Archive for the ‘Windows XP’ Tag

BSOD goes away before I can read it

Thursday, December 3rd, 2015

A windows virtual machine goes bad and gives the terrible Blue Screen of Death. The problem is it goes away before you can read it.

What is interesting is the way many people can overlook a simple solution for getting this information. There are many articles about what to do to slow down the boot process, capturing error messages through many steps, etc., etc.

If it was a physical host, it makes sense.  However, with a virtual machine and using the host console (in this case VMware); there is a simple way.

Watch the system go through the reboot and attempt to load. When the BSOD appears, take a screen capture.

 

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Shutting down a workstation through remote desktop.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

Every once in awhile I come on a workstation which only has “Logoff” or “Disconnect” through remote desktop.

What to do when you want to reboot or shutdown?

There are a few ways to do this:

1) You can use the Alt+F4 keys to bring up a shutdown window which has the options for restart and shutdown.

2) You can use the Ctrl+Alt+End keys to bring up the old Ctrl+Alt+Del menu where you can select shutdown or restart

3) You can enter:  shutdown -s -t 10  to shutdown in 10 seconds or you can enter: shutdown -r -t 10 to restart in 10 seconds.

Keep in mind new operating systems will do things different such as the Ctrl+Alt+Del menu is different for windows 7.

One thing I find still works is the shutdown command.

Finally, I keep forgetting the Alt-F4 approach.  I was reminded of it here.

 

XP Support Countdown Clock

Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013

Found a little countdown clock provided by the people of Camwood in the UK.

End of life for Windows XP

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

People ask from time to time “When is Microsoft ending support for XP?”

They did announce end of life and then extended it.

Current date is 4/18/14.

People tend to be slow to migrate off and if there are enough people still using it, they will probably extend it.