Windows

Windows 8 on a MacBook Air

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Hi,
This one was a bit more painful than expected. Windows 8 WILL work on a MacBook Air, but there’s a few hurdles to get over.

Firstly, you can do the standard method of going into OSX and using the inbuilt Boot Camp option. You’ll have to burn a copy of your ISO and use an external CD/DVD drive (Ironic for a MBA, but also I was running Snow Leopard so this may be fixed in Lion or Mountain Lion) and follow the bouncing ball.

At the other end, you’ve got Windows 8 installed, except if you try to then install the Boot Camp tools you’ll get the lovely message “Boot Camp requires that your computer is running Windows 7”.

You’ll have to break out the free Microsoft tool Orca (available here http://www.technipages.com/download-orca-msi-editor.html) and make one small change. Thanks to this page http://www.sellsbrothers.com/posts/Details/12708 for advising on what that is:

Open the BootCamp64.msi file from your WindowsSupport\Drivers\Apple folder created from OSX and under the LaunchCondition entry, go to where it says VersionNT=601 and change it to 602 (or just right click and drop row to remove the check completely). Now you’ll be able to run setup.exe without getting the annoying error.

That’ll install Boot Camp, which you can then update from inside the app for a newer version without issue.

Next, you may have noticed that if you’re using the trackpad that right click doesn’t work. You can enable that in the Boot Camp software under the Boot Camp Control Panel, and ticking the Two Fingers > Secondary Click option.

The last annoyance for me was that the network dongle didn’t work either. I found the correct driver under WindowsSupport\Drivers\Asix – installing that made it instantly work.

Good luck and enjoy Windows 8!

Windows 8, accounts and inbuilt admin $ shares

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Hi,
Windows 8 RTM is now out, so everyone who cares is installing it on every device they can find (or is this just me?). Anyway, after doing this to a few PC’s I wanted to browse to a Windows 8 PC’s UNC path using the inbuilt $ share for each drive.

Don’t know what an inbuilt Admin share is exactly? Do some reading here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_share

So, if you’re trying to map or browse to a file share such as \\homepc\c$ you should get ‘Access Denied’, even when using administrator credentials.

A fix to this is to add the following setting to the registry on the Windows 8 PC you’re trying to connect to (I had to reboot to make it work afterward):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mi
crosoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Add a new DWORD (32-bit) called LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy and set it to 1 

While working this out, I did a bit of trial and error with my accounts. Windows 8 lets you use a Microsoft Live ID account over the top of your administrator local account (not the inbuilt administrator). A bunch more info on that from Microsoft blogs here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/privacyimperative/archive/2011/09/28/signing-in-to-windows-8-with-a-windows-live-id-privacy-and-security.aspx

With this, I discovered that once you’ve put your Microsoft Live ID in, it sits on top of your administrator account, and actually changes the password to match your Microsoft Live ID. You can use the combination of the username for the administrator account, and your Microsoft Live ID password to prove this. The old password for the administrator account won’t work. The other interesting thing about this setup is that even if you’re logged onto the PC with your Microsoft Live ID, you can’t change the password of the administrator account it’s on top of via Computer Management > Local Users and Groups. I assume this is because it will break the relationship between the Microsoft Live ID and the administrator account, but anyone who knows more about this please fill me in.

In summary, a registry entry will enable the admin $ shares again and you can either use the combination of “Microsoft Live ID Username\Microsoft Live ID Password” or “Local Administrator Username\Microsoft Live ID Password” because both passwords are now the same. Keep this in mind if you’ve got a poor strength password!

How to add your KMS keys for Windows 8 and Server 2012

Posted on by Adam Fowler
Hi,
Now that Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 are out, any company that uses KMS keys needs to add the new ones from Microsoft’s Volume Licensing Service Center
https://www.microsoft.com/Licensing/servicecenter/Downloads/DownloadsAndKeys.aspx

First, there’s a hotfix for your existing KMS server available here:

Once you request the hotfix, get the email and download it, and install. The install will require a reboot, so if you’ve got this on a critical server you’re going to have to schedule a reboot.
A few change request forms and approval signatures later, you’ll be finally ready to add your shiny new keys in.
Now, here’s the installation instructions from the link above:

Installation instructions
If you have a KMS host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or Windows 7 SP1, follow these steps to perform an upgrade: Install this update (KB2691586). Restart the computer when you are prompted.

To install a new KMS host key for Windows 8 activation or for Windows Server 2012 activation, run the following command: cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk
Note In this command, replace  with the new KMS host key for Windows 8 activation or for Windows Server 2012 activation.Important Every KMS host key is associated with a group of Windows editions. Additionally, a KMS host key that is associated with Windows client operating systems cannot be installed on Windows server operating systems, and vice-versa. This is true for all Windows operating systems except for Windows Server 2003.

If you install a KMS host key on a Windows operating system that is not associated with that host key, you receive the following error message: 0xc004f015: The Software Licensing Service reported that the license is not installed.SL_E_PRODUCT_SKU_NOT_INSTALLEDFor example, you receive this error message if you try to install a KMS host key for Windows 7 on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.For more information about KMS host keys and about associated groups of Windows editions, see Table 5 in the “Determine Product Key Needs” section of the Volume Activation Planning Guide (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd878528.aspx#E3IAC) .
To activate the new KMS host key on the host computer, run the following command: cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ato

I had to read this more than once. Using the command cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ipk  worked fine with the Server 2012 KMS key, but not with the Windows 8 key. You can’t mix both Windows 8 and Server 2012 keys on the same box, but it appears that as long as you enter the Server 2012 key, it also allows Windows 8 clients to register.

The secondcommand cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /ato makes the server ‘phone home’ and completely register the keys.

Once you’ve got a client registered, you can use the command cscript %windir%\system32\slmgr.vbs /dli to show you when you registered, to which server etc.
Note: The Volume Activation Management Tool is useless for this, as it won’t recognise your new keys.
Good luck!

Disabled Add-ins in Microsoft Office

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Hi,
Another little fix here. Many companies will have certain add-ins in their Microsoft Office products, and sometimes things go wrong. Often if an Office product crashes, it will blame an active plugin and bring up the prompt asking if you want to disable the add-in:

For most people presented with more than a line of text and a ‘Yes/No’ option, they’ll just click ‘Yes’ and continue on their merry way – not realising they’ve just crippled some functionality.

In Office 2010, it’s a bit of a pain to re-enable an add-in manually: Click File > Options > Add-ins > Drop down Manage and choose ‘Disabled Add-ins’ > Go > Choose the add-in > Click Enable > Click OK > Click OK > Have a nap. Hard work!

So, what I decided to do was use Group Policy to automatically wipe from the registry anything that’s disabled. This will happen on 90 minute intervals, and at login time – so for some users, it’s easier to train them to log off and back on (or reboot) if they’re having that important add-in disabled.

The relevant keys to delete are:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Resiliency\DisabledItems
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Resiliency\DisabledItems
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Resiliency\DisabledItems

I am doing this with a Registry Group Policy Preference set to ‘Delete’

Of course this could be added to a login script if you use those, or if it’s a really common problem a desktop shortcut or reg file that deletes the key when the user choose to. All it needs to contain is this:

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Word\Resiliency\DisabledItems]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\Resiliency\DisabledItems]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Excel\Resiliency\DisabledItems]

Note that this is for Office 2010, but the same works for 2007 and 2003, just the version path needs to be changed – for 2003, it’s 11.0 and 2007 is 12.0 (no unlucky 13.0).

SCSM 2010 and SCOM 2012 Consoles

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Hi,
Thought I’d share this quick one, not many people will run into it, but anyway:

It seems that the SCSM 2010 console and the SCOM 2012 console can’t co-exist on the same box. A bit of a pain if you’ve built your centralised tool box.

I found this Microsoft Technet thread about the issue: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/systemcenterservicemanager/thread/33de3e93-207b-44cc-8afb-7c8aa7d774f4

The symptom is trying to launch the SCSM 2010 console and getting the error:

Failed to connect to server ‘scsmserver’
The container could not find a component with name ‘ConfigurationExtension’…

The fix, is pretty much to uninstall SCOM 2012 console, and reinstall SCSM 2010. Bit of a pain, and hoping that SCSM 2012 can co-exist with SCOM 2012.