice you DO want in your house

I have to say a word here about my favorite mouse ever: the Microsoft Laser 6000. Now, I am not a Microsoft fanboy, by a long shot. In fact this may be the only Microsoft product I like.

I built my computer in February 2006, three years ago next month. At that time I bought a Microsoft Laser 6000 as my mouse, because the reviews were decent and I wanted a laser mouse, it being a step up from that old optical technology. Not that there are many situations that I woudl be moving my hand too fast for an optical mouse to register it, but three years later I certainly don't regret this purchase. My brother has gone through at least three mice during the time I have had this Laser 6000, and mine still performs flawlessly. When my sister got a laptop, she bought the same mouse for it due to my recommendation. Three years is a long time for any piece of hardware to be on the market, so she had to order it online - it couldn't be found in any stores. However, the extra trouble she went through to acquire one was worth it.

Should my own Laser 6000 ever break down, I will scour the internet to find another one just like it. If I could pull it off, I would never buy another mouse design for the rest of my life.

Edit: My #1 blog fan, Jerk, has drawn me a picture of my adorance of this mouse. Here it is.

Buy the Laser 6000 from Amazon (only available in Pack of 3)

Google Chrome - More than just Shiny!

Recently in class, during our install of Server 2008, our instructor mentioned that we should install an alternate browser on our 2008's, because for reasons unknown to me Server 2008's version of Internet Explorer is virtually unusable. He specifically mentioned Firefox and Google Chrome. I have long been a Firefox addict (I love the extensions!) and also a Google fan (very innovative company, quality products), but had not as yet tried Google Chrome, the new browser they had developed. So I decided to give it a try.

Our instructor wasn't sure that Google Chrome would even install on our new Server 2008 virtual machines, but it worked just fine for me. Being used to Firefox's layout, my first response to the browser was, "whoa, the tabs are at the top!". It's not really a very chrome-looking interface, but it is clean and minimalistic, which I can appreciate.

Since I didn't really know anything about Chrome or what set it apart from other browsers, I read this comic that I found on the Chrome introduction page. It is very informative, easy to read and understand, and a bit entertaining as well. I recommend spending the time to read it if you have ever wondered how Chrome works.

After seeing how Chrome performed on Server 2008, I thought I would put it through some more rigorous testing at home. I installed it, and then began abusing it as much as I do Firefox. It took everything I threw at it, and I was delighted to discover that it had some functionality that is fairly close to one of my favorite Firefox addons, QuickDrag. QuickDrag allows you to highlight a plaintext URL and drag and drop it on the page to open a new tab of the address you highlighted. Chrome allows you to select a plaintext URL and drag it to the tab bar to do the same thing. The only difference in the functionality that I used was that I had to drag it farther.

Being new, Chrome does still crash sometimes. Bugs still exist. But due to the way Chrome is built, one thing going wrong won't kill the whole browser - only the part where the error occurred. If you read the comic I mentioned earlier, you will understand how this works. Sometimes Windows would pop up saying Chrome had crashed, I would click End Program, and Chrome would continue on as it had been, seemingly unaffected by the crash. In essence, it does what Google says it does.

When I first heard about Chrome being a Java executable, I was quite apprehensive. All of my previous interactions with Java had left me feeling that it was a slow, clunky language that was only useful for extreme portability. However, the way Chrome has been intelligently designed, it actually runs very smoothly and hesitates not at all.

All in all, I was very impressed with Chrome, and I think it safe to say that my Firefoxing days are pretty much over.

ServerManagerCmd failure to launch

While doing an activity assigned to me, I ran across this error while running ServerManagerCmd:

Being new to Server 2008 and the server manager command, I had no idea what that meant, and rather than trying to spend the time to figure out what was wrong, I moved on to the next excercise. A few excercises later, I needed to open the server manager window. When I did, it popped up with the add / remove roles wizard and displayed a statusbar that said "Resuming configuration...". It was at this point that I realized that a configuration that I had been doing earlier had not finished for some reason. After the previous configuration completed, I went back to the command prompt and tried again, and saw this:

Much better. This is the kind of result I was looking for the first time.

Creating a lot of sheep

In many IT environments, there is a need to install the same operating system on multiple computers. Manually installing an OS on several computers is simply not efficient, and with all the other options out there, why would you?

Perhaps the most fundamental way is to use Windows Deployment Services. This requires that you already have one server set up, with all the computers you want to install the OS on hooked into the same network. I have yet to try WDS, but from what I've read it seems quick and easy. The setup can be further hastened by the creation of an unattended install, as long as you remember to configure WDS to use the unattended file.

Another popular option is cloning, also known as ghosting. This involves setting up the OS on one operating system, configuring it the way you want, even installing drivers, service packs, and third-party software, and then using cloning software to make an image of the installation and then copy it to a hard disk on another computer, or hundreds of other computers. This can be done with a DVD or USB drive, another hard drive, or even through a network.

Examples of cloning software include Symantec's Ghost and Acronis True Image (both commercial software) or the free FOG.

You've Been Baselined

Why is baselining important? To be able to record the difference made by hardware or software changes (installing more memory, installing google desktop), also knowing the baseline of my own personal computer has helped me to detect viruses before (there's a post earlier in this blog about that). It is also helpful in recognizing bottlenecks, so that work can be done to overcome those.

I was unable to rate my virtual Vista with the index due to an error, probably an error related to it being a virtual machine, but here you can see the vital stats of the machine.

Here you can see the usual activity, if you let Windows have it's way for a few minutes. It's interesting to note the jumps when I made the image in paint...

The bottom line: Windows just can't leave itself alone.

Baselining may not be too important on a personal computer, but it is much more useful in a business setting.

Going into stealth mode

We took a troubleshooting lab today, and I was able instantly to figure out what was wrong because the script we were told to run to "break" our computers showed it's output in the DOS box. Because the script had a significant pause during execution, it showed exactly what it was doing, so rectifying that was very simple. Due to this, I wondered if it would be possible to hide the execution of a script. I did a little Googling and this is what I discovered.

Failed Attempt:

I at first wanted to completely hide the DOS box from coming up at all, however from what I read this is simply not possible with a batch file. Then I came across a solution that suggested using the redirect symbol after the command to pipe the output to NULL. This method does show a DOS box, but hides the output. So, say you wanted to delete a file called trash.txt with a batch file, without revealing in the DOS box that you were doing so. In this case your batch file would contain:

@echo off ; prevents the command itself from being displayed
del trash.txt >NULL

and this would execute the command while directing the output to nowhere. However, when I tried this method, it merely made a file called NULL with the output in it. It did hide the output in the DOS box, but created a useless file, which was not my intention. Closer, but no cake.

The Real Deal:

I modified my Google search to be "redirecting output to null" or something along those lines, and quickly came across the true answer. You have to redirect the output to NUL with one L, not NULL with two. After testing this method, I found that it did indeed work. So, in the example above, the batch file would contain this:

@echo off ; prevents the command itself from being displayed
del trash.txt >NUL

This would send the output to nowhere, while not affecting the execution of the command. I like this solution because it is simple and easy. A DOS box will still flash up momentarily, but it will open and close much faster than it would otherwise, and no text will be displayed.

Be warned that I at least would not want a normal program to be flashing empty DOS boxes during execution - that would make me very suspicious. A batch file setting up a debugging test is a different matter, and is in honesty the only real use I can see for this. If you want to suppress a spam of text in a window by using this, I would suggest that you alert the user to this, possibly with some @echo commands and maybe a pause so they have time to read it. That however goes beyond the scope of this blog.

Here is a link to a much deeper guide about using redirection, with links to many more tutorials about scripting in a shell:
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/20530/shell-scripting-101-lesson-4.html