Yep, Cisco VPN Client didn’t work first time but there is a small registry update to make it work. The installation worked fine but after I setup an entry it will tell me “Failed to enable Virtual Adapter” during “Securing communication channel”. There is a small registry fix for this.

Open Regedit and go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\CVirtA

and modify the value of DisplayName key with the following

For 64 bit – Cisco Systems VPN Adapter for 64-bit Windows
For 32 bit – Cisco Systems VPN Adapter

Close Regedit and try to connect again… Voila’!

I have had issues with logs of Exchange getting 100GB and more, or the backup application not clearing the logs. So, there is a way to keep the logs from getting large and you running out of diskspace. It’s a simple solution which you can undo it in 5 minutes with no repurcusions.

:: Open Exchange Management Console
:: Navigate to Organization Configuration/Mailbox
:: Right click on the Mailbox Database Store in question and select Properties
:: Click on the Maintenance tab and tick the option Enable Circular Logging
:: Click Apply
:: Dismount and Re-Mount Store

Downside to this? You can’t restore with current data. You can only restore from your last backup. Old log files are overwritten during this procedure and not enabled by default for a reason. I enabled circular logging, backed up the server, and disabled circular logging and scheduled more frequent backups in order to keep the log files under control.

Usually this happens when you have iether a newer version of Microsoft Office and then you install an older one, you may see this error when opening Outlook.

Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging software. Please reinstall Outlook.

To fix this, do the following:

Open C:\Program Files\Common Files\System\Msmapi\1033
Delete MAPI32.DLL
Rename MSMAPI32.DLL to MAPI32.DLL
Start Outlook

I went past an issue where I would have a flooding Error messages on the Event Viewer saying:

The description for Event ID ( 204 ) in Source ( IIDS ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: PurgeThread.cpp, 83, OS reports error:The system cannot find the path specified.

The Event ID and Source is irrelevant and it may vary depending on the service reporting the issue. In my case the issue was being reported by the Internet Imaging Document Server (IIDS).

This usually happens when there is a service which is installed and started, but not configured. In my case it was a service that could be stopped.

This could also happen with 3rd party applications where it was installed with a user account and the service account doesn’t get permission to pull the info about the required DLLs like that.

Hope it helps someone

When making a backup of a VMWareCenter server and noticing that the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service is stopped and in the event viewer you will have the below log, it means that the SQL database of the VCenter Server is full and reached the SQL Express limit of 4GB or more.

Log Name: Application
Source: MSSQL$SQLEXP_VIM
Date: 06/06/2012 14:14:48
Event ID: 1105
Task Category: (2)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: SYSTEM
Description:
Could not allocate space for object
‘dbo.VPX_HOST_VM_CONFIG_OPTION’.'PK_VPX_HOST_VM_CONFIG_OPTION’ in
database ‘VIM_VCDB’ because the ‘PRIMARY’ filegroup is full. Create disk space by deleting
unneeded files, dropping objects in the filegroup, adding additional files to the filegroup, or
setting autogrowth on for existing files in the filegroup.

To fix this, follow the below solution:

– Stop the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service (Note, this will not stop the virtual machines)
– Open the SQL Management Studio
– Log into the SQL instance SQLEXP_VIM
– Open the table VPX_PARAMETER from the table VIM_VCB and set the fields below with the value specified

event.maxAge - 30
event.maxAgeEnabled - true
task.maxAge - 30
task.maxAgeEnabled - true

Open a new Query, type and execute the following:

USE VIM_VCB
EXEC cleanup_events_tasks_proc

Once completed, right click on the database VIM_VCB and select Tasks/Shrink/Database and one the Shrink window, select OK.

Once finished, start the VMWare VirtualCenter Server service and vuala!

Many times I wanted to see if I could send a notification by mail about the status of my ESXi machines. There seems to be a solution by using PERL and VMWare VSphere CLI. Firstly you will need to download and install the PERL and VMWare VSphere CLI and here are the links to download them.

Note: This is for the free ESXi version

PERL
http://strawberryperl.com/

VMWare VSphere CLI
https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VSP510-VCLI-510&productId=285

After you download the above, install them. It’s simple as it’s just Next, Next, Next.

Now to create the batch file script. Use the following to send an email of the ESXi server with all the information including alerts.

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin\perl.exe" script.pl --server [serverip] --username [username] --password [password] --mailhost [smtpserver] --maildomain [domain name] --mailfrom noreply@myserver.com --mailto reports@mydomain.com;otheruser@mydomain.com

If you want to send only an email with alerts (if there are) use the following batch file script

"C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin\perl.exe" script.pl --server [serverip] --username [username] --password [password] --mailhost [smtpserver] --maildomain [domain name] --mailfrom noreply@myserver.com --mailto reports@mydomain.com;otheruser@mydomain.com --cpuwarnpc 85 --memwarnpc 85 --dswarnpc 25 --dscriticalpc 10 --warnofsnapshots --warnonchange --warnonalerts --concise --logfile esx-health.log --statusfile esx-health-status.txt

Note: The script is looking for the perl.exe under the VMWare CLI. If you change the location of the CLI installation, change the first part of the script.

Script download: http://noelpulis.com/files/esxi_monitor_script.zip
Source: http://blog.peacon.co.uk/hardware-health-alerting-with-esxi/

Many times you try to stop a service and it remains in “stopping” state and you cannot do anything to make it stop. There is a way to kill a serive by running the following command.

Taskkill /F /FI "SERVICES eq Service_name"

In the Service_name you have to enter the name. To find the name you will need to open services.msc and right-click on the service and select properties. You will need to copy the name on the Service Name field under the General tab.

It’s a nice and light tool to view the folder structure of the drive showing how much storage is consumed. This can get in handy when you have storage problem and don’t know which folder is using the most storage.

“TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders. Expand folders in an Explorer-like fashion and see the size of every subfolder. All results can also be drilled down to the file level. Scanning operations run in a thread, so you can already see results while TreeSize Free is working. The Explorer context menu is supported within TreeSize, as well as the usual drag & drop operations.”

Download Here: http://noelpulis.com/files/treefile_free.zip
Source: http://www.jam-software.de/treesize_free/

With Windows SBS 2011, at one point I have noticed that it was consuming a lot of storage and only 10GB was left out of a 150GB partition. After further investigation I have noted that the INETPUB was consuming around 90GB. Actually the log files of the W3SVC1 doesn’t remove old log files.

You can either delete or crop these logs. A quick solution is to stop the World Wide Web service and delete the folder, but if you want to keep the recent logs, you can create a sheduled task which does the following.

Stop Service
Delete files in the W3SV1 folder which are older than 5 days

Script below

@ECHO OFF
CLS
ECHO ** STOP SERVICES **
NET STOP "TSGateway"
NET STOP "W3SVC"
ECHO ** DELETE OLD LOGS **
Forfiles.exe /P "C:\inetpub\logs\LogFiles\W3SVC1" /M *.log /D -5 /C "Cmd.exe /C del @path"
ECHO ** START SERVICES **
NET START "W3SVC"
NET STOP "TSGateway"


For setting up the auto-login on domain with a Windows 7 and Windows XP machine is an ideal function when having point-of-sales starting on their own and you want the sales persons to find it ready to work in the morning.

So, to do this you would need to browse your registry by running the REGEDIT.EXE and under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon you would need to update the following…

"DefaultUserName"="username"
"AutoAdminLogon"="1"
"DefaultDomainName"="domain"
"DefaultPassword"="password"

As the DefaultUsernName enter the username of the user example myuser
On the AutoAdminLogon, if it is set to 0, replace it with 1
On DefaultDomainName, enter the domain name example mydomain

Now, usually the DefaultPassword doesn’t exist, so you have to create it. So, right click and select New and then String Value. As the name of the string enter DefaultPassword (Mind the Case) and then update it by entering the password of your user.