You can see this in action: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/virtualboxs-seamless-mode-combine-operating-systems-desktop/

The process is very simple: Install Virtualbox into your Windows host system, install Ubuntu within Virtualbox, install guest addons within Ubuntu.  For added goodness, you might also want to add Samba to Ubuntu so you can share folders with Windows (all downloads with the Ubuntu Firebox go back into Ubuntu).  An excellent video guide for doing so can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89hjWOb8qmY.

Once Ubuntu is running in Virtualbox, you can do a “Right Ctrl-L” and you’ll get this in your Windows host system:

As you can see, Virtualbox places the Ubuntu taskbars above my Windows 7 taskbars.  You get the comforts of you host operating system with the goodies from Ubuntu.  I’m running this with 256MB of memory for the VM and it runs great.  If you still have Windows 2000/XP, you can keep them and be more secure on the Internet.

- Soli Deo Gloria

I then tried GetDataBack NTFS, but it wanted to search the whole drive.  The data wasn’t deleted nor was the drive formatted.  I knew exactly where the data was: I just wanted to copy the blasted files!  The data search was taking too long because again it was hitting the bad sectors.

I decided to try the Symantec Ghost route: image the drive from WinPE using Ghost32.exe.  I used the command line switchs -fro and -crcignore to skip over the bad sectors.  I let it run overnight.  I came in the next day and it had created a Ghost copy in about 6.5 hours.  Using Ghost Explorer, I tried restoring the files, but it would only restore 232MB of the 18GB.

I don’t easily give up on problems like this, so I tried something called Fastcopy within WinPE.  This utility is designed specifically to copy files from one place to another and fast!  This program had the ability to skip over the bad files with no lock ups at all.  In addition to this, it also recorded the time of copy, the data rate and kept a log of the files that it couldn’t copy.  Now I could give the list to my user without having to write down all the folder and files that were missed.

- Soli Deo Gloria

Microsoft has also released a nifty spreadsheet showing the difference between Standard and Professional.

Standard seems to have most of what Professional has, sans the Enterprise versions for $100 less.

- Soli Deo Gloria

I tried another FireGL video card with the same results.  At this point, I was completely baffled, so I called Dell and actually had them connect into the PC in question.  Try as he may, the tech support guy who was A+ and DCSE certified could not fix the problem either.  This PC was only a few months old and had recently been imaged within the last 3 months.

I tried another DVI cable with the same results.  I then (for completeness sake), tried a NVS 295 video card since it had DisplayPort inputs on it and again, I got the same results with the display scaling.  At this point, I was pretty convinced it was the monitor itself, so I brought over a Dell T3500 and attached the monitor this PC.  Again, I got the bars across the screen.

I called Dell again, this time requesting a RMA on the monitor.  By this time I had gone through 5 video cards, 2 cables, and 2 computers.  After firing off all this information at the tech support person, I expected a prompt replacement of the monitor.  However, she came back after talking with the engineering lab and stated that I needed a DVI dual-link cable.  I never knew there was a difference in DVI cables, much less single-link and dual-link DVI cables.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Visual_Interface, the dual-link has 6 extra pins and has a higher bandwidth (resolution) capability.  We ordered this cable from Dell for around $9.  Upon getting the cable and trying it on a Dell 390, it worked!  I happily wheeled the monitor over to the user’s workstation.  And guess what?  SAME PROBLEM!

At this point he had a Quadro FX1400 installed, after the many video card attempts I had tried.  I ran back and took the Quadro FX 570 out of the Dell 390.  Finally, the monitor worked!

I don’t know if there is a moral to the story, other than to say that if you have a 30inch LCD screen, you better have the best video card and best DVI cable you can.

- Soli Deo Gloria

now offline, wonder why

- Soli Deo Gloria

Autoruns v10: This major update to Autoruns introduces the ability to scan offline Windows
installations, adds.exe and .cmd extension handlers, defaults to hiding Windows entries to
reduce noise in the common use case, and includes bug fixes.

Process Explorer v12.04: This Process Explorer release adds the ability to generate full and
minidump process crash dump files and fixes a bug in the process permission dialog.

Sigcheck v1.7: This version of Sigcheck, a file version and signature verification command-line
utility, now returns an exit code of 0 to indicate that all code it checked was signed and 1 to
report that some were unsigned.

ProcDump v1.8:  This version of ProcDump, a command-line process crash-dump generation
tool, includes comments in the crash dump that reflect the reason that the dump was
generated (memory threshold hit, CPU threshold hit, manual, etc.).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

- Soli Deo Gloria

Software Installation did not complete policy processing because a system restart is required for the settings to be applied. Group Policy will attempt to apply the settings the next time the computer is restarted.

So I rebooted the PC over and over again, only again to find the same message.  Copying down all the computer names, I started to look at each computer.  They were all Dell GX270 computers.  I sat down at one of these machines and started updating network drivers, setting the GPO “Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon” locally to Enabled, etc.  After a few Google searching, I found a setting called Media Sensing that can cause a computer not to detect the network connection at boot: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326152.

The explanation from the above article is as follows:

The problem occurs because link status fluctuates as the network adapter (also known as the network interface card, or NIC) driver initializes and as the network adapter hardware negotiates a link with the network infrastructure. The Group Policy application stack executes before the negotiation process is completed and can fail because of the absence of a valid link.

Upon running the REG file I made with this setting, the PC took the GPO!  Within SCCM 2007, I created a collection with membership based on computers with the chassis value of GX270.  I then pushed my REG file to this collection and shazam, all were fixed!

- Soli Deo Gloria

These are the major features as per the developer:

• Migrate a Windows-based computer to a virtual environment (P2V)
  
• Migrate from a virtual environment to physical (V2P)
• Virtualize system from its backup image (P2V)
• Migrate from one virtual environment to another (V2V)
• Recover the OS startup ability after system migration to a different hardware or unsuccessful virtualization by a 3rd party tool (P2P and P2V Adjust)
• Clone a partition or an entire hard disk
• Exchange data between your physical environment and the virtual one, or between a virtual disk and its snapshots
• Accomplish virtual drive partitioning (create, format, delete, move, resize etc.)

Edit (5/27/10): After installing this program, it just seems simliar to Sysinternals’ Disk2VHD program.

- Soli Deo Gloria

REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bUpdater /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bShowEbookMenu /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bPurchaseAcro /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bCreatePDFOnline /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\FeatureLockdown” /v bBrowserIntegration /d 0 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\AdobeViewer” /v EULA /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\AdobeViewer” /v Launched /d 1 /t REG_DWORD /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\Downtown” /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\Downtown” /v bDontShowAtLaunch /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\9.0\Downtown” /v bGoOnline /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

- Soli Deo Gloria

I placed the executable on a share on my Windows 7 PC and I was able to run it from an XP machine just fine remotely, so this can be used as a portable application.  Best of all: it’s freeware!

- Soli Deo Gloria