OWA 2003 P2V Login issues

After attempting to P2V the OWA server, and subsequently failing…I decided it would be FAR better just to migrate and build a new VM from scratch- and not to mention this would allow me to get rid of yet another stupid hostname and use something that makes sense. On top of the hostname was the fact that this server had started life as a 2000 box with Exchange 2000 installed, then was upgraded to server 2003 … Read more…

Imaging an AcerPower 2000

I am quite fond of WDS – especially in 2008 R2- especially since the WIM files can still be used to contain an XP image. While this does work, you cannot do any of the awesome offline servicing that you can on images of newer operating systems. I have only run into one issue with my current WDS deployments – AcerPower 2000 machines. These are very small form factor machines from Acer that are all … Read more…

Office 2007 Customization Tool Settings don’t apply

In building 2 new Citrix servers from scratch over the past week, I’d been having a bit of trouble with the customizations. We already had a customization file for the Citrix farm, but a few new settings needed to be added. The first issue that I ran into was that the new file did not run with the install at all- and gave an error – something like “This update file cannot be applied as … Read more…

Excel opens random files on start

A user had reported a weird issue last week- when she would open Excel (All Citrix Environment- unrelated) Excel would open with a dozen files- they looked like recent documents. She didn’t have time to let me troubleshoot it at the time, so it was put off. Today I was asked to fix the issue- it still existed. The usual questions were asked: “When did this start?” “Did you change anything?” “Did you change anything??” … Read more…

ATI 5770 HDMI Audio

I upgraded our current HTPC with an ATI 5770 a while back. I normally go for the nVidia cards, but the 5000 line from ATI had something that fit perfectly in the HTPC: Full HD audio bitstream output through the HDMI output. While we don’t have a receiver\multi-speaker setup [yet]…I figured this would still be a better card than what was already in there – an nVidia 8800 series. I like the jumbo, 2-slot cooler … Read more…

Error removing VHD

After adding the old web server’s VHD to get the web files onto the new web server, I tried to remove the old VHD…only to fail with the following error: Error Removing Hard Drive Failed to remove device ‘Microsoft Synthetic Disk Drive’: Generic failure (0x80041001) Providing no hint at why this happened aside from “cannot be deleted because a logical disk object is still attached to it.” I powered on the VM and offlined the … Read more…

Classic ASP on IIS 7.5

I had thrown together a website for the sole purpose of getting information out about our wedding last year- there were a bunch of photos, directions to the venue, and I also coded a simple way to RSVP online via the website. Having not yet learned enough .NET (and I still really don’t know enough) I used classic ASP with “code behind” in Script Objects. It worked fairly well…wasn’t the most ‘pretty’ website, but it worked well [enough] … Read more…

Video card fried

My Dad is “one of my clients”…as most of our family members are. Last Monday, I received a frantic call stating that he had no video signal. He had tried rebooting, then proceeded to “insert the boot disk and back up the C: drive, and press OK, Next, and Enter to several prompts……” at which point I smacked myself in the head. Long story short, I dropped by the house the next day. As I … Read more…

Useless, meaningless Hostnames

I have seen it on tons of networks- servers named “Saturn” or “Elvis” or “OptimusPrime”. In fact, one of my previous employers thought it was a good way to judge if I was competent enough by testing to make sure that I remembered what roles all of the oddly named servers hosted- when in reality, all of that time wasted trying to remember “Oh- what’s the PDCe called? Is it ‘Jones’ or ‘Robert’?” Sorry…I was … Read more…