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An insight into hard disk corruption in Windows and the need for Windows Data Recovery

oliverpowell — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:14:08 +0000

Data recovery is the most important step and possibly the last resort to circumvent any case of data loss or corruption. Data loss is frequently encountered in Windows because of physical damage to the storage media, data corruption, and other similar reasons. If you run into a problem of OS failure, it is very likely to make y

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our system unbootable. Additionally, if you receive a disk-level failure error, you need to check your file system for consistency. File system corruption may lead to some serious outcomes, including data loss. To overcome this problem, you need to go for Windows data recovery through a reliable third-party utility.

For instance, you may notice that some files on your hard disk have changed their locations or contain invalid data. When you try to open a file, you may receive the following error on your screen:

“: is not accessible
The file or directory is corrupt and non-readable.The file or directory is corrupt and non-readable. The file or directory is corrupt and unreadable.
Please Run the Chkdsk utility.”

Causes:

The above error is caused because there is some corruption in your file system. This may happen due to a hardware failure, abnormal system shutdown, or instant power surge.

This would prevent you from accessing the valuable data stored on the disk. In such circumstances, you may use a backup to restore all lost or inaccessible data. However, if the backup is unavailable, you should follow the below mentioned resolution steps.

Resolution:

You need to follow the below steps to resolve the problem-

Create an identical image of your hard disk on another storage media, such as external hard disk using a third-party tool.
Run CHKDSK and SCNDSK to locate and fix file system corruption.

If the problem still persists, take help of efficient Windows recovery software to safely restore all the valuable and significant data. These third-party tools are embedded with a multitude of advanced mechanisms to effectively recover all lost, deleted, or inaccessible data from any Windows-based system. They support different file types for recovery and are compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, 2000, and NT4 (SP6).

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windows 2003 task scheduler error

jayb — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:22:29 +0000

We had a windows 2003 server that was getting an error running scheduled tasks. When you tried to view the properties of that task you would get the follow error:

The attempt to retrieve account information for the specified task failed; therefore, the task did not run. Either an error occurred, or no account information existed for the task.
The specific error is:
0×80090016: Keyset does not exist

Searching Microsoft’s site, they had a fix but required you to boot into safe mode. This was a production server I did not want to take down.

Image by WinAutomation via Flickr

But I found a way to fix it without needing to enter safe mode.

Try this:

Stop the Task Scheduler Service

Delete the files from C:Documents and Settings-All Users-Application Data-Microsoft-Crypto-RSA-S-1-5-18

Start the Task Schedule Service

Go into each task and re-enter the password for the user account under which the task runs.

Give each task a test run.

That should do it for you. A much better process than booting into safe mode and you don’t even have to reboot the computer.

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How To Completely Uninstall Software From Your Computer

burnworld — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:30:14 +0000

To maintain a healthy and high performance PC, it is essential for computer users to keep it free from information they do not need. One of the important tasks in the process is to keep the system free from unwanted stuff by uninstalling programs you no longer need.

The Add or Remove Programs utility that comes with the Windows operating system is the most common method that users use to uninstall software. You can launch this utility from the Control Panel. After the Add or Remove Program window opens, select the software you want to uninstall and then remove it. For example, to remove Yahoo toolbar that is added on to your Internet Explorer, select its uninstall option in the Add or Remove Programs window and then select Remove.

Although popular, the Add or Remove Program utility often fails to completely uninstall software from your computer. Orphaned folders, files and registry entries are left behind that unnecessarily take up space on your PC and cause problems.

To counter this problem, there are a few other methods that users may use to ensure complete software removal. One of the popular methods is to use program-specific removal tools. These tools are usually available on the Web site of the software manufacturer. So, if you are facing problems, you may check the Web site of the software you are trying to remove, and if available you may download and use its uninstall tool to perform complete removal.

If a program-specific tool is not available, you may opt to download a reliable third-party program removal tool to completely get rid of programs you do not require. These tools are designed to thoroughly scan your files, folders, and registry entries for any information related to the program you are trying to remove and help you get rid of them. One of the main advantages of these uninstallers is that you may use them to uninstall even when the uninstall information of the program you are trying to remove is corrupt or missing—this is practically impossible by using Add or Remove Programs.

There are some programs, such as the Mirar Internet Explorer toolbar that often install on your computer without your knowledge. These programs, are known as spyware programs and they usually come packaged with freeware and shareware software you may download from the Internet. To uninstall Mirar and other similar spyware programs, you need to use an efficient antispyware tool. Before scanning, ensure that you update the tool with the latest definitions, and then run a thorough system scan to detect and uninstall these unwanted, malicious and troublesome programs.

Frequent install and uninstall of software affects the Windows registry the most because loads of information is added, modified, and deleted during this process. Quite often, the registry fills up with orphaned entries that cause it to bloat up, become unstable, generate errors, and slow down your computer. To get rid of these problems, you may use a good registry cleaner tool to perform a thorough registry scan and clean up. This helps in maintaining an error-free and compact registry that not only prevents several computer errors, but also enhances your computing experience.

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How To Have Fun With Windows 7

My blog Guest — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:50:09 +0000

Windows 7 is supposed to be the best Windows operating system yet. It has simplified everyday tasks, works the way its users want it to, for example by allowing easy management of systems, and enables users to do new things such as sharing and streaming music and videos.

Why Choose Windows 7?

Windows 7 provides a better desktop allowing you to move around even quicker. It offers snapshots and jump lists, for example.
Windows 7 offers a smarter search than older Windows versions. Your search results will be grouped by category, which is very useful.
Windows 7 offers easy sharing through HomeGroup. This means that any computers that are attached to your home network can easily share files.
Windows 7 is built for speed through its key performance improvements
Windows 7 offers better wireless networking
Windows 7 can operate on touch screen technology
Windows 7 works well with other devices
Windows 7 should offer you a fantastic opportunity to watch, listen and stream
Windows 7 also unleashed the power of Internet Explorer 9
Windows 7 offers “nag free” notifications – it is possible for you to switch notifications on and off

Further Improving Windows 7

There are some great Windows 7 tricks available to make performance even better. For example, you can use hidden international wallpapers and themes through the globalization network within Windows 7.

A fantastic trick, and probably one of the best Windows 7 gadgets is the shake feature. Basically, if you click and hold the title bar of the window you want to keep open and shake it about, all other windows will be minimized. If you shake the title bar again, they will reappear.

The new calculator in Windows 7 is also packed with useful new features and functionality. For example, the statistics and programmer views.

One really fun trick is an additional way of closing Windows Explorer. Tech people will know that you can restart the Start Menu by opening up the task manager and ending the explorer.exe process. However, you can now also hold down the ctrl and shift key, open the start menu (whilst holding the keys) and clicking anywhere on the blank space you will then see. A new menu will appear that includes Exit Explorer. Clicking on this will terminate your explorer. To restart it, press ctrl, shift and esc, then choose file, run and type explorer.exe.

Windows 7 was made for users by users and is visually attractive and user friendly both for those who are really tech savvy and those who, simply put, are not so technically minded. A vast improvement on previous releases of Windows, it has received mainly positive reviews and very few reports of annoying problems. In effect, it allows you to customize your Windows experience in such a way that completely suits your needs, whilst also enabling you to have a great home network where you can share music, videos and any other files with other computers in your home network. Have fun with Windows 7!

Ajeet Khurana writes about many dimensions of technology. Read some of his tech writing at any of his tech blogs: TechFume.com, TechnoTropis.com, and TechnoZeast.com.

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Exchange 2010 offline folder issue

jayb — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:11:01 +0000

I’ve been working though the last week with our transition from exchange 2003 to 2010.

I hope to write up more of my findings soon, but I wanted to share this one as its happening.

I haven’t been able to get the offline addressbook to download for the users that have been moved.

Outlook 2010 uses IIS not public folders to download the OAB.

I found when I ran the powershell command

Update-GlobalAddressList -Identity "default global address list"

it throws a bunch of yellow warnings, mostly for public folders.

this leads me to think I have some public folder replication issues.

I’ll update more as I dig into this.

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Allowing non-admins to RDP into a Windows 2000 server

jayb — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 15:35:33 +0000

First off yes, we still have windows 2000 servers around. I have about 7 left, they are running old legacy applications that are no longer supported (Jet forms anyone?). Gotta love those type of applications

We started last year, but this year we are really working on limiting IT’s roles and responsibilities which means not everyone is a domain admin and not everyone gets to be admin on the servers. We’ve been defining what role needs what access. Most of the time just giving them RDP access to the server is enough. In 2003 and 2008 there is a group for RDP access, but not in 2000. If you just enable the admin mode on a 2000 server it allows you 2 remote connections, but only for members of the admin group.

But I found a MS KB that explains how to allow anyone to RDP into a 2000 server, with the limit of two concurrent connections.

Here are the steps from the KB

You can give additional groups and users logon permissions. The members of the Server Operators group, for example, would then be able to log on and manage the Terminal Services-based server without having to be a member of the Administrators group. To add additional groups or users:

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Terminal Services Configuration.

in the tree in the left pane, click Connections.

Click the RDP-TCP connection in the right pane, and then click Properties on the Action menu.

Click the Permissions tab.
NOTE: Only Administrator and System accounts appear.

Click Add. Search for the groups or users that are appropriate for your Terminal Services management (such as the Server Operators group). Click Add to place them in the bottom pane. Click OK.
NOTE: The Server Operators group appears in the RDP-TCP properties; the permissions in the bottom pane are not enough to manage the server because only Guest Access is selected by default.

Click to select the User Access check box for basic tasks or both the User Access and Full Control check boxes to fully manage the server, and then click Apply.

Click OK.

Test by logging on the accounts in the Server Operators group.

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How to remove a webpart from a broken page on SharePoint 2010

jayb — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 18:15:10 +0000

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We started giving other IT personnel SharePoint site collections for them to play with. They only had the Web UI to edit,tweak, and test their SharePoint sites. One person was able to “break” their site the first day they got it. After talking to them I found out they had added a webpart for SQL reporting services, which had not been configured on the SharePoint farm. But he was able to add the webpart and it broke the page called home. I was able to access the “All Pages” page and found the home page. I was going to delete it but found the option to edit properties of the page.

When you click on the edit properties you get the box below. Its the link called “Open web part page in maintenance view” that let me fix my issue.

When the page opened in maintenance mode, I was able to delete the webpart causing the error.

This concerns me, when rolling out SharePoint to more power users. If something as simple as adding a webpart can cause the page to error and not load, with only a cryptic error code. Its not very user friendly for the end user. We haven’t even started to get into SharePoint designer or visual studio for power users or designers. We also haven’t gotten into external data sources which I can only guess what type of fun we can get into with those.

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Free tool to patch your servers

jayb — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:04:00 +0000

Remote reboot X is an awesome piece of software, better yet its free!!

Doug has done a great job with the software it uses pexec to remotely connect to the servers and run the commands to pull down the patches, install, then reboot the server.

One thing to watch for if you’ve never used psexec before run it from the command line once before you use Remote reboot x because psexec requires you to accept a EULA first.

Some of the additional features of RRx include

Viewing the patch installation log on each server, its saved to C:\RRx but can be viewed from the RRx GUI

You can pull the last reboot time on the server to make sure the patching process with reboot completed correctly.

Connect as another server, you have the ability to connect to the servers as a different user context than which the RRx program is running (if you do this the username and password are sent in clear text across the network)

The only issue I have with RRx right now is you have to add your list of servers into a text box, you can’t import from a file. I know Doug is working on this issue, but this is a side project for him so its only in his spare time.

Give the program a try and see how much time it saves you. It works with WSUS or from the Windows update site. It will download the patches from where every the server is configure to pull from.

Remote Reboot X
*The Ultimate WSUS Companion Tool*

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Moving DHCP from windows 2003 to windows 2008

jayb — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:16:50 +0000

I’m getting ready this weekend to replace one of my windows 2003 domain controllers. This DC is a DNS,DHCP, and WINS server.

Moving DHCP from windows 2000 to 2003 was a royal pain if both machines where already DC’s

Microsoft has much improved this process for 2003 to 2008

Here’s the steps to follow from a MS KB Article

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Export the DHCP database from Windows 2003:
1.                   On the Windows 2003 DHCP server, navigate to a command prompt
2.                   Type the following Command: netsh
3.                   Type the following Command: DHCP
4.                   Type the following Command: server <\\Name or IP Address>
5.                   Type the following Command: export c:\w2k3DHCPdb all
Note You must have local administrator permissions to export the data.
Import the DHCP database
1.       Copy the exported DHCP database file to the local hard disk of the Windows Server 2008-based computer.
2.       Install the DHCP Role on the server.
3.       Stop the DHCP server service on the server. To do this, follow these steps:
a.       Log on to the target DHCP server by using an account that is a member of the local Administrators group.
b.      Click Start, click Run, type cmd in the Open box, and then click OK.
c.       At the command prompt, type net stop DHCPserver , and then press ENTER. You receive a “The Microsoft DHCP Server service is stopping. The Microsoft DHCP Server service was stopped successfully” message.
d.      Type exit, and then press ENTER.
4.       Delete the DHCP.mdb file under c:\windows\system32\DHCP folder.
5.       Start the DHCP server service.
6.       Right-click on the Command Prompt (cmd) and select run as administrator, to open the cmd prompt using elevated privileges.
Note You must have local administrator permissions to import the data.
7.       Type the following Command: netsh
8.       Type the following Command: DHCP
9.       Type the following Command: server <\\Name or IP Address>
10.   Type the following Command: import c:\w2k3DHCPdb
11.   Restart DHCP and verify the database has moved over properly.

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Causes and Tips to Resolve the STOP Error When Booting Windows XP

tompatrick — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 13:28:28 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

When your Windows XP does not start, then there could be various hardware or software related problems behind it. Some problems can be sorted out using some or the other workaround while some of these problems are so rigid that these can only be corrected by reinstalling the operating system. However, in such cases there is always the risk of losing your data. In such desperate circumstances, I would advise you to use a professional data recovery software to safely recover all the valuable data.

Let’s consider a situation wherein you are not able to start your Windows XP system. The following STOP error is displayed in the process:

“STOP 0x0000000A (0xBFD14AAC, 0x000000FF, 0×00000000, 0x8000F67C)

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

***Address 8000f67c has base at 80001000 – hal.dll”

Cause:

This kind of error message appears when any one or all of the following conditions is true:

· The system tried to touch the pageable memory at a reasonably high process internal request level.

· A hardware driver is using an incorrect memory address.

· A device drive is incompatible with the operating system.

· There is a general hardware error that is causing the issue.

· There is an incompatible software that is having conflicts with Windows XP.

Resolution:

In such situations, you should perform the following methods to fix the problem:

· Troubleshoot third-party driver problems: If there is any problem with the third-party drivers, then you should perform the following methods:

◦ Analyze third-party software that are recently added: If a third-party software is causing this problem, then try to remove or disable it.

◦ Analyze third-party hardware that are recently added: If you have added a new hardware that is causing the problem, remove it and see if it solves the problem.

· Restore Windows: You should try to bring Windows to a former state using the following methods:

◦ Use the ‘Last Known Good Configuration’ feature: This feature brings the system to the state when it started successfully.

◦ Repair the Windows XP installation: If the previous method does not work, then try to perform a parallel Windows XP installation.

◦ Use the ‘Rollback Driver’ feature: Try to start the system in Safe Mode. Then, see if you can replace the existing driver to the previous one that worked.

◦ Use the Windows XP ‘System Restore’ feature: Try the System Restore method, if you are able to start the system using Safe Mode.

If the system does not start even after doing these methods, then the situation calls for a third-party data recovery software to recover data. These data recovery tools possess rich user interface that makes it easy for the user to easily understand its features.

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