I was planning to install windows 8 on touch enabled laptop. Unfortunately this particular laptop does not have DVD Drive with it. I didn't have any External DVD drive or DVDs available with me.

Finally I figured to install Windows 8 from an SD Card, and got succeeded. Let us see how  i installed form an SD Card or USB Stick.

Please note : You Need a Minimum of 8 GB of SD or Thumb Drive.

These steps assumes you another partition to install windows 8 over or you are going to install it over your current partition.

1. Download the ISO here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

2. Download Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (this was meant for Windows 7 ISOs but it works fine with the Windows 8 ISO: http://images2.store.microsoft.com/p...B-DVD-tool.exe

3. Format your SD Card/USB Stick to NTFS, do not do a quick format, fully format it.

4. Install and open up Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (This application requires minimum of  .NET Framework 2.0)

5. Choose your ISO:

6. Choose media type (choose USB!):

7. Insert your USB Stick or SD Card and select it:

8. Wait for it to finish creating your bootable USB Stick/SD Card:

9. You should see this, If you don't something went wrong:

10. "Safely Remove D: (or whatever drive letter your USB stick/SD Card is.)", but don't actually remove the USB Drive physically.

11. Shut down your computer and re-order the boot option to boot from the Removable disk or USB Drive.

12. Now your machine should boot from the USB Drive with loading the windows files.

Recently we purchased a machine which support Hyper-V. Ensured with intel on the support of the processor and mother board.

Our server has the below configuration and with win 2008 R2 Hyper-v Server installed.

1. INTEL XEON 1220 PROCESSOR &

2. INTEL BTS MOTHERBOARD

3. 16 GB DDR3 RAM

4. 2Nos TB SATA Hard Disk Drive

5. Server Cabinet with 400 W Power Supply ( Prime Source )

After we have installed the Windows 2008 R2 hyper-v server, we tried to create VMs via the Hyper manager client tool.

Ensured the hyper -v server has installed with latest updates and settings.  Created a VM and tried to launch it where got th error  with below message.

Error.: While launching the  Hyper-v Machine it fails with an error of  An error occurred while attempting to start the selected Virtual Machine

Virtual machine Id D714DA9E-C429-4F85-B17B-9F967796250A

RESOLUTION

We installed the KB 2517374 using WUSA command line and rebooted the server. Able to install the VM successfully.

SOME GOOD LINKS FOR YOUR REFERENCE:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732470(WS.10).aspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2517374

View and request hotfix downloads 

Thanks
E.Ravi

Basic Computing

Of note here, Azure can ONLY run Windows-based instances, at the moment. AWS is able to run Linux instances, which are cheaper than Windows instances ($0.10/hour for a small Linux instance).

Database Operations

This is an area that is quite gray to me. Microsoft is offering SQL Azure which appears to be cheaper than even SimpleDB from AWS. It's not quite clear whether you are getting a full instance in SQL Azure, or simply a database.

AWS does offer SimpleDB, which is explained as, "Amazon SimpleDB provides a simple web services interface to create and store multiple data sets, query your data easily, and return the results. Your data is automatically indexed, making it easy to quickly find the information that you need. There is no need to pre-define a schema or change a schema if new data is added later. And scale-out is as simple as creating new domains, rather than building out new servers."

Below you will see time multiplied out for AWS with an instance running 24 hours, 365 days a year. You will also see pricing with an instance on 10 hours a day, 20 days a month (work week). By leveraging the persistent storage of S3, an instance does not need to be online 24 hours a day, assuming a cloud-ready solution is architected.

Message Queueing

AWS' Simple Queue Service (SQS) defines themselves as, "Amazon SQS works by exposing Amazon's web-scale messaging infrastructure as a web service. Any computer on the Internet can add or read messages without any installed software or special firewall configurations. Components of applications using Amazon SQS can run independently, and do not need to be on the same network, developed with the same technologies, or running at the same time."

Advanced Features

There are several features not yet available on the Azure platform. Most of these features revolve around global deployments, such as CloudFront, which is a webservice for global cloud delivery.

This is simply a pricing comparison of each platform.

Thanks

E.Ravi

http://loadstorm.com/

LoadStorm is a cloud load testing tool that generates web traffic for you.

Thanks
E.Ravi

Surprise - you Can View your File of the HDD using Firefox with the command File:///c:/.  This is very useful if you are on a computer that has restriction on drives being hidden.

Microsoft recently released Exchange Server 2010, and it's chock-full of new features.

1: Legal hold
Over the last several years, it has become increasingly more common for an organisation's email messages to be subpoenaed as part of the litigation process. The problem is that email is dynamic in nature. Messages are constantly being sent, received and deleted. Likewise, messages in the archives are often set to expire after a specific length of time. All of these factors have made it difficult to comply with litigation-related message retention requirements.

Exchange 2010 offers a new legal hold feature. This feature allows you to preserve the contents of an Exchange mailbox. Users can still use their mailbox in the usual manner, but copies of all items are retained, even if they delete them or if archived content would otherwise have expired.

2: Multi mailbox search
A complementary feature to legal hold is the new multi mailbox search feature. This feature makes it a lot easier for organisations to perform e-discovery. As the name implies, multi mailbox search allows a designated person to perform organisation-level searches across users' mailboxes. The search interface is designed to allow administrators to search for multiple keywords or phrases simultaneously.

3: Exchange Control Panel
The Exchange Control Panel is a new management tool built into Exchange 2010. While the Exchange Control Panel isn't designed to take the place of the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell, it is definitely a welcome addition.

The Exchange Control Panel is integrated into OWA. It allows users to perform a few basic self-service tasks, such as changing their contact information. For administrators, the Exchange Control Panel provides a way of performing some of the more common management tasks remotely using a web interface.

4: Database availability groups
Exchange 2007 provided several high availability features, such as Cluster Continuous Replication. Exchange 2010 takes things a step further with database availability groups. Database availability groups allow you to designate multiple servers to host copies of individual databases. In the event of a failure, Exchange can automatically recover. Databases are no longer server specific, so you are free to mix and match the database replicas that are hosted on each mailbox server.

5: Database-level failover
In previous Exchange Server cluster implementations, a failure required an entire cluster node to fail over. This meant that if a server was hosting multiple databases, and the disks associated with a single database were to fail, the entire server would have to fail over - which would be disruptive to users whose mailboxes weren't even stored on the failed disks.

In contrast, Exchange 2010 supports database-level fail over. That way, if a failure affects only a single database, that database can fail over without disrupting the other databases on the server.

6: Voice mail transcription
In Exchange 2007, the unified messaging feature caused voice mail messages to be saved as email message attachments. While that seemed to work out fine most of the time, it did sometimes make life difficult for road warriors who didn't always have the ability to play the message.

Exchange 2010 uses a speech recognition engine to automatically transcribe voice mail messages. Users still receive the voice message as an email attachment, but the email message also contains a written transcript of the voice message. Users can check their voice messages even when they don't have access to a sound card. More important, the transcription feature allows the contents of voice messages to be indexed along with traditional email messages.

7: Call answering rules
In Exchange 2007, the auto attendant provides voice prompt menus for the organisation's primary phone number. For example, an auto attendant might be used to ask callers to press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish and then route calls accordingly. In Exchange 2007, the auto attendant is an organisation level feature.

In Exchange 2010, though, each user has his or her own personal auto attendant, which Microsoft refers to as the Call Answering Rules feature. Call answering rules allow users to create their own call routing options. So, for instance, an important call might be forwarded to a user's mobile phone, while a less important call might go straight to voice mail.

8: Personal archive
In Exchange 2010, each user can now have two mailboxes - a primary mailbox and an archive mailbox. By using an archive mailbox, users can keep their primary mailboxes uncluttered. They're free to browse their archive mailbox at will, and items can be automatically moved from their primary mailbox to their archive mailbox using retention policies.

9: Retention policies
Retention policies allow messages to be tagged in a way that reflects their useful lifespan and what should happen when they expire. For example, you could specify that items in one folder should be deleted after 30 days, while items in another folder should be moved to the archives after five years. Users can also apply retention policies to individual messages that are separate from folder-level policies.

10: Role-based access control
Exchange 2010 uses a new access control model called role-based access control. Now, administrators can perform delegation based on the role that the delegate will be performing. This means that rather than guessing which permissions the delegate will need, the administrator can simply tell Exchange which tasks the delegate will be performing.

Our CEO wants to get Outlook 2011 configured on his Mac Air for Exchange 2010. Everything was set up like it should be on outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010. Unfortunately Outlook 2011 refused to get connected to the Exchange 2010 with a General Error. We struggled a long time as we kept getting no feedback on the process from the mac.

The Solution.

Finally We found the solution, it was very basic one. Outlook 2011 does not use MAP1, it relies on EWS ( Exchange Web Services). When we tried to browse https://mail.vishwak.com/EWS/exchange.asmsx  thru the browser on the Mac, it would not prompt for any credentials. just show a blank page. As the Outlook 2011 relies on EWS, we focused on EWS in IIS, which as set to allow anyonymous Authentication and windows Authentication.  Basically the services has to be pulled from the EWS via a Authentication, where the Mac wasn't using windows Authentication. We finally tried to Enable the the Basic Authentication . Outlook 2011 immediately got connected to our Exchange 2010.

Now we got in problem of browsing our OWA directly finally we made a redirection for the same.  YES finally everything worked fine.

Thanks
E.Ravi

Sizing for the SharePoint Web farm is challenging portion for SharePoint Architects  in designing a large web farms.

Finally HP has given a tool to size your web farm. This tool is available for two versions of SharePoint 2007 and 2010. 

Yes this is really good tool which give almost equal configuration when we manually size the servers.

 Articles

Capacity Planning Docs: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=fd1eac86-ad47-4865-9378-80040d08ac55&displaylang=en 

http://sharepoint-sandbox.com/index.php?/Practices/Recommendations/how-to-determine-farm-throughput-requirements.html 

Tools :http://h71019.www7.hp.com/activeanswers/Secure/548230-0-0-0-121.html 

Thanks
E.Ravi

By default, the EC2config service will attempt to set your computer name for you.  You can change this behavior by editing the Config.xml file inside your instance to have the element <Ec2SetComputerName> changed to Disabled.  More information on this can be found here:

http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/appendix-windows-config.html 

Thanks
E.Ravi

http://www.iis.net/extensions/WinCacheForPHP 

This is an PHP accelerator used to increase the performance of the PHP applications running on windows7 and windows 2008 R2 server. It is an extension available in the IIS 7.5 and loaded by the PHP Engine. Major advantage this functions without any code change.

Features

• PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3 support
• Configurable file cache
• Configurable PHP opcode cache
• Relative file path cache
• PHP functions to obtain information about the cache status

Thanks
E.Ravi

Check your Server hardware Warranty (IBM, HP and Dell)

For IBM Server (You will need Serial Number and Type Number)

For HP Server (You will need Serial Number and Product Number)

For Dell Server (You just need the Service Tag number)

Thanks

E.Ravi

Size your SERVER - Load Estimation - Recommendations from IBM

Customer Input for Size the Webserver:
1.90million page user per month
2.Page wait 10k
3.NO SAN is required
4. NO DB clustering required
5.No Backup solution is required.

Software Details :
1. Operating system : Win 2003
2. Database : MS SQL
3. CMS application.

<>
Thank you for using ASEAN Techline.
Kindly note that the sizing for the web server requested is based on the best-effort basis since we do not standardly support sizing for third
party web server applications.
The sizing is done using the IBM Web-based Workload Estimator, using Microsoft IIS 6.0 with the following assumptions.
1. Which version of Microsoft IIS will you be using? IIS 6.0
2. What is the total number of visits per second? 100 per second (90 mil page/month = 35 page/sec)
3. How many pages will be displayed per visit? 10 pages
4. How many objects will be displayed per page? 200 objects/page
5. How much storage should be allocated for web content? 100 GBs
6. Indicate what percent of the pages are Static and/or Dynamic. Static: 60.0%; Dynamic: 40.0%
7. What percent of pages will use processor-based SSL? Encrypted: 15.0%
8. Select the desired server form factor for this sizing. Rack-optimized
9. RAID Support for this workload: RAID-5
The recommended server as below, included buffer for a 50% growth on the workload and disk capacity.

x3650 with two (2) x 2.0GHz Intel 5140, 2GB Memory, 300GB Internal Disk
Please note that if the sizing results does not fit with the web server application required, kindly consult the software vendor to provide
sizing on the hardware requirement, so that we can provide server recommendation accordingly.
Support from IBM Asia : ASEAN Techline Specialist
Notes: ASEAN Techline/Malaysia/IBM Email: techline@my.ibm.com

Server Sizing. Independent & Easy -http://www.sizinglounge.com

This website is really usefull to size the hardware when you have the Pageviews/ users/concurrent users on IIS. To size a server lot of parameters being focussed.This is some extend accurate when we do a Manual size of server (Ram,HDD,CPU).

http://www.sizinglounge.com

Calculate your Pipe requirement for hosting a soltuion  : http://www.netmakers.com/bandwidth.htm

Sizing the network

Network sizing provides the most formulaic approach to Web server sizing and capacity planning. The goal of network sizing is to ensure that no bottleneck occurs between the Web server, the network cards, and network and client requests/response.

Determining the size of the network is based on the server use and characteristics. For example:

• The amount/frequency of a request sent to the server (hits)
• The size of that request (client request)
• The size of the request (Web server response), total size of average Web page, including all objects

At a high level, basic network calculation can be expressed as follows:

bps = h x s

where:

• b is the required network bandwidth per second (bits per second)
• h is the number of Web server hits per second
• s is the average size of each hit in bits

Bits and bytes

Networking components measure traffic differently from servers and storage components. Networking components usually measure traffic in bits/second, while servers and storage measure it in bytes/second. For example, a 100 Mbps network can transfer 12.5 MB per second. See calculations in Figure 1 . Figure 2 shows the utilization.

Figure 1. Calculating transfer rate for network

Figure 2. Network utilization

Finally, network overhead accounts for approximately 30 percent network utilization. This overhead results from all communications such as packet headers. Several vendors offer network card solutions that provide Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) acceleration; that is, network overhead can be off-loaded to a hardware card optimized for establishing and tearing down TCP connections.

Estimating number of hits

Accurate sizing requires a good estimate of the average number of hits per day. There are two approaches to estimating the number of hits per day. The first approach presumes that you have access to Web traffic information. In this case, calculate Web traffic and break the day into four-hour windows. Select the number of hits in the highest four-hour window. Multiply this figure by 6 (see Figure 3 ).

Figure 3. Web server traffic: 24 hours

Use the peak four-hour period as the reference point. Multiply it by 6 to determine hits per day. Then divide by 24 to determine hits per hour.

The second approach most likely applies to building an infrastructure from scratch, which requires a different set of steps. Identify the architecture of the Web site, including number of pages, objects per page, and the target customer. If it is an internal site on an intranet, your calculations can be based on the customer base and company or department size. If the Web site is an Internet site, talk with other people who have similar Web sites and can help you to estimate traffic characteristics.

Determining the processor size

Processor sizing is straightforward if steady state CPU utilization of less than 80 percent is assured. This is crucial to maintaining efficient response times, because the higher the CPU utilization, the longer the queue, and consequently, the longer the response time per request. If the CPU utilization is above 80 percent, queues grow exponentially rather than linearly. (See Little's Law for more information about queues).

Server-generated dynamic content, such as CGI or Java^TM  servlets, makes it difficult to size the processor. The processing costs of this dynamic content will be high enough so that the Web server processing cost is not significant. This assumes that the Web server has been correctly configured.

Benchmarking data for the dynamic content generation processing that will be performed is essential. This data can be used to estimate the number of CPUs and CPU speed necessary to serve the dynamic content. This estimate requires an understanding of the proportion of hits that will cause dynamic content to be served to allow the average computational effort per hit to be calculated.

Sizing the memory

Knowing the resources to be used can help to determine the amount of memory required. For Web servers, consider the byte size of all the software resources running on the processor, beginning with the operating system. The Available Bytes counter can serve as a guide to the size of the unused portion of memory. Allow for 10 percent of memory to be free; this is also known as memory freespace.

As a rule of thumb, you can never have too much memory, because server performance degrades heavily when the system has insufficient memory. The amount of memory is generally a balance with the monetary cost. The availability of sufficient memory prevents the server from accessing the disk frequently. It also enhances the end-user experience while resulting in less work on the server.

If users request information that is stored in memory, that information can be retrieved directly from memory rather than accessing the disk.

To calculate memory requirements, add the required memory for the following consumers of RAM:

Operating system and Web server memory usage. See documentation for the applicable operating system and Web server to determine memory usage. In addition, remember that memory is directly affected by the number of concurrent connections.

Generating dynamic content. Generating dynamic content requires extra memory compared to serving static pages. If applicable, consider the amount of memory required to generate dynamic pages and the number of concurrent connections to estimate how much memory is required.

Calculating dynamic and static content ratios. When calculating the ratio of dynamic to static content served on a site, it is easy to overestimate the percentage of dynamic material, particularly because some content that appears dynamic is actually served as static content. A good rule of thumb is that dynamic content is loaded from a database, while static content loads from HTML, text, or other static types of files. Note that many Web sites today have a dynamic front-end and link to static pages. For example, visit www.microsoft.com and drill down a level or two and you will find Active Server^TM  Pages (ASP) delivering the documents.

Financial sites that provide up-to-the-minute stock market quotations are good examples of a high dynamic content ratio. These sites typically provide 30-40 percent dynamic to 60-70 percent static content. Look closely at your site to assess the ratio of dynamic to static content.

Operating system and Web server caching. Two key types of caching are key to Web server performance: operating system file system caching and Web server caching. Be sure to allocate and account for memory for these processes. The system administrator usually controls these settings.

Putting it all together

Once the memory requirement is determined, this should be considered an absolute lower limit beyond which the server will fail. Add some contingency, then track the actual memory performance (especially the amount of disk access) when the site is implemented. Use the guidelines in Figure 4 .

Figure 4. Calculating lower limit of acceptable memory

Sizing the hard disk drive

Sizing the disk drives and number of drives is as important as determining memory and processor speed. It is important to never exceed 85 percent usage of disk drive space. Base the selection on 85 percent of used space and 15 percent free space. For example, with 8 GB of data: 8 (data size = GB) + 1.2 (15 percent free space based on 8 GB = 1.2) = 9.2. In this case, select one disk drive close to the 9.2 GB calculation or two smaller disks with capacity equal to 9.2.

Optimizing disk performance. Sizing and performance are not the same. Sizing is based on a conservative percentage of performance capabilities to allow for peaks and spikes in usage. Industry practice supports using no more than 80 percent of disk capacity and maintaining 20 percent of disk space for other network requirements. Choose the size of the disk based on the site size, considering the 80/20 ratio. However, Dell recommends employing a 60/40 ratio for multiple data centers-existing or planned for the future.

RAID

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is a disk subsystem that provides disk performance, reliability, or both. RAID is a set of two or more hard disks and a specialized disk controller that contains the RAID functionality.

The theory behind RAID is that instead of using one large drive to store all of the data, a set of smaller drives provides the flexibility to add redundancy and/or increase performance. There are many varieties of RAID, but the most commonly used RAID types are 0, 1, and 5.

RAID-0 offers better performance. RAID-0 is disk striping only, interleaving data across multiple disks for better performance. It does not provide safeguards against failure. For that reason, it is technically not "true" RAID because it does not provide fault tolerance. RAID-0 requires at least two hard disk drives (HDDs) and a RAID controller card.

RAID-1 provides high reliability. RAID-1 is disk mirroring that provides 100 percent duplication of data and provides a small performance benefit. Because both drives contain the same information, the RAID controller can read data from one drive while concurrently requesting data from the other drive. However, write speeds are slower since the controller must write all data twice. While RAID-1 offers high reliability, it doubles storage cost. The system will keep running if a hard disk fails. RAID-1 requires at least two HDDs and a RAID controller card.

RAID-5 provides both performance and fault tolerance. RAID-5 is one of the most commonly used RAID types. Data is striped across three or more drives for performance, and parity bits are used for fault tolerance. The parity bits from two drives are stored on a third drive. RAID-5 requires at least three HDDs and a RAID controller card.

Scalability, availability, and planning for growth

Business requirements increase over time. By adding processors, memory, and disks, Dell's PowerApp.web servers and general-purpose servers can scale up within each server, then scale out modularly. Businesses then have the option to scale their network by purchasing servers as needed, thereby realizing a return on investment (ROI) in a shorter time, rather than purchasing one large Web server and hoping to realize ROI.

Recent tests show that the PowerApp.web 120 Windows Powered systems were able to handle 1,110 concurrent users with 30,940 ASP request/minute with moderate load on the processors. See the article in Dell Power Solutions² for details.

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/power/en/ps3q01_graham?c=us&cs=555&l=en&s=biz

Thanks

E.Ravi

This article really useful to take the reports on

1. Who's connected to your SQL Server

2. Dealing with blocked processes

3. Performance killers

4. Clues to SQL Server performance problems

5. Process Management

6. SQL Server

7. Database Performance

You can use with System tables built in with SQL server 2005 - which does these performance tasks for you. Check on sp_who, sp_who2, and Enterprise Manager are simply presenting data from the master.sysprocesses table.

Here go with the article from Microsoft which gives lot of info on this.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160786.aspx

Thanks

E.Ravi

I tried with the lot of options given in the forums.- No luck.

Finally i want to try on packages on PPP available on the Gnome. yes got one package called "Gnome-PPP".

Let us see the steps to get connected using the TATA Indicom ..

Step 1

Install the package Gnome using your " synaptic package Manager" from the administration tab.

Search for Gnome-PPP package and install it.

Step 2

Go to -> Applications->Internet->Gnome-ppp

Launch the Gnome-PPP and add configure the settings using the setup tab.

Launch and add the username and pw and phone number.

username : internet

Pw: internet

phone number #777

Step3

Check these items are enabled. Detect the type of the modem you are using "Detect" Option - this will fetch the Device and its type and speed.

Disable the "wait for Dialtone" mode.

Then check the options tab

Enable " Auto Reconnect" and Ignore terminal strings(Stupid mode)

Step4

Now you are set with the settings of the Dialer. Try to connect

yes - you are connected now.

Step 5

Due to some reasons Firefox goes "offline" - Disable the offline and try surfing with success.

Thanks

E.Ravi

Good FAQ document from Microsoft for the NLB  :

Thanks

E.Ravi

Are you designing a architecture for the Sharepoint , Exchange - then these tools will be useful. This is only for Architects.

Capacity Planner 2007 :http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sccp/bb969059.aspx  - You can find the tools here.  

First install the SCCP 2007  the install the Sharepoint capacity planner as add on.
To access the System Center Capacity Planner 2007 download, click here.

The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool is a software extension of the System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP2007).

Then install Sharepoint Capacity tool  - Download here http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=93029.

Now start using the Sharepoint Capacity Planning tool.

input the configurations of the Hardware

Input the redundancy required in the WEB and SQL server ends.

Once done with the inputs run the Simulation where you get the results

Thanks
E.Ravi

Now you can create a pre-installed OS on VHD in 15 Mins max using WIM2VHD.

Requirements.

A computer running one of the following Windows operating systems:

• Windows 7 Beta or RC
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta or RC
• Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V RTM enabled (x64 only)
• The Windows 7 RC Automated Installation Kit (AIK) or Windows OEM Pre-Installation Kit (OPK) installed.
• A Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 installation source, or another Windows image captured to a .WIM file.

Let is see the steps to create the VHD

Step 1

Download the Windows 7 RC Automated Installation Kit (AIK)  and install on the base machine.

Step2

Download the WIM2VHD and save in D:\ or E: where you have enough space to create the VHDs. Minimum of 20GB.

WIM2VHD 6.1.7033.0 Beta  Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter 

Let us see how we are going to use these.

Usage:  ( Work with administrator rights)

WIM2VHD.WSF /wim: /sku:
[/vhd:] [/size:] [/disktype:]
[/unattend:] [/qfe:]
[/ref:] [/copylocal:]
[/passthru:] [/signdisk:]
[/mergefolder:]

Required parameters:
/wim:
    The path of the WIM file to use when creating the VHD.  For example:
    X:\sources\install.wim
    Where X: is the drive letter of your DVD ROM drive.

Step 3
Commands i used and worked :

E:\>cscript wim2vhd.wsf /wim:d:\sources\install.wim /SKU:ULTIMATE /QFE:C:\Windows6.1-KB961367-x86.MSU /VHD:C:\TEMP\MYDESKTOP1.VHD

D: is the Windows 7 RC DVD on the DVD Rom
SKU : used to put the name of the WIM ULTIMATE OR ServerStandard .
QFE : QFEs is to apply to VHD after the WIM is applied. Windows6.1-KB961367-x86.MSU 
Download this MSU file and save it in C:\

Now the script started to build the VHD ..

Yes after max 10~ 15 mins i got the VHD of the WIM.
 Step 4

Mount this VHD using the Microsoft VPC and start using..

Few Examples for other SKUs

Create a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Standard Core VHD, named foo.vhd
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:X:\sources\install.wim /SKU:SERVERSTANDARDCORE /VHD:C:\foo.vhd

Create a Windows Server 2008 R2 Server Standard VHD with an automatically generated name
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:X:\sources\install.wim /SKU:SERVERSTANDARD

Thanks

E.Ravi

Windows lovers has to wait for eleven or 5 more days !!!!

Microsoft planning to release the RC on May 5th on TechNet and MSDN. Seems Subscribers can start downloading from April 30th.

Stay tuned on Microsoft website where the RC official downloads links begin to appear.

Thanks

E.Ravi

Installing Ubuntu 8.04 on the virtual machine

Once the virtual machine had been created, it should show up on your Virtual PC Console:

Start the Ubuntu VPC, and go to CD and choose Capture ISO Image  and select the ISO image of Ubuntu. select the Language.

Choose English by Default and hit Enter.

Next, you have 5 options:

1. Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer "" this option is good when you are running Ubuntu from a live CD.
2. Install Ubuntu "" physical installation of Ubuntu on the physical hard disk
3. Check for CD Defects "" check if anything is wrong on the installation CD
4. Test Memory "" self explanatory, it checks the memory for any problem.
5. Boot from first hand hard disk.

Here I encountered an error when selecting the Install Ubuntu option:

An unrecoverable processor error has been encountered.

The virtual machine will reset now.

Here is the way around this problem. when you get to the option to unstall Ubuntu, press F4 and choose Safe graphics mode. then choose the first option on the menu:Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer.

If you still get the same problem do this:

At the prompt, press F4 and select "Safe graphics mode".
then press F6.

Modify the following boot line:

"Boot Options seed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.gz quiet splash -" Delete the part that says "quiet splash "" -" and replace it with "vga=791 noreplace-paravirt"

Sure - This option will make your Ubuntu boot onto the GUI. Now you start installing the ubuntu on to your local hard Drive

Click on the Install folder.  The installation wizard should come up:

Select the language and click Forward.  Next Choose your location:  Continue the same and complete the installation.

here is the place you get into issue after successful installation of VPC Ubuntu.

When you reboot the VPC -

I got the dreaded error:

An unrecoverable processor error has been encountered.   The virtual machine will reset now.

fix the booting problem.

When booting Ubuntu, press the Esc key when the GRUB loading is displayed. You should get 3 boot options menu:

Make sure, Ubuntu 8.04.1, Kernel 2.6.24-19-generic is selected, and press the letter E on your keyboard. You should get to the following window, with 3 options again:

Press the letter E again on your keyboard. on next window, delete the last piece of code that says "quiet splash "" """ and replace it with "noreplace-paravirt"

Press enter, you should get back to the previous window. Press B on your keyboard, Ubuntu should load fine now.

Login using the Root account to change these settings

Now, we need to make this change permanently. After you logon to your Ubuntu GUI go to Applications then Accessories and open Terminal

Type the following command on terminal "sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst" enter you password when asked. When you get to the menu, scroll to the very bottom and look for the following code line:

Go to the end of the line code and change the last piece of code, from "quiet splash "" """ to "noreplace-paravirt" press CTRL + O to write, press ENTER to accept it, and press CTRL + X to exit out.

Now you have done the Successful installation of Ubuntu 8.04 on VPC 2007.

Thanks
E.Ravi

Actual new SKUs for the OS:

• Windows 7 Starter (limited to three apps concurrently)
• Windows 7 Home Basic (for emerging markets)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (adds Aero, Touch, Media Center)
• Windows 7 Professional (Remote Desktop host, Mobility Center, Presentation mode)
• Windows 7 Enterprise (volume license only, boot from virtual drive, BitLocker)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (limited availability, includes everything)

Starter edition : seems this edition will be offer to netbook to cut the cost with limited features
please note : Starter will not be offered through Retail market.

Enterprise Edition is for Enterprise Businesses - sold thru VLK

Thanks
E.Ravi

How to Remove Vista from a Dual Boot system

1. Boot your computer in to Windows XP.

2. Ensure you have the Vista DVD image emulated or in the DVD drive.

3. Go to Start and Run. Type in e:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt52 ALL /force (without quotes, and replacing e: with the drive letter of your Vista DVD).

4. Restart the computer, and you will notice the boot selection menu is gone.
Format the partition/drive where you had Vista installed.

5. Remove two files (Boot.BAK & Bootsect.BAK) on your XP drives root folder (C :), these were backup files of your previous boot loader, now no longer useful.

6. Optional: Restart to ensure it still works.

7. Use your partition software to merge your partitions together.

Now the complete system is out from vista and without the New Boot loader.

Thanks

E.Ravi

Sign in now :  windows-7-beta-product-key_03  Only Limited beta products keys are available.It's limited to 2.5 Millions keys.

Available in 32 Bit and 64 Bit versions. Minimum Requirements Processor : 1GHZ for 32 and 64 bit Ram : 1 GB HDD : 16GB Graphics: 128 MB Memory on card

Good Luck - Download today and try it out!
Thanks
E.Ravi

YES, good news Live messenger 2009 is out from its beta stage. Nothing much on this except the bugs, UI Look changes. You can download the Web installer : http://download.live.com/messenger/?mkt=en-us

Thanks
E.Ravi

Error message when a Web browser sends a request for an active server page to a Web server that is running IIS 6.0: "Response buffer limit exceeded"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925764

Increase the buffer limit You can increase the buffering limit if one of the following conditions is true:

How to configure Local IP to Live ip in sonic firewall TZ170

This article says how to configure Local IP to Live ip in sonic firewall TZ170

Check the article attached

Thanks

E.Ravi

Ru n MAC OSX in PearPC on Windows XP

Yes you can install MAC OS on windows xp machine now. check the document for full details.

ppcguide-v1.pdf (803.17 KB)

http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/

 http://pearpc.sourceforge.net/getstart.html

eravi

This article will give you more information on ports, protocals and services used on microsoft server OS.

REFERENCES

How to configure a firewall for domains and trusts - 179442 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179442/)

 Information about TCP/IP port assignments - 174904 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/174904/)

For more information about how to restrict Active Directory replication traffic, see the "Restricting Active Directory replication traffic to a specific port" -

224196 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/224196/) 

Port Reference for MS TCP/IP" in the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Resource Kit -

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windowsnt/4/server/reskit/en-us/net/port_nts.mspx

TCP and UDP Port Assignments -

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/cnet/cnfc_por_GDQC.asp

Port Assignments and Protocol Numbers -

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/2000/server/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/windows/2000/server/reskit/en-us/cnet/cnfc_por_ZQYU.asp

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority coordinates the use of well-known ports -

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

For more information about how to configure DTC to use a specific range of ports, see the "Configuring Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) to work through a firewall" -

250367 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/250367/) 

File Replication Service

For more information about how to configure FRS to work with a firewall, see the "How to restrict FRS replication traffic to a specific static port" -

319553 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319553/) 

Internet Information Services

For more information about the ports that are used by IIS 4.0, by IIS 5.0, and by IIS 5.1, see the "Inetinfo services use additional ports beyond well-known ports" -

327859 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327859/)   

SQL Server

For more information about how SQL Server 2000 dynamically determines ports for secondary instances, see the "Behavior of SQL Server 2000 Network Library during dynamic port detection" -

286303 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/286303/) 

For more information about the ports that are used by SQL Server 7.0 and SQL Server 2000 for OLAP, see the "TCP ports used by OLAP services when connecting through a firewall" -

301901 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301901/) 

Terminal Services

For more information about how to configure the port that is used by Terminal Services, see the "How to change Terminal Server's listening port" -

187623 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/187623/) 

How to Give permission to large number of Tables/SP/Views in a Database . (Microsoft SQL 2000)

Permission script for Tables.

SELECT 'grant select, insert, update on ' + TABLE_NAME + ' TO [Machine name\user]' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_TYPE='BASE TABLE'

 Permission Script for Store procedures.

SELECT 'grant EXECUTE on ' + ROUTINE_NAME  + ' TO [Machine name\user]' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.ROUTINES WHERE ROUTINE_TYPE='PROCEDURE' and Lower(SUBSTRING(ROUTINE_NAME,1,2))<>'dt' AND PATINDEX('%sys%',ROUTINE_NAME)=0

Permission Script for Views

 SELECT 'grant select on ' + TABLE_NAME + ' TO [Machine name\user]' FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.views

 Run the above scripts to get the details of the Tables/SP/Views like this.

Example for Tables script.

grant select, insert, update on Country TO [Machine name\user]
grant select, insert, update on Customer TO [Machine name\user]
grant select, insert, update on CustomerBrands TO [Machine name\user]
grant select, insert, update on CustomerUserMapping TO [Machine name\user]
grant select, insert, update on dtproperties TO [Machine name\user]

 Follow the same method for the SP and Views.

eravi

Enabling Remote Desktop using regedit, follow these steps:

1. Run REGEDIT from Start>Run
2. Click on File, then select Connect Network Registry
3. Type the remote computer IP or host name in the Enter the object name to select and the click OK.

4. If you don't have permission to access the remote computer, the logon screen will show up. Type the username and password for the remote computer. Then click OK.

5. Now, the remote computer is listed in the Registry Editor.

6. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server, in the right panel, seelct  fDenyTSConnection (REG_DWORD). Change the value data from 1 (Remote Desktop disabled) to 0 (Remote Desktop enabled).

7. Close the regeidt.

8. Try to connect now that machine using the RDP.

This is how to add/remove IP address, Default Gateway and DNS and WINS addresses to your NIC using a script.

you can use Netsh.exe -which is available on Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

This can be used when you two different places LAN Environment with static and DHCP

Adding ip addresses - Static LAN Environment

===================================

netsh interface ip set address name="Local Area Connection" static
158.223.101.53 255.255.0.0 158.2232.89

netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection" static 158.223.1.1
netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection" static 158.223.1.3

===================================

Removing ip addresses - DHCP Lan Environment

netsh interface ip set address "Local Area Connection" dhcp

netsh interface ip set dns "Local Area Connection" dhcp

===================================

E.Ravi