The WinPE customisations keep coming, wanting more information about the system you are running WinPE on?

If you are familiar with BGInfo, you already know that it is a great way of displaying information about a system and you probably already use it in your base server build (for those not in the know check out BGInfo on TechNet). But what you may not know is that it works in WinPE and you can draw that same information out and display it on the screen.

Simply add the BGInfo executable and custom layout file to your WinPE scripts directory, modify your unattend.xml to include "X:\BGInfo.exe /accepteula /timer:0 /iqX:\WinPE.bgi /silent" and you are up and running.

To get you started I have added my layout file for download WinPE.bgi (1.96 KB).

NOTE: BGInfo is a 32-bit executable and since WinPE 2.0 64-bit doesn't support WOW it will only work in a 32-bit WinPE environment.

Something that I have been meaning to write up for some time now...

In nearly every environment I have worked in I have always come across some type of issue with Broadcom NICs.

In my most recent bout, it was determined that the network wasn't always (seemed to swap between having link negotation issues and invalid IP addresses) 100% initialised in WinPE before a task in the unattend.xml started executing. In our particular case we were working with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit which builds a custom WinPE image as part of deployment point synchronising.

Sample boot.bat

@echo off
echo.
echo INFO: Executing Sleep
echo.
cscript //nologo "%systemdrive%\sleep.vbs" 10
echo.
echo INFO: Renewing IP Address
ipconfig /renew
echo.
echo INFO: Executing Sleep
echo.
cscript //nologo "%systemdrive%\sleep.vbs" 10
echo.

Sample sleep.vbs

If Wscript.Arguments.Count = 0 Then
   ' Print Usage then quit
   Wscript.Echo "Usage: cscript sleep.vbs <Number>"
   Wscript.Echo " <Number> - Number of seconds to sleep."
   Wscript.Quit
Else
   ' Print how long we are sleeping for
   Wscript.Echo "INFO: Sleeping for " & Wscript.Arguments.Item(0) & " seconds"
   NumSeconds = Wscript.Arguments.Item(0) * 1000
   'Sleep
   Wscript.Sleep(NumSeconds)
End If

Unattend.xml Extract

<RunSynchronous>
   <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
      <Description>CommandBreak WINPE Customisations</Description>
      <Order>1</Order>
      <Path>X:\boot.bat</Path>
   </RunSynchronousCommand>
   <RunSynchronousCommand wcm:action="add">
      <Description>Lite Touch PE</Description>
      <Order>2</Order>
      <Path>wscript.exe X:\Deploy\Scripts\LiteTouch.wsf</Path>
   </RunSynchronousCommand>
</RunSynchronous>

Patching is one of those tasks you want to bundle up with some other critical work that you can kick off on the side while you dig into the pizza you expensed for dinner. It is necessary work but never exciting.

So imagine my surprise when I applied ISA 2006 Service Pack 1 and got new features, it was like XP Service Pack 2 all over again :)

New to the ISA Management console is Change Tracking, and once enable will keep detailed records on what really changed after the new guy has implemented an RFC.

 

 

This feature is fantastic! Even if you have processes out the wazoo this information will be invaluable when you really want to know why the website really went down.

Change management isn’t the only new feature to ISA 2006; there is also rule testing and traffic simulators (just to name a few). Check out http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707230.aspx for the full story.

I came across this problem the other day, where I wanted to determine if a Virtual Machine was running on Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 host system.

WMI exposes the Win32_ComputerSystem class which contains information about the Manufacturer and Model of a particular system (this is very hand if you want to check type of system before installing an application, e.g. Virtual Machine Additions). The unfortunate news is that Win32_ComputerSystem returns the following on both Hyper-V and Virtual Server hosts:

So how to determine what it is I am looking at? Well there is another WMI class, Win32_BIOS, which can help. Here you can see a difference in the Version between products.

Hyper-V

Virtual Server 2005 SP1

So far this seems to work for me; I am interested if anyone has alternate suggestions on how to solve my little problem, especially if there are cases where this will break (for example limiting the CPU functionality to run NT 4.0?)

Not long now till I tie the knot and if you are in the same boat, you may not have realised how many geek wedding accessories are out there.

With a little help for Leon we have found a few things to make that special day that bit more geeky!

 

 

Last week I was configuring a lab server with Hyper-V RC0 when I came across this error after creating a Virtual Switch with VLAN ID enabled:

Switch set up failed, name='3742d220-e73d-4ae5-bf0c-429ca168dc41', external port='d02dcb9e-76d4-496a-9c17-ea808e5ce125', internal port='375e5f91-b1fb-415d-8717-cd3ea36c9753', NIC='{165929BF-5BA2-4887-BC54-1D52C1A6BE61}', internal name='07b53c30-5d56-4a2d-a542-146773d39299', internal friendly name='Virtual Network Connection (VLAN Trunk)', error=2147749896, mof code=0.

Located in the Hyper-V application log this error resulted in a failed switch configuration and without a supported way to remove Virtual Switches (doesn’t seem right does it?) prevents you from creating any other network using that interface.

Turns out that this error occurs if you are creating a new network (with VLAN ID enabled) on a physical interface that doesn’t have a default VLAN ID specified, see example image below.

Hyper-V Networking
Hyper-V provides many networking improvements and the Virtual PC Guy’s has put together a great blog post explaining the changes, worth while reading for those making the move from Virtual Server.
Understanding Networking with Hyper-V

I love my media center and for some time now it has been playing/pausing/recording all my media without major issue (especially after moving too Vista Ultimate). Now I did say major issue! Since day dot I have had one problem; 1+ second delay on key presses with my Terratec remote control.

The explanation is simple; the Terratec remote has programmed keys, and it requires that you install a hardware application to capture the incoming signal, and then process them as actions in whatever application you happen to be using, making it one of the most versatile remotes available. It’s just unfortunate that the user experience and general design are so crap, just look at it, what were they thinking?

Until recently there haven’t been many other options just a lot of promises (and more promises) that there will be a new remote available for Vista MCE although nothing ever appeared on the Microsoft Hardware site. :(

Well here they are... turns out that Microsoft has left it to hardware manufactures to take up the fight and conform to the new IR RC6 and Windows Logo Program.

    

Now all that is left is deciding which one to buy :)