Scambler

The System Center User Group directory

scambler — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:23:00 GMT

myITforum has started to compile a centralised list of User Groups around the world that host meetings centred around Microsoft System Center technologies.

Of course WMUG is in the list as the only UK based user group.

Read more about the User Group Directory

Error 29506 when installing SQL Server 2005 Management Studio Express on Vista

scambler — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 10:52:00 GMT

I was trying to install SQL Server 2005 Management Studio Express on my home Vista 64 system at the weekend, and came across the following Error.

This is due to the new Vista feature called User Account Control or UAC. there are 2 different ways of fixing it.

Fix 1.

1. Under ‘Accessories’ from ‘All Programs’, right-click the Command Prompt shortcut and select ‘Run as Administrator’. Accept the UAC warning when prompted.
2. From the command prompt change to the directory that holds the SSMSEE installation .MSI file.
3. Enter the command .\SQLServer2005_SSMSEE_x64.msi if you’re running Vista x64 (64-bit) or .\SQLServer2005_SSMSEE.msi if you’re running Vista x86 (32-bit)
4. Press enter and complete the installation as normal.

Fix 2.

The second method is to disable UAC completely but I wouldn’t do that if I was you.

www.mms-2009.com is live ! - yippee

scambler — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:16:00 GMT

The Microsoft Management Summit is the only systems management conference to attend, if you are only able to attend one conference in 2009, make it this one. As usual I will be doing my up most to attend - hope to see you there !

Link to MMS 2009

Take part in the MMS 2009 Content Survey, you can help shape MMS 2009

Link to MMS 2009 Content Survey

Yes! It's the Darth Vader breakfast toaster

scambler — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:17:00 GMT

I thought I would blog this before Cliff does....

We’ve no idea what Darth Vader eats* for breakfast, but even those strong with the Sith need a good start to the day if they’re to defeat the Jedi and overthrow the Republic. So, thankfully, a Star Wars toaster’s been invented.

The end of an era - Windows 3.x - I thought it had died years ago...

scambler — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:10:00 GMT

An application has expectedly quit.

Windows 3.x has come to the closing moments of its long life.

On 1 November Microsoft stopped issuing licences for the software that made its debut in May 1990 in the US.

The various versions of Windows 3.x (including 3.11) released in the early 1990s, were the first of Microsoft's graphical user interfaces to win huge worldwide success.

They helped Microsoft establish itself and set the trend for how it makes its revenues, and what drives the company until the present day.

Important changes to Microsoft Action Pack subscription

scambler — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:02:00 GMT

This is new....

For those partners who are not aware, there have been some important changes made to Microsoft Action Pack subscription. All first time subscribers and renewing partners must now study a course and pass a qualifying assessment with a score of 70 per cent or higher in order to subscribe or renew their Action Pack subscription. This presentation and webcast can help you understand the changes and how to go about subscribing. If you experience any issues subscribing to or renewing Action Pack subscription or have any questions you should contact the Regional Service Centre on 0870 60 70 700 (press option 1) for further assistance. Alternatively, the following email addresses are available:

Email for Gold Certified Partners - goldcert@msdirectservices.com
Email for Certified Partners - certpartner@msdirectservices.com
Email for Registered Members and all others - regmember@msdirectservices.com

Scripting and scheduled tasks.....

scambler — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Scripting and scheduled task...

I wanted to find a an easy way to create and check scheduled tasks via a script, not as easy as I first thought - all will be revealed why, read on.

so I create a scheduled task via the scheduled task control panel applet, no problem there.
I then try and query it via a vb script using WMI (attached) nothing is returned, no scheduled task present. Even using other WMI tools and looking in CIMV2 Win32_ScheduledJob - no jobs there.

However when I create a scheduled task via a vb script (see below)

strComputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
    & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _
    & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
JobID = "Test"
Set objNewJob = objWMIService.Get("Win32_ScheduledJob")
errJobCreate = objNewJob.Create _
    ("Notepad.exe", "********143000.000000-420", _
        True , 1 OR 4 OR 16, ,True, JobId)
If errJobCreate = 0 Then
    WScript.Echo "Job created successfully: " & VBNewLine _
        & "Notepad.exe scheduled to run repeately at 14.30 (2:30 P.M.) PST" & VBNewLine _
        & "on Mon, Wed, and Fri."
Else
    WScript.Echo "Job not created. Error code = " & errJobCreate
End If

And query the scheduled tasks via a script, the query returns the script generated scheduled task, the reason (I have now found out) is below.

The problem we have here is that Windows actually has two different - and, sadly, not fully-compatible - APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) used to manage scheduled tasks. For one, there are the Task Scheduler APIs used by both the Task Scheduler and by Schtasks.exe, a command-line task management tool that ships with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. For another, there are the so-called At APIs used by At.exe and by WMI’s Win32_ScheduledJob class.

So what’s the problem? Well, let’s say you use WMI to create a scheduled task. If you do that, you can then use a script to retrieve information about that task and about any other tasks created using the At APIs:

On top of that, if you open up the Task Scheduler, you’ll see the task in there as well. So far so good, huh?

However, suppose you say to yourself, “Hey, as long as I have the Task Scheduler open I might as well schedule a second task.” Let’s say you do so. That task, created by the Task Scheduler, will not be visible to your WMI scripts. The Task Scheduler can deal with tasks created by WMI, but WMI cannot deal with tasks created by the Task Scheduler.

Even worse, suppose you use Task Scheduler to modify the task you originally created with WMI. That task will be successfully modified, but you’ll no longer be able to access it using WMI, even though WMI created the thing in the first place. Yes, we know. And, hopefully, this problem will be corrected in future versions of Windows. And, yes, we know: that doesn’t really help you much right now, does it? Sorry.

So what does all this mean? Well, it means that managing scheduled tasks using WMI is kind of a hit-or-miss proposition. If you can be assured that no one is scheduling tasks using the Task Scheduler then WMI works great. But if people are using both WMI scripts and the Task Scheduler, well, then management becomes a bit more complicated, to say the least.

Free version of Hyper-V released

scambler — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:31:00 GMT

No surprise here, after VMWare release ESXi for free download, you can now get a free version of Hyper-V - which one to use - decisions, decisions, decisions

http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/how-to-get.mspx

Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 is a stand-alone product that provides a simplified, reliable, cost-effective and optimised visualisation solution enabling organisations to improve server utilisation and reduce costs. It allows organisations to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server and is a good solution for organisations who want a basic and simplified visualisation solution for consolidating servers as well as for development and test environments. Low utilisation infrastructure workloads, departmental applications and simple branch office workloads are also candidates to virtualise using Hyper-V Server 2008.

Hyper-V Server 2008 is a cost-effective solution that is convenient because it plugs into existing IT infrastructures enabling companies to reduce costs, improve utilisation and provision new servers. It allows IT professionals to leverage existing patching, provisioning, management and support tools and processes. IT Professionals can continue to leverage their individual skills and the collective knowledge of Microsoft tools, minimising the learning curve to manage Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008. In addition, with Microsoft providing comprehensive support for Microsoft applications and heterogeneous guest operating systems support, customers can virtualise with confidence and peace of mind.

Extending Schema for ConfigMgr and 'A Referral was returned from the server'

scambler — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:35:00 GMT

I know this has been covered on a number of sites, but I had not seen this error before.

I have always said that the best way to extend the schema was to use an LDIF file (LDAP Data Interchange Format)

I prefer it as 'you are in more control' of the schema extension, and can see what changes are going to be made.

The only down side is that you have to modify the LDIF file before hand. The file in question is ConfigMgr_ad_schema.ldf, the modifications in question are changing all instances of DC=x to specific entries for your domain, more precisely the full name of the domain to be extended. For example for domain.com you would change DC=x to DC=domain, DC=com.

So the process I follow is

Backup the schema master domain controller’s system state using the NTBACKUP utility.
Disconnect the schema master domain controller from the network.
Edit the ConfigMgr_ad_schema.ldf file, located in the \SMSSETUP\BIN\I386 directory of the Configuration Manager 2007 installation files, as show above.
Use the LDIFDE command-line utility to import the contents of the modified ConfigMgr_ad_schema.ldf file.

For example, this command line will import the schema extensions into Active Directory, turn on verbose logging, and create a log file during the import process:
ldifde –i –f ConfigMgr_ad_schema.ldf –v –j <location to store log file>.

Seems simple.....

However I had a phone call from a site today saying it had not worked, and they had received the following error 'A Referral was returned from the server', add error on line 56.

Line 56 is where it updates the MS-SMS-Management-Point class, I couldn't see anything wrong there - and then it hit me. Their domain was domain.co.uk, they had changed DC=x to DC=domain, DC=co.uk - not good, it needs to be DC=domain, DC=co, DC=uk

Cumulative update package 9 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2

scambler — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:42:00 GMT

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 hotfixes are created for specific SQL Server service packs. You must apply a SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 hotfix to an installation of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2. By default, any hotfix that is provided in a SQL Server service pack is included in the next SQL Server service pack.

Cumulative Update 9 contains hotfixes for SQL Server 2005 issues that have been fixed since the release of Service Pack 2.

Note This build of the cumulative update package is also known as build 3282.

Microsoft recommend that you test hotfixes before you deploy them in a production environment. Because the builds are cumulative, each new fix release contains all the hotfixes and all the security fixes that were included with the previous SQL Server 2005 fix release. Microsoft recommend that you consider applying the most recent fix release that contains this hotfix. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
937137 The SQL Server 2005 builds that were released after SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 was released

Important notes about the cumulative update package

SQL Server 2005 hotfixes are now Multilanguage. Therefore, there is only one cumulative hotfix package for all languages.
One cumulative hotfix package includes all the component packages. The cumulative update package updates only those components that are installed on the system.
You must enable the SQL Server Management Object (SMO) extended stored procedures and the SQL Server Distributed Management Object (SQL-DMO) extended stored procedures before you apply the cumulative update package. For more information about the SMO and DMO XPs option, see SQL Server 2005 Books Online.

Note SQL Server 2005 Books Online notes that the default setting of these stored procedures is 0 (off). However, this value is incorrect. By default, the setting is 1 (on).

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953752/

Google Chrome Announcement - Tuesday, September 2, 2008 11:00 a.m. Pacific/2:00 p.m. Eastern

scambler — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:59:00 GMT

Get ready for the new web browser from Google......

Google Blog

Tuesday, September 2, 2008 11:00 a.m. Pacific/2:00 p.m. Eastern

To watch the webcast

Windows Media Player:

Real Player:

SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0 is Live!

scambler — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 10:38:00 GMT

The SharePoint Administration Toolkit v2.0 is now live and available for download! Having just reached over 19,000 downloads of their first toolkit, this second release included a major investment in the ship package to allow for ‘selectable’ installation of tools (which is vital as they add more tools to the toolkit) as well as the Profile Replication Engine, a tool absolutely necessary for highly available and geo-graphically located SharePoint deployments.

More on The download and documentation is all available from the announcement post on the SharePoint blog.

WMIC - Command Line WMI and SMS

scambler — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 13:40:00 GMT

Most of my posts seem to come about because someone asks me how to do something, so yet again some one asked me if I knew a way to 'control' SMS / SCCM from the command line.

This got me thinking. Most of the scripts I write or use manipulate WMI in some way, either on the site server or on the client it's self.

After a bit of research I found a command called WMIC - Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line.

I am not going to delve to much into it as there are some pretty good articles on the Internet regarding WMIC.

Below I have summarised the command.

WMIC is more intuitive than WMI, in large part because of aliases. Aliases take simple commands that you enter at the command line, then act upon the WMI namespace in a predefined way, such as constructing a complex WMI Query Language (WQL) command from a simple WMIC alias Get command

Here is a little exercise to start you off.

1. Run noptepad.exe
2. Run WMIC (You will see that Windows installs it on the computer and displays the WMIC command prompt wmic:root\cli>. )
3. At the WMIC prompt type the following process where name='notepad.exe' call terminate

How easy is that, nice way to kill a process

After the command runs, the WMIC command prompt reappears.

Now I know that you lot are never happy, and I hear the question 'Thats great but how do I do it all in one command'

WMIC also runs in noninteractive mode. This mode is especially useful when you need to complete a single task or you need to run WMIC commands in a batch file. To run a command in noninteractive mode, you start WMIC and run the command in the same line of code.

wmic /node:machinename process where name='notepad.exe' call terminate

So what can you do with it as far as SMS / SCCM goes

I thought I would try a couple of the most common process that people seem to always want to trigger, hardware and software inventory

wmic /namespace:\\root\ccm path sms_client call triggerschedule "{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001}" /nointeractive

wmic /namespace:\\root\ccm path sms_client call triggerschedule "{00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000002}" /nointeractive

I suddenly thought if anyone else has done anything like this, so after a quick Goggle I found Roger Zander's blog
Where he explains all this, and lists some more SMS / SCCM commands you can do with WMIC, saves me writing about them and duplicating work.

I started this article about two months ago, just shows that I ought to finish them more quickly...

SQL Server 2008 Beta Exams Published

scambler — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:21:00 GMT

If you are a follower of SQL server you may be intrested to know that there are now some Beta exams for SQL Server 2008

The first is Beta Exam 71-452: Designing a Business Intelligence Infrastructure Using Microsoft SQL Server 2008. This exam counts as credit towards the Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Business Intelligence Developer 2008. Registration has begun. The Beta exam period will be from August 13 - September 10, 2008. When registering for this exam, please use the promotional code: 3568C. All individuals interested in partaking in this exam are urged to

The second offering is the Beta Exam 71-450: PRO: Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Designing, Optimizing, and Maintaining a Database Administrative Solution. This exam counts as credit towards the Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Database Administrator 2008. Registration begins on August 15, 2008. The exam can be taken between August 18 - September 16, 2008. When registering for this exam, please enter the promotional code: 239F4. Start registering on August 15 to book your place. To get ready for this exam, please go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-452.mspx

So why take these exams? They are free! Also, they give you credentials that are recognized in the marketplace. Employers feel confident in the skills and abilities of those who have achieved certification from Beta exams.

So what are you waiting for? Beta exams have limited availability and once all places have been filled, no additional seats will be offered. Remember, these exams are free for you to take. You must register 24 hours prior to taking the Beta exam, and you will be given 4 hours to complete it.

Testing is held at Prometric testing centers worldwide, although the exams are not available in India, Pakistan, and China.

To register in North America, please call Prometric at 800 755-EXAM (800-755-3926). If registering outside the US or Canada, please go to http://www.register.prometric.com/ClientInformation.asp

Do not wait any longer! Now is the time to get another step closer to earning your certification.

SMS Site Assignment

scambler — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:06:00 GMT

Q. The other day I was asked about why (in a single forest, multiple domain environment with separate SMS hierarchies in each domain) does a SMS client get assigned to an SMS site in the wrong domain.

A. If you have multiple domains in your forest, and multiple independent SMS hierarchies, although the schema is extended for your entire forest, each domain maintains its own System Management container in Active Directory in its own domain partition. A domain controller does not replicate its System Management container to other domains in the forest. However, the Systems Management information from each domain is published to the global catalog for the forest, When SMS clients use automatic site assignment, the global catalog returns information for all sites in the forest, regardless of the domains in the hierarchy affiliation. This means that if two sites, installed in separate domains in the forest, have overlapping site boundaries, the client could potentially be assigned to the wrong site. This is one reason that an overlapping site boundary is not recommended.