Like a lot of SysAdmins, the environment I manage isn't always up to date with the latest and greatest operating systems or patches for a variety of, usually, business related reasons. This inevitably causes problems as you try to keep everything running while still being old.
I had the wonderful opportunity of dealing with a variety of Windows 2003 servers that are running out of disk space. Unfortunately, previous caretakers of these boxes P2V'd them without doing any resizing of the boot partition. C: is running out of space fast. It just so happens, that's a major problem with 2003 - resizing the boot partition is nearly a no-go without shutting down the whole system and using GParted. Sometimes that kind of server downtime just isn't acceptable for the business.
Luckily, Dell (of all sources) has an online and free solution. Let's walk through the full process. For this tutorial, I will be showing it with VMware. Hyper-V is nearly identical.
Jim's Technical Blog
System Administration At All Costs.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Monday, November 19, 2012
Fix Corrupt or Blank Windows 7 System Tray Icons
I see this a lot where I work and while I haven't yet been able to track down the source of the problem, the fix is as follows:
- Open Regedit via Start-->Search
- Open Task Manager via CTRL-ALT-DEL
- Find Explorer.exe in the list and end the Process
- Go back to Regedit
- Select HKEY_CURRENTUSER
- Click Edit-->Find
- Search for IconStreams
- Or navigate directly to HKEY_CURRENTUSER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify\
- Delete IconStreams
- Search or navigate to PastIconStreams
- Delete this key as well
- Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL
- Start Task Manager
- Click File-->Run
- Type, Explorer.exe
- The issue should be resolved.
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Friday, May 25, 2012
Awesome Tool! TiddlyWiki
Tiddlywiki is perhaps the easiest to set up wiki available. You don't need a server. You don't need to setup a SQL database. You need to download 2 files, be able to run JavaScript and open the HTML file. It works on Linux, OS X and Windows as well as multiple browsers. I had mine set up and running in about 2 minutes flat and now I use it every day. What was the fix for that random problem? What's the login for that site? What's my long distance code? TiddlyWiki knows and it's even encrypted and stored on my a network drive that only I can access.
I would highly recommend everyone check this out.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Awesome Tool! Remote Desktop Connection Manager
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Thursday, May 17, 2012
How To Configure Disk Space Alerts on Server 2008
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The general premise is to set up a new data collector set with the Reliability and Performance Monitor that will kick off an automated email via a scheduled task letting you know the disk space on your server is nearly full.
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