A New Microsoft Site for IT Pros — Thrive

Another Microsoft site  – Thrive has been launched – anyone else think it looks utterly useless?

VBScript get user’s profile folder

To find the directory for the current user’s profile on Windows with VBScript:

Set objShell = CreateObject(”WScript.Shell”)
profile_path = objShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings(”%USERPROFILE%”)

This method can be used to find other environment variables also.

Change MAC Address of a VMWare Virtual Machine

Some info from VMWare, find the configuration file for your VM (ends with .vmx), open it with notepad.

Remove the three lines that begin with the following from the configuration file:

ethernet[n].generatedAddress
ethernet[n].addressType
ethernet[n].generatedAddressOffset

In these options, [n] is the number of the virtual Ethernet adapter — for example ethernet0.

Add the following line to the configuration file:

ethernet[n].address = 00:50:56:XX:YY:ZZ

Fix tombstoned Virtual Machines

I’ve been able to fix a virtual machine (running VMWare Workstation 6.5) that couldn’t logon to the domain by removing it from the domain, logging on with a local admin account and rejoining the domain.

In a corporate environment you may not have standard local accounts (say if you use SMS/SCCM to build machines), so you may need to create a local user account first.

Drag and drop to command prompt in Vista

FINALLY I have found a tool that let’s me drag and drop file names onto the command prompt in Vista.

Visit http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=16368.0 or http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Skrommel/DropCommand/DropCommand.exe for the direct download.

VirtualBox not as good as VMWare on domains

I’ve tried running a Vista box on a domain this week and have been trying to run Sun VirtualBox 2.0.4 as a replacement for VMWare Workstation. I’d read promising reports of VirtualBox, but I was unable to create a new machine and boot it off the network. Why on earth would someone do that? Plenty of corporate environments use a network image for the SOE installation and straight off, VirtualBox doesn’t play nicely. Depending on how a corporate image is put together, you may be able to mount a disc and build a corporate machine with VirtualBox, but you can’t in every instance. Don’t get me wrong, for some people I’m sure VirtualBox is the bee’s knees, but for network boots, look elsewhere.

If you are running Vista as your host OS, your main options then are VMWare and Virtual PC. If you don’t have a licence for VMWare 6 (where they bought in Vista support), it looks like Virtual PC is the only option.

Fix COM+

I know there are a lot of things that can go wrong with COM+ applications, but when I came across

Error code 80080005 — server execution failed, these directions were the way to go:

net stop msdtc
msdtc -uninstall
msdtc -install
<reboot>

There are a couple of Microsoft articles around – 315296 and 870655, but unless you’ve got a lot of patience, try the above first.

Command line unattended install switches

This site comes up first for silent installs, but has good information for some non-msi silent installs – http://unattended.sourceforge.net/installers.php

Google Earth Pro Silent Install

I wrote this up for appdeploy back in March 2007, but reproduce it here:

 

Installing Google Earth Pro 4 in a corporate environment using SMS using a per-machine based installation.

This solution consists of 5 main steps:

1. Do an installation of Google Earth, including the registration information. This puts down a bunch of files into C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Google\GoogleEarth. As well as a whole lotta reg keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google.

2. Put these files into a safe location. Export the registry keys into a .reg file.

3. I created an msi to dump these files and the .reg file into the Program Files>Google Earth directory. I also created an Active Setup key to run a script when the user next logs in to the machine. It’s located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\GoogleEarth and
I created ComponentID, StubPath and Version. There are better places to read up on Active Setup…
The last thing I put into the msi was the vbscript referred to in the StubPath key.

4. This script which will be on the local machine and run as the user should create C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Google\GoogleEarth where you replace USERNAME with the correct user. Then there are 4 reg keys that contain this path. I created them in vbscript as follows:

Const HKEY_CURRENT_USER = &H80000001
strComputer = "."
Set oReg=GetObject("winmgmts:{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\default:StdRegProv")

' Create the two keys if they don't exist
strKeyPath = "Software\Google\CommonSettings"
oReg.CreateKey HKEY_CURRENT_USER,strKeyPath
strKeyPath = "Software\Google\Google Earth Pro"
oReg.CreateKey HKEY_CURRENT_USER,strKeyPath

' All keys have the same strValue
strValue = "C:\Documents and Settings\" & strUser & "\Application Data\Google\GoogleEarth"

strKeyPath = "Software\Google\CommonSettings"
strValueName = "KmlPath"
oReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue

' Same strKeyPath from here on
strKeyPath = "Software\Google\Google Earth Pro"
strValueName = "DefaultKMLPath"
oReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue

strValueName = "KmlPath"
oReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue

strValueName = "CachePath"
oReg.SetStringValue HKEY_CURRENT_USER,strKeyPath,strValueName,strValue

Then, I copy the required user files into their profile..

Const OverWriteFiles = True
objFSO.CopyFolder "C:\Program Files\Google\Google Earth Pro\UserFiles", strDirectory, OverWriteFiles

And then install all the other registry keys into current user. This includes the registration information

strCommand1 = "regedit.exe /s " & Quotes & PWD & "UserFiles\google_current_user.reg" & Quotes
WScript.Echo strCommand1
return = objShell.Run (strCommand1,0,True)

5. To get all this to run through SMS, I wrote a vbscript which performs the install with .iss file
“GoogleEarthWinProSetup.exe /s /SMS /f1setup.iss /f2c:\google.log”. Of course, do what you have to do to correctly point to the setup and iss files. After that I found that googleearth.exe was running, so I kill that process so that it doesn’t go off and create reg keys. Lastly, I install my msi.

Clear as mud!

Vista backup with Robocopy – Part 2

In part 1, I covered how to use robocopy, which is part of Windows Vista. Now we’ll use that knowledge to create a scheduled task and have regular backups.

Using Vista, you’ll want to run Task Scheduler (try pressing the windows key and typing this in, it should appear pretty swiftly). You’ll probably need to press continue to get past the UAC prompt. The Task Scheduler screen is very busy and has a lot of options. For our purpose, try looking on the right for an item called Create Basic Task. If you can’t find it there, it should be under the action menu.

This will launch the Create Basic Task Wizard, now give this a name (Backup is ok) and click Next.

This goes to the Trigger screen, which dictates how often the backup will be done. Take your pick, but I’ll go for Daily. You’ll then be asked about the exact time you want it to run and for this backup it doesn’t matter too much for most people, unless you know you’ll be doing something really important every day and you don’t want it disturbed. I’ll pick 9:00:00 am every 1 days and click Next.

Now we’re at the Action screen and we want to start a program, so click Next. Here’s the important part, you need to select the program to run, which is robocopy, you can either just type robocopy or click browse and find C:\Windows\System32\robocopy.exe. Now you need to enter the parameters into the Add arguments (optional) box. These will be whatever you’ve decided based on Part 1, in my case “C:\Users\MyUser\Pictures” “G:\MyBackup\Pictures” /MIR /XJD /R:5 /W:15

Click Next and then Finish and it’s all setup.

Now if you want to see if it will all work, you should be able to see you backup task, right-click it and choose Run. You should have a command prompt window appear, unless you disabled that in your robocopy command. You’ll also be able to see the Last Run Result, which will be the exit code robocopy gives. Generally you should get 0,1,2 or 3 (0×0, 0×1, 0×2, 0×3), but consult Robocopy exit codes if you’re not sure. At times I’ve gotten 16 (0×10) when my external drive hasn’t been connected too.

Happy backing up and don’t forget to check your backup is what you expect! Comments and suggestions welcome.