-user must be local admin on box
-user must be in farm admin group in SP
-user must be in sharepoint_shell_access role on SQL server on Sharepoint_config db
-user must have dbo role on each content db being accessed (Sharepoint_shell_access role only exists on sharepoint_Config- this is ok)
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 has recently released CU3 (Update 3)
the install proceedure varies depending on what version you have installed.
how can you tell what version you have?
Open the SCOM Console.
Under ‘Monitoring’ select the item ‘Discovered Inventory’
Change the Scope of the items displayed to ‘Heath Service’ (there is a scope button on the tool bar on top)
Every now and then I need a way to pull all of the lines from a log file that match a certain string.
An example of this would be sharepoint uls logs – every error gets a unique ID number, and the errors can cover 20-30 lines at times.
if all these lines were together, that’d be easy, but often they are not together so a grep like tool comes in handy.
Thanks to a google search and the scripthacks website, it looks like there is a command in windows for this already:
Findstr
http://scripthacks.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/grep-equivalent-for-windows-string-parsing/
Basically, if you open a command prompt and cd to the logs directory,
you can enter something like this:
Findstr “Correlation ID to find” filename
or
findstr “Correlation ID to find” *.log
which will look though all the log files in that directory (This can take forever if there are lots of large files)
Of course you can save the results by adding > c:\temp\findresults.txt to the end of the line…
A handy feature for SharePoint admins with lots of log files might be the /F:file flag
basically, this reads the file list from a file.
Why would you want this?
Because you can easily dump a list of all files to a file with this command:
DIR /B *.log > filelist.txt
once you have this list (mine was 435 lines long!) , you can easily edit it in notepad and reduce the list down to the date range you’re after, this could take you from say, 435 lines down to 24
you’d then do your search with Findstr like this:
Findstr “Correlation ID to find” /F:filelist.txt
Some neat projects exist on codeplex.com that relate to sharepoint
FAST Search Query Analyzer: http://fastforsharepoint.codeplex.com/
Sharepoint content Migration tool: http://spdeploymentwizard.codeplex.com/
Sharepoint Feature Administration and Clean Up Tool: http://featureadmin.codeplex.com/
Sharepoint Farm Report: http://spsfarmreport.codeplex.com/ (an .exe – somewhat jumbled html output)
Sharepoint 2010 Farm Poster http://spposter.codeplex.com/ (some nice Powershell scripts)
I’ve run into this situation a few times and the fix was pretty easy.
The scenario goes like this: A user clicks a PDF file in sharepoint and can’t open it in the browser (instead they have to open it in Adobe Reader)
I’ve seen two fixes for this:
1) involved adding the mime type to the web app – this was a little elusive to me at first – sharepoint keeps tabs on mime types separately than IIS does – I had originally looked in IIS and thought everything was ok..
This can be checked with powershell
$Web = Get-SPWebApplication “http://mysharepointsite.myurl.com”
$Web.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes – this will list out all the mime types,
if you dont see “application/pdf” in the list, then you can add it like this:
$Web.AllowedInlineDownloadedMimeTypes.Add(“application/pdf”)
$web.Update()
So that was the first approach.
The next approach involved looking at the ‘safe’ settings for a document library – this too was a little elusive, becasue this is generally set at the site collection level – I don’t even think there is an option in the gui to set this for a document library in SharePoint 2010 (RTM) So again it’s gotta be done with powershell
I documented that here: http://basementjack.com/uncategorized/pdfs-not-openi…oint-2010-site/
I had this problem enough times that I wanted to capture the solution.
First of all, credit goes to Craig Lussier on the Technet forms, his post has the full solution and background.
I used the above solution and it worked great.
I also found a script that I did not try. The script is described as being able to change this setting system wide by looping through each document library in each subsite of a given site – it could come in handy. (the script is by the same poster – Craig Lussier – Thanks Craig!
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Set-SPDocumentLibrary-0426781c
The code below is from the first link above, I’ve copied it here in case MS ever changes the link structure and the original post can’t be found.
# SPAssignment $gc = Start-SPAssignment #Get Web $web = $gc | Get-SPWeb "http://yourspweburl" #Get Document Library $docLib = $web.lists["Your Document Library Title"] #View all properties/methods of the Document Library and you'll see that BrowserFileHandling is a property $docLib | Get-Member #See the current BrowserFileHandling setting for the Document Library $docLib.BrowserFileHandling #If you need to change it from Strict to Permissive $docLib.BrowserFileHandling = "Permissive" $docLib.Update() # End SPAssgment $gc | Stop-SPAssignment
Ok this took a bit of wrangling and some new understandings on my part to understand.
I was trying to index a file share of content, and create a FAST search page that would ONLY search that content. Since the FAST server had tons of other stuff on it, I needed to create a scope to narrow down the search.
I used this powershell command to create the scope – this is key – you can’t do this from the sharepoint GUI (As of Sharepoint 2010 SP)
New-SPEnterpriseSearchQueryScope -SearchApplication “FAST Search Query SSA” -Name thisisthescopename -Description “A scope for a file share” -DisplayInAdminUI 1 -ExtendedSearchFilter “contentsource:nameofcontentsource”
Some explanation – the -SearchApplication is the name of our FAST query SSA – yours might be named differently
The -ExtendedSearchFilter nees some explanation,
First, the word contentsource needs to be in lower case – I had orignally tried it in mixed case (ContentSource) and that didn’t work
Next, the :nameofcontentsource – this is the artificial name you gave the content source over in your FAST Content SSA – it’s NOT the URL, UNC Path etc.. of the content!
for example, if in your FAST Content SSA, you created a content source on \\server1\files and called it myfiles
then your ExtendedSearchFilter would look like this: “contentsource:myfiles”
Ok so that’s the end of my explanation of the command itself.
After a few minutes the scope is created and we can test it in a normal FAST search site in sharepoint
Lets say that we indexed a bunch of content on monkeys and we want to see if it turns up in our new scope.
We would search for scope:thisisthescopename monkey
If we get the results we want, then we know the scope is working.
One step beyond this, we can create a special search page for this scope,
create a new FAST search site in sharepoint.
do a bogus search on the sites home page so that it shows you the results page
Edit the results page in the browser
find the web part at the bottom that displays the results
edit that web part
On the right hand side of the page, are the web parts properties, one of them is ‘scope’
put thisisthescopename in that web part and save the page (don’t forget to check in/publish if needed too)
now on your newly modified search page, when you enter a search for monkey, it will limit it to your scope.
I had a stubborn FAST Server installation that continued to return search results, even after the content source was removed from FAST!
After stumbling around, someone on the FAST forums at Microsoft suggested clearing the sp collection, but didn’t say how.
Here’s how:
On the fast server, there will be a shortcut to launch a FAST powershell prompt – open that
Enter the command
Clear-FastSearchContentCollection sp
That should clear it out – you’ll need to do full crawls on all your content sources after this is done to repopulate the index, so it’s best not to do this to a production box without understanding how long search will be down.
Also note that in FAST Search for Sharepoint, pretty much everything is stored in the SP collection – It’s my understanding that as of right now, you can only have one collection in FAST for SP.
I wanted to add a link to the parent folder of an item in FAST search results.
I had found an article that said I could use the “SiteName” property.
Unfortunately, this content wasn’t from a SharePoint site, it was from a File Share.
The “SiteName” only returned \\Server\Sharename for each result, never the folder path
For example \\Server\Share\Folder1\SubFolderA\myfile.txt is where the file is
SiteName retured \\Server\Share
I wanted \\Server\Share\Folder1\SubFolderA\
The following XSLT uses a few chained string commands to return the desired results
<xsl:if test="isdocument = 'True'"> <br/> <a> <xsl:attribute name="href"> <xsl:value-of select="substring(url,1,string-length(url) - string-length(title))"/> </xsl:attribute> <i>Link to Containing Folder</i> </a> </xsl:if>
This is one of those posts more to serve as a reminder to me than anything.
While watching a video on SharePoint-Videos.com about customizing search results with XSLT, the presenter showed how to use a small bit of XSL to dump all the search results returned by the search engine – the original video can be found here: http://www.sharepoint-videos.com/sp10-customize-search-results-using-xslt/
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/> <xls:template match "/"> <textarea rows="20" cols="100"> <xsl:copy-of select="*"/> </textarea> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>
This video shows how to use the Visifire Designer at visifire.com to create a sample chart that’s just what you want, then copy and past the XAML and HTML to your PC to re-create the cart on your own website.
Visifire.com has a nice silverlight charting library that does animated charts and graphs.
My employer was looking to do up a Dashboard in SharePoint and I used Visifire, the Sharepoint Content Editor Web part and a few back end aspx pages to grab data from various sql servers to present the graphs.
I’m doing a video series on the basics of how to do it.
This first video introduces visifire, downloads some samples and walks through getting the sample to work locally on your PC.
Part 2 will discuss the Visifire Chart Designer.
Part 3 will show how to copy the needed files to SharePoint and how to put the relevant HTML in a SharePoint Content Editor WebPart.
Part 4 talks about how to move Source XAML to a separate file.
Part 5 talks about one way to construct a back end ASPX page to produce the XAML and feed it back.
Part 6 talks about how to modify the ASPX page to query a database and produce live data
Part 7 talks about how to move that page onto the SharePoint Server.
I work with a network monitoring tool from Microsoft called System Center Operations Manager (SCOM for short)
The version of SCOM I use (2007 R2 with Fix rollup 2) has an issue that seems to affect computers that are part of a cluster -
The computers could not be deleted, which is a bit of a pain.
This query was provided by a MS support rep, the first query should return a GUID for the object(s) that match the computer name
The second gives you a preview of what you’ll change.
the 3rd actually changes the objects in the database to deleted status.
note that it doesn’t actually delete anything, it just updates the values.
Select TopLevelHostEntityId from basemanagedentity where Name like ‘%ComputerName%’
Select * from basemanagedentity where TopLevelHostEntityId = ‘GUID’
Update BaseManagedEntity Set Isdeleted=1 where TopLevelHostEntityId = ‘GUID’
Powershell notes
May 22
I’ve wanted to learn about powershell for a while, but never really had time to mess around with it.
This post will be a collection of key ideas and commands as I read through a book or two on powershell.
#1 Launch powershell:
powershell
#2 Launch powershell ise
powershell_ise
#3 get-childitem
in the powershell command window, hit F7 to bring up a list of recently used commands
commands to get info about commands:
get-Command – (info about command)
get-help *-* (gets info about all commands)
get-help get-* (gets help about all get commands)
get-help set-* (gets help about all set commands)get
invoke-command
measure-command (measure run time)
Trace-command (trace)
Get-hotfix (gets hotfix info)
display environment variables with $env:varname ie $env:computernameget
See the execution Policy: get-ExecutionPolicy
Set the execution policy so it will run anything: Set-ExecutionPolicy
pipeable formatting commands:
format-wide -column 3 (ie Get-command | format-wide -column 3)
The new juniper 6.5 client seems work with OSX 10.6.x better than the old ones did – it no longer requires creating a directory and setting permissions from the command line.
That said, my upgrade seemed to go ok, but a few days later, it stopped working – saying it was unable to download files from the URL of my webvpn.
I did an uninstall (I used appdelete) then downloaded the VPN client from the VPN
it turns out the client is easily obtained manually by using
(URL of your webvpn)/dana-cached/nc/NetworkConnect.dmg
this downloads the disk image file, then you can run the setup program from there – once I did that, it worked fine without any further modifications.
(thanks to William (post #9) on http://forums.juniper.net/t5/SSL-VPN/Snow-Leopard-Network-Connect-Fix/m-p/29985)
I recently rebuilt my home domain controller and renamed my home domain that I use internally.
As a result, all the links to my subversion server are now broken.
In other words, my local working copy thinks it’s linked to a subversion server that it can no longer reach.
if only there were a way to update my local copy to let it know where to look…
first I opened terminal (on a mac here, open the cmd prompt on windows)
cd to the working directory
enter svn info – this will display where subversion thinks it’s pointing to
enter svn switch –relocate FROM http://oldpath TO http://newpath
Video: CODA & SUBVERSION HOW TO
I did a video tutorial recently on how to use CODA (A popular mac editor used by web designers) with the Source Control System Subversion (Using Beanstalkapp.com’s free account offering)
The video is just under 20 minutes long and covers:
Setting up a free account on BeanstalkApp.com
How to configure the free account.
How to configure the ‘sites’ tab in Coda to work with the free account.
How to push changes to the Subversion Server (in this case Beanstalkapp)
How to compare an old revision with the current one.
How to ‘roll back’ a code change to an older version that’s in Subversion.
I’m working on a project in PHP at the moment.
Nothing gets a project moving like dropping a good grid control on a page, spending 2 minutes setting a few properties and having a nice editable grid.
For ASP.NET, I’ve used the obout.com grid before with pretty good results.
Since this is my first PHP project I thought I’d see what grids are out there.
Here’s what I found…
———————
PlatinumGrid – only works with Delphi – no go.
PHPEzyGrid -sucked – no inline editing.
KoolPHP.net $130 for the suite – nice flexibility – other tools too (combo box, calendar etc)
AppHP.com’s grid – looks nice – cheap $35
phpgrid.com – requires zend optimizer $99
Active Widgets – too expensive ($500)
DHTMLX – I like that this is actually a Javascript grid – The good part about this is that the knowledge gained and the grid itself could be used on other platforms (ie ASP.NET) The bad is that there’s some back end server code that needs to be written. also kind of pricey ($200-450) Typically with a pure Javascript based grid, the back end has to be written 100% by you, however, they have a connector product (still in beta no price given) The nice thing here is that the connector works with php, asp.net and jsp.
eyesis – Does not seem to have the features of other grids (no inline editing)
On the plus side, it does seem very easy to use, so there are likely places where this could be a good fit (last update was Dec 2008 however…)
ExtJS is another javascript control set – they claim to have a bunch of big customers.
It’s not cheap ($330) but like DHTMLx you are buying a whole slew of tools.
One nice thing about ExtJS is that they have a designer tool for it.
They also offer phone support (paid not free)
jQuery Grid (jqGrid) – this is a popular javascript grid for use with the jQuery framework. -$300 per platform (PHP/ASP.net )
datatables.net – (jQuery based – donation based)
SlickGrid (http://github.com/mleibman/SlickGrid)
This is my favorate from an end user perspective for it’s inline editing – it’s just like a spreadsheet.
<Query><SoapAction>http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/GetListItems</SoapAction>
<Method Namespace="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/" Name="GetListItems">
<Parameters>
<Parameter Name="listName">
<DefaultValue>{8529D70B-D632-4CC8-A1E7-2C25F29BE1E0}(this could also be a list name, it doesn't have to be a GUID)</DefaultValue>
</Parameter>
<Parameter Name="viewName">
<DefaultValue>{2FC6AA42-EA95-4C18-AB07-33E25EBBA85D}(could also be a view name)</DefaultValue>
<ViewFields>
<FieldRef Name="Resolve_x0020__x0023_" />
<FieldRef Name="Product" />
<FieldRef Name="Release" />
<FieldRef Name="Theme" />
<FieldRef Name="Pre_x002d_Req_x0020_Estimate" />
</ViewFields>
</Parameter>
</Parameters>
</Method>
<ElementPath IgnoreNamespaces="True">*</ElementPath>
</Query>
PHP getmonth function
Apr 7
PHP doesn’t offer getmonth, getday or getyear.
Instead use this:
$unixtime = strtotime($test);
echo date(‘m’, $unixtime);
echo date(‘d’, $unixtime);
echo date(‘y’, $unixtime );
strtotime creates a unix style time (The number of seconds since some point in time around 1970)
Once you have that, you can use the date function as shown.
A few posts back I wrote about a program called SuperFlexibleFileSynchronizer.
My latest project is to Scan all the papers in my file cabinet. That’s a little scarry. There’s information in there that I can’t afford to loose, yet most of it is private enough that I wouldn’t really trust it being stored online.
So today’s post talks about one possible solution for that, using Dropbox and SFFS.
DropBox:
Dropbox is a great online storage service. You put things in your local dropbox folder, and it copies them to the dropbox server. Dropbox has only one problem, and it’s a problem shared by any and all online backup systems: Security.
Call me an untrusting person, but I don’t trust that information put on Dropbox will stay private. It’s just too big a target for a hacker to avoid. At some point, it will be compromised. I feel this way about all online storage.
So what’s the solution?
Encryption.
Encrypt the data here, then put it on the Dropbox folder.
Now there are two ways to do this –
a) encrypt everything into a single file like a zip file or truecrypt volume
or
b) encrypt everything individually
The problem with a) is that you’d need to re-upload the entire file for every change, which isn’t really practical.
The problem with b) is that once the file is encrypted, it’s not as easy to compare the encrypted file, so incremental backups become an issue.
Enter SFFS. SFFS has an elegant solution to the problem. SFFS can make a backup where the folder structure is replicated, but each file is zipped with AES encryption. SFFS also keeps a signature for each file and puts it in the file name. In this way, SFFS is able to do incremental backups, comparing the unzipped originals to the zipped & encrypted copies.
Perfect.
For me.
To be clear: the names of the folders and files are visible, so if you’re dealing with super secret stuff, you’ll want to take that into account.
For my needs, I think it’s enough extra protection that I’m happy with it.
Now, if a hacker ever gets into dropbox, they’ll need to do some extra work to get into my files. Could they do this? Absolutely. Would they do this? Probably not. There would be so many other files that aren’t protected that my files wouldn’t be worth the hackers time.
Free Mac Apps
Mar 1
Take part in the http://FreeMacApps.com Giveaway! 21 apps, over $1000 of combined worth for two lucky winners @TwistedMac
I’m a computer guy.
In the beginning, life was simple. You had one computer – you kept your files on it. If you backed up, you did so to a floppy disk.
Today, I have a few computers, and I use them for different things, but I need my data on all of them. If they were all desktops, Life would be easy – keep all the files on one, then share it out to the rest. Add a laptop and things get messy.
What I want is to have a local copy of all my files, and have those automagically copied to and from the server whenever changes take place.
For that, I’m using SuperFlexible File Synchronizer. I’ve tried over a half dozen apps on the Mac for Sync and this one is by far the best. It’s also available in a Windows version, which is awesome, because one of my computers is a windows computer -that solves the problem of what to do there, and SF is available as a bundle that includes both versions.
What makes SuperFlexible better than the others? Control & Options. Superflexible lives up to it’s name. Do you need scheduled sync – no problem. Exclude .DS_Store? Got it. Need to sign into a Windows server before you run the backup? Done. I could go on and on – it seems to EVERYTHING. Here’s a few more things it can do – it can encrypt and zip each file so you can backup to internet based storage like Amazon S3 or Google without worrying about your data being exposed. It can detect when files move so they aren’t simply re-synced. It can add version numbers to your files when it copies them over. The interface is well refined too. When you run a sync, you can do so in the foreground or background – background is kind of like Autopilot, where foreground gives you a bunch of information – what files are going to copy, in what direction etc… Here’s an area that set this one apart – you can right click on any file before it’s synced, and tell it what direction to sync, to ignore it, to delete it from one but not the other etc..
I also found it rewarding that during testing, I wiped out the target folder, and on the next run, SF came up and asked if the folder should be re-created. (other tools have given an error in this scenario)
My setup is as follows:
I have a folder I keep all my stuff in. I keep a copy of that folder on my Mac Laptop, and another copy on my home server. On the Mac, I have a Sync job setup with SuperFlexible File Synchronizer that keeps things in both places up to date. This way, when I’m on my laptop, I’m always working with a local copy of my data. If I take the laptop on a trip, that data comes with me. When I get home, it copies it to the Server.
SuperFlexible File Synchronizer also has some other good qualities and I hope to use it for online backup soon as well. It supports backing up to Amazon S3, and Google storage support is in Beta as of this writing. It also supports FTP & Webdav folders (such as apple’s iDisk). And as mentioned above, it supports zipping and encrypting files which makes me far more comfortable using online storage as a backup target.
I recently picked up an Epson GT-S50 Scanner for a project I am working on for a client.
My Client’s office is using Windows, and at home I have a combination of windows and Mac.
I’ve read tons of great reviews on the Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners (like the S1500), but you have to buy a mac or windows version of those, and they only work with the built in software. There were some issues when Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard came out, and the scanners lost a lot of functionality for a few months while Fujitsu readied new software.
The big draw to the Fujitsu is how good the software is that comes with it. It does a bunch of things for you – and may people say it “just works”.
After reading a review on the Epson GT-S50 online, I knew the software wasn’t as polished, but wondered how far off it would be..
Impressions:
I connected the GT-S50 to my Macbook Pro and installed all the latest drivers.
The epson has a nice 2 line display that tells you what’s going on, and on Windows you can see what preset you have selected, along with the description. On the mac, the description is gone, you see Job 01, Job 02 etc…
One button scanning is HORRIBLE. Awful, the worst. It takes FOREVER to even get the thing started. In fact, I thought I’d time one and it’s been 2 minutes and the software still hasn’t scanned (the panel says Scanning and the software launched on the mac so it’s doing something.) When I hover over the ‘Progress’ Window, I get the beachball of death.
Ok 3 minutes in and I’ll ‘force Quit’, but the scanner still thinks it’s scanning.
Click the red button on the scanner, – power light stops flashing, display still says Scanning.
I thought I’d scan once manually with the Epson scan software, but when I launch that, it shows the icon in the doc, but no menu.
I tried launching Apple Image Capture, but the scanner doesn’t show up so it’s now time to power cycle the scanner.
At this point I’m thinking the scanner sucks, but in reality, the software they have for ‘one touch’ sucks.
The reason you’d buy an Epson over the Fujitsu is because it has a twain driver, and the Fujitsu does not. This means you can use other software with the scanner.
So now I’m out to find out if any of the other software is any good.
I have adobe Acrobat Pro 9.3 installed, and it can scan using the twain driver.
Acrobat does a great job with the scanner, it’s just a little slow. The whole process is slow, but…
If you use Acrobat to scan, you’re pretty much done when you’re done. Since Acrobat Pro does the OCR, the deskew, the page rotation, the auto page sizing & the image compression there’s no need to go into another program to clean it up. In fact ,after you scan, your document is sitting in acrobat, waiting for you to save it – So you don’t even have to go find it and rename it. When you’re done, you’re done…
Still I wondered if I was missing out on the scansnap - There’s so many good reviews of that thing.
I thought about it for a bit, but decided that the twain interface was something I really liked the flexibility of having.
And the Epson scanner seems better built (11 lbs vs the 6lb fujitsu)
And I’d read more than once about the fujitsu misfeeding issues.
So at this point I feel the Epson has the best hardware, but not the best software.
Enter Image Capture.
The macs come with a program called image capture.
I opened it, and my scanner was there, so I used that – It was fast!
it doesn’t do everything that acrobat does, but if you need to whip up a quick letter sized pdf, it does the trick – quickly!
This has me on a hunt for more apps that support the image capture interface.
So far I’ve had little luck.
I tried 2 or 3 apps that support image capture and in all cases the scan comes up as a gray box.
So I’m not sure what’s up, but somethings up.
I’m also not sure if the image capture driver came from epson or apple.
I need to hook it up to a second mac, one that hasn’t had the epson drivers installed, to see where the drivers are coming from, and then hopefully I can point to either apple or epson and get the problem fixed.
(for all I know the image capture driver might be using the twian driver and not displaying the dialog)’
I read an article today talking about how easy it is to get sued for using commecial codecs like h264, mpeg 2 and mpeg 3, the site below alters alternative codec, that are completely free.
The other day I had to extend the C partition on a server.
Microsoft has a command for this, it’s part of DISKPART.EXE
Unfortunately, the needed subcommand is “EXTEND” -which fails on the Boot parition (aka drive C)
Fortunately, there’s an easy way around this – boot from a winPE CD, and the CD becomes the Boot Partition, freeing the C drive for the extend operation to work it’s magic.
Making a WinPE disk isn’t hard, but it’s not as easy as downloading and burning an iso either. In total, there’s 8 commands I needed to enter to make my custom WinPE iso.
About WinPE
WinPE is a ‘PreInstallationEnvironment’ – whatever that means! To me, it’s a bootable CD, that brings up a windows command prompt. I’ve used one in the past to get files off a retired server that I no longer had access to the password for – boot from winpe, copy the files to a usbkey, done.
Where do you get it?
If you have access to technet or MSDN, you can download something called the windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) This is filed away with different versions of Windows, it’s not under a menu like tools, or applications, I found it mixed in with Windows 7 as well as 2008R2. Both locations list the same ISO for download.
Unfortunately, the iso you get from technet is the AIK Iso, not the ISO of the WinPE CD you want to burn. You have to first download the AIK then follow the steps below to construct a WINPE iso customized with the drivers you need for your raid card.
Lets begin,
Download the AIK
While you’re waiting for the AIK to download, you’ll also need drivers for your raid card. You’ll need both the driver (usually a .sys file) and a .INF file. In my case, I looked at device manager to see what driver (.sys file) was in use by the raid card, then I went to HP’s website and downloaded a driver set, extracted it and confirmed that the .sys file I needed was there – there was a .inf with the same name, so I figured I was in business….
(back in a few, waiting for this to download…)
Burn the ISO of the AIK to a DVD (or extract the iso to your hard drive)
Run the Windows AIK Setup (there’s a link to it on the autorun that pops up)
Once thats done you’ll have a new folder in your start menu ‘Windows AIK’ open that folder.
Have a look at the Windows PE manual under documents.
The section I used was ‘Customizing Windows PE’->’Windows PE Walkthroughs’->’Walkthrough: Create a Bootable Windows PE RAM Disk on CD-ROM’
What this does is help make you a bootable CD that will load itself into Ram – you’ll know its running in ram, because the command prompt points to drive X: which is the ram disk.
Before you get started with the above walkthrough, have a look at one more section:
‘Customizing Windows PE’->’Windows PE Customizations How-To Topics’->’Add a Device Driver to an Offline Windows PE Image’
ok what does that mean? well there’s another help option for ‘online’. What’s the difference? Well ‘Online’ means you’ve already booted from the CD, we are still building our CD so we want to use the advice for the ‘offline’ that way, once our CD is done, we won’t need to do anything else to use the driver.
Ok now if you’re clever, you’ve read both sections and have noticed theres something a bit off in trying to merge the two sections – the instructions in the walkthrough tell you to copy winpe.wm to \iso\sources\boot.wim,
but then in the driver section, they tell you to open the winpe.wim to change it. I did so, then when I was done, I just recopied the file to the boot.wim…
Here’s the list of steps I followed:
- started deployment tools command prompt as administrator
- ran copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
- Dism /Mount-WIM /WimFile:c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim /index:1 /MountDir:c:\winpe_x86\mount
- Dism /image:<path_to_image> /Add-Driver /Driver:(Here I put the folder path to the folder with the .inf and .sys files) /recurse
(the /recurse causes all the drivers in that folder to be added) - dism /unmount-wim /Mountdir:c:\winpe_x86\mount /commit
At this point, we’ve altered the winpe.wim (which is basicallly a fancy .iso file) - copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim
- oscdimg -n -bC:\winpe_x86\etfsboot.com C:\winpe_x86\ISO C:\winpe_x86\winpe_x86.iso
(this created an actual .iso you can burn with your burning software) - Burn the .iso to CD. I used the free & excellent ImgBurn
That’s it!
8 relatively simple steps and you’ll have a bootable Windows PE CD with the Raid drivers of your choosing!
Pearnote
Jan 20
Pearnote (http://www.usefulfruit.com/pearnote/) is a really clever idea – a sound recording app, along with a text editor.
As you type, some hidden data is stored with your text linking it to that position in the audio recording app.
I can’t imagine how awesome this would be if you were a student and wanted to take notes, and record a lecture on your laptop.
Great idea!
http://justindevine.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/remote-development-deployment-and-remote-debugging-your-first-sharepoint-2007-program/
http://www.igregor.net/post/2008/01/Installing-SQL-Server-2005-Reporting-Service-on-IIS-7.aspx