First Look: Microsoft Office 2010 E-Book

Microsoft Office 2010 Beta is available for download and anyone and everyone can download and install it. The experience is mind blowing. Specially Outlook 2010. Microsoft has redesigned the interface which is similar to Office 2007 but with some additional touches starting from the Office logo to the individual program icons.

The following is a free e-book available for download on the first look at Office 2010 and this is free for a limited time only. Download the e-book here and enjoy reading and experiencing the new Office 2010.

Windows Server 2000/2003 Active Directory Directory Services Restore Mode Password Recovery

Recently on a Sunday evening I got a call from one of my friends who had a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory (AD) in his organization. He called me up and said that there is something wrong with his AD and he wants to restore a recent backup of his AD. The backup he had includes the system state backup of his AD.

My friend was asking me on how to restore the system state backup of the Active Directory. So I instructed him to restart his Domain Controller in Directory Services Restore Mode by pressing F8 while the server is restarting. Once in the Directory Services Restore Mode enter Administrator as user name and the password should be the password you have assigned as Directory Services Restore Mode Administration password while installing Active Directory.

Unfortunately, he has forgotten the DSRM administrative password and he called me again asking is there anyway on to reset it 😦 HMMMMM!!!

Well the following are the steps to reset the Directory Services Restore Mode Administrator Account Password incase you forget it 🙂

Log in to your Domain Controller with Administrative privilege

1. Run => Ntdsutil
2. At the Ntdsutil prompt type set dsrm password
3. On the DSRM prompt type reset password on server null
4. type the new password and confirm the password
5. type q at the prompts to quit and exit command prompt

Now log in using the new password in Directory Services Restore Mode.       

Phew…

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V issue when deployed using Sysprep Image

What a day!!!

I was preparing for a training on Windows 7 which is to be started tomorrow and was setting up the lab’s along with the virtual images. I had to set up around 10 PC’s so i thought of creating a Windows Server 2008 Image using Sysprep.exe and ImageX.exe since the virtual machines are configured to run on hyper-v.

I started off with my reference computer, by installing Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Office, etc along with the Hyper-V role installed. I made sure that the ImageX.exe is saved in a place where it can be accessed easily (D:). As soon as I installed the reference computer I opened up RUN and typed sysprep and executed the system preparation tool on which I selected the generalize option along with shutdown under the Shutdown Options.

The System Preperation Tool started its job and it completed by shutting down my reference computer which i restarted using a Windows OEM Pre Installation CD. The computer booted with the Pre installation kit, through which i navigated to my D: where i already copied my ImageX utility and executed the following command to capture the image

imagex /capture c: d:\Win2k8.wim “Win2K8”

It started to capture and save the Win2K8 image on my D drive.

Now that my reference computers image is captured, i started to apply the images on other computers by booting them up using the Windows Pre Installation CD and executing the following command

Imagex.exe /apply D:\win2k8sp2.wim 1 C:\

The image applied successfully and Windows Server 2008 was installed on all the computers. I copied the virtual images to all the computers and started one of the images, BOOOOOM!!!! It gave me an error and wouldn’t start 😦

“The virtual machine could not be started because the Hypervisor is not running” 

To see the issue is because because there is no Sysprep provider for Hyper-V. Therefore, the HypervisorLaunchType BCD entry is removed from the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) file when you run Sysprep.

And to resolve it, you will have to open CMD with elevated privilege and navigate to

C:\Windows\System32

and type the following Bcdedit /set {current} hypervisorlaunchtype auto

then restart the computer and that will fix the issue with Hyper-V not starting or loading the VM’s.  

For more information related to this error, please visit

Microsoft KB 954356