Archive for the ‘Vista’ Category
Funky DNS resolution with cisco VPN and Vista/7
Posted by: ds in Microsoft Network Admin, Vista on February 25th, 2010
You have Vista or Windows 7 and finally got the latest version of Cisco VPN client (5.0.06.0110) to install and apparently work. All is well until you try to get to some other internal host after a few minutes or more. Suddenly no other hosts than the original host resolve! You ping your internal DNS server by address and it responds. NSlookup reports timeouts and cant resolve the host name for the internal DNS server. What the heck is going on here? Is it another Cisco “issue”? The clue is that everything works fine on XP but not on Vista/7. So what changed between XP and Vista/7? Well, it turns out that Microsoft rewrote the IP stack for Vista/7 and among other things added a nifty little feature called autotune. This is supposed to automatically tune the recieve window size based on latenacy, usage and the color of your underware. So guess what? Since you don’t resolve internal names over the VPN very much (and you have green undies on), name resolution gets tuned down to practically nothing. So when you try to use it, it times out. The fix is to turn off autotune. You can do this as follows:
Disable TCP Auto-Tuning
1.Open elevated command prompt with administrator’s privileges.
2.Type the following command and press Enter:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled
Enable TCP Auto-Tuning
1.Open elevated command prompt with administrator’s privileges.
2.Type the following command and press Enter:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal
How about that law of unintended consequences???
MDT 2008 Lite Touch fails with wierd network errors - sometimes
Posted by: ds in Microsoft Network Admin, Microsoft Server, Vista, Windows Desktop on October 20th, 2009
You may not put two and two together but they last time you updated MDT (because MS told you you needed to… (yeah so much for trusting MS)) you actually broke it. Now you get a Network Timeout (or a wierd access denied error) in Windows PE 2.1 when it’s trying to launch the Lite touch scripts. Oh, and another thing about launching LiteTouch, don’t have a Windows boot CD (or any CD in the CD drive. For some wierd reason WPEInit will see that and fail to launch the LiteTouch Script. (no I havn’t figured out why yet)
Symptoms:
You get the following error message in MDT 2008 Lite Touch Deployment even though you have the correct nic drivers in Windows PE and the correct bootstrap.ini settings. “A connection to the deployment share \\Server\Distribution$ could not be made. The Deployment will not proceed” upon further investigation you find out that you get an access denied error when you try to list the \\server\distribuiton$\ directory. BUT! if you do a Net Use mapping to the folder, it works just fine! WTF? AND, it works on some models of computer but not on others. More WTF?
Cause:
A network initializion timeout issue in wpeinit.exe in Windows PE 2.1 causes MDT 2008 Lite Touch Deployments to fail.
Workaround:
Give WIndows PE 2.1 a few more seconds by editing startnet.cmd on your LiteTouch_x86.wim (or iso) to look like below. (It’s in the windows/system32 directory) (Use Imagex /mountrw LiteTouch.wim 1 d:\image to mount the WIM) (Don’t forget to ImageX /Unmount d:\image when you’re done)
startnet.cmd
wpeutil InitializeNetwork
ping localhost or Pause (or any other command that does nothing but takes a few seconds to complete)
wpeinit
If you want the Deployment Workbench to include the updated startnet.cmd every time you update the Deployment Point just follow the below steps
Configure MDT to use the updated startnet.cmd
- Create a folder named ExtraFiles\Windows\System32 in the distribution share and copy the updated startnet.cmd to it.
- In the Deployment Workbench, right-click the Deployment Point and select Properties.
- In the Windows PE Tab, in the Extra directory to add textbox, type in D:\ExtraFiles
- Click OK
- Regenerate the WIM files and don’t forget to rebuild the Boot images in WDS otherwise your changes won’t take effect.
ds
Converting Roaming Profiles to Mandatory Profiles
Posted by: ds in Microsoft Network Admin, Vista on March 26th, 2009
When doing the official MS method for creating mandatory profiles, you used to be able to take advantage of a little flaw in XP where XP neglected to remove the cached roaming profile even though you told it to via GPO. Well, they fixed that for the most part in Vista and so now it really does remove the cached profile when you tell it to. So now, everytime you need to refresh your mandatory profiles, you pretty much have to start from scratch creating a new local profile. If only you could convert the mandatory profile back to a roaming one, make the changes then reconvert it back to mandatory! Life would be so much simpler. Guess what there is a way! Go ahead and create or change the roaming profile that is your base, log off to save it to the server. Now simply copy it to where you keep the mandatory profile, fix the permissions on all the files and subfolders, rename ntuser.dat to ntuser.man and whala! you’re done. er….. almost. You probably remember that didnt freakin work. It turns out that all you were missing was to fix the permissions inside the registry. Yup, they’re still set to only allow the user you saved the roaming profile as access to the registry. So, now all you need to do is fire up regedit, load the ntuser.man hive, remove the roaming user, and add the group you want to be able to use the mandatory profile, unload the hive back to the mandatory profile folder - and NOW you’re done! so why doesn’t MS tell you you can do it that way instead of the rigamarole they have you go through???? Because they are MS of course.
ds
Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0
Posted by: ds in Adobe, Vista, Windows Desktop on March 12th, 2009
Don’t DO it!!!! In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Adobe’s realease 9.0 of acrobat reader cause lots of problems. Known issue #1 - In Vista with IE 7 and a normal user, Reader won’t launch inline in the IE browser window - it just hangs with a blank page. The work around for this has been to turn off the browser integration so Reader launches in it’s own window.
Known Issue #2 - If you have redirected your Application Data folder to a network share, 9.0 has a hissy fit and errors out on open.
The fix to all of this??? why it’s Acrobat reader 9.1 of course! Just another example of why you should be very cautious with dot zero releases. And, cynically, another example of the rediculous buggy bloat that is all things adobe. Yes Adobe seems to be contending with the king of bloat (MS) for the crown. I think they might even get it very soon!
PS: Version 9.1 does indeed fix both of the problems. HOWEVER, it unintentionally breaks it’s self again. Or more correctly, it tries to use something that is broken in Vista. so, when you install 9.1, make sure to install hot fix 228839 available here: http://support.microsoft.com/hotfix/KBHotfix.aspx?kbnum=955555&kbln=en-us
This fixes a problem that shows up when you are using roaming or mandatory profiles and Vista doesn’t create all of the local temp folders. It’s especially bad if you clear the cached profiles at logout.
Gone insane yet??????
More insanity…
Ok, so the hotfix listed above does indeed fix the problem. But ONLY for VISTA SP1 !!! The hot fix won’t install in SP2. Not only that, but if you do have the hotfix installed (or any other hotfix for that matter) SP2 won’t install via WSUS. AND MS broke the Local/Low folder generation for situations of folder redirection in SP2 again. So, basically I give up waiting for MS to fix this and keep it fixed so if you just add the following line to your logon scripts it will create the missing folder if the logon process doesn’t. Maybe some day MS will get their head out of their A@# and actually get this fixed (Yes this has been frustrating).
If not exist %userprofile%\appdata\locallow md %userprofile%\appdata\LocalLow
ds
Change those unchangable defaults
Posted by: ds in Vista, Windows Desktop on January 28th, 2009
You can change the default open and save location for all of the Office 2007 programs except Publisher. How lame is that??? Or can you?
It turns out that Publisher for some unknown reason looks at the following registry key value: HKEY_USERS\username\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Personal to figure out where to open and save from. So if you change this value to where you really want your default to be, thenPublisher (and any other program that looks at the same key) will magically use that as the default path.
Ah, and here is another one just like that. MS Paint looks at: HKEY_USERS\username\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\My Pictures to figure out where it opens at. Change that value and whala! Default changed. You can use either UNC or Mapped drive.
The big warning is that any other programs that use these keys will get their defaults changed as well, but then again, if you want your default changed for these programs, you probably want it changed for any others as well. The other big warning is that these values will be ignored if you have folder redirection enabled for My documents either at the user level or via GPO.
ds
Vista, Outlook 2007 and RPC over HTTP
Ok, here’s a fun little tidbit. You’ve been setting up Outlook 2003 and 2007 to operate remotely over HTTP for quite a while now. You even think you know what you are doing! And then along comes a problem out of the blue that makes no sense. After all, you’ve done this lots of times before. Here’s the situation…. Outlook 2007, Vista, RPC over HTTP, AND self signed certificates. and the error message is: “Outlook is unable to connect to the proxy server ….” and ends with “(Error code 8 )”. You, being a smarty pants, realize that you probably forgot to install the certificate. So, you go ahead pop open IE, go to your OWA page, click on the cert warning and install it - click, click, click, done. Something you’ve done a thousand times right? You try Outlook again and - dang it! It still doesn’t work! Same error. WTF? Well, what happened is that Vista puts your self signed cert in the Intermediate category (one of those clicks told IE to put it in the default category) and Outlook 2007 needs the cert to be in the Trusted Root category. Picky, picky, picky. Solution? Watch where you install the cert to when you install it! But if you already messed that up, then open MMC, add the cert snapin for personal use, then drag the cert from the intermediate folder to the trusted root folder. Bang done, Outlook 2007 works! So, now you ask: “Why does MS need to go around messing with stuff like this????” Ah, now if I had the answer to that!!!!…..
ds
Vista errors 1747 and 10107
Posted by: ds in Vista, Windows Desktop on June 11th, 2008
Suddenly your Vista computer decides to go on strike. Network connections don’t work, wierd failure messages pop up, and you can’t even open up event viewer to see what the problem is! You try to start Event logging or other services that should be started but aren’t and you get a “Error 1747: The authentication service is unknown” mesage. You try other things and your get the fabulous “Error 10107: A system call that should never fail has failed” mesage. (go figure - Microsoft can take the time to create an error mesage the shouldn’t ever happen, but can’t take the time to actually fix the problem!) Anyway the problem, believe it or not, is likely to be a messed up Winsock stack. TCP/IP stack Winsock settings in Windows Vista may get corrupted, causing errors and problems with Internet connectivity. Corrupt Winsock or Windows sockets configuration can be due to a lot of reasons such as installation of a networking software, or due to virus, trojan or malware infection, or sometime even due to disinfection of spyware by security software.
When Winsock corrupts, the networking errors that you may face include unable to surf the Internet with “Page cannot be displayed” error message in Internet Explorer or AOL even though the DSL/ADSL/cable Internet connection is connected. Sometimes, Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service is terminated as well.
To repair and reset the Windows Vista Winsock Stack:
- Click on Start button.
- Type Cmd in the Start Search text box.
- Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter keyboard shortcut to run Command Prompt as Administrator. Allow elevation request.
- Type netsh winsock reset in the Command Prompt shell, and then press the Enter key.
- Restart the computer.
What netsh winsock reset command does is it resets Winsock Catalog to a clean state or default configuration. It removes all Winsock LSP (Layered Service Providers) previously installed, including the potential malfunctioned LSP that causes loss of network packets transmission failure. So all previously-installed LSPs must be reinstalled. This command does not affect Winsock Name Space Provider entries.
Note: To check which LSPs installed on your Vista system, use netsh winsock show catalog command.
ds