Confessions of an IT Consultant

Excel will not open a workbook when double clicking the file or opening an attachment in Outlook.

2011-08-31T12:18:00.000-07:00

Had an issue where a user was opening excel files from explorer. Excel would load up, but the workbook would not launch. You could go to File Open and open the file just fine.

We had recreated his profile and made sure that there was nothing wonky in his xlstart folder and yet this issue still kept happening. Well, there is a check box in excels options that says something to the effect of disabling other application to access excel. If this is checked you will not be able to have outlook, explorer, or anything else open excel for you when you click on a file.

The problem was that this check box "somehow" got checked. Doing a little poking around on the Internet gave me the following information as well as booting up a test machine to play with it.

Here are the settings in the registry that were set.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\OFFICE11\\EXCEL.EXE\" /e"
"command"=hex(7):27,00,5d,00,67,00,41,00,56,00,6e,00,2d,00,7d,00,66,00,28,00,\
5a,00,58,00,66,00,65,00,41,00,52,00,36,00,2e,00,6a,00,69,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,21,00,44,00,65,00,40,00,\
5d,00,56,00,7a,00,28,00,72,00,3d,00,66,00,60,00,31,00,6c,00,66,00,71,00,60,\
00,3f,00,52,00,26,00,20,00,2f,00,65,00,00,00,00,00

Notice the /e at the end, when that is replaced with “%1”, even if the check box in excel is checked to ignore other applications requesting information from DDE, the application will still request the information via dynamic data exchange. If the /e is taken out of the key, excel will open up a document, and a blank workbook will show up, but the file requested will not show up. At least in my testing, it looks like “%1” is the only way to get it to ignore the check box and get the file to come up.
Here is the reg dump for the key being set with “%1”

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Excel.Sheet.8\shell\Open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\OFFICE11\\EXCEL.EXE\" \"%1\""
"command"=hex(7):27,00,5d,00,67,00,41,00,56,00,6e,00,2d,00,7d,00,66,00,28,00,\
5a,00,58,00,66,00,65,00,41,00,52,00,36,00,2e,00,6a,00,69,00,45,00,58,00,43,\
00,45,00,4c,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,3e,00,21,00,44,00,65,00,40,00,\
5d,00,56,00,7a,00,28,00,72,00,3d,00,66,00,60,00,31,00,6c,00,66,00,71,00,60,\
00,3f,00,52,00,26,00,20,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00,00,00

It’s hard to tell for sure why this is happening, but some of my researching suggests updates could switch these keys around. Also, I would like to note that on my test machines I was able to use excel just fine with the /e key at the end of the strings, until I checked the check box to ignore other applications. Once that check box was checked, I was unable to open files unless I put in the “%1”.

0_o Just another day in MS land I guess. I would be interested if anyone else has had issues with this.

Thanks!

Lockdown Internet Explorer 7 Address Bar, Print, and Menu options.

2011-08-25T12:58:00.001-07:00

The following screenshot shows that the address bar is disabled, navigation is also disabled, as well as the print buttons and file menu item. These settings are applied by using a custom ADM file in Group Policy.

The following group policy settings should be applied to the servers. These policies will disable any workaround that the user may use to gain access to another website.

Users\Administrative\Templates\Internet Explorer

\Internet Control Panel

\Browser Menus

\Toolbars

ADM file to be added.

CLASS Machine
CATEGORY InternetExplorer7Lockdown
POLICY "IE7 Lockdown Settings"
EXPLAIN !!Help
KEYNAME "Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbars\Restrictions"
PART !!Addressbar_title DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED
VALUENAME "NoAddressBar"
ITEMLIST
NAME !!Addressbar_enable VALUE NUMERIC 0 DEFAULT
NAME !!Addressbar_disable VALUE NUMERIC 1
END ITEMLIST
END PART
PART !!NavButtons_title DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED
VALUENAME "NoNavBar"
ITEMLIST
NAME !!NavButtons_enable VALUE NUMERIC 0 DEFAULT
NAME !!NavButtons_disable VALUE NUMERIC 1
END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
POLICY "Disable: Printing"
Explain !!Help2
KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\POLICIES\EXPLORER"
PART !!PrintButton DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED
VALUENAME "Btn_print"
ITEMLIST
NAME !!PrintShow VALUE NUMERIC 1 DEFAULT
NAME !!PrintHide VALUE NUMERIC 2
END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
POLICY "Disable: File Menu"
Explain !!Help3
KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\POLICIES\EXPLORER"
PART !!FileMenu DROPDOWNLIST REQUIRED
VALUENAME "NoFileMenu"
ITEMLIST
NAME !!FileShow VALUE NUMERIC 1 DEFAULT
NAME !!FileHide VALUE NUMERIC 2
END ITEMLIST
END PART
END POLICY
END CATEGORY 
[strings]
InternetExplorer7Lockdown="IE7 Settings"
Addressbar_title="Set the IE7 Address bar to: 
Addressbar_enable="Enabled"
Addressbar_disable="Disabled" 
NavButtons_title="Set the IE7 Navagation buttons to: 
NavButtons_enable="Enabled"
NavButtons_disable="Disabled" 
PrintButton="Hide Printer button?"
PrintShow="No"
PrintHide="Yes"
FileMenu="Hide File menu?"
Fileshow="No"
Filehide="Yes"
; explains
Help="Enabled: This policy will change registry settings to disable the address bar and navigation buttons IE7." 
Help2="Enabled: This policy will allow you to Hide or Show the print button in IE7." 
Help3="Enabled: This policy will allow you to Hide or Show the File menu item in IE7."

Issues:

Users will still be able to press CTRL+P to print – I am unable to find a way around this.

APP-V Server install

2011-06-16T09:44:00.001-07:00

Found a very helpful write-up on how to get app-v installed on a Server 2k8r2 box.

They tech net articles are a little convoluted, while all the information is there, you have to find about 10 articles to get things set up.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/how-to-install-and-configure-the-app-v-management-server.aspx

Also, one of the things that I had issues with was the fact that .net 4 was installed on the servers. Make sure to uninstall .net 4 framework before trying to install app-v, unless you like scratching your head.

Remember to reinstall .net 4 after though

Cheers!

Ports to be opened when using RD Web in a DMZ

2011-06-14T07:59:00.001-07:00

Found this on MSDN’s blog. Has a good write-up on what ports need to be open in different scenarios.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/rds/archive/2009/07/31/rd-gateway-deployment-in-a-perimeter-network-firewall-rules.aspx

Domain Controller Assessment

2011-05-13T12:44:00.001-07:00

I really wish Microsoft would release a single product that would be able to assess the health of the overall domain controller.

Server 2008 does come with built in Best Practice Analyzers and they are very helpful.

This is really nice because you are able to click on anything that gives you a warning or error and open up the properties of that error.

As you can see, Microsoft even suggests how to fix the issue.

This is all fine and good and you can run these BPA on any of the roles you have installed, however, some times you run into a server that is so broken that these BPAs won’t run. That is when you have to use a basket full of commands. I have added in few that I use and just put them into a batch file that I can run on the servers.

Example:

mkdir c:\<Folder>
dnscmd /info > c:\<Folder>\dnsinfo.txt
dnscmd <SERVERNAME> /directorypartitioninfo DomainDnsZones.<DOMAIN> > c:\<Folder>\dnspartitioninfoDomain.txt
dnscmd <SERVERNAME> /directorypartitioninfo forestDnsZones.<DOMAIN>> c:\<FOLDER>\dnspartitioninfoForest.txt
repadmin /showreps > c:\<FOLDER>\replog.txt
repadmin /replsum /errorsonly > c:\<FOLDER>\replogerror.txt
route print > c:\<FOLDER>\routes.txt
copy c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\* c:\<FOLDER>\

I grab the routes as well as all the files in the etc folder because I have run across issues before where someone had gone in and put static routes on the servers or static entries in the hosts file or protocols file that had me scratching my head for a few hours until I figured it out. It’s best to just grab these files and make sure they are clean.

I would like to know what other commands people use and why they use them, maybe we can get a super script that will take 2 seconds to run and generate a nice report with useful information.

EDIT: I left DCDIAG and NETDIAG.. not sure why.. I just did

Exporting a list of services from all machines in your domain

2011-05-10T08:20:00.001-07:00

This can be done pretty quick with a power script, rather than going into each machine and opening up services and exporting manually.

Get-Service | Export-Csv -path "C:\services.csv"

Ranked Dimms?

2011-04-22T12:01:00.001-07:00

So, today I was specing out a couple SQL servers, and I have not had to do any hardware specing in a few years, so things sure have changed when looking into the hardware components. One of the things that I was seeing on HPs site was Ranked Dimms. I found this website that explained what Ranked Dimms are, good read!

http://www.oempcworld.com/support/Whatis_4-Rank_DIMM_Memory.htm

Remote uninstall of SEP 11

2011-02-09T10:06:00.001-08:00

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH105827&locale=en_USWhile Logged into an account that has domain admin rights, you can run this command after downloading psexec.exe from Microsoft.

psexec @c:\computers.txt MsiExec.exe /norestart /q/x{2EFCC193-D915-4CCB-9201-31773A27BC06} REMOVE=ALL

Where @c:\computers.txt is a txt file that I pulled from the AD computers OU and chopped it up in excel so that it lists all the computers, one line at a time.

Example:

XPPC001
XPPC002
XPPC003

{2EFCC193-D915-4CCB-9201-31773A27BC06} is the uninstall string from the local systems registry. This can be found by going to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH105827&locale=en_US

If there is a password set on the clients you can:

A) disable it from the SEP Manager

B) Edit the registry to zero out the password Value.

I will post how to do this soon.

Ever want to double check who has what FSMO roles quick?

2011-01-25T12:31:00.001-08:00

I always seem to forget the stupid command to type to look at show what servers hold what FSMO roles. This can be nice when walking into a network that is having issues and there are multiple domain controllers. Knowing what domain controllers do what can help in your troubleshooting.

Open up a command prompt with enterprise admin privileges and run the following command.

Netdom query fsmo

You should see something to the effect of..

Windows Deployment Services: Capture an Image

2010-12-30T07:48:00.001-08:00

Booting to the Capture Image

First boot to the network by pressing f12 and selecting the network adaptor.

Once you have done that you should see a PXE boot screen similar to the following.

Make sure you press F12 again once tells you to Press “F12 for network Service Boot”

The next screen will list the available boot images to you. Since we are going to be Capturing a Windows 7 image, select “Windows 7 Capture Image” using your arrow keys on the keyboard and press “Enter”

Windows will then load the WIM file into RAM on the client machine. You can see the name of the WIM file that is being loaded, this is always good to look at to make sure it is the correct one.

Once it is loaded into RAM you will see the “Windows Deployment Services Image Capture Wizard” come up.

Click “Next” to continue

On the Volume Capture dropdown box, select the drive letter to capture. Normally this will be C:\ and name the image as well as giving the image a description.

Press Next.

The next screen will give you an option on where to store your image. You can store it to a removable hard drive, shared network folder, or even directly upload it to the WDS server.

**NOTE**
If you do not see anything in the “volume to capture:” drop down box, something went wrong with your sysprep or the WIM capture image does not have the correct hard disk drivers installed.

Refer to “Syspreping your Client” and “Injecting Drivers into a WIM file” to correct these issues.

I chose to upload to the WDS, I typed the name of my machine in and hit connect. You will then be prompted for a username and password after it times out trying to connect anonymously.

Type in a Domain Administrator’s user account and password; make sure to add the domain name in front of the username.

Once you are authenticated, the “Image Group Name:” drop down becomes available. This will allow you to put the image in a particular image group on the server.

Click Next.

If next does not show up you can also just add the image manually, to do this, click “Back” then “Next” and it will bring you back to the screen where you can choose a location for the image to be stored.

Press Next to begin upload to the server.

Depending on the size of the image and the speed of the network, this can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a few hours.

Client Side Setup: Sysprep Client Machine

2010-12-30T07:24:00.001-08:00

Once you have finished installing all updates/software and configuring any settings you want to have on each image, you will need to strip out all of the unique information from that install so that you can image multiple machines with the same image and not have issues with duplicate names and System IDs on the network. To do this we will use a tool included in Windows 7 called Sysprep.

Sysprep is located by default at:

C:\windows\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe

There are many options that go along with sysprep, this will be discussed in a later guide. For deployment purposes, all we need to know now is how to get our windows 7 machine ready to image.

To do this go to “Start –> All Programs –> Accessories” Right click on “Command Prompt” and choose “Run as administrator”

If you have User Account Control enabled, click YES to the dialog box that pops up.

The following options are available to us for Sysprep

For this example we are just going to use the following:

“Sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown”

This will strip information from the machine and shut down the computer. Once the machine is turned back on you will get the “Out of Box Experience” as if the machine had just had Windows 7 Installed.

To run this command we just type it in the command prompt and hit enter. It will bring a window up and shut down when it is finished.

**Note**
Do no turn the machine back on until you are ready to capture an image. If you do you will have to re-sysprep the machine, this can only be done 3 times!!

Plug-ins for Windows Live Writer

2010-12-29T11:08:00.001-08:00

I just installed a bunch of neat plugins for Live Writer. This is just a post to test them.

Windows Deployment Services

2010-12-29T10:47:00.001-08:00

Currently I am working on getting an all inclusive guide for Windows Deployment Services. There are a lot of guides online, however, none address the whole process of deploying custom images to client machines.

Look for a complete guide and video walk through soon!

Word documents opening slowly over a network share

2009-12-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday I ran into an issue where I was unable to open word documents from a network share that had just recently been moved from one server to another.

The problem was that when the server was opening up the word document on the new server it was still looking for the old server to open a template by a unc path.

In the bottom left hand corner of word you could see that it was trying to access \\oldserver\sharename\templates\template.dot.

I looked all over for a fix to this but could not find anything short of running a bunch of scripts on all the files and folders in the new share.

WORKAROUND:
Since it was still looking for \\oldserver and that server was decommissioned, all I did was add an (A) record to DNS to point oldserver to the newserver ip address.

Granted, this is a super messy way of getting it to work. However, I also had 80+ people sitting at their desks with nothing to do. I will have to research this a little more and see if I can find a way to fix this for good!

2009-11-23T05:42:00.000-08:00

New Blog Updater

Just testing my new blogger client.

Dell Vostro hackintosh

2009-10-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I just got my new Dell Vostro A90. I'm running Ubuntu on it right now, but I plan on installing OSX on the machine. I will keep you up to date on the status of my new Dell Hackintosh.

Symantec AV 10.1 install problems

2008-11-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

Just ran across this one today and thought I would share my findings.

When trying to install the Symantec AV client to a 32bit workstation running Windows XP sp3 (or any service pack), Symantec systems center tells you everything pushed out fine, however the client never has the AV agent installed.
The following event logged in eventvwr on the client machine after trying to push the install out from the server:


Event Type:    Information
Event Source:    MsiInstaller
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    11708
Date:        11/24/2008
Time:        8:44:46 AM
User:        NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer:  
Description:
Product: Symantec AntiVirus Win64 -- Installation failed.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 7b 32 34 33 46 41 45 30   {243FAE0
0008: 37 2d 43 32 30 44 2d 34   7-C20D-4
0010: 36 45 30 2d 39 41 45 37   6E0-9AE7
0018: 2d 36 46 45 45 35 45 31   -6FEE5E1
0020: 45 44 41 41 34 7d         EDAA4}

Now, the strange thing is is that the installation of Windows on this machine is only 32bit. However, the CPU in the computer is a 64bit. The reason for Symantec, and other applications, erroring out on the install is because it sees a key in the registry that tells it to send the 64bit install. To fix the problem, you need to delete the registry key from:


HKLM\Software\Wow6432node

Just right click and delete the whole thing.

Now try the push install again. You can watch the system log to make sure that the live update service is installed and shortly after you should see symantec barking at you because of old virus defs.

Welcome

2008-07-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Welcome to COAITC!

This site will include many things dealing with the world of IT. I currently work as an IT consultant for a company in the Midwest. My background is in Windows desktop and server systems with a bit of Linux thrown in for flavor. The main focus of this site will be to provide information and insight into the world of IT. I hope you will find this site informational as well as helpful in your daily IT needs.