Thursday, July 28, 2005

Gigabit Network problems with 2003 Server

Gigabit networks and 2003 do not always work together first time. Quite often an error will apear in the event log which is detailed below. This error has a major affect on the active directory and will also slow down the network; negating the point of having gigabit!

Event Id: 1054

Description:
Windows cannot obtain the domain controller name for your computer network. (The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted. ). Group Policy processing aborted.

Microsoft have put this problem down to having Media Sense enabled on your nics. To fix this problem you need to disable Media Sense and to do that, you need to modify the following registry value:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

Add in a new DWORD value called DisableDHCPMediaSense

Give it the value of 1 to disable Media Sense


Hope this works!

Event Id 1517 User Profile Problems

Windows saved user Domain\User registry while an application or service was still using the registry during log off. The memory used by the user's registry has not been freed. The registry will be unloaded when it is no longer in use.

This error is all down to user profiles and rather than play with the registry, Microsoft have issued a very nice fix called the User Profile Hive Cleanup Service. The file can be downloaded from here http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1b286e6d-8912-4e18-b570-42470e2f3582&displaylang=en

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Eraser

This tool is once again very useful, it allows deletion of files and machines to military standards and is free.

It's very useful if you ever need to hide anything

http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/

Monday, July 11, 2005

RIS

Remote Installation Services

Feature of win2k server and win2k3 server
Allows remote install of operating systems and full images
Uses PXE compliant Nics or a special boot disk
Full images need to use Risprep

Server needs:
  • 2 Partitions one for Os and one for images
  • DHCP Server
  • Active Directory

Friday, July 8, 2005

Netsh

Just discovered the joys of netsh

This is a tool to allow changing network settings on local or remote computers via the command line. I just did a small sample script to change DNS settings on the local adapter:

netsh interface ip add dns "local area connection" xxx.xxx.xxx.xx1
netsh interface ip add dns "local area connection" xxx.xxx.xxx.xx2

More info on this can be found here:

Microsoft Link

http://www.computerhope.com/netsh.htm