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Category: Windows Server

Creating a Sysprepped Windows Server 2012 image

Creating a Sysprepped Windows Server 2012 image

One of the advantages to running Windows Server 2012 is the highly improved Hyper-V engine. In my time working on deployment scenarios I have found that creating a reliable baseline VM is critical to my success in getting farms deployed quickly and easily. To this end I have found that getting a new VM server with the OS installed to the correct level with patches, the SharePoint prerequisites, and all of the customizations that I like to have on a…

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How to: Activate Desktop Experience in Windows Server 2012

How to: Activate Desktop Experience in Windows Server 2012

I ran into an issue where I needed to active that Desktop Experience in on Windows Server 2012 and found that it was not in the same place that I was expecting it to be from previous versions. Figured that this might help some people. Desktop Experience is required to be running if you are going to utilize OneNote, which when working in a demo server environment can be very useful. There are some DLLs that are not accessible unless…

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How to: Run PowerShell ISE as Administrator under alternate credentials

How to: Run PowerShell ISE as Administrator under alternate credentials

Coming from a security focused AD background I prefer to have the Managed Service Accounts OU locked down with a GPO restricting interactive logon to a server. This helps avoid service accounts becoming compromised and being taken advantage of in attacks. Having an ISE is especially helpful when you are doing SharePoint work on the farm and while I am a big fan of PowerShell, running straight at the command line is often a pain. Rather than installing one of…

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How to disable Shutdown Event Tracker in Windows Server 2008 R2

How to disable Shutdown Event Tracker in Windows Server 2008 R2

Scenario: You have people in your office, you are in the middle of work in 2 different Dev VMs plus Visual Studio on your host or you are working on several servers plus your local Dev VM while writing admin scripts (making this viable for Admin and Dev types alike).  Time for a reboot of your Dev VM so you click on reboot and flip back to your other work and figure you will check back in 10 minutes once…

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SharePoint 2010 & SQL 2008 R2 build numbers and helpful patching links

SharePoint 2010 & SQL 2008 R2 build numbers and helpful patching links

In an effort to make life simpler I have compiled a short list of useful link to build numbers and patching sites for SharePoint 2010 and SQL 2008 R2. The Microsoft SharePoint Updates PagesSharePoint 2010 – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ff800847.aspx SharePoint 2007- http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sharepointserver/bb735839.aspx This is your official sites for downloading the SharePoint updates from Microsoft.  Highly useful rather than waiting on the blogger community to send you a link, or get the TechNet bulletin, your carrier pigeon to arrive, or any of the…

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How to: Configure Microsoft Nework Load Balancing (NLB) in a Virtualized Environment for Windows 2008 R2 on a Cisco Switched Network

How to: Configure Microsoft Nework Load Balancing (NLB) in a Virtualized Environment for Windows 2008 R2 on a Cisco Switched Network

Firstly, can I make this blog post’s title any longer?  Yes, I didn’t include that I am doing this for SharePoint 2010, so thanks for the smart-alecked thoughts subconscious! Scenario: Using VMware vSphere 4.0 server to host Windows 2008 R2 64bit Servers which host SharePoint 2010 Server and looking to use Microsoft’s NLB. Set up NLB in mulitcast mode as recommended by everyone in the blogosphere and some different Microsoft articles and viola!  It works…  until 5 minutes after implementation…

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Unable to access VMware Workstation Guest after Host Machine crash

Unable to access VMware Workstation Guest after Host Machine crash

Scenario: While doing SharePoint 2010 development is now able to be done from within a Windows 7 64bit system and even inside of a Hyper-V VM, many of us in the wide world of computing are still using VMware Workstation, Fusion, Player, or even the old VMware GSX Server to run local development environments.  This post deals with how to get back into a VM that seems horribly locked after your workstation hosting your VM crashes hard. Symptom: System crashed…

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Random Server hang issues result in a required hard reset

Random Server hang issues result in a required hard reset

Symptom: Windows 2008 R2 64bit systems hang at random and require a hard reboot of the system to recover. You can remote to the system via KVM (RDP is not accessible) and even do a CTRL+ALT+DEL, but after the lock screen goes away and tries to give you a login screen… YOU GET NOTHING. Only silence… Root Cause: We ended up with a three headed root cause on this set of issues. 1.) Our blades had a bad BIOS version…

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