The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation server 2008 r2

When I install Server 2008 R2 I have came across a weird problem that will prevent me from running any MSI installation program even though I am an administrator on the box.

The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation

Of course, I haven't set any policies to prevent this but I found the following registry key which will override this setting. Apparently by default the policy with R2 is to disable all installs of MSI's - fairly draconian but better than the default I guess:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer

REG_DWORD

DisableMSI set to 0

Changing the HAL from Multiprocessor to Single processor after P2V conversion

1. Before making any changes to the VM, Create a Snapshot in Virtual Center.
2. Right click on the VM you want the Snapshot for and go to Snapshot
3.
4. Click Take Snapshot
5.
6. Name it and click OK
7.
8. Snapshot will create
9.
10. RDP or Console into the Server and go to Device Manager
11. For Windows Server 2003, install the following hotfix. It does not require a reboot. This hotfix allows you to downgrade to Uniprocessor. WindowsServer2003-KB923425-v2-x86-ENU.exe
12. Expand the Computer tab to see what HAL is loaded
13.
14. In this case, this server used to have 2 processors when it was in its physical form. This needs to be changed. To do so, Right click on ACPI Multiprocessor PC and choose Properties
15.
16. Click the Driver tab
17.
18. Click Update Driver
19.
20. Click Next
21.
22. Choose Display driver so I can choose and click Next
23. It will show you this screen
24.
25. Choose “Show all hardware of this device class”
26.
27. Choose ACPI Uniprocessor PC and click Next
28. You will be warned about changing this driver, but don’t worry, if it fails, we can revert from the Snapshot we took!
29.
30. Click Yes to continue
31.
32. Click Next
33.
34. Click Finish
35. Click Close
36. You will be asked to reboot the computer. Here is where we will find out if it boots cleanly!
37.
38. If the Computer reboots cleanly and everything seems to work, clean up the Snapshot you took. Verify in Device Manager that the HAL has changed. This should really improve the VM’s performance!
39. To cleanup the SnapShot, Open Snapshot Manager
40.

How to get the CPU utilization of remote machine from command prompt

This command is very useful if you don't want waste time on logging and checking just for CPU Utilization.Run the below command from your local machine and replace host name with your remote server name in below command.

C:\typeperf "\\Hostname\processor(_Total)\% Processor Time"

How to get Remote Server Serial Number

just you need to remember one command is as follow and that you need to run from your command line...

C:\wmic /node:servername bios get serialnumber

Automating VCB using Script

Recently we migrated the Virtual Machines from FAS 3050 to 3070. All our our data and LUN's are assigned from FAS3050 . So before migrating data from one filer to other filer we took the Virtual Machine Back up using the below script.

1. Save the below script as a VCB.cmd

@echo off

set filename=%1%

set clustername=%2%

FOR /F "delims=|" %%I IN (%filename%) DO start "%%I" vcbs.cmd "%%I" "%clustername%"

2. Save the below script as a vcbs.cmd

@echo off

set vcbExePath=C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup Framework

set VCaddress=Virtual Center IP address

set ADuser=Login Name to the Virtual Center

set ADpassword=password

set VMname=%~1

set Clustername=%~2

set BackupPath=path for the backup

"%vcbExePath%\vcbMounter" -h %VCaddress% -u %ADuser% -p %ADpassword% -a name:"%VMname%" -r "%BackupPath%%VMname%" -t fullvm -m san

3. Save list of servers on text file eg: serverlist.txt

4.Run the below command on VCB server from Run->cmd.

vcb.cmd serverlist.txt Groupname

Groupname is use simply for grouping backups in one directory

Error while installing Software on Windows 2008 Server

I was installing software on newly built Windows 2008 Server all of sudden i got the below error and it is not allowing me to install anything on the server even though i am local administrator to the server.

Don't be panic.. Just set the Windows Installer service to " Automatic" and restart the service.

init commands and their use

The best solution to know about these init levels is to understand the " man init " command output on Unix.

There are basically 8 runlevels in unix. I will briefly tell some thing about the different init levels and their use.

Run Level: At any given time, the system is in one of eight possible run levels. A run level is a software configuration under which only a selected group of processes exists. Processes spawned by init for each of these run levels are defined in /etc/inittab. init can be in one of eight run levels, 0-6 and S or s (S and s are identical). The run level changes when a privileged user runs /sbin/init.

init 0 : Shutdown

init 1 : Single user mode or emergency mode means no network no multitasking is present in this mode only root has access in this runlevel

init 2 : No network but multitasking support is present .

init 3 : Network is present multitasking is present but with out GUI .

init 4 : It is similar to runlevel 3; It is reserved for other purposes in research.

init 5 : Network is present multitasking and GUI is present with sound etc.

init 6 : This runlevel is defined to system restart.

init s : Tells the init command to enter the maintenance mode. When the

system enters maintenance mode from another run level, only the system console

is used as the terminal.

init S : Same as init s.

init m : Same as init s and init S.

init M : Same as init s or init S or init m.

How To Recover Windows Administrator Password

Please don't use this ISO image for making any fun or hack other machines password.

I have tested this method in few windows servers and worked fine!

During My migration project i forgot to reset the password for one of Citrix Production server and there are multiple password combinations for Local Admin account ( and Tried all the combinations but no LUCK) So I called my team lead and explained the situation and he gave me a link to down load an ISO image which helped me to wipe up the Local Administrator password to "Blank".

http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Instructions to Reset the password:

http://home.eunet.no/pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Find Model Number and Serial Number of your computer Using Dos Commands

Desktops and Laptops purchased from manufactures like DELL, IBM, etc comes with a serial number(or service tag) and a model name. If you ever loose this information, then you can use MS DOS commands to retrieve the information

To retrieve serial number of the computer run the following command

wmic bios get serialnumber

To retrieve model name of the computer run the following command

wmic csproduct get name

ESX Server 3.5

Following are limitations for the ESX Server 3.5

Number of virtual machines per server 170
Number of hosts per DRS cluster 32
Number of hosts per HA cluster 32
Number of hosts per VirtualCenter server 200