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Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

What is Swapfile.sys and How Do You Delete It?

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/09

Windows 10 (and 8) include a new virtual memory file named swapfile.sys. It’s stored in your system drive, along with the pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys. But why does Windows need both a swap file and a page file?

…

In summary, the swapfile — swapfile.sys — is currently used for swapping out Microsoft’s new style of app. Microsoft has called these universal apps, Windows Store apps, Metro apps, Modern apps, Windows 8 apps, Windows 8-style UI apps, and other things at various points.

via:

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9 | Leave a Comment »

libssh-delphi will migrate from Mercurial on BitBucket to git on GitHub soon (or finding about “fatal: repository … not found”, “MSVCR120.dll is missing” and “D3DCOMPILER_47.dll is missing” when prepping a fresh VM for a presentation)

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/03/08

When git on Windows suddenly gives you this when the repository URL opens fine in Chrome:

C:\Users\jeroenp\Versioned>git clone https://bitbucket.org/jeroenp/libssh2-delphi
Cloning into 'libssh2-delphi'...
remote: Not Found
fatal: repository 'https://bitbucket.org/jeroenp/libssh2-delphi/' not found

but this worked fine:

C:\Users\jeroenp\Versioned>git clone https://github.com/jpluimers/GExperts.git
Cloning into 'GExperts'...
remote: Counting objects: 12031, done.
remote: Total 12031 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 12031R
Receiving objects: 100% (12031/12031), 9.77 MiB | 1.36 MiB/s, done.

Resolving deltas: 100% (9284/9284), done.

I first thought “huh?”.

Then I remembered: this was a Mercurial repository, but I hardly use Mercurial any more…

C:\Users\jeroenp\Versioned>hg clone https://jeroenp@bitbucket.org/jeroenp/libssh
2-delphi
destination directory: libssh2-delphi
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 30 changesets with 56 changes to 25 files
updating to branch default
12 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved

Since I wanted to switch away from bitbucket for a long time anyway, it was time to say goodbye and find out how to make the conversion to git.

A quick search revealed there were many tedious manual ways involving command-lines: [WayBack] Convert Mercurial project to Git – Stack Overflow

But then I found out that github can fully automagically import a Mercurial Repository (of course without the BitBucket attached bells and whistles like issue tracker):

So it is now at github.com/jpluimers/libssh2-delphi with one user still to be mapped at github.com … libssh2-delphi/import/authors: Zeljko Marjanovic. If I ever get in contact with him (I tried over the last 2 years), then I will add him.

For now, I will be in touch with Vadum Lou (a.k.a. https://github.com/pult, full nameVadim V. Lopushansky) who already made another manually copied fork and get his additions integrated.

I might redo the conversion process later on as at least some of his submissions are at least partially in a Mercurial pull request.

Then I need to merge the develop branch into the master branch and prepare a release.

Oh: if it fails to debug in Delphi, then run the EXE alone. You will get an error like this:

--------------------------- SftpClientDemo.exe - System Error --------------------------- The program can't start because MSVCR120.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem. --------------------------- OK ---------------------------

I need to document this better in the README.md: the underlying libssh2 DLLs require the Visual Studio 2013 C++ run-time library to be installed. The latest version I could find as of writing is vcredist_x86.exe version 12.0.40649.5 from the Update for Visual C++ 2013 and Visual C++ Redistributable Package at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3138367 (download selection) or http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/C/2/CC2DF5F8-4454-44B4-802D-5EA68D086676/vcredist_x86.exe (direct download).

I need to update If a program you wrote can’t start becuase MSVCR*.dll is missing, then you forgot to ship the Visual C++ runtime… from 2012 on this as well as there are more versions available now than listed there.

Another error I got was the one below when running .NET stuff, but that might be because Windows Update was in progress:

--------------------------- SourceTree.exe - System Error --------------------------- The program can't start because D3DCOMPILER_47.dll is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem. --------------------------- OK ---------------------------

Later: yes, that was indeed fixed during Windows update. Apparently, Microsoft has an update installation order issue or a dependency requirement issue where part of .NET depends on that DLL, even though it is not yet present.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, Delphi, Development, Power User, Software Development, Windows, Windows 7 | Leave a Comment »

Windows 10 auto-logout on <5 minutes of inactivity – Super User

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/26

This seems to work on other Windows versions as well: [WayBack] Windows 10 auto-logout on <5 minutes of inactivity – Super User

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a Comment »

Searching for Windows shutdown messages in the event log

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/21

Searching for shutdown isn’t enough as frequent WAS messages also contain that search string.

Searching for shutdown of will work as they match both these:

The process C:\Windows\system32\shutdown.exe (COMPUTERNAME) has initiated the shutdown of computer COMPUTERNAME on behalf of user COUNTERS\Administrator for the following reason: No title for this reason could be found Reason Code: 0x800000ff Shutdown Type: shutdown Comment:

and

The reason supplied by user DOMAIN\Username for the last unexpected shutdown of this computer is: Other (Unplanned) Reason Code: 0xa000000 Problem ID: ###### Bugcheck String: Comment: VM host failure

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows Server 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Cleaning up a huge “Console.log” file on SBS 2008

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/19

You might think the Console.log belongs Console.exe. That’s right, but that’s a different thing than the Windows Command prompt that many people call console, but is in fact C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe on a default Windows installation.

C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs>dir console.log

It belongs to the SBS 2008 console which you can access using the https://sbs2008serverIP/remote (for more details, read [WayBack] Accessing Windows SBS Console) and is served by:

C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Bin\console.exe

It is started when any user logs on (which is sort of odd) and never log-rotates the log file but keeps the log file locked when the process executes.

So the only way to get rid of a really big console.log file is this:

Terminate console.exe in the Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc)
Move away the old C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs>dir console.log file
Start console.exe in the Task Scheduler or logoff/logon

Cleaning up a huge “DataServiceComponents.log” file on SBS 2008

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/19

When cleaning out an old SBS 2008 Servers, I saw a huge “DataServiceComponents.log” file. [WayBack] SBS 2008 disk space and the DataServiceComponents.log file – Oxford SBS Guy indicated how to clean it up and pointed to [WayBack] Recovering Disk Space on the C: Drive in Small Business Server 2008 | The Windows Server Essentials and Small Business Server Blog.

Both posts have the problem that many backslashes missing in the the various paths.

So this is how I cleaned the DataServiceComponents.log file using an UAC command prompt:

C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Logs\MonitoringServiceLogs net stop DataCollectorSvc "C:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -t7z -m0=lzma2 -mx=9 -aoa -mfb=64 -md=32m -ms=on -sdel DataServiceComponents-backup.7z DataServiceComponents.lognet start DataCollectorSvc

Note that DataCollectorSvc is the shorthand for the Windows SBS Manager service.

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows Server 2008 | Leave a Comment »

Changing the network from public -> private in Windows 10 is way to convoluted (works for 8.1, 8 and 7 too)

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/05

I often wonder why do they make changing the network location more difficult in each Windows version.

Anyway: for Windows 10, the secpol.msc way still works even though by default you now need to use a command prompt or the Windows-R key-combo to start it as typing it in the “Ask me Anything” search often gets you to bing (the search is too slow to figure out it is available locally even if you’re running a machine with SSD).

So from [WayBack] Top 10: Windows Firewall Netsh Commands (via: Windows Server content from Windows IT Pro), this still works in Windows 10:

a secpol.msc way that is easy:

Press Win+R, then type secpol.msc

Click on “Network List Manager Policies”

Double-click on your network

Optionally give your network another name

Click on “Tab Network Location”

Set “Location Type” to “Private”

Go back to Network and Sharing Center to check the result.

In Windows 10 there are half a dozen other ways: [WayBack] Network Location – Set to Private or Public in Windows 10 – Windows 10 Tutorials

Option One: To Change a Network Location in Settings app

Option Two: To Change a Network Location in Registry Editor

Option Three: To Change a Network Location Local Security Policy

Option Four: To Change a Network Location in PowerShell

Option Five: To Change Network Location of Current Network Connection in PowerShell

Option Six: To Change Network Location of Current Network Connection using a VBS file

I like this PowerShell script too via [WayBack] networking – How do I force Windows 10 to see a network as private? – Super User:

## Change NetWorkConnection Category to Private
#Requires -RunasAdministrator

Get-NetConnectionProfile |
  Where{ $_.NetWorkCategory -ne 'Private'} |
  ForEach {
    $_
    $_|Set-NetConnectionProfile -NetWorkCategory Private -Confirm
  }

–jeroen

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 | Leave a Comment »

Finding out when your domain password will expire :: Active Directory :: Admin Tips :: Windows 7 :: Windows Server 2012/2008/2003/2000/XP/NT Administrator Knowledge Base :: KBase Tips :: WindowsNetworking.com

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/02/02

Here’s how you can find out when your domain password will expire.

net user %USERNAME% /domain

It figures this out for the current logon domain (so it doesn’t work cross-domain) but it is a great help, especially when filtering out just the password information:

net user %USERNAME% /domain | findstr "Password"

This can be done in a more complex way with dsquery or adinfo that are tools to query

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 9, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Proxmox with Windows VMs and backups: why you want qemu-agent and how to install it

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/01/26

When running Windows VMs on Proxmox and you want to make snapshot backups you really want to run the qemu-agent inside the Windows VMs.

First of all you really want snapshot mode backups as of all backup modes they have the least downtime. By default they have a small inconsistency risk, but on Windows that can be alleviated by running qemu-agent as described in [WayBack] Backup and Restore – Proxmox VE: Backup Modes

More on `snapshot` backup mode

Backup modes for VMs:

snapshot mode

This mode provides the lowest operation downtime, at the cost of a small inconstancy risk. It works by performing a Proxmox VE live backup, in which data blocks are copied while the VM is running. If the guest agent is enabled (agent: 1) and running, it calls guest-fsfreeze-freeze and guest-fsfreeze-thaw to improve consistency.

A technical overview of the Proxmox VE live backup for QemuServer can be found online here (https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-qemu-kvm.git;a=blob;f=backup.txt -> https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-qemu-kvm.git;a=blob;f=vma_spec.txt;).

Proxmox VE live backup provides snapshot-like semantics on any storage type. It does not require that the underlying storage supports snapshots.

On Windows the trick is that qemu-agent can use VSS to get a frozen state of the filesystem as described in [WayBack] Qemu-guest-agent – Proxmox VE:

In Proxmox VE, the qemu-guest-agent is used for mainly two things:

To properly shutdown the guest, instead of relying on ACPI commands or windows policies

To freeze the guest file system when making a backup (on windows, use the volume shadow copy service VSS).

So: installing qemu-agent.

Start with the VM options

Don’t make the mistake to start at [WayBack] Qemu-guest-agent – Proxmox VE: Installation; guest; Windows as it will give you a hard time. Always use the full [WayBack] Qemu-guest-agent Installation steps beginning at the[WayBack] Host; these steps worked for me:

Download a recent set of [WayBack] Windows VirtIO Drivers – Proxmox VE
- I used the [WayBack] Index of /groups/virt/virtio-win/direct-downloads/archive-virtio/virtio-win-0.1.126-2 via [WayBack] Windows Virtio Drivers – FedoraProject: Direct download
Ensure the ISO image is in /var/lib/vz/template/iso on the Proxmox host so they show up as local:iso for mounting.
Shutdown the Windows VM
[WayBack] Qemu-guest-agent – Proxmox VE: Host; enable guest for VM: on the “Options” page for a VM, ensure the “Qemu Agent” setting is set to “yes”
- This will add a PCI serial device to your computer that Windows – after a fresh boot – sees as “PCI Simple Communications Controller”
Mount the ISO image to a CD/DVD drive
Boot the Windows VM
Start Device Manager (devmgmt.msc)
In the Device Manager, observe a new device “PCI Simple Communications Controller” that doesn’t have drivers installed yet
Right click the”PCI Simple Communications Controller” device and select “Update Driver Software…”
Indicate you want to browser for the files (as opposed of Windows finding them on-line: they’re not on-line):
On the CD/DVD drive letter you mounted the ISO image to, select D:\vioserial\[OS-Version]\ where OS-Version is your Windows Version and ensure “Include subfolder” has a checkmark so it will find the Win32 or Win64 drivers depending on your processor architecture.
- I used D:\vioserial\w7
Finish the driver installation
Observe it now has a driver installed
From D:\guest-agent install either qemu-ga-x64.msi for Win64 or qemu-ga-x86.msi for Win32.
During installation, confirm the UAC prompt for sofware by Red Hat, Inc.:
Start the Service Manager (services.msc) and execute from any command promt the following statments to verify the check if these services are running:
Now reboot the VM, logon and start the Service Manager again; now it should look like this

Note you can obtain the same information from the console by executing these commands.

sc queryex "QEMU-GA"
sc queryex "QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider"

Before the reboot, they should show output like this:

C:\Windows\system32>sc queryex "QEMU-GA"

SERVICE_NAME: QEMU-GA
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0
        PID                : 4444
        FLAGS              :

C:\Windows\system32>sc queryex "QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider"

SERVICE_NAME: QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 1  STOPPED
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0
        PID                : 0
        FLAGS              :

After reboot it should have become this:

C:\Windows\system32>sc queryex "QEMU-GA"

SERVICE_NAME: QEMU-GA
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, ACCEPTS_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0
        PID                : 1680
        FLAGS              :

C:\Windows\system32>sc queryex "QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider"

SERVICE_NAME: QEMU Guest Agent VSS Provider
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0
        PID                : 1624
        FLAGS              :

Verification

Verifying the qemu-agent is reachable from the Proxmox host:

Note the VM ID of the VM as #
Reboot the VM (for instance by typing this on the command prompt: shutdown -r -t 0)
- I’m not sure this step is needed under all circumstances; if the below steps don’t work then you definitely need it.
Verify the Proxmox host can communicate with the qemu-agent on the VM:
On the Proxmox host, start a terminal session, then type these commands where # is the ID of the VM (I’ve used 112 as an example here):

# socat /var/run/qemu-server/112.qga - {"execute":"guest-sync", "arguments":{"id":1234}}

It should get you this result:

{"return": 1234}

Note there’s all sorts of nice stuff you can do with socat /var/run/qemu-server so maybe I’ll put more about it in a future blog post.

–jeroen

Some more links with background information:

Easiest is to download the ISO image to /var/lib/vz/template/iso on the Proxmox host so they show up as local:iso for mounting.

Posted in Power User, Proxmox, Virtualization, Windows | Leave a Comment »

How can I reset a PC if I forgot the administrator password? – The Old New Thing

Posted by jpluimers on 2018/01/22

What I reboot three times is true.

[WayBack] How can I reset a PC if I forgot the administrator password? – The Old New Thing:

There is an emergency reset button that you can activate like this:

Turn off the computer.

Turn on the computer, but while it is booting, turn off the power.

Turn on the computer, but while it is booting, turn off the power.

Turn on the computer, but while it is booting, turn off the power.

Turn on the computer and wait.

After three failed reboot attempts, Windows goes into recovery mode and one of the options there is to reset the computer. One of the reasons for that option is to address this specific problem of finding an old machine that you forgot the password to, and you want to just reset the PC and start over clean.

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Power User, Software Development, The Old New Thing, Windows, Windows Development | Leave a Comment »

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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

What is Swapfile.sys and How Do You Delete It?

libssh-delphi will migrate from Mercurial on BitBucket to git on GitHub soon (or finding about “fatal: repository … not found”, “MSVCR120.dll is missing” and “D3DCOMPILER_47.dll is missing” when prepping a fresh VM for a presentation)

Windows 10 auto-logout on <5 minutes of inactivity – Super User

Searching for Windows shutdown messages in the event log

Cleaning up a huge “Console.log” file on SBS 2008

Cleaning up a huge “DataServiceComponents.log” file on SBS 2008

Changing the network from public -> private in Windows 10 is way to convoluted (works for 8.1, 8 and 7 too)

Finding out when your domain password will expire :: Active Directory :: Admin Tips :: Windows 7 :: Windows Server 2012/2008/2003/2000/XP/NT Administrator Knowledge Base :: KBase Tips :: WindowsNetworking.com

Proxmox with Windows VMs and backups: why you want qemu-agent and how to install it

More on `snapshot` backup mode

So: installing qemu-agent.

Verification

How can I reset a PC if I forgot the administrator password? – The Old New Thing

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

Subscribe

Archives

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Blog Stats

Meta title

Tag Cloud Title

Top Clicks

Top Posts

My badges

My Flickr Stream

Pages

All categories

Email Subscription

Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

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More on snapshot backup mode

So: installing qemu-agent.

Verification

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More on `snapshot` backup mode