Windows Server
Task Manager Freezes on Windows 8/Server 2012
Reading Time: 2 minutesI’m the kind of guy that ALWAYS has task manager open. I’m serious, ask anyone I work with — I sometimes even have a whole screen for Task Manager and Resource Monitor (Maybe that’s why I like SCOM so much?). Though, I’ve noticed a couple of times on Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2 that when I open task manager the stats just freeze. The system is fine, everything is normal but the stats just freeze — like this.
They never do anything else, and just stay at that initial opening mark. So frustrating! I’ve SFC’d, I’ve rebuilt my performance library, I’ve copied new bits for taskmgr.exe, everything! It turns out for some reason sometimes the view speed gets set to pause. I never would have though of that, but somehow it just happens (though, I’ve never seen it happen in any OS earlier than Windows 8/Server 2012).
Here’s how you fix it. Go into View –> Update speed and notice it’s set to pause. So strange.
Go ahead and set it to normal and you’re back in business!
I hope I’ve made your day, at least a little bit easier.
Thanks,
How to find the Hyper-V host name of a guest VM
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIn all of our environments we all know EXACTLY what’s going on, where it’s going on, and where everything is right? Chances are that’s not true, and like most of us, especially in large home-grown development environments there are servers sitting under peoples desks, in some random closets, etc. Here’s an easy way to find out on what Hyper-V host a guest resides.
(get-item “HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Virtual Machine\Guest\Parameters”).GetValue(“HostName”)
Pop that into powershell and you’re good to go!
Hope I’ve made your day at least a little bit easiser.
Thanks,
SCCM 2012: WSUS Server version 2.0 SP2 or above is not installed or can not be contacted
Reading Time: 2 minutesThis week I had an issue where I needed to rebuild the WSUS server leveraged by my SCCM 2012 Software Update Point. After uninstalling/reinstalling WSUS from server roles, I downloaded and installed SP2 for WSUS 3.0 since that’s the requirement for SCCM 2012. At this point the normal train of thought would be “I met the requirements, all should be well!”. No. That’s not the case.
SMS_WSUS_CONFIGURATION_MANAGER status query was showing tons of errors including that of “WSUS Server version 2.0 SP2 or above is not installed or can not be contacted”, so were the other WSUS related status queries. Dig, dig, dig! This is the point where the logs come in handy.
Pop open WCM.log in CMTrace and the verbosity is a life saver!
You will notice that, just like with all other SCCM components if there is an issue it will try again every 60 minutes. In this case every 60 minutes it was the same 8 log entries. “Supported WSUS version not found”, but wait — one of the log entries tells you exactly what it’s looking for (wouldn’t that have been nice to know as a prereq?). WSUS 3.0 SP2 + KB2720211 + KB2734608. After these two KB hotfixes are installed, restart the SMS_WSUS_CONFIGURATION_MANAGER (or restart the machine) component and VOILA! Everything starts configuring and processing correctly. I’ll include a link to the two hotfixes below. Happy updating!
KB2720211 x64: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29999
KB2734608 x64: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30747
I hope I’ve made your day, at least a little bit easier.
Thanks!
Server 2012 R2 “does not have a network adapter available to create a virtual switch” when configuring VDI
Reading Time: 2 minutesI recently ran into this issue when doing an all-in-one VDI install, on top of a server that had been used for other things in the past. The “quick start” VDI option is supposed to essentially do everything for you, but I ran into this issue.
“The Server does not have a network adapter available to create a virtual switch”
Taking a quick look here, I do have a vSwitch. Why is it complaining?
It turns out that the installer isn’t actually complaining about the fact that there is no vSwitch, it’s complaining that there IS a vSwitch. It needs it to be a “blank slate” so it can manage it and do it’s thing. I’m not a fan of this, because I intend to manage my VDI environment using SCVMM, and the VDI component itself won’t have a whole lot to say about it. Nevertheless, this is how you get past this. Delete any vSwitches.
All gone, now try the installer again.
There we go, now we’re off onto the next step without any errors. Have fun!
I hope I’ve made your day, at least a little bit easier.
Thanks!
Powershell Script to Test SMTP
Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis one is going to be short and sweet, I’ve been testing SMTP with and without encryption and wanted a good script for that.
Here are the lines that you’ll want to look at configuring:
- Line 5: “$smtpServer =”InsertYourSmtpServerHere”
- Line 12: Change the $false value to $true if you want to encrypt your SMTP with SSL
- Line 13: If you’re using a non-default SMTP port, change the “25” to whatever you’re using
- Line 15: Only change this if you need to enter credentials for authentication
- Line 18/19: Change these to who you want to say the email is from, and to whom it is being delivered.
- Line 21: Change this to whatever you want your email title to be
- Line 25: Change this to say whatever you want the body of the email to say
There are also some write-host’s in there to let you know the values that are being run and whether or not they were successful, which will print to the powershell console.
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Powershell-SMTP-Test-Tool-621b07ae
Disk Performance on Server 2012 Task Manager
Reading Time: < 1 minuteSomething that I’ve noticed not a lot people know, is how to get your disk performance to show up on a server’s task manager. Yes, yes, I know. With the new Microsoft model you shouldn’t be RDP’ing to servers anyways — but I still get asked how to do this. For some reason they have this by default on Windows 8, but not enabled on Servers. So here’s the one command you need to fix that.
1) The problem, no disk portion on task manager. 🙁
2) Run the following command to enable it.
“DiskPerf -Y”
This enables the physical and logical disk performance counters.
3) Close and re-open task manager.
There ya go!
I hope I’ve made your day at least a little bit easier.
SCCM 2012 “Perform site maintenance or reset this site” Greyed Out / Unavailable
Reading Time: 2 minutesAs I went to upgrade an evaluation version of System Center Configuration Manager 2012 to a full version, I noticed unlike Operations Manager — you have to do this through the setup/install interface. Upon first search people were saying just run the setup again and choose “Perform site maintenance or reset the site”, though it was greyed out. Here’s the quick tip to remedy that.
Here, I’m just running the setup again and choosing Install, and the option is greyed out to perform site maintenance.
So here’s what you do instead. Close the setup window, and go open Programs and Features in your Control Panel. Find “Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager Primary Site Setup” (this may be different if the top of your hierarchy is a CAS), and click “Uninstall/Change”.
Then, there it is — not greyed out!
Click next and you’re able to do what you need to do.
At this point you can do a few things.
- Reset your site with no configuration changes
- Modify SQL Server Configuration
- Modify SMS Provider Configuration
- Modify Language Configuration
- Upgrade Evaluation Edition to a Licensed Edition
I just needed to upgrade my site to a licensed edition, and this worked like a charm.
I hope I’ve made your day at least a little easier!
Enable Disk Cleanup on Server 2008 R2
Reading Time: < 1 minuteI know, I know — we shouldn’t use this on servers. Sometimes though, in the right environment and for the right reasons, it can be useful (and you don’t have to install something like ccleaner).
This process is honestly, really easy — the files are already on your system, they just need to be put in the right place. Take these lines below and either run them one at a time with an administrative command prompt or put them in a batch file and run all at once.
Server 2008 R2 x64:
copy C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_c9392808773cd7da\cleanmgr.exe C:\Windows\System32
copy C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_en-us_b9cb6194b257cc63\cleanmgr.exe.mui C:\Windows\System32\en-US
cleanmgr.exe
These three lines will copy the needed files from your sxs folder and put them in your system32 which will allow you to call “cleanmgr.exe” from the command line.
I hope this makes your day at least a little bit easier!
Domain Controllers “Grayed out” in SCOM 2012
Reading Time: 2 minutesI did a few new SCOM 2012 installs recently and noticed that after pushing the agent to the DCs, they showed up grayed out in Ops Manager. Here’s a quick tip on how to fix that.
Logon to the DC(s), and with an administrative comand prompt run the HSLockdown tool, and add the local system account to the allowed group.
C:\Program Files\System Center Operations Manager\Agent:
*NOTE* In newer version, this is now stored in “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Monitoring Agent\Agent”
Run the command “HSLockdown /L” to show what accounts are being allowed or denied. In this case, my local system isn’t even populated.
Now run the HSLockdown tool again with the add switch to allow local system.
“HSLockdown /A “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM”
Restart the agent with “net stop heathservice && net start healthservice” and give it 5 minutes or so then it should be all green in your dashboard.
Hope this made your day at least a little easier!
Config File Iteration Backup – Change Checking Config Files
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn a lot of environments that have developers that use a lot of config files, sometimes it would be nice to keep older versions of those files. Fortunately Microsoft has graced us with shadow copies so we can have “Previous Versions”. The only issue with that, is you can only can’t turn on shadow copies (as far as I know) for specific files. So what I did was write a powershell script to take care of that, in a round-about way.
What this script does, is wait until the file has been modified then copy it to an “archive” location and time stamp it so you can review older copies.
At the beginning of this script there are two arrays that include variables of full paths to the files. “$OriginalPath” is the array that holds the full path to each file you want to watch. In the script here the two files I’m watching are “C:\configs\config1.txt” and “C:\configs\config2.txt”. Then the second array is where you want to archive the files to. In the script here it’s “C:\archive_configs\config1.txt” and “C:\archive_configs\config2.txt”.
What’s done after the arrays are initialize, is the time -1 minute and compares the last write value of the file in question to the current time -1 minute. If it has been modified, it copies to the archive location then modifies the name with a time stamp. Then loops back through if there are more files being checked in the array.
What I’ve done is put this in Task Scheduler to run every 1 minute. If you want to modify that, take the line:
$1MinAgo = (get-date).AddMinutes(-1)
and you the “Minutes” portion and the “(-1)” portion can both be modified.
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Config-File-Iteration-ab2a69df
I hope I’ve made your day a little bit easier!
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