I don’t like the Windows 8 preview pane. It makes moving and deleting things difficult, especially over network shares. It likes to lock shit up thanks to the (usually hidden) thumbs.db file it creates. So, turn it off. It’s a simple reg hack:
1 2 3 4 | Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] "NoReadingPane"=dword:00000001 |
Tonight was our maintenance window at work, and I updated a bajillion virtual servers. Went OK save for one Windows 2008 r2 box that got stuck in a reboot loop. Updates failed, so I bounced the box to start fresh. It would begin boot, show the dialogs for installing/configuring updates, reach “Configuring Updates: Stage 3 of 3,” and crater. Repeat infinitely. Thankfully the fix was easy. I mounted and booted from the 2008 Server ISO and:
After that it came up fine.
For some reason I can’t ever remember this. So now I will: ALT + F4.
Need a quick list of currently installed roles and features on your Windows 2012 server? Open a PowerShell prompt and put in the following:
1 | Get-WindowsFeature -ComputerName COMPUTERNAME | Where-Object InstallState -eq Installed > installed.txt |
It’ll give you a list similar to this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 | Display Name Name Install State ------------ ---- ------------- [X] File and Storage Services FileAndStorage-Services Installed [X] Storage Services Storage-Services Installed [X] Web Server (IIS) Web-Server Installed [X] Web Server Web-WebServer Installed [X] Common HTTP Features Web-Common-Http Installed [X] Default Document Web-Default-Doc Installed [X] Directory Browsing Web-Dir-Browsing Installed [X] HTTP Errors Web-Http-Errors Installed [X] Static Content Web-Static-Content Installed [X] Health and Diagnostics Web-Health Installed [X] HTTP Logging Web-Http-Logging Installed [X] Performance Web-Performance Installed [X] Static Content Compression Web-Stat-Compression Installed [X] Security Web-Security Installed [X] Request Filtering Web-Filtering Installed [X] Application Development Web-App-Dev Installed [X] .NET Extensibility 4.5 Web-Net-Ext45 Installed [X] ASP.NET 4.5 Web-Asp-Net45 Installed [X] ISAPI Extensions Web-ISAPI-Ext Installed [X] ISAPI Filters Web-ISAPI-Filter Installed [X] Management Tools Web-Mgmt-Tools Installed [X] IIS Management Console Web-Mgmt-Console Installed [X] .NET Framework 3.5 Features NET-Framework-Features Installed [X] .NET Framework 3.5 (includes .NET 2.0 and 3.0) NET-Framework-Core Installed [X] .NET Framework 4.5 Features NET-Framework-45-Fea... Installed [X] .NET Framework 4.5 NET-Framework-45-Core Installed [X] ASP.NET 4.5 NET-Framework-45-ASPNET Installed [X] WCF Services NET-WCF-Services45 Installed [X] HTTP Activation NET-WCF-HTTP-Activat... Installed [X] Message Queuing (MSMQ) Activation NET-WCF-MSMQ-Activat... Installed [X] Named Pipe Activation NET-WCF-Pipe-Activat... Installed [X] TCP Activation NET-WCF-TCP-Activati... Installed [X] TCP Port Sharing NET-WCF-TCP-PortShar... Installed [X] Enhanced Storage EnhancedStorage Installed [X] Message Queuing MSMQ Installed [X] Message Queuing Services MSMQ-Services Installed [X] Message Queuing Server MSMQ-Server Installed [X] SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support FS-SMB1 Installed [X] User Interfaces and Infrastructure User-Interfaces-Infra Installed [X] Graphical Management Tools and Infrastructure Server-Gui-Mgmt-Infra Installed [X] Server Graphical Shell Server-Gui-Shell Installed [X] Windows PowerShell PowerShellRoot Installed [X] Windows PowerShell 4.0 PowerShell Installed [X] Windows PowerShell 2.0 Engine PowerShell-V2 Installed [X] Windows PowerShell ISE PowerShell-ISE Installed [X] Windows Process Activation Service WAS Installed [X] Process Model WAS-Process-Model Installed [X] Configuration APIs WAS-Config-APIs Installed [X] WoW64 Support WoW64-Support Installed |
To view in the prompt rather than dumping to a txt, remove the
1 | > installed.txt |
I upgraded to a (hand me down) Dell Latitude E6530 not long ago. I loaded it with Windows 8.1 (and Classic Shell, because one must). I kept having wireless trouble – dropping off of networks. It wasn’t isolated to my home. What I believe I’ve determined is that, in a nutshell, Windows handling of N networks kind of sucks. I disabled N and since then have been rock solid.
Navigate to your network adapters, right click on the wireless and choose Properties. Beneath the adapter description choose Configure:
Choose the Advanced tab, then locate 802.11n Mode. Switch the Value to Disabled and OK your way out of all.
Needed more workspace, so I built some with leftovers and wood recycled from what I’ve torn off the house:
Made some numbers for the house:
The things I’ve held onto over the years. Here’s what I think is the 2nd edition of Gwar’s handmade origin comic. Looks like it’s from 1988. I’m sure I got it from one of their shows at Atlanta’s Metroplex back then. Download it here.
I had installed and configured a trial of a web analytics package for my day job and had the server put through the wringer. Among the issues found was a redirect buried deep in the code to cornify.com, “…the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide, spreading sparkly happiness around the world.” I added it to my list of concerns for the products developers and shipped it to them. They responded that the cornify link was an “Easter Egg” put there by one of the coders and wasn’t a security concern.
My immediate thought was this: What if cornify becomes something else? What if it stops being the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide? What if someone buys the name, or hijacks it, and it instead leads to an unsavory site? How will you explain to your paying customers that you’re rushing out an update to the web app they’ve paid you handsomely for, and that their administrators need to burn their time updating it ASAP, because a redirect you added on a whim now points to something lawsuit inducing? Less dramatically, and more likely, why would you want to deal with that inevitable customer who gave you thousands of dollars for your product and doesn’t have a sense of humor? The one who thinks it’s completely unprofessional and a poor reflection on them that your product did what you think is a lighthearted redirect? Is being clever (and let’s be fair – it’s not all that clever) worth that risk?
And that’s when I realized I’d stopped being the Young IT Guy and I’d become the Old IT Guy.
I tried to delete an empty directory and was presented with an “Item Not Found” error:
Easy enough fix:
My host finally set up the ability to upgrade PHP. I’ve been running on 5.2 for roughly forever. I host for clients, and most upgrades went without a hitch. A couple, however, barfed a bit thanks to undeclared variables, generated errors the likes of:
Warning: Creating default object from empty value in \wp-content\themes\hybrid\library\functions\core.php on line 27
Thankfully, it’s a pretty easy fix: just declare the variable! for example,
1 2 | if ( post_type_supports( $post->post_type, 'entry-views' ) ) { $entry_views->post_id = get_queried_object_id(); |
In a library/extensions file generated a warning. To fix, I simply declared the variable $entry_views:
1 2 3 | if ( post_type_supports( $post->post_type, 'entry-views' ) ) { if (!is_object($entry_views)) {$entry_views = new stdClass; } $entry_views->post_id = get_queried_object_id(); |
I had to do the same in a few other files as well.
