Installing Client Hyper-V

Installing Client Hyper-V

Thought I’d write about my experience installing Client Hyper-V. I haven’t installed it so I’m writing this up as I go.

Windows 8 professional comes with a feature called client Hyper-V. This is the same version of Hyper-V which is found in Server 2012. This can come in handy for developers or IT professionals who need to test things out in a lab environment without having to set up a bunch of computers on a physical network.

First things first: you will have to enable the feature and let Windows download the necessary files. To do so, I am going to open the control panel by switching to desktop mode.

Once you have switched over to desktop mode, move your cursor until it is in the bottom left hand corner of the screen. When you see the preview of the start page appear, right click and you’ll see a context menu appear. Go ahead and select control panel.

In control panel, click on programs and features. When programs and features opens, look on the left side of the screen: you will see the “Turn Windows features on or off” option with the yellow and blue shield next to it. Click on it.

It will take a brief moment for the list of features to load. The fourth item from the top you will see Hyper-V. Put a check box in the box next to it.

After checking off that box, click OK. Windows will start searching for the files that need to be installed.

Once the files are found, Windows will install them and you will be greeted with another window explaining that you will need to restart your system in order to complete these changes. Go ahead and restart your computer. Once your system is started, you should see in the start screen two freshly new tiles: “Hyper-V Virtual Machine Connection” and “Hyper-V Manager.” That’s it. You are now free to install some virtual machines and create a virtual lab.

Microsoft notes on its TechNet page: If you are using a laptop and you are having trouble getting Hyper-V to work after the reboot, shut your computer down and remove the battery for a few seconds. After a few moments have passed, replace the battery and turn the laptop back on. If you are using a desktop, instead of rebooting your computer, try shutting down the system and then turning it on again.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh857623.aspx

Unlocking The System Administrator Account

Need to make a change to your system and can't remember the system administrator password?

Chances are you are reading this article because you want to make a change to your windows system and you are getting an error message stating that you do not have the necessary credentials to make this change. You’re probably going out of your mind trying to figure out why you are getting that error message since you know that you are using the administrator account. I found this issue to be less prevalent using Windows XP, but I have encountered it while supporting both Windows Vista and 7.

Why do we geeks call it the local administrator account? It is because a lot of us support computers that are on a company's internal network, meaning there are network accounts where a user can log on to multiple computers with one account and not have to worry about having an account created on each. A local account means that the account is on the computer itself and cannot be used on a different computer. In a lot of situations, the local administrator account has more control over a single system then a network administrator, or in your situation a normal administrator account. When one configures their Windows system for the first time and is prompted to create the primary user account, they have just enough administrative rights for your average end user. The local administrator account is locked by default to make it harder for the end user to make accidental changes to their computer that may cause catastrophic failures to their system. In this post, I'll be walking you through a method of recovering the local administrator password.

In order to unlock the local administrator account, all it takes is a simple command. Let’s go ahead and open up the command prompt.

Click on start
In the search box type cmd
In the results pain right click cmd and choose “run as administrator”
Click on “yes” in the box that appears (provide account credentials if required)

Now that the command prompt is up and running, in the command prompt box type "net user administrator/active yes".

Once the command has been performed correctly you will get a message saying, “The command completed successfully.”

Now that we have the Administrator account unlocked, we can create a password for it. To do this, follow the next few steps.

Click on start
Right click on Computer
Select manage
Select Local Users and Groups
Double click on Users
Right click on Administrator and choose set password

Once you set your administrator password, you can now access the administrator account. It is suggested that you only unlock this account when needed; if your computer is ever compromised and the hacker manages to access your system, it makes it easier for them to have full control over your computer. You can now log off of your account and perform whatever action you were trying to do that produced the irritating error message. When you are finished using your admin account, you can lock the admin account with the following command "net user administrator /active.no"

Just be sure to log back in to the original account you were using before you logged in as the administrator.

Once the command has been performed correctly, you will get a message saying, “The command completed successfully.”

And that’s that.

There was a problem sending the command to the program

When trying to open an Excel spread sheet by double clicking the desired file. Occasionally one may get the error message “There was a problem sending the command to the program”. But getting the error message doesn't mean you can’t view the document. You can still open excel with, then from within excel you can browse to the spread sheet you wish to open with out an issue. But that is probably too lengthy of a process for some, here is now to fix it.

For Office 2007:

Open MS Excel
Click Excel Options
Click on Advanced
Scroll to the "general" section other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)

For Office 2010:

Open MS Excel click on File
Click on Options
Click on Advanced
Scroll to the “general” section and uncheck Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)

The Dirty Bit

Does your computer go through a disk check every time it is turned on or rebooted?

Your system may be affected by the Dirty Bit. It is a common issue that people tend to bypass by striking a key at the beginning of the disk check. This lets them disregard the process and continue on booting their computer. But doing this merely sidesteps the issue; it does not fix it.

So now you may be asking yourself, what is the Dirty Bit? And how do I tell if my system is suffering from it? The Dirty Bit is caused when a bit on your hard drive has been modified and corrupted. Often, the modification process occurs when the user is performing a simple task such an editing a word document. The corrupted bit can cause your system to perform a disk check every time your computer is turned on or rebooted.

Here is how to fix the issue:
(Fix applies to windows XP, Windows Vista, & Windows 7)

1st: Open the command prompt

(XP)
click on the start menu, then run. In the run box, type “cmd”, you’ll want to make sure you are a member of the admin group on your system.

(Vista & Windows 7)
Click on the start menu and in the bar that says “search programs and files,” go ahead and type “cmd.” Up in the results area, right click on “cmd” and choose the run as administrator option. Then, click yes on the prompt that follows.

2nd: Now we are going to figure out what partition or disk contains the dirty bit. For those unfamiliar with the term: a partition is a section of your hard drive that may contain your data or the OS depending on how your computer was initially set up. A hard drive can be split into multiple different partitions which the computer designates as different letters (a user can change these). If you have a partitioned hard drive, the dirty bit can either be on your C: partition, your D: partition or whatever other letter it has been designated.

In order to locate the dirty bit, open the command prompt once again and type the command: “fsutil dirty query c:”

This command assumes you are checking your C: partition for the dirty bit. If you were to check your D: drive, you would replace the C: with D: or with whatever drive letter you have designated to that partition or disc.

If the partition is not dirty you will receive a message stating so. The message will look like this: “Volume – c: is NOT Dirty”

If the drive you are checking is dirty you will receive a message stating this: “Volume – c: is Dirty”

Now that we know which partition contains the dirty bit, we can fix it. Type in the following command: “chkntfs /f/r c:”

This command will tell your system to perform a disk check with the fix and repair flags once your system reboots. Now, go ahead and reboot your system. Once it has begun booting up, allow it to run the disk check. This will likely be a lengthy process but once the process is finished your system should be free of the dirty bit.