Determination
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent”
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge was an American politician and the 30th President of the United States. Read more on Wikipedia
Server 2008 R2 BSOD after Bare Metal Restore
After completing the BMR process don’t restart.
Select Command Prompt.
regedt32<CR>
Highlight HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, File>Load Hive>[restored volume]:\Windows\System32\Config\SYSTEM>Open>Key Name = Restored_HKLM>OK.
Expand Restored_HKLM\ControlSet001\services and ensure the following are set:
If restored to a (VMWare) VM then ensure intelide>Start = 0 and LSI_SAS>Start = 0; msahci>Start = 3 and pciide>Start = 3
NB: I have only tested this with VMWare VMs (Player/Workstation and vSphere) but will likely translate across to Microsoft (e.g. HyperV) VMs. The LSI_SAS value is definitely required, I couldn’t boot in a VM until this was chaned to 0.
Or if restoring to a physical machine with native HDD controller then ensure msahci>Start = 0 and pciide>Start = 0; intelide>Start = 3 and LSI_SAS>Start = 3
Highlight Restored_HKLM and then File>Unload Hive.
Close windows and restart.
You should now have a successfully booting restored Server 2008 R2! :¬)
(Remember if it’s a new add-in RAID card and you supply the drivers it will successfully inject them into the restored OS – see previous posts in this thread)
NB: Don’t worry if you have restarted without making the changes and it Blue Screens, come back through these options and if set correctly it will boot normally – nothing is damaged by the Stop Error, and the ide settings can be turned on and off with no permanent effect on the OS. I.e. change and restart until you hit the right combination required – I’ve tested this copious times and when changed back to the correct settings the OS boots again without issue.
If in doubt, turn on all possible required services e.g. set both intelide = 0/pciide = 0 and msahci = 0, or set all of these to 0 and it will still boot with the correct driver/s:
aliide, amdide, atapi, cmdide, iastorv, intelide, msahci, pciide, viaide and LSI_SAS.
I don’t recommend this due to the overheads it could introduce, but it will work and will get the machine up as quickly as possible if confidence in the exact combination required is in doubt.
Settings for typical destination machines – skip if desired:
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
VMWare VM:
aliide 3
amdide 3
atapi 0
cmdide 3
iastorv 3
intelide 0
msahci 3
pciide 3
viaide 3
LSI_SAS 0
Dell PE2970 physical machine with RAID card:
aliide 3
amdide 3
atapi 0
cmdide 3
iastorv 3
intelide 3
msahci 0
pciide 3
viaide 3
LSI_SAS 3
Dell PET100 physical machine on native SATA adapter:
aliide 3
amdide 3
atapi 0
cmdide 3
iastorv 3
intelide 3
msahci 0
pciide 0
viaide 3
LSI_SAS 3
Win 7 64x custom built physical machine on native SATA adapter:
aliide 3
amdide 3
atapi 0
cmdide 3
iastorv 3
intelide 3
msahci 0
pciide 0
viaide 3
LSI_SAS 3
KEY FOR SERVICE START VALUES:
0 = ?
1 = ?
2 = Automatic
with DelayedAutostart = 1 = Automatic (Delayed Start)
3 = Manual
4 = Disabled
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Migrate Windows DHCP server
A few weeks ago at work, I was tasked with the project of decommissioning one of our older Windows Server 2008 machines and upgrading it to Windows 2012. I was initially a little worried, seeing as this server ran a lot of key roles, such as DHCP, DNS, was a Domain Controller, and also acted as a print server as well as a few other services. As I was migrating the DHCP role, I wondered if there was a simple way of exporting all of the settings, such as DHCP scope and reserved IP addresses. Turns out there was, and it went off without a hitch!
Here’s how I did it:
Log on to the old/existing DHCP server.
Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, right-click, and then “Run as Administrator”.
On the Action menu, click Backup.
Type netsh dhcp server export C:\Users\\Desktop\dhcp.txt all, and then press ENTER.
Install the DHCP role on the new (2012) DHCP server using Server Manager.
Copy the exported DHCP text file to the desktop of the new DHCP server.
Verify that the DHCP service is installed and started on the new DHCP server.
Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, right-click, and then “Run as Administrator”.
Type netsh dhcp server import C:\Users\\Desktop\dhcp.txt all, and then press ENTER
Open DHCP console on the new server.
In the console tree, right-click DHCP.
Select “Authorize”.
If your old DHCP server is in the same network/subnet as the new DHCP server, you’ll notice that the old DHCP server has been de-authorized automatically. This is to prevent two DHCP servers from handing out conflicting addresses.
Check to make sure that your new DHCP has all of the same settings, options, scopes, and reservations set as the current one. If done correctly, everything should have been brought over. I was pretty impressed as to how well this worked and just how seamless it truly was.
Set AD Attributes
You can also view and set these values with PowerShell, provided you have the ActiveDirectory module installed.
View:
Get-ADUser <username> -Properties extensionattribute1
Set:
Set-ADUser <username> -Add @{“extensionattribute1″=”Your Value Here”}
Clear:
Set-ADUser <username> -Clear extensionattribute1