Troubleshooting

Windows Server 2008 with HyperV crashing

Submitted by pwnell on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 18:02

One incident is a co-incidence.  Two is a pattern.  For the second time I dealt with a strange situation that did not seem to adhere to any predictability other than the fact that it will happen.  Sometime.  A Windows 2008 Server Core and now a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Server with Hyper-V and some virtual machines would run fine for days, then suddenly become unresponsive.  The machine is up, Hyper-V VM's are inaccessible, console is locked up, can telnet to SMTP service but for the most part the system is dead.  Only a hard reset helped.  Until the next time.

The way I fixed the Server Core issue, and hopefully the R2 incident, is by configuring Hyper-V's network settings as follow:

  • Since my servers each had two NICs, I configured one for the host OS called LAN, and the other for Hyper-V's exclusive use.
  • The LAN interface is the one used to access the host itself.
  • The Hyper-V interface is used exclusively for each VM.
  • Ensure the "Allow management operating system to share this network adapter" setting is OFF.
    Screen Shot 2012 02 02 at 18 01 04

Using those settings, ensuring the Hyper-V nodes do NOT share the host LAN interface, seem to have fixed the crashing issue.

Blog Categories:

Determining which FSMO roles a DC owns

Submitted by pwnell on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 15:41

Everyone knows this most likely, but the fastest way to determine which FSMO roles a domain controller holds is by typing in:

C:\Users\administrator> netdom query fsmo
Schema master               server.domain.local
Domain naming master        server.domain.local
PDC                         server.domain.local
RID pool manager            server.domain.local
Infrastructure master       server.domain.local
The command completed successfully.

 

Blog Categories:

Exchange 2010 Fails Best Practices Analyzer due to Not Being Backed Up

Submitted by pwnell on Wed, 02/01/2012 - 09:30

I recently had an issue where a client's Microsoft Exchange 2010 server failed the best practices analyzer due to an "Database backup critical" error.  I was confused at first since I had a fully functional wbadmin scripted backup that I could see backed up Exchange.  Only after fiddling for a while did I discover the missing parameter I had to provide before exchange indicated a successful database backup and subsequently cleared out all the thousands of database log files it kept:

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:\\1.2.3.4\backups -include:c: ^
   -user:msbackup -password:"password" -quiet -allCritical -vssFull -systemState

Without -systemState this never worked.

Blog Categories:

Failed Windows Backup on Windows 2008 R2 and Dell hardware Due To VSS

Submitted by pwnell on Fri, 09/30/2011 - 22:38

If you ever fail to create a bare metal backup using wbadmin for Windows 2008 R2 due to the fact that the Windows system files resides on the FAT32 partition that is factory created by Dell, and you do not want to convert it to NTFS, follow these steps:

  • Open cmd.exe
  • Run:
    bcdboot c:\windows /s C:

    where C: is the target drive where the system files should reside for booting

  • Mark the C: partition as active using Disk Management
  • Reboot
  • If you run HyperV it will fail.  Open cmd.exe.  Then run:
    bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto
  • Reboot.

Blog Categories:

StarCraft II crashes frequently on nVidia GeForce GTX 295

Submitted by pwnell on Sun, 09/18/2011 - 17:05

I have a Windows 7 Professional x64 machine, fully patched.  Screen card is nVidia GeForce GTX 295.  This card gets really hot, so initially when playing StarCraft II Wings Of Liberty I assumed it was crashing (sometimes 2-3 times in an hour)due to heat, as the sound still played, the screen went black and the machine was still pingable.  Though I could not remotely connect to the machine or Ctrl+Alt+Del it, it needed a hard reset.

Blog Categories:

Sending Ctrl+Alt+Del To Inner RDS Session

Submitted by pwnell on Fri, 09/16/2011 - 12:30

I have a very unique setup.  I have my Mac OS X running Lion, using a full sized Apple keyboard.  Then I have a Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection session to a Windows 7 machine.  This session runs RoyalTS with lots of RDS sessions to various of my clients.

So to get the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen on the Windows 7 machine is easy.  Either press Ctrl+Option+End or Ctrl+Option+Del.  But to send that key combination to the RoyalTS session is another matter...

The solution is straight forward: Press Ctrl+Option+Command+End

 

Blog Categories:

Failure adding USB drive to Windows Backup Schedule on Server 2008 / R2

Submitted by pwnell on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 13:30

I've had this issue in the past - Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2 both fail when you have set up a Windows Backup schedule with one USB drive, and then later try to add another USB drive if BOTH drives are not connected concurrently while you are adding the second drive.  In specific, it states that "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect."

Blog Categories:

Rebuilding Failed RAID1 on Mac OS X

Submitted by pwnell on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 12:54

I recently had one drive in a two non boot disk Mac OS X software RAID1 set being marked as FAILED.  Since the disk seemed good, I shut down the computer, reseated all the drives and booted it back up.  The failed drive showed up, but marked as FAILED.

I went to Terminal, and entered:

Blog Categories:

VSS errors on Windows SBS 2003 R2

Submitted by pwnell on Tue, 09/13/2011 - 09:56

I recently tried setting up a TrueCrypt encrypted USB drive and a script that calls ntbackup to perform a full VSS based backup of the local server to that encrypted drive.  However ntbackup kept on saying "Retrying VSS snapshot".  Looking at the EventLog I saw these:

Blog Categories:

Real Life Troubleshooting

Submitted by pwnell on Sat, 09/10/2011 - 13:42

About 4 days ago I started hearing the dreaded click of death on my one Windows computer.  Problem is, I have two RAID arrays - one RAID1 with two drives and one RAID5 with four drives.  Then also a standalone OS drive.

Blog Categories:

Pages

Subscribe to Troubleshooting

Back to top