Friday, July 29, 2011

When WindowsUpdate requires reboot

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/microsoft/Windows-Update/33666310/0x8ddd0007.aspx

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired

This RebootRequired key can cause Automatic Updates to not install.  It's usually indicative that you should reboot the machine.  You can manually delete it, preferably immediately before a reboot.

Files to be renamed on reboot

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298890

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\PendingFileRenameOperations

Values in this key can prevent Automatic/Microsoft Updates from occurring.  A reboot should clear this out.  Might also be useful for deleting malware files currently in use.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

DS Software - Good Things Come in Small Packages

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~nulifetv/freezip/freeware/

Dariusz Stanislawek is cranking out lots of small utilities.  There's file hash, task handling, encryption, and also a command-line ZIP utility.

Freeware calculator for CRC32 SHA MD5 et al

http://www.febooti.com/products/filetweak/members/hash-and-crc/

Did you ever have two large files, same name, same size, different timestamp?  This adds a Hash tab to the Windows Explorer file properties.  Supports CRC32, MD5, SHA variants, RIPEMD, WHIRLPOOL, Tiger-192.

Trouble shadowing remote RDP sessions on Server 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976110

Shadow attempts yield Error "the requested session denied remote control". This can occur when using RDC less than version 7.0 against Vista or Windows 2008. There is a hotfix, or there are workarounds on either client or server.

Server-side workaround, launch gpedit.msc, and drill down to
Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Windows Component
.. and on Windows 2008, expand
Terminal Services\Terminal Server\Remote Session Environment
... or on Windows 2008 R2, expand
Remote Desktop Services\Remote Desktop Session Host\Remote Session Environment
.. and then set the value "Set compression algorithm for RDP data".

The article says set it to "Do not use an RDP compression algorithm", but I set it to "Optimized to use less memory", and that also worked.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

VPrinter prints to nowhere

http://www.mabuse.de/tech-vprinter.mhtml

I wanted to print to nowhere, to save paper on massive test jobs that nobody would review. This is an interesting, but slightly arcane solution. Also no drivers for Win2008, which is the platform I needed. Still, this falls into the classification of small, cute utilities.

In the end, I just configured a generic HP PCL6 printer and created a new local port to NUL:

Thursday, July 7, 2011

VMware ESX cut and paste from guest

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=1026437

Cut and Paste from guest is disabled in newer versions of ESX.  You can disabled this per guest or per host.

On Guest:
Edit VM Settings
Options, Advanced, General, click the Configuration Parameters:
(Note, this is only non-grayed if the machine is turned off.)
Add Rows for "isolation.tools.copy.disable" and "isolation.tools.paste.disable", both false.

On Host:
Nano /etc/vmware/config to add the following two lines.
isolation.tools.copy.disable="FALSE"
isolation.tools.paste.disable="FALSE"

Either change takes effect after the associated VMs are rebooted.