Day: Apr 24, 2015

Albert Einstein

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 7, 2015

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

This entry was posted in Thoughts and tagged Einstein.

Windows Server 2008 R2 stuck in recovery mode after power failure

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 10, 2015

If you cannot boot into Safe Mode either, I suggest restarting the computer, keeping pressing F8 and choosing the Last Known Good feature.

If the issue persists, please try methods below:

Method 1:

Put the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation disc into the disc drive, and then start the computer.
Press a key when the message indicating “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD …”. appears.
Select a language, a time, a currency, and a keyboard or another input method, and then click Next.
Click Repair your computer.
Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
Type sfc /scannow, and then press ENTER.

Method 2:

Put the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer.
Press any key when the message indicating “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD …”. appears.
Select a language, time, currency, and a keyboard or another input method. Then click Next.
Click Repair your computer.
Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
Type Bootrec /RebuildBcd, and then press ENTER.

Method 3:

Put the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation disc into the disc drive, and then start the computer.
Press a key when the message indicating “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD …”. appears.
Select a language, a time, a currency, and a keyboard or another input method, and then click Next.
Click Repair your computer.
Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
Type BOOTREC /FIXMBR, and then press ENTER.
Type BOOTREC /FIXBOOT, and then press ENTER.
Type Drive:\boot\Bootsect.exe /NT60 All, and then press ENTER.

Note: In this command, Drive is the drive where the Windows Server 2008 R2 installation media is located.

This entry was posted in Windows and tagged Windows Server 2008 R2 stuck in recovery mode after power failure.

How to use the Replication Monitor to Determine the Operations Master and Global Catalog Roles

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 10, 2015

Let us see how to use the Active Directory Replication Monitor (ReplMon.exe) tool to determine the servers that hold the operations master roles in a forest as well as the domain controllers and global catalog servers for the forest. The five operations master roles that are defined in Active Directory are:

Schema master
Domain naming master
Relative identifier (RID) master
Primary domain controller (PDC) emulator
Infrastructure master

There is a very quick method to determine which servers in the forest hold these roles by using Active Directory Replication Monitor.

The Setup program that installs Active Directory Replication Monitor (and other useful support tools) is available on the Windows 2000 Server CD-ROM under the \Support\Tools\Setup.exe folder. When this tool is installed, you can start it if you click Start, point to Programs, click Support Tools, click Tools, and then click Active Directory Replication Monitor.

Determine the Operations Master Role Holders

Start the Active Directory Replication Monitor tool.
Right-click Monitored Servers, and then add one or more servers by using the wizard.
Right-click the servers, and then click Properties.
Click the FSMO Roles tab.
The domain controllers that hold all operations master roles are now displayed under the “Owner” column.
To test the connectivity to each of the operations master role holders, click Query to the right of each role.

Determine Global Catalog Servers

Start the Active Directory Replication Monitor tool.
Right-click Monitored Servers, and then add one or more servers by using the wizard.
Right-click the servers, and then click Show Global Catalog Servers in Enterprise.

This entry was posted in Active Directory, Windows and tagged Replication Monitor.

How to user DsQuery

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 10, 2015

To find all the domain controllers in the forest with DN and RDN:

DsQuery Server -o rdn -Forest
DsQuery Server -Forest

To find all the domain controllers in a domain:

DsQuery Server -domain domain_name.com

To list all the domain controllers in a domain that are also Global Catalog Servers:

DsQuery Server -domain domain_name.com -isgc

To list the domain controller in the forest that holds the Schema FSMO:

DsQuery Server -Forest -hasfsmo schema

Note: Use the “>” to store the output to a text file. The below command will store all the domain controller names in AllDCs.txt.

DsQuery Server -Forest > AllDCs.txt

This entry was posted in Windows and tagged DsQuery.

How to export dump from AD

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 9, 2015

There are 2 commands available for this:

1. Go to Start -> Run ->cmd

Paste the command in the below format:

ldifde

ldifde -f Exportuser.ldf -s ADservername -d “CN=username,CN=Users,DC=xxx,DC=xxx,DC=xxx,DC=com”

csvde

csvde -m -f AccountName_mailboxes.txt -d “cn=ADusername,OU=Group Mailboxes,OU=Groups,DC=xxx,DC=xxx,DC=xxx,DC=com” -r “(&(objectClass=*)(mail=*))” -l objectClass,member,displayName,memberOf,proxyAddresses,legacyExchangeDN,title,telephoneNumber,facsimileTelephoneNumber,mobile,homephone,givenName,company,userPrincipalName,co,c,physicalDeliveryOfficeName,postalCode,sn,st,streetAddress,title,wWWHomePage,description,l,initials,info,sAMAccountName

This entry was posted in Active Directory, Windows and tagged AD dump, csvde, ldifde.

To get a serial number remotely for any server/desktop/laptop

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 1, 2015

Run this command:

wmic /node:[remote computer name] bios get serialnumber

Or, if you would like to output to a text file:

set myfile = [The full UNC path with filename e.g. \\server\share\filename.txt]

wmic /append:%myfile% /node:[remote computer name] bios get serialnumber

Just open the shell with Admin rights, and type:

Get-WmiObject -ComputerName [remote computer name] -Class Win32_BIOS

or the short version:

gwmi -comp [remote computer name] -cl win32_bios

wmic cpu get name,CurrentClockSpeed,MaxClockSpeed This command will tell you the system motherboard (that happen to be the name) and it’s UUID

wmic bios get name,serialnumber,version This will tells you the name if your BIOS, current version and it’s serial number if there is any.

wmic csproduct Computer system product information from SMBIOS

This entry was posted in Windows and tagged To get a serial number remotely.

Installing ADSI edit in Windows Server 2003

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on May 9, 2015

The ADSI (Active Directory ServiceInterfaces) editor is a management console that comes along with the Windows Server support tools. Using this you can edit each and every attribute of the objects present in your active directory database. The support tools for the Windows Server OS is present in the OS installation CD. It is located at [CDDRIVE]:\SUPPORT\TOOLS\SUPTOOLS.MSI
If you don’t have the OS CD you can download it from Microsoft
Download Windows Server 2003 Support Tools
After installation got to Start -> Run and type adsiedit.msc to get the ADSI edit console.
If you get an error message saying adsiedit.msc is not found you have to register the DLL file required for it manually.
To do this go to Start-> Run and type regsvr32 adsiedit.dll.

This entry was posted in Active Directory, Windows and tagged ADSI edit.

How to change the thick or thin provisioning of a virtual disk

Posted on Apr 24, 2015 Updated on Apr 27, 2015

Caution: Before following these procedures, it is highly recommended that you have a valid backup of the virtual machine and enough space to convert the virtual machine’s disk(s) from thin to thick.

To change the provisioning of a virtual machine base disk from thin to thick from the Datastore Browser:

Power off the virtual machine.
In vSphere Client, right-click the virtual machine in the inventory.
Click Edit Settings to display the Virtual Machine Properties dialog box.
Click the Hardware tab and select the appropriate hard disk in the Hardware list.Note: The Disk Provisioning Type section on the right displays either Thin Provision or Thick Provision. If the disk provision type is Thick, disk provisioning has already taken place. In this case, the disk provisioning is Thin.
Click Cancel to exit out of Virtual Machine Properties dialog box.
Click the Summary tab of the virtual machine.
Under Resources, right-click the datastore where the virtual machine resides and click Browse Datastore.
Double-click the virtual machine folder to display the .vmdk file.
Right-click the .vmdk file, and click Inflate. The Inflate option converts the disk to thick provisioned.
Reload the .vmx file. For more information see Reloading a vmx file without removing the virtual machine from inventory (1026043).

Notes:

If the Inflate option is grayed out, this indicates that the virtual machine is not powered off or that it is not thin provisioned.
There should be no snapshots and the conversion is performed on the base disk.

To convert a virtual machine base disk from thick to thin provisioning by changing the datastore and using offline virtual machine migration:

Note: This process requires more than one datastore. If only a single datastore exists, you can clone the virtual machine to a destination machine with thin provisioned disks instead of migrating.

Power off the virtual machine.
Right-click the virtual machine, and click Migrate.
Click Change datastore.
Click Next, and select a datastore that is not the same as the current datastore.
From the dropdown, select the Thin Provision virtual disk format.
Click Next, then Finish. You can monitor the progress of the conversion in the Tasks and Events view in vCenter Server.

Follow the below steps to do Storage vMotion from vSphere Webclient for vSphere 5.5:

Right-click the virtual machine and select Migrate.
1. To locate a virtual machine, select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, host, or vApp.
2. Click the Related Objects tab and click Virtual Machines.
Select Change datastore and click Next.
Select “Thin Provision” for the virtual machine’s disks and click Next
Select a virtual machine storage policy from the VM Storage Policy drop-down menu, click Next
Select the datastore location where you want to store the virtual machine files and click Next.
Review the information on the Review Selections page and click Finish.