Today, I was deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 using an image which I captured from another server using Sysprep and ImageX utilities.
After I deployed the image to my server using the same ImageX utility, and as soon as I started the server BOOM, got a startup error “BOOTMGR MISSING”
To fix this issue, I started my server using a WinPE CD to the Windows Pre Installation Environment, and typed the following command
BCDBOOT C:\Windows
Restart the server
That fixed the issue
One of my common task at work involves me to sign in to multiple Microsoft websites using different Live ID’s (.NET Passport addresses). The problem is that usually I have, like 15-20 Internet Explorer tabs open and sometimes one of these tabs uses one Live ID which I have signed in with, and when I try to open a new site and sign in with another Live ID, the newly opened site uses the already used Live ID, so have to go through every tab and sign-out and then use the other Live ID to sign in, this is a tedious process and a headache at times.
One easy way to solve this is Open a new browsing session. To do this
On the Internet Explorer window, click File => and then click New Session
This will enable you to start a new browsing session in which you will be able to use different Live ID’s.
This is what I have been waiting for quite some time now
an official version of Windows 8 to try it out. After they released the Developer Preview Pre-beta version of Windows 8 yesterday at the BUILD conference I managed to download the ISO.
Since it was a Pre-Beta I started to install on top of a Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V machine ( I know the touch features – but something I want to sacrifice until later)
I created a new hyper-V virtual machine and started to install and it was almost the same as a Windows 7 installation except for the Windows 7 starting splash screen being replaced with another (refer screen shot below)
Here you go!
Loading Files
The changed splash screen from Windows 7
Language Settings
Installation Confirmation
Setup is Starting
Installation Option
Disk Selection
Installation Progress
Restarting
Setting up registry for the fist time and first time only
Preparing to load
Preparing the attached hardware devices
License Agreement
Initial startup and configuration
Personalizing – Computer Name
Setup Option – I selected “Express”
Creating the first User Account
Finalizing
Loading User
Preparing PC
Icons “Tiles” which can be clicked
More tiles and icons
Desktop (revamped start button)
Ribbon enabled Windows Explorer
Built in Internet Explorer 10
My Computer
System Properties
Hover over start button
Other settings accessed through desktop settings
WOW… isn’t this mind blowing? 
Awesome stuff.. stay tuned.. I am to explore more and try this on my slate (reason why I was waiting till later)
The Official Pre-Beta of Windows 8 for developers is available for download from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/
This was announced during the ongoing BUILD conference which started yesterday.
Recently after a Windows Server 2008R2 implementation I had to use the new Microsoft Command Shell the so called “Windows PowerShell” to run a script. After installing the server I opened up notepad and wrote a simple script and as you’ll know I had to save the file with a PS1 extension so that PowerShell can execute the script. and I did save the file with the PS1 extension.
As soon as Opened PowerShell and typed the path to the PS1 file and press enter, I got an error as shown below
Which says “File <filepath> cannot be loaded because the execution of scripts is disabled on this system. Please see "get- help about_signing" for more details.”
If you get this error, don’t panic
by default PowerShell is designed like this for security reasons, The Execution Policy which is in Windows PowerShell is set to Restricted which means none of the scripts will run (even if you write with your user credentials).
In Windows PowerShell type Get-ExecutionPolicy to verify
In order to be able to run scripts using Windows PowerShell type Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
This would enable to run script using PowerShell on your computer
According to the Official Blog post by Microsoft http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/07/bringing-hyper-v-to-windows-8.aspx to have Hyper-V on an upcoming Windows 8 Operating System you will need to meet certain requirements.
One of the requirements for Hyper-V is that it requires a 64-bit system that has Second Level Address Translation (SLAT). This is a feature that the current processors comes along with.
How do we check whether our existing systems/processors support this feature? this is the ultimate question
According to this blog Intel and AMD have different types of SLAT, Intel calls this Enhanced Page Tables (EPT) and AMD calls it as Nested Page Tables (NPT).
Microsoft Sysinternals has a tool called Coreinfo which can be downloaded here, using this tool we can view whether our processors support either one of EPT or NPT depending on the processor make.
Once you download the Coreinfo, extract the software to your C: drive. Open command prompt and navigate C:\ and type Coreinfo.exe –v
This command will give you whether your processor supports EPT or NPT
With the recent release of Office 365 (previously known as the Microsoft BPOS) which is a complete Cloud Computing offering, Microsoft has made an e-Book authored by Katherine Murray available free which can be downloaded from here
There is a funny video in YouTube which I came across
As an IT Pro, we are required to do R&D a lot. At the rate of new technologies being implemented specially in the Microsoft arena we have to do a lot of research to be in par with the technology.
Mostly, what we do is virtualize the newly released products and test it out, but the common problem most of us face is that to have a descent virtualization solution such as hyper-v, we are compelled to install Windows Server as the base operating system.
I have a Lenovo W520 with a Core i7 vPro and 16GB of RAM and I run Windows Server 2008 R2 as my base OS, purely because I need to run Hyper-V. The Biggest problem I face is that once I enable Hyper-V, I cannot hibernate or put my Lenovo Notebook to sleep.
Hold on.. Microsoft just released a blog post on their Windows 8 Engineering Blog that Windows 8 will support Hyper-V on it
. This is something super cool and most of the IT Pros out their will love this for sure. The best part is that hibernation/Sleep ill still be there even if you install Hyper-V on Windows 8
The requirement is that you will need to have a Windows 8 x64bit OS and a minimum of 4GB of RAM.
For more information and for a video click Bringing Hyper-V to “Windows 8”
The Windows Engineering Team has launched a blog on technet called Building Windows 8
The Blogs first post was posted by Steven Sinofsky who is the President of Windows and Windows Live Division yesterday.
On 1st of June 2011 Microsoft released a video which shows the preview of Windows 8 here
Click here to see videos of Windows 8 at the partner preview event in Taipei, Taiwan for COMPUTEX 2011 on June 2nd 2011.
