Honey I Shrunk the VHD!

Published on May 9, 2012

I recently tried running Disk2VHD to convert a Windows XP x64 machine to add to a Virtual Server 2005 server. Upon trying to attach the 12GB VHD to Virtual Server 2005, I got the error message “The virtual hard disk image AdamVMx64.VHD is too large for the IDE bus. Make sure that all virtual hard disk images connected to the IDE bus are not greater than 127.5 GB.” This was weird, as the physical disk is 148GB, but the resulting VHD was only 12GB. I downloaded Partition Wizard and sized down the active partition to 80GB. I took another capture with Disk2VHD and again, Virtual Server rejected it as being too big.

I went off to Google and found the VHD Resizer. Upon running this tool and sizing down the VHD to 80GB, I was finally able to get Virtual Server to accept it.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Operating System,Tech Tips | No replies

VBScript CopyFile/FolderExists Quirks

Published on April 15, 2012

So I’m posting this here for my future reference:

Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If oFSO.FolderExists("C:\Program Files (x86)\SmartDraw 2012") Then
 oFSO.CopyFile "SDX.DLX", "C:\Program Files (x86)\SmartDraw 2012\"
End If
If oFSO.FolderExists("C:\Program Files\SmartDraw 2012") Then
 oFSO.CopyFile "SDX.DLX", "C:\Program Files\SmartDraw 2012\"
End If

VBScript can be funny.  If you omit the “\” on the end of the CopyFile statement, the run time engine will bark at you: something like “Access Denied”.  Yet, the “\” isn’t needed in the FolderExists statement.  So you can spend minutes and minutes looking at the two statements scratching your head why the later doesn’t work.

So what does this code do?  Well, it copies an updated license file for a program we use called Smartdraw.  The funny thing is that I copied the new license before the old one expired, yet users running Windows 7 started calling the HelpDesk stating their copy of Smartdraw had expired.  Yet, if you did a run-as administrator on Smartdraw, the program would work fine.  I contacted Smartdraw tech support only to be told that you can simply go into the properties of said program and check the “Run as administrator” box to fix the problem.  Not the most elegant solution.

The real problem was that an older copy of the file SDX.DLX was sitting in C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\SmartDraw 2012. Removing this file fixed the issue.  The real question is: why wasn’t this file updated when I did the file copy?  Obviously, UAC stepped in the first time and noticed that a file was trying to be written to C:\Program Files (x86), so it was re-directed instead to the VirtualStore folder.

Upon first launching Smartdraw, the program attempts to contact an activation server over the Internet and then writes the SDX.DLX file back to the Program Files (x86) directory with the activation status.  UAC senses this and then re-directs it to the VirtualStore instead.  However, when I ran my script, it ran under the SYSTEM account which likely bypasses UAC and the VirtualStore folder.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Misc | No replies

Windows 8 Coming in October 2012

Published on March 20, 2012

Whoa, I’ve been slacking!  Here’s quick article stating that Windows 8 will hit the market in October 2012:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-19/microsoft-said-to-finish-windows-8-in-summer-with-october-debut.html

And Paul Thurrott has an article on Outlook 15: http://www.winsupersite.com/article/office/whats-coming-microsoft-outlook-15-142613.  The built-in Hotmail integration is nice: don’t have to download a separate addon anymore.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Misc | No replies

Imaging PCs from just from a USB Stick

Published on February 10, 2012

So, how fast can you image a PC from a USB stick?  This was a good question, as we aren’t using multicast and the server only has one NIC.  A normal image in WIM format applied using GImageX at around 5.8Gb in size over 100Mb Ethernet cabling takes around 16 minutes.  The first experiment was tried with a Komputerbay SDXC (Class 10) card and reader.  Windows only supports 1 partition on removable media, so you need to make the file system NTFS to accept files > 2.1Gb.  I simply copied the contents of my WinPE 3.0 ISO unto the SDXC card and booted from it.  This resulted in 10 minutes imaging time for a 38% increase in speed.

I then tried a Kingston DT160 USB flash stick.  For this, simply copying the files to the USB flash drive wouldn’t make the device bootable for some reason.  I used the Microsoft Standalone System Sweeper program to create a bootable WinPE USB stick, then overwrote everything with the contents of my ISO file.  This time: I clocked in at 6 minutes or a 63% increase in speed.  These experiments were all carried out on a Dell Latitude e6420.

Later on, the speed of the DT160 dropped from 6 minutes back to 10 minutes.  I cannot explain this decrease in speed, since I am only pulling bits over the USB channel and not the network.  Still, this is boon for imaging:

You can deploy this USB stick to remote sites that have no deployment points.

You could give this USB stick to an OEM to have them image all your new computers before they leave the factory.

You could bundle this with every road warrior (a 16Gb flash drive can be had for $25 and the price just keeps dropping).  Boot into WinPE with a file manager to allow saving of data or better yet, have some type of TeamViewer environment so you can look at their dead laptop remotely!

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Operating System,Tech Tips | No replies

XYplorer 10.8 Free! Today Only.

Published on February 6, 2012

Go get it! http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/xyplorer1080/

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Misc | No replies

Google Voice: Power to the People!

Published on January 1, 2012

Lately, I’ve had a phone that just keeps randomly calling my cell phone.  It appears to be some magazine subscription service. I get at least 2 calls a day and let’s just say it’s really annoying. Don’t have to use my imagination to think that this is probably some type of obnoxious robocall service.

I rarely use my phone, so I have a prepaid plan with over 3000 minutes (accumulated over a few years of light use), with a max cap of 5000 minutes.   After digging around on the Internet, I discovered that Google Voice can block calls with a very cool message: “this phone number is no longer in service”. Sounds like the real deal too!  Even more cool is that I can have it notify me when I’ve missed a call through the Google Voice extension for Chrome or alert me to a new voice message that I can play right from the Internet.  All I have to do is forward my phone number to Google Voice.

It seems odd that blocking e-mail addresses is pretty trivial these days (Hotmail.com even allows top-level domain blocking!), but nothing like that seems to exist for most cell phone providers. AT&T has a parental control service that they will sell you for $5/month, but it doesn’t work for prepaid plans. Bummer.  Maybe with all the FCC regulations that we now have on the books, maybe we can add 1 more that would require cell phone providers to allow all customers to block phone numbers of their choice from a web page.  Crazy?

The one caveat to using Google Voice with conditional forwarding is that this will use the phone plan’s airtime minutes: basically, it costs me 10 cents every time someone calls me regardless of whether they leave a message.  Given that I add $100/year to carry over the unused minutes, I’m only paying about $8.33/month to keep to the right to use the phone when I want.

Filed in Review,Tech Tips | No replies

Scott Hanselman’s 2011 Power Users Tool List for Windows

Published on December 17, 2011

A very nice list of power tools by Scott Hanselman. Most of these are free.

I would add the following to the list (most of which have already been mentioned on my blog some where in the past):

DesktopOK - Save and restore the positions of desktop icons.

DontSleep - Don’t Sleep is a small portable program to prevent system shutdown, Standby, Hibernate, Turn Off and Restart.

MobaXterm – Like Putty/SecureCRT, but better.  Allows you to run XWindows apps over a ssh connection.

Agent Ransack - Search utility that adds a context menu for searching and allows advanced searching features such as searching for a text string in a set of files.

DirSync Pro - DirSync Pro is a small, but powerful utility for file and folder synchronization. DirSync Pro can be used to synchronize the content of one or many folders recursively.

GreenShot - Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows.

FF File Time – A program that allows you to easily modify the time stamps of any file on your computer. It features an easy to use GUI that offers the possibility to modify not only single but also multiple files or whole directories.

Google Chrome – My favorite web browser! Add addons from the Chrome store such as GMail, Google Voice, Adblock and IETabs.

Free Download Manager – Why buy GetRight when you can use this program for free?  Helps with troublesome downloads that like to stall out in web browsers.

Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) - Secunia PSI is a security scanner which identifies programs that are insecure and need updates. It even automates the updating of many of these programs, making it a lot easier to maintain a secure PC.

QEMU Manager – Lightweight Virtual Machine emulator.  Also has versions that run from a USB flash device.  Seems to only use its own internal DHCP server and won’t use an external network’s DHCP server.

Zip2Secure - ”ZIP 2 Secure EXE” is a utility program that creates self-extracting EXE files for Windows.  Self-extracting EXE files are executable programs (EXEs) that contain a ZIP file and the software necessary to unzip the contents.  No other software is needed.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Misc,Review,Tech Tips | No replies

Donate to EFF this weekend and it will be matched 4x!

Published on December 10, 2011

Join me in fighting for the users! Become an EFF member today and your donation will get a 4x Power Up @ https://supporters.eff.org/donate/powerup

These are the guys that fight against the censorship of the Internet and ridiculous laws such as SOPA and PROTECT-IP.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Misc | No replies

UltraISO 9.3 for Free!

Published on December 6, 2011

I was looking around for a free ISO editor and found a promo for UltraISO 9.3: http://www.raymond.cc/forum/freebies/12282-free-ultraiso-v9-full-license-key.html

This was offered as a freebie in the June 2009 PC User magazine from Australia.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Misc,Tech Tips | No replies

Fun with Bootable USB Flash Devices

Published on December 1, 2011

If you are interested with booting operating systems from a USB Flash device, check out RMPrepUSB.com. This is the home of the kick arse utility called RMPrepUSB that will make your USB device bootable a snap using either syslinux or grub4dos boot managers.  Using this utility, I was able to take a 2GB SD card and my Zonet SD card reader and create a WinPE 3 x64 bootable USB flash device using Make_PE3 and RMPrepUSB with great ease.

Another cool thing I discovered is the ability to test booting your USB flash device with QEMU Manager (tutorial here).  The advantage to this is that you can take screen shots of the early stages and you don’t have to keep rebooting your computer all the time to see the changes you made. There are over 50 tutorials on this web site, from installing Windows XP from a USB flash device to resetting passwords.

Speaking of USB flash devices: ISOStick.  This is a project they are trying to get off the ground and is worth watching.   It is a USB flash device where you drop an ISO file unto it and then you can boot from that ISO, without any of the messy configuration necessities of grub4dos or syslinux.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Filed in Tech Tips | No replies