WindowsAdminGuru BLOG

I got one alert today - 'CPU Processor High Utilization' on one of my client server Scan32.exe seems to be chewing up a lot of the CPU memory. I know it's a virus scan and has to run. This SCAN32.exe file is killing the all memory going up to 90% of utilization. Checked in Windows Task Manager, Performance window still showing 90% usage. I waited for couple of hours and check again, no change in the usage. Thought wait for a day and see, not seen any change in it. Finally I'm decided to reboot the server and see. Rebooted and worked. This solution would be only Windows 2000 Servers and or legacy hardware servers. This kind of errors normally we don't get on Windows 2003 editions.

A lot of people have been confused when looking at the properties of a file, folder, or drive as the properties size and size on disk do not usually match each other. The value of size in the properties page indicates the actual size of the file while the size on disk indicates the number of bytes that it actually occupies on the hard drive. The discrepancy comes from the way the file system stores the file on the drive. File systems treats a number of bytes as a single cluster in order to reduce the number of addresses that are being used. Depending on the file system, common cluster sizes can vary from 2KB to as large as 32KB. A file that is written to disk takes a discrete number of clusters regardless of each actual size. So a 1KB file when saved in a file system with 2KB clusters would take up 2KB but in a file system with 32KB clusters, it would take up 32KB. Also, a 33KB file would take up 17 2KB clusters (34KB) or 2 clusters in a 32KB file system (64KB). The amount of wasted ...

The mostly likely problem is that the power_ok (or power_good) signal is sent before the power supply has stabilized. Get a better quality PSU. In modern PCs, the power switch is a logic device that tells the PSU to supply full power to the motherboard. The power_ok signal tells the motherboard that the power supply is available and stable. If the signal is sent too soon the motherboard does not recognize it and stays off to protect itself. This can happen in lowerquality PSUs. Booting more than once is not recommended, and you will be better off getting a better PSU. The PC powers on but nothing happens after that (no beep) 1. This may be due to the addition of new hardware that is overtaxing the power supply. Remove the last hardware component installed and check again. 2. A defective hard disk or one that is not plugged in correctly: Check the power cable to the hard disk. Sometimes it may not be fully plugged in. Check the hard disk on another system. The PC powers on...

Today I've faced some difficulty in deleting folder / sub folders with files. Here is the command line command to use to delete the folders and sub folders with files. RMDIR or RD with /s option will delete all the files Some how I managed to delete 98% of the files except few because of 'access denied' errors. For this you need to take control by giving the full control permission to your id and delete them.

If you see a BSOD or a Blue screen of death on your computer, then the first step to troubleshoot the issue behind it is to write the error code that appears on the blue screen. However, by default, most Windows systems restart automatically in case of serious errors that normally cause a BSOD. So you see the BSOD for a couple of seconds and the computer restarts instantly making it impossible to write the error code. To pause the BSOD, you have to disable the automatic restart of Windows in case an error occurs. To do that, right click on My Computer and select Properties . Then select Advanced System Settings from the right panel. On Advanced System Settings window, un-check the Automatically Restart option. That’s it. Now Windows will not restart automatically in case of any serious issue and will pause at the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) screen.

Last week one of our team members was implementing a Change Control to create a Maintenance Plan on a SQL Server 2005 instance. Since this instance was getting backed up using a Third Party tool, it did not have any Maintenance Plans on it. Since we wanted to backup one of the databases to disk, this Change Control was put in place. Everything went fine until we tried saving the Maintenance Plan. It could not be saved and popped up the following error message. I came across this error message for the first time. My team members stumbled on this KB article which explains the cause for this error. Here is the summary of the symptoms and cause. Maintenance Plans are saved as SSIS packages and stored in MSDB by default These packages use encryption to connect to SQL Server. Secure Network packets are sent over Secure Socket Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security(TLS) layers. Data fragments sent over these layers have a limit of 16K. If the packet size sent from SSIS is grea...

powermt.exe command line commands list with options This command used to check / grab information about devices, ports, multipathing checking etc from command line interface. Here is the link to know more about 'powermt.exe' command. (Powerpath Software) http://www.scribd.com/doc/8223701/powerpath-cli-commands If you don't find this powermt.exe file in your machine, there is no Powerpath software installed.

Private cloud to deliver up to 50% saving to India Inc, create 1 lakh additional jobs by 2015 EMC Corporation and Zinnov Management Consulting, in a study on private cloud landscape in India estimated that the total cloud market in India, currently at $400 million, will reach a market value of $ 4.5 billion by 2015. Of this private cloud adoption will dominate and account for $3.5 billion in revenues, growing at over 60%. The study also estimates that the segment will create 1 lakh jobs by 2015 from 10,000 today The study was commissioned by EMC and executed by Zinnov Management Consulting. Its findings are based on a comprehensive survey of over 100 CIOs & IT decision makers in India across industry verticals conducted during January 2011 to May 2011. With the overall environment of cloud adoption fast evolving in India, cloud computing will account for a significant share in the total IT spend of enterprises. Total cloud spend as a percentage of the total IT spend is expect...

Knowing how to rebuild the SYSVOL tree from scratch isn't a skill that you'll use every day, but it's definitely one that you'll be glad you have. Recently I talked to a Windows admin who had trouble promoting the second DC in a domain. It seems that AD replication was working and DNS was healthy, but FRS was not. No SYSVOL or Netlogon share, no SYSVOL tree on the second domain controller. The FRS event log was logging Event ID 13508 events but no 13509 events. Tried forcing SYSVOL replication, using KB 290762 -- setting BURFLAGS value on the PDC to D4 and on the other DC to D2 -- but something went wrong and it wiped out the SYSVOL tree on the primary domain controller. It was as if it had replicated the empty SYSVOL to the PDC instead of the other way around. So we had no SYSVOL tree on either DC. Yes, we could have started from scratch, but that would not have been a good political decision. And we really didn't have root cause to justify it. The solutio...

Question: How to manually rebuild Performance Counter Library values? Summary: This article describes how to manually rebuild the performance counter library values. Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/) How to back up and restore the registry in WindowsWhen you use the System Monitor tool, some counters may be missing or do not contain counter data. The base set of performance counter libraries may become corrupted and may need to be rebuilt along with any extensible co...

Do you have a Computer with low configuration or a system in which you have installed bunch of software’s or programs? I know many of you would think, why I am asking this type of questions! Actually all these things may affect your computer performance and it leaves you with a low computing speed. Start, Run, Type 'regedit' Select HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Control Panel, Desktop. After selecting Desktop you will see a list of files in the right hand side. Select 'WaitToKillAppTimeout' from the list and then right click, modify. Once you select Modify, Change the value to 1000 and click OK Select HungAppTimeout from the list and right click it to Modify. Change the value to 1000. Click Ok Now Select HKEY_USERS, .DEFAULT, Control Panel, Desktop. Once again Select WaitToKillAppTimeout from the list of files. Right click it and select Modify. Change the value to 1000. Click Ok. At last, Navigate for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, System, CurrentControlSet, Control. Select 'Wait...

Here goes the KB article that includes all the recommended hot fixes for Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2. Last update is from a few days ago (8-09-10) so for all of you out there with VMM 2008 R2 running, check it out. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;2397711

Here goes the SCVMM 2008 R2 SP1 RTM download link - Support for new features of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V supports Dynamic Memory enabling customers to better utilize the memory resources of a Hyper-V host. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines onto Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts and will report on the memory currently in use for these VMs where Dynamic Memory is enabled. Using Dynamic Memory for supported VMs allows for more efficient utilization of memory, with consistent performance, and higher consolidation ratios. Microsoft RemoteFX: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 introduces a new set of end user experience enhancements with Microsoft RemoteFX. VMM 2008 R2 SP1 allows administrators to create and deploy Virtual Machines with RemoteFX enabled to qualified Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V hosts. This enables a rich, local-like desktop environment over the netw...

Application geeks are cashing in on users' craze to move from Facebook to Google's new social media site, Google+. Applications and websites that enable this migration are already showing up. Check this out. Move2Picasa is a small application that allows users to move their photos from Facebook to Google+. Coded by Pune-based Web developer Aman Kumar Jain, Move2Picasa saw over 10,000 users put in requests for migrating their photos from their Facebook accounts to Google+ profiles. "I did not think it will get such a response. We moved 4 lakh photos which took up lot of resources. We have a long request queue waiting, so we have temporarily paused accepting requests," said Jain, cofounder of the web app developing firm Amiworks. The app doesn't have all features yet. It either moves all photos or moves none. Users cannot choose photos to move, nor can it pull in photo tags and comments. It took over three hours to migrate all photos. The photos get added to t...

In simple words, Cloud Computing means providing online services (may be free of cost or may charge for some services). For example Google docs is a cloud service, where in Google provides you with some free space in its database to store our files. Another example is Universities need extra servers to handle the web traffic while releasing exam results. However, it is very expensive for them to maintain extra servers throughout the year. Hence few third party companies maintain servers and they borrow the servers to the universities whenever needed on time to time basis. Now the core part about the Cloud Computing is to manage servers and maintain the online resources.

I had a problem with the user profile on Windows 2008 server. This was probably caused by incorrect permissions on the ts profiles. I corrected this problem by giving required permission however still received two more errors in the event log. Issue: Log Name: Application Source: Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles Service Date: Date Event ID: 1515 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: Classic User: User Computer: Computer Description: Windows has backed up this user profile. Windows will automatically try to use the backup profile the next time this user logs on. Log Name: Application Source: Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles Service Date: Date Event ID: 1511 Task Category: None Level: Warning Keywords: Classic User: User Computer: Computer Description: Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Solution: Delete a folder from the registry. Go to HK...

What is TCP Chimney Offload TCP Chimney Offload is a networking technology that allows the work associated with moving data across a network to be offloaded from the host computer's CPU to the network adapter. This helps improve the processing of network data on your computer or server without the need for additional programs or any loss to manageability or security. Programs that are currently bound by network processing overhead will generally scale better when used with TCP Chimney Offload. Reference : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951037 Tags: Chimney Offload, Firewall, IPV4, Network, Offload, TCP, TCP Chimney Offload, TCP/IP, windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 Firewall

CloudFlare is known as the cloud-based service caching site content on proxy servers around the world. Its main objectives are protecting your site from malicious threats and improving website performance, all of those great features are provided for free. CloudFlare is being used widely by many bloggers and there are many positive reviews about the service. Some has seen a dramatic increase in loading speed, more visits and lower bounce rate on their sites. CloudFlare has been integrated into HostGator and if you are using the hosting service, it will take you less than 1 minute to set it up. Just go to the HostGator’s CPanel and find the CloudFlare icon in the Advanced box. Then you just need to choose your domain and activate the feature. By doing this, you’ve just enabled the Basic Mode of CloudFlare, you even don’t need to change nameservers of your website. However, after I activated CloudFlare in HostGator, I saw the 500 internal server error when trying to ac...

The IE10 Platform Preview 2 is available to download now. IE10 is the follow up to generally well received IE9, which was released only a couple months ago; platform preview 2 is the follow up to platform preview 1, which was released about 11 weeks ago. For Microsoft, they have been fighting a battle against Chrome and FireFox for marketshare. While Microsoft did let IE6 go stale, the following iterations have built upon the success of the previous generation to bring new features to the table. Microsoft's latest browser, IE9, has been downloaded by millions of users. IE10 for Microsoft represents their continued march towards bringing new and innovative products to the web. While it is not known what all the new platform will bring to the table, we do know that it will bring enhanced security features and will allow the browser to do more without the need for plug-ins. The IE blog states : Beautiful and interactive Web applications are easier to deliver with support for sev...

Earlier many sources reported that Mac OS X Lion will be Released on July 14.Before this reports, Apple has seeded the golden master version of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion to developers.The final version of Mac OS X Lion will be available as a download exclusively through the Mac App Store. It will cost $29.99 USD. You should note that a server version of OS X Lion will be available separately via the Mac App Store. It will cost $49.99. Well, It is not confirmed that the new MacBook Air will be released on 14th July. According to the sources of 9to5mac, this release date of Mac OS X Lion can be pushed back at anytime due to any last minute bugs.

This week the MozillaWiki web site announced that Firefox 6 will enter into beta phase on Tuesday, July 5. The beta release comes just a few weeks after Mozilla officially released the final version of Firefox 5. A few days ago, Mozilla has chosen not to offer automatic updates for Firefox which means users must make the choice to update the browser to the current fifth version. Those updates are needed in order for users to keep the software safe from exploits, additionally Mozilla also announced that Firefox 4 has reached EOL (End of life) with Firefox 5 being the sole security update for the 3 month old browser.