Sometimes a system just goes offline or reboots and we cannot catch it in the debugger or it is not a stop error (bugcheck) so that machine just reboots from underneath you. One technique you can use is to set a breakpoint on nt!NtSetSystemPowerState. This function is the last thing called during ANY type of reboot….
Hey Admins! Windows System State Analyzer (Beta)
Windows System state analyzer toolHelps create snapshots of the computer—some of which include fixed drives, services, drivers and the registry. Users can create two snapshots at different points in time and compare them to view differences. A detailed report could be generated at the end of a compare operation. Microsoft is starting to release…
Domain not available when trying to TS onto a Windows 2003 server.
Issue came in this week where when you attempted to logon to a server it would not authenticate your request and would give you a message indicating the “domain is not available”. If you tried logging on via your UPN, then it would give a slightly different error message indicating that “there is not enough storage to…
Discrepancy in volume size when you extend a volume with DISKPART
Had an issue come in today where the customer requested that one of their drives on SAN storage be expanded. They carved out the necessary disk space and expanded the LUN which was verified showing 430GB total on the array. Rescanned in Disk Management and showed the Unallocated Space. They then used diskpart to expand…
The case of Windows Defender not starting.
Had a client whose machine would not load Windows Defender, each time it was opened it would eventually die on initialization: Log Name: ApplicationSource: Application ErrorDate: 8/13/2007 4:03:10 PMEvent ID: 1000Task Category: (100)Level: ErrorKeywords: ClassicUser: N/AComputer: server1 Description:Faulting application MSASCui.exe, version 1.1.1505.0, time stamp 0x45ad8d6e, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 6.0.6000.16386, time stamp 0x4549d372, exception code…
How to know if TCP offload is working
So you went out and got yourself a new server and it came with TOE functionality, and now you’re playing Windows 2008 which has TCP offload enabled but you just want to know if its actually offloading traffic. Here’s the only way I know of finding what traffic is offloaded without setting breakpoints in the debugger. First off…
Debugging a virtual machine with VMRCPlus
This is how it should look, at least this is what’s working for me. Loving VMRC BTW. I’m kind of doc’ing this for myself as more and more virtual machines are coming online and we’re asked to debug them and I never can remember the syntax. On the Virtual machine set it up for debug:…
Vista: Two hotfixes now released to improve performance, compatibility, and reliability.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194 This update resolves some compatibility issues and reliability issues in Windows Vista. By applying this update, you can achieve better reliability and hardware compatibility in various scenarios.This update resolves the following issues: •The screen may go blank when you try to upgrade the video driver. For more information, click the following article number…
Vista and 2k8: Enabling Debug mode on boot up.
Pre-Vista it could be an issue if you didn’t have debugging turned on via the boot.ini file and your system stopped booting. Well in Vista and 2k8 you can enable “Debugging mode” on boot by hitting F8 after POST. You can also turn off driver signing verification on x64 systems, so if you REALLY wanted…
XBOX 360 price drop
Technorati tags: XBOX If you haven’t got an XBOX 360 yet maybe now you’ll reconsider, or have new ammo for the battle with your significant other. It looks like Microsoft just announced a significant price drop. Price changes which are up to $50 start on August 8th. Enjoy.