The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

The proxmox side

In Proxmox, ensure you have a named backup of your machine that starts with vzdump-qemu like this:

vzdump-qemu-Win7Sp1UK.vma.lzo

That way, Proxmox knows that it can restore from it.

Don’t forget to assign a new MAC address to the network adapter so it’s unique on the network.

The Windows side

I wanted to provision this with two test accounts: one regular and one with administrator access.

The latter needs to be added to the Administrators group using [WayBack] net localgroup.

Both need passwords that (for now) never expire. This is where [WayBack] net user add fails: even if you set the correct flag, it won’t be reflected, so you need WMIC UserAccount for that.

These two posts helped me a lot with the below batch file fragment:

• [WayBack] windows – Create admin user from command line – Super User
• [WayBack] powershell – Accounts suddenly expiring when created with ‘NET USER /ADD /expires:NEVER’ – Server Fault

After restoring, run a batch file like this with an UAC token:

  call :addUser regularTestUser regularTestPassword
  net localgroup "Remote Desktop Users" "regularTestUser" /add
  call :addUser administratorTestUser administratorTestPassword
  :: https://superuser.com/questions/515175/create-admin-user-from-command-line
  net localgroup administrators administratorTestUser /add
  goto :eof
:addUser
  :: https://superuser.com/questions/515175/create-admin-user-from-command-line
  net user /expires:never /add %1 %2 /expires:never
  :: https://serverfault.com/questions/710964/accounts-suddenly-expiring-when-created-with-net-user-add-expiresnever
  WMIC UserAccount where "Name='%1'" set PasswordExpires=FALSE
  goto :eof

The Remote Desktop Users tip is from [WayBack] Enable remote desktop from command line (CMD) but that post has “beautified” double quotes in them, so net localgroup by default complains it cannot find the group. The code above should have regular quotes.

Finally the computer needs a new name. Again WMIC to the rescue here as Windows 7 only comes with PowerShell 2.0 which cannot rename a computer.

Again with a UAC token, execute something like this:

WMIC ComputerSystem where Name="%COMPUTERNAME%" call Rename Name=INNOSETUPTEST
%windir%\System32\shutdown.exe -r


This last tip was via [WayBack] windows 7 – Renaming computers via command prompt – Super User.

–jeroen