Archive for the ‘2012’ Category

Telephone activation is no longer supported

Thursday, April 27th, 2017

I have a secured cluster where there is no Net access. The users had licenses for Office 2013 and wanted to use them inside the cluster.

Office likes to activate itself.  It tried and gave an error.  I restarted Word and it gave the options for Internet and telephone activation.  I selected telephone and I selected my location and was rewarded with:

Telephone activation is no longer supported for your product

Oooooookay.  No Net and no telephone…….

Luckily this is just a “feature.”

I went through the telephone process and activated the installation.  The only problem now are templates which appear to be downloaded from the Net.  But, I will take care of that if they complain.

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Posted in 2012, troubleshooting | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Use a KMS outside of the domain

Tuesday, May 10th, 2016

I had an issue where we needed a small domain to register it’s Windows 2012 virtual machines to the main KMS of the company.

The problem was the small domain had it’s own IP range and it’s own DNS. I attempted to activate the virtual machines and received a message reporting the KMS was not resolvable in DNS.

Since this was a tiny domain and the DNS would not be managed, I needed another way to activate the virtual machines.

Looking at the options of the slmgr script, I found what I needed.

slmgr.vbs /skms <ip address>:<port number>

This tells the system where to look for the KMS and what port to use.

After the “OK” message, I simply attempted activation via:

slmgr.vbs /ato

The virtual machines activated.

 

 

Posted in 2012, Windows | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Command line to start task scheduler?

Wednesday, December 9th, 2015

I was cleaning task scheduler jobs and found a 2012 server which would not display the task scheduler or scheduled tasks. As I was on a time table and could not review this system; I needed the command line.

To start the GUI for the task scheduler; simple enter:

taskschd.msc

Posted in 2012, commands, Windows | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Missing license server for windows 2012 Remote Desktop Services

Wednesday, August 6th, 2014

Windows Server 2012 can be a little disconcerting due to the new look and layout.

Such was the case for a request of a 2012 server with Remote Desktop Services enabled. I installed the OS and added it to AD. I installed the requested applications and then I went through the wizard and installed the “Remote Desktop Session Host.”

I didn’t need the license server installed as I have a couple already in place.

When it came time to configure verify the setup; I went to Administrative Tools and looked at Remote Desktop Services and only found “RD Licensing Diagnoser”

Ok? Where do I configure the license servers?  Oh wait! the Dashboard.  I looked under that and found the same thing.

I reinstalled the role and found nothing changed.

I did get the warning about licenses and so I ran the diagnoser to see what was wrong.  Two license servers were found but the problem was the missing license server had the licenses for 2012.

Time became an issue and I literally had the user panicking to use the server so I needed a quick resolution as this system was a short term “crash and burn” setup.

I decided to add the missing entry via the registry and reboot.

The license server list can be found here:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services

The entry you need to modify is : LicenseServers

I added the missing license server to the list and rebooted.

The warning message about licenses went away and I verified multiple users could access the server.

Time to crack open the 2012 books and papers!

 

Posted in 2012, Remote Desktop, Terminal Server | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

An extended error has occurred

Thursday, July 10th, 2014

New operating systems always bring new error messages. Such was a recent incident for a Windows 2012 server trying to access a share on a Network Appliance Filer:

An extended error has occurred

A quick test of my Windows 8.1 laptop produced the same error.

We have been playing around with SMBv3 on the Netapp filers and this was thought to have been an issue as the new OS is more SMBv3 “friendly.”

The filer people said they configured the filer to use smbv2 but the error continued.

Originally, I wrote about this a year ago with this post but you can review the support article.

I suspected either signed support was not configured or can’t be used so I opted to disable it via Powershell and the command(start it in admin mode):

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters" RequireSecureNegotiate -Value 0 -Force

A reboot of the server (just because) and we had access to the share.

For those that want to get some features information on SMBv3 and 2012, you can look at this article.

Posted in 2012, PowerShell | Leave a comment

Windows Certification time

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

I dragged my feet for years on renewing MCSE. I wondered if it was really worth it? I have several training books and certification books which for all purposes are taking shelf space and gather dust.

I did ask around and found there are two basic arguments.

1) The main argument for getting MCSE for windows 2003 is HR and resume filtering. HR departments tend to be behind or simply don’t understand the IT field. Therefore, they look for catch phrases such as MSCE. It is also the last instance of Microsoft Certified Server Engineer.

The HR resume filtering argument is something to consider if you are starting your career.

If you like having the engineer label and it’s good for you to have a constant line of OS certs on your resume then by all means, get it.  Especially, if you are not worried about the cost and can pass it pretty quickly.

I am told however, the 2003 tests will retire this July.

2) The main argument against is the simple fact it’s old.  People are converting to 2008 so why bother?

A very valid consideration.  Especially, if you see your 2003 installs disappearing.  I learned long ago there is little value for being a master of a dead or dying Operating system.

Get an idea for how much 2003 is being used. Microsoft will keep the tests and certification around if the base is large. They tend to start retiring the tests and certifications about 10 or so years after the certification is introduced.

I am not concerned about 2003 anymore. I passed on obtaining the windows 2000 MSCE and found people weren’t bothered.  Probably, because I had converted a company from NT domains to Active Directory.

I have decided to “trail blaze” and go after the new certs for 2012.  Training material is limited and at this point in time. I have only found items for installing server 2012.

Some useful pages:

2008 or 2012

MCITP

Retired

 

 

 

Posted in 2003, 2012, Certification, Windows | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Add a new product key to Windows 8 or Server 2012

Friday, March 15th, 2013

I had a request to add a purchased product key to a server running a trial version of server 2012.  We are still learning the new layout so of course the question was how?

A quick check found we could change it via a GUI.  There is the command line; but, I wanted to use the GUI.

To change the license simply enter:

slui 3

This will bring up the following window:

activation

Simply cut and paste the new license, click Activate and the change will happen.

Posted in 2012, Windows | Tagged , | Leave a comment

System error 2148073478 has occurred.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

As we start to play with Windows 8 in our environment; we run into many new things. One such issue was trying to mount a network drive from a Netapp Filer.

We issued the command and received the following error:

System error 2148073478 has occurred.

A quick check at Microsoft showed this was due to Windows 8 and Server 2012 now using “secure negotiate” in their use of SMBv3. This requires servers using SMBv2 (which the filer in question uses) to use a signed response for all error messages which some filers don’t use and it causes the connection to fail.

The suggested resolution was to get the third party vendor to provide an update which in this case was not possible as it’s a “Release Candidate” at this time. This is not always the best thing to run in a production environment. Especially, for only a couple clients that are being used to test the new operating system versus having a genuine need.

The other option was to perform a registry edit via PowerShell to disable the “secure negotiate” on Windows 8.

I opened the PowerShell window and pasted:

Set-ItemProperty -Path “HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters” RequireSecureNegotiate -Value 0 -Force

But, it didn’t work.  I received this nice little message:

> Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Serv
ces\LanmanWorkstation\Parameters" RequireSecureNegotiate -Value 0 -Force
Set-ItemProperty : Requested registry access is not allowed.
At line:1 char:1
+ Set-ItemProperty -Path
"HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanWorkstatio ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~
    + CategoryInfo          : PermissionDenied: (HKEY_LOCAL_MACH...tion\Parame
   ters:String) [Set-ItemProperty], SecurityException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : System.Security.SecurityException,Microsoft.Powe
   rShell.Commands.SetItemPropertyCommand

One of the things to remember is Microsoft is trying to be more secure with such things. Being a local administrator isn’t what is used to be.

The way around this was to right-click the tile for powershell (I have the administrative tools displayed on the desktop).  This made a check appear on the tile and a menu appear at the bottom of the screen.  On that menu was the option to “run as administrator”

I clicked the option and was able to run the command.

After that; I was able to mount shares from the filer.

Posted in 2012, 8, PowerShell, Windows | Tagged , , | Leave a comment