Windows

HOWTO: Set the creation and modification timestamp on a file via #PowerShell

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

Recently, I updated one of our internal tool kits, and then packaged it for distribution.  It was a busy day when I updated it, so I didn’t manage to package it on the same day as I had updated / built / compiled it.  Internally, we use the date as the version number of the tool (occasionally suffixed with a letter which indicates my screw-ups in the build process on that given day).  In this particular case, the version number was 2018-11-24b, indicating I updated it on 2018-11-24, and that this was the 3 revision (no suffix, a, then b) that I had created on 2018-11-24 (I found bugs in the first two after testing the packaging).

Because I wasn’t packaging on the same day as I updated it, the time stamps on my archives didn’t match the build date, so I need to change them – all of them!  So I figured up PowerShell and used it instead.  Below are the commands necessary to view and set both the creation and modification timestamps on a file via an elevated PowerShell prompt.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

To view the file creation timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).CreationTime

To set the file creation timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).CreationTime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’

To view the file modification timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).LastWriteTime

To set the file modification timestamp:

(Get-ChildItem “c:\path\file_to_change.wim”).LastWriteTime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’

To set the creation and modification timestamp on every single file in a folder:

foreach ($objFile in Get-ChildItem “c:\path\*”) {$objFile.Creationtime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’}

foreach ($objFile in Get-ChildItem “c:\path\*”) {$objFile.LastWriteTime = ’11/24/2018 11:24AM’}

 

 

HOWTO: Permanently replace the ugly Windows 10/2016 login screen background and colors for all users with #PowerShell

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

I can’t stand the default Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 logon background, and one of the first things I do when I build a new Windows template at a customer site is wipe that default background out!  I typically replace it with a single solid color, and I’m kind of fond of the old blue backgrounds that came with Windows XP (or was it Windows NT 4 – or may Windows 2000, I don’t remember now) as they are easy on the eyes… Anyways – the background color I like and use has a RGB value of 58 110 165.

I used to have a basic batch file to wipe it Microsoft’s stock background out by copying an existing background over from my staging server, but with every iteration of Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, the path to img100.jpg in C:\Windows\WinSxS changes.  So last night I decided it was time to use some PowerShell to take care of this menace and allow the script to run on multiple platforms and software updates.

I struggled with creating a new solid color background jpg in PowerShell using the RGB value I wanted, but eventually I found some code that someone had posted elsewhere on how to create a gradient jpg, so I snagged it and set the gradient to be same at the end as the beginning, which results in a solid color all the way across.  I’m sure someone with better skills than me could clean this up properly – but this suits my purposes for what I need so I stopped searching for a better way.

So basically what this script does is create a new jpg that is 640×480 in C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Staging, adjusts the accent colors for the current user and the default user profile, finds the path to img100.jpg and replaces it after taking ownership and setting appropriate ntfs rights to it, then clears out the lock screen jpgs using RoboCopy.  The lock screen jpgs are owned by the System account, and Robocopy /mir /zb is the simplest way to wipe them out that I know of without using Sysinternals Suite psexec to involve System account privileges and delete the jpgs.

You definitely need to run this in an elevated PowerShell session too!

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

New-Item -Path "C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Staging" -ItemType "Directory" -Force -Confirm:$false | out-null
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Drawing
$newbackground = New-Object System.Drawing.Bitmap 640, 480
[System.Drawing.Graphics]::FromImage($newbackground).FillRectangle(
(New-Object System.Drawing.Drawing2D.LinearGradientBrush(
(New-Object System.Drawing.Point(0, 0)),
(New-Object System.Drawing.Point(640, 480)),
[System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(58, 110, 165),
[System.Drawing.Color]::FromArgb(58, 110, 165))),
0, 0, $newbackground.Width, $newbackground.Height)
$newbackground.Save('C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Staging\background.jpg',[System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat]::Jpeg)
copy-item -path C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Staging\background.jpg -destination c:\windows\web\wallpaper\background.jpg -force -confirm:$false
REG LOAD HKEY_USERS\ZZZ C:\USERS\DEFAULT\NTUSER.DAT
REG ADD "HKEY_USERS\ZZZ\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "StartColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffa66c39
REG ADD "HKEY_USERS\ZZZ\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "AccentColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffb51746
REG UNLOAD HKEY_USERS\ZZZ
REG ADD "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "StartColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffa66c39
REG ADD "HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "AccentColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffb51746
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "StartColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffa66c39
REG ADD "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "AccentColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffb51746
REG ADD "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent" /f /v "DefaultStartColor" /t REG_DWORD /d 0xffa66c39
takeown /f C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\SystemData /a /r /d y
takeown /f C:\Windows\Web\Screen\img100.jpg /a
icacls C:\Windows\Web\Screen\img100.jpg /grant Administrators:F
$lockscreen = "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\SystemData\S-1-5-18\ReadOnly\LockScreen_Z"
$tempfolder = "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\SystemData\S-1-5-18\ReadOnly\LockScreen_Temp"
$img100 = Get-ChildItem C:\Windows\WinSxS -Recurse -Include img100.jpg
write-host $img100
takeown /f $img100 /a
icacls $img100 /grant Administrators:F /q
copy-item -path c:\windows\web\wallpaper\background.jpg -destination $img100 -force -confirm:$false | out-null
copy-item -path c:\windows\web\wallpaper\background.jpg -destination C:\Windows\Web\Wallpaper\Windows\BlueBackground.jpg -force -confirm:$false | out-null
copy-item -path c:\windows\web\wallpaper\background.jpg -destination C:\Windows\Web\Screen\img100.jpg -force -confirm:$false | out-null
New-Item -Path $tempfolder -ItemType "Directory" | out-null
Robocopy $tempfolder $lockscreen /zb /mir /njh /njs
Remove-Item -Path $tempfolder -force -confirm:$false | out-null

 

HOWTO: #PowerShell script to download, extract and add #SysinternalsSuite to the path

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

I absolutely love Microsoft’s Sysinternals Suite – it’s an amazing set of tools for troubleshooting and tweaking Windows machines.  Heck – there isn’t a day goes by that I don’t use at least one of the tools out of the suite.  I generally try to download, extract and add the suite to the path of any computer I touch.

This morning while building a new 2016 template for a customer, I realized I had missed downloading and adding it to the path, but the VM was in a firewalled VLAN and unable to reach my staging and support server – so I couldn’t just grab the extracted directory from my staging server.  This got me to thinking there must be a simple way to use a cli or script to download, extract, and add the extracted folder to the computer’s path.  So I took 30 minutes and wrote one.

Basically, this script can be cut and pasted into an elevated PowerShell session, and it will grab the most recent SysinternalsSuite.zip from Microsoft, extract the .zip to C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite, and then add C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite to the computer’s path if it does not already exist in the path.

I’ve tested this with Windows 7, Windows 10 (1803), Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

Import-Module BitsTransfer
$url_zip = "https://download.sysinternals.com/files/SysinternalsSuite.zip"
$output_path = "C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite"
$output_zip = $output_path + '\SysinternalsSuite.zip'
Remove-Item -Path $output_path\*.* -force -confirm:$false
New-Item -Path $output_path -ItemType "Directory" -Force -Confirm:$false | out-null
Start-BitsTransfer -Source $url_zip -Destination $output_zip
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
function Unzip
{
param([string]$zipfile, [string]$outpath)
[System.IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($zipfile, $outpath)
}
Unzip $output_zip $output_path
Remove-Item -Path $output_zip -force -confirm:$false
$oldpath = (Get-ItemProperty -Path "Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" -Name PATH).path
If ($oldpath -NotLike "*SysinternalsSuite*") {
$newpath = "$oldpath;$output_path"
Set-ItemProperty -Path "Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" -Name PATH -Value $newPath
}
$writtenpath = (Get-ItemProperty -Path "Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment" -Name PATH).path
write-host $writtenpath

 

 

HOWTO: Send “Shift + F10” to a remote #VMware / #vPro console over #RDP

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

We typically do a lot of our work at client locations over RDP to a server that resides on-prem in the client’s data center.  We then use that on-prem server as a jump server to manage other systems that reside on-prem and for the most part it works well except for the occasion keyboard combo press that just won’t go through to the client machine we are remoted into via the RDP jump server.  This is particularly a problem is when we are deploying Windows images to machines, which we do either via Intel’s vPro KVM controls (if it is physical) or via VMware Console (if it is virtual).  Occasionally the Windows machine will fail to boot during the specialize phase of sysprep, and we need to troubleshoot the issue.

If we were physically sitting in front of the machine, the process would be pretty simple – hit Shift + F10 and a command prompt pops open, and from there you navigate to C:\Windows\Panther and access the sysprep logs using Notepad.  But in our case, because we are utilizing a jump server via RDP to access the console (either vPro or VMware), Shift + F10 is being intercept by the jump server and not passed on to the vPro KVM session or the VMware Console, which means we can’t get to a command prompt to start troubleshooting.  When this happens, we need to disconnect from the RDP session, and use either RealVNC Plus (for the vPro console) or the VMware client directly from our local machines over VPN, which in some cases is deathly slow at best.

After getting stuck the other day having to troubleshoot a sysprep error over VPN using vPro instead of RDP using vPro, I decided there had to be a way to script a hotkey to send Shift + F10 to the console via RDP.  Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything readily available, so I scripted my own using AutoIt, which I then compiled into an .exe and digitally signed with my code signing certificate.

Basically the script searches for a window that has a title of “Intel(r) AMT KVM – VNC Viewer Plus” or a window that has a title that contains ” on ” (as in Windows7 on ESXiHost” and makes the first instance it finds the active window, then sends a Shift + F10 to the window.

Now when I have to send a Shift + F10 to a remote console during troubleshooting, I simply run the correct executable on our RDP jump servers and up comes the command prompt in the remote console!

Below are the two AutoIt scripts and further down are the two compiled .exe files.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

Code for Intel(r) AMT KVM – VNC Viewer Plus:

$Title = "Intel(r) AMT KVM - VNC Viewer Plus"
WinWait ($Title)
WinActivate ($Title)
Send ("+{F10}")
Sleep (100)
Exit

Code for VMware Console:

Opt("MouseCoordMode", 0)
Opt("WinTitleMatchMode", 2)
$Title = "[REGEXPTITLE:(?i)(.* on .*)]"

WinWait ($Title)
WinActivate ($Title)

MouseClick ( "right",9,88,1 )
Send ("+{F10}")
Sleep (100)
Exit

Already compiled and digitally signed AutoIT executables:

SendShiftF10toVMware
SendShiftF10tovPro

HOWTO: Install QLogic QConvergedConsole beside HPE 3Par SSMC and Veeam Backup & Recovery

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

Ok – I’ll admit it – I’m something of a vendor snob…  And my vendor of choice when it comes to Ethernet and fibre channel host connectivity is QLogic and HPE’s OEM products made by QLogic.  You just can’t beat the price or performance of the offerings, and the support that QLogic’s HPE OEM team gives you – they are second to none (a huge shout out to @ToddOwens_QLGC & Jim Burton – if you guys are reading this, thanks for all the amazing support over the years!).

One of the interesting things about QLogic is their branded applications generally work hand in hand with the OEM products they offer to various system manufacturers such as HPE, Dell, and Lenovo.  While I was attending a storage conference last week, I sat in on a presentation Jim and Todd were hosting.  During the presentation the talk turned to QLogic’s comprehensive adapter management tools, including the Web-based QCC (QConvergedConsole), which is supported on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.  QCC allows you to modify and configure your adapters (Ethernet, iSCSI, FCoE, and FC), upgrade the flash on them, perform FC ping and traceroute, and to view reports, statistics, and diagnostics of all the QLogic devices in your equipment – either locally or remote.

Given that QLogic devices are generally so bullet proof, and that the HPE Support Pack for Proliant takes care of my firmware updates, I rarely have a need to install and use QCC.  But today was a little different – I had a VMware host that suffered a Purple Screen of Death overnight, and while I was in the ILO power cycling it and looking for a reason for PSOD, I noticed that ILO was complaining that the 534FLR-SFP+ adapter was degraded because it was in FCoE mode and not connected (we don’t use FCoE).  Since I didn’t want to waste any more time playing around with the host before I brought it back online, I decided that I would load QCC on my management server at the site and see if I could disable FCoE mode remotely.

I never did find a way to disable the FCoE function via QCC – I only spent 3 minutes looking at it, so there may well be a way if I actually RTFM (that isn’t my style though), but this post isn’t about that.  This post is all about getting QCC to co-exist (temporarily anyways) on a server that already has HPE’s 3Par SSMC and / or Veeam Backup & Recovery installed on it.  QCC has been around a long time – longer that both SSMC and VBR, and as such has a few port conflicts that the guys at HPE and Veeam never took into consideration.  As a result, you can’t just fire up the QCC installer and expect it co-exist and run 7/24 right out of the box along side SSMC and VBR.

Once you have the QCC installer downloaded and extracted, there are a few things we need to do before firing up the installer.

First, lets check to make sure TCP ports 8080, 8443, and 111 are not in use.  We can accomplish this by opening an elevated command prompt and running:   netstat -ano | find “0.0.0.0:####”

2017-01-30-15-04-41-snagit-0067

In the example above, you can see that two of the three ports are in use.  Port 8443 is used by the application that has a PID of 38692, while port 111 is used by the application that has a PID of 30000.  Using Task Manager, or better yet my favorite tool for the job – Process Explorer, we can easily determine the applications that are hogging these ports if we enable the PID and Path columns and then sort of the PID.

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So to get started, we need to stop (temporarily) SSMC and VBR’s vPower NFS service.

2017-01-30-13-56-34-snagit-0040

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Now that we have stopped these two services, lets double check to make sure TCP ports 8080, 8443, and 111 are no longer in use.

2017-01-30-15-13-24-snagit-0069

So with all three ports now free and no longer in use, we can launch the QCC installer as Administrator (note – all screen snapshots are based on Windows 2012 R2 with QCC v5.4.0.41).  Click next a couple of times until you get to the “Please enter desired port number”.  This defaults to TCP 8080, which as we checked already above, is free to use, so go ahead and click Install.

2017-01-30-13-58-32-snagit-0046

Eventually the installer will prompt if you wish to restrict access to localhost.  No one else at my sites require access to QCC, so I’m ok with restricting access – I clicked yes (note it defaults to no, so if you just hit enter you answered no…)

2017-01-30-13-59-39-snagit-0048

Eventually, you’ll be prompted if you wish to enable security login.

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Since this application is only going to be enabled temporarily when I actually need it on the management server on the management VLAN, and because I am restricting access to the localhost only, I left the checkbox cleared.  That said, you may wish enable security – and if you do, make sure you make a note of the credentials you set!  The default login id credentials if you didn’t change them is “QCC” with a password of “config”.  Click Next to continue.

Now you are prompted if you wish to enable SSL.  That is likely a good idea, even if you are restricting it to the localhost – so click yes.  This will automatically set the Tomcat7 engine to use TCP 8443 and you can not change this from the installer.

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Finally you will be presented with the Done button.

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Take note of the URL as you will need it shortly…  https://localhost:8443/QConvergeConsole/ or http://localhost:8080/QConvergeConsole/

Now we can go ahead and install the necessary management agents.  In my case I am going to install all of the management agents.

2017-01-30-14-02-55-snagit-0054

After we click Next, you’ll notice that the installer is installing the ONCPortmap service.  This runs on TCP 111.  If TCP 111 is already in use, the installer will hang, and hang, and hang…  This is why we stopped the Veeam vPower NFS service earlier.

2017-01-30-14-03-14-snagit-0055

Eventually the management agent will complete the install process.  When we install the next management agent, you’ll notice a warning about the ONCPortmap service – this is good!  It means the ONCPortmap installed and started successfully.

2017-01-30-14-04-05-snagit-0058

After we have all the management agents installed that we want or require, we can go back in the command prompt and check our port status again.

2017-01-30-14-08-10-snagit-0059

Now you can see that all three ports are in use – which means QCC is likely ready to go.  Sort of…  As I mentioned previously, because the ports used in QCC conflict with SSMC and Veeam vPower NFS, we can’t just leave things alone and expect all three apps to work in the future after a reboot.  In my environment SSMC and Veeam are more important than QCC, and I always want them to be started after a server reboot.  So we need to set the follow services to be manual start instead of automatic (which they are by default) so they don’t prevent SSMC or Veeam from starting.

  • ONC/RPC Portmapper
  • QLManagementAgentJava
  • QLogic Management Suite FastLinQ
  • QLogic Management Suite Java iQAgent
  • QLogicManagementSuitenQLRemote
  • Tomcat7

Once we have changed the startup type of these services to manual, then lets login using the URL we were shown above.

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Now – in the Host Selection dialog box, type in localhost and hit the connect button.  You should be able to safely ignore any errors you may see.

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Finally – the console is opened!  Lets make a simple cosmetic change to see if it works (so something that does not affects the performance or anything of the adapters).  Highlight one of the ports of one of your adapters (in my example below, Port 0 of the HP 533FLR-T) and click on the MBA Boot Cfg tab in the right hand pane.  In the Hide Setup Prompt drop-down box, pick the opposite of whatever is there (it is probably already disabled, so select enabled), then click the Apply button.

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You’ll be prompted for a password.  This password, assuming you made no changes to the default setup will be “config”.  If you aren’t sure if this is correct, clear the checkbox that says save password.  If you leave it checked, and the password you put in is wrong, then you will need to log out of QCC and back in to be able to try a different password.

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If you had the correct password, you’ll see a green banner advising you of a successful update!

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Now all that is left is to make the changes you actually set out to do!  Of course, once you are finished, you have two choices – reboot the server to apply the changes and have SSMC and VBR startup on reboot, or ignore the reboot, manually stop all the QCC services (see the list above) and manually start the SSMC and VBR services.

Now that you have QCC installed, if you need to access it in the future, you can just stop SSMC and VBR, then start the necessary QCC services.  While it isn’t a perfect solution, it will allow QCC to coexist along side both SSMC and Veeam’s vPower NFS service.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

HOWTO: Converting from BackupExec to #Veeam when using RDX drives

@DeanColpitts3 Comments

Ok – I’m completely done with Backup Exec when it comes to VMware.  I’ve been selling, supporting, certified on and even using Backup Exec for our own internal backups since it was Conner Backup Exec for Windows NT 3.1, way back in 1993.  Once upon a time, it was a great product – in fact it was the only product for backups that worked worth a damn.  But it’s reliability has dropped to nothing over the past 6 or 7 years.  Technical support has been off-shored and 99.9% of the time, if I am lucky enough to finally reach someone in technical support on the phone, I can’t understand a damn word they say due to their thick accent and shitty VOIP lines crossing the Pacific Ocean.  Today was the last straw with Backup Exec, their crappy bugs, and unreliable VMware backups.  So now it’s time to fully embrace the move to Veeam, which I’ve been considering for some time (note of disclosure – I am also a certified Veeam VMCE – v7, v8, & v9)

Several of my clients have single standalone ESXi hosts, an HPE StoreOnce appliance, a physical Windows Server 2012R2 with a RDX drive or two (for offline backups), and both Backup Exec and Veeam loaded on that Windows server.  Oh – and many, many, many RDX cartridges that have months of rotated backups on them that are all three quarters full.  I can’t just erase all these cartridges in one swoop and use them for Veeam backups.  And I certainly don’t want to have to log into the clients’ servers everyday to manually delete the old Backup Exec folders off the RDX (as they come up in rotation) so that there is enough room for the nightly Veeam backup.  And finally, even though I’m dumping Backup Exec for my VMware backups, I still need to use Backup Exec to backup the 2012R2 physical instance to the same RDX cartridge that Veeam is going to use (atleast until Veeam releases their next project).  So what do I do?

A little PowerShell scripting to the rescue – that is what I am going do!

After going through a sampling of several RDX cartridges at several different client sites, I’ve determined that when Backup Exec runs with GRT enabled it dumps those backed up VMs in IMGxxxxxx folders on the root of the RDX drive (including the VMDKs).  I also discovered (or at least in the environments that I’ve setup) that GRT enabled application backups (not VMs, but rather SQL, AD, Exchange) will also be in an IMG folder with either a file called ntds.dit or edb.chk, and sometimes both!  In my case, my 2012R2 server has SQL and AD on it, so I want to be careful not to delete IMG folders that potentially contain my SQL and AD backups (which could screw Backup Exec up even more than normal when it uses that cartridge again for the 2012R2 server).

In the end, I setup the RDX drive as a new rotated drive repository in Veeam (prior to this Veeam only backed up to the HPE StoreOnce).  I then create a new Veeam job that did active fulls to the RDX drive every night (with a restore points to keep of 1).  In the job’s Advanced Settings menu, I added a pre-run script that runs C:\Windows\Remove_BackupExec_IMG_Folders.cmd.  This script in turn launches a PowerShell script that deletes all the IMGxxxxxx folders off the RDX drive except IMG folders that contain either ntds.dit or edb.chk.

**NOTE – the following deletes data from your backup cartridges. Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.  I accept zero liability and responsibility if you use these scripts!!!**

Here is the contents of my batch file.

rem start notepad++ "C:\Windows\Remove_BackupExec_IMG_Folders.cmd"
PowerShell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "& {Start-Process PowerShell -ArgumentList '-NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ""C:\Windows\Remove_BackupExec_IMG_Folders.ps1""' -Verb RunAs}"
exit/b

Here is the contents of the PowerShell script to remove the IMGxxxxxx folders (adjust the drive letter accordingly)

# start notepad++ "C:\Windows\Remove_BackupExec_IMG_Folders.ps1"
foreach ($i in Get-ChildItem R:\IMG*)
{if ((test-path "$i\ntds.dit") -eq $False -and (test-path "$i\edb.chk") -eq $False) {Remove-Item $i -force -recurse -confirm:$false}}

But wait! There is more!

Because I am still going to have to suffer with Backup Exec a while longer to backup my 2012R2 server, I need to make sure my nightly Backup Exec job doesn’t eject the RDX cartridge on me before Veeam finishes it’s RDX job.  To ensure this, I disabled the scheduled RDX jobs on my Backup Exec server.  Fortunately, Backup Exec includes a PowerShell module called BEMCLI.  So I wrote a second set of scripts as it was simply a matter of starting PowerShell from a script, importing the module, and starting the job.  So this time my scripts are a post-job script to start the Backup Exec job only after the Veeam job completes.

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Here is the batch file to launch PowerShell.

rem start notepad++ "C:\Windows\Start_BE_UTIL01_RDX_JOB.cmd"
PowerShell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Command "& {Start-Process PowerShell -ArgumentList '-NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ""C:\Windows\Start_BE_UTIL01_RDX_JOB.ps1""' -Verb RunAs}"
exit/b

And here is the PowerShell script to start the Backup Exec job called “23:10 UTIL01 RDX-Full”.

# start notepad++ "C:\Windows\Start_BE_UTIL01_RDX_JOB.ps1"
Import-Module BEMCLI
Get-BEJob -Name "23:10 UTIL01 RDX-Full" | Start-BEJob -confirm:$false

Now when my Veeam backup job to RDX starts, it deletes all the IMGxxxxxx folders off the RDX drive (unless those folders contain either ntds.dit or edb.chk), and when it completes, it starts the remaining Backup Exec job, which ultimately ejects the RDX cartridge when it completes.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

HOWTO: Silently remove old VMware vCenter 5.x apps/tools and install the newest 6.x ones

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

It appears that VMware has finally figured out how to make vSphere 6 stable, which means it is finally time for my team to start migrating our clients off vSphere 5.5 and onto vSphere 6.    Upgrading a vSphere host takes all of 60 seconds with esxcli followed by a reboot of the host.  Upgrading all the apps and tools to manage the vSphere hosts however can take hours if doing it manually across all the machines in a domain though.

Like many of you (I’m sure), we generally have the various VMware apps and tools such as VIClient, PowerCLI, VMRC, Client Integration Plugin, and Update Manager client installed on multiple machines throughout the client’s computer system.  It’s time consuming and a real pain in the butt to go into Add/Remove programs and manually uninstall all the old 5.x tools and then manually install all the new 6.0 tools on each of these machines.  So, after a bit of testing and troubleshooting, I’ve come up with a series of one liners to cut and paste into an administrative command prompt to do all the time consuming pain the butt work without actually doing any of the work myself… Using these scripts, I can generally remove all the old 4.x and 5.x software and install all the new 6.0 software in less than 5 minutes per machine.

And I use our inventory and software management system to determine which machines have 5.x apps installed on them before I ever begin so I can target just the machines I need to without wasting time.  So basically once I have all ESXi hosts upgraded to version 6, I use Remote Desktop Connection Manager to connect to each machine I have identified as having 5.x apps, open an Administrator command prompt and cut and paste all my command lines in (both uninstall and install).  Once that machine is cranking away, I move onto the next machine and start the same process over again, and then on to the next machine.  Generally the first machine is completed before I get the last machine even started.  Then it is just a matter of verifying the apps work as expected…

So first we want remove all existing VMware apps on the target machine except VMware Tools and VMware Update Manager (server, not client).  You should be able to cut and paste all 7 of these command lines into the administrative command prompt at the same time and they will run one after the other, silently uninstalling any installed application on the machine with a name that matches the search parameters. The 7th line will open Add/Remove programs for you so you can manually verify everything has been removed before continuing.

Important – make sure there are no opened/running browsers on the machine and that none of the VMware apps are opened (very important if you are doing this on a Windows server that allows Remote Desktop for Administration and another admin is logged into it at the same time!!!)

**Note – if you are still using a Windows based vCenter server – it likely wouldn’t be too wise to run these uninstall commands on the vCenter server – consider yourself warned**

start /wait wmic product where "name like 'vmware c%%'" call uninstall
start /wait wmic product where "name like 'vmware r%%'" call uninstall
start /wait wmic product where "name like 'vmware vix%%'" call uninstall
start /wait wmic product where "name like 'vmware vsphere c%%'" call uninstall
start /wait wmic product where "name like 'vmware vsphere p%%'" call uninstall
start /wait wmic product where "name like 'vmware vsphere update manager c%%'" call uninstall
start appwiz.cpl

So now we all our old version 5.x tools and apps removed from our management stations, so we can go ahead now and silently deploy our new version 6.x apps.  Again, you should be able to paste these 6 lines all at once into a command prompt and they will run sequentially and install the VIClient, VMware Remote Console, vSphere CLI, vSphere PowerCLI, and the Update Manager client.

 

start /wait \\SERVER\SETUP\VMWARE\ESXi60u02\VMware-viclient.exe /q /s /w /L1033 /v" /qr"
start /wait msiexec /qb- /i \\SERVER\SETUP\VMWARE\ESXi60u02\VMware-VMRC-9.0.0-4288332.msi EULAS_AGREED=1 AUTOSOFTWAREUPDATE=0 DATACOLLECTION=0
start /wait \\SERVER\SETUP\VMWARE\ESXi60u02\VMware-vSphere-CLI-6.0.0-3561779.exe  /s /v/qn
start /wait \\SERVER\SETUP\VMWARE\ESXi60u02\VMware-PowerCLI-6.3.0-3737840.exe  /s /v/qn 
start /wait \\SERVER\SETUP\VMWARE\ESXi60u02\VMware-UMClient.exe  /s /v/qn 
start appwiz.cpl

 

Add/Remove Programs should once again automatically open for you to manually verify that everything has installed correctly.

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.

REVISED – HOWTO: Grab the all file download links on a HP Inc driver download page and wget them

@DeanColpittsLeave a comment

About 3 months ago, I posted how to grab all the download links on a HP Inc driver download page and wget them.  After some messing around, I decided to take my previously posted instructions (which you can find here) and turn them into a pair of macros for Notepad++ to save some manual labor.  Below is the content of the two macros.  I also assigned ALT+F12 to the first macro, and ALT+F10 to the second macro.  And finally I assigned ALT+F11 to the Hex to Ascii plugin.

So now all I need to do is open Notepad++, paste the HP Inc’s driver download page’s source into Notepad++ and hit ALT+F12, ALT+F11, and then ALT+F10 to get my wget links.

To use these two macro’s, you’ll need to edit %AppData%\Notepad++\shortcuts.xml and insert these two macros, then save shortcuts.xml.  You also need to close Notepad++ and reopen it before using the macros.

Macro #1 – HP Inc Download Source Cleanup Part 1 – ALT+F12

<Macro name="HP Inc Download Source Cleanup Part 1" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="123">
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="#" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\t" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam='&apos;&quot;&gt;\r\n' />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\r\n" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam='&quot;&gt;\r\n' />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\r\n" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="obtainSoftware?url=" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\r\n###" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="0" message="2013" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="2" message="0" wParam="42043" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="2" message="0" wParam="42056" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="2" message="0" wParam="42059" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="^###" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="2" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="784" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1615" sParam="" />
<Action type="2" message="0" wParam="43051" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="###" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="768" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="0" message="2013" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="2" message="0" wParam="43008" lParam="0" sParam="" />
</Macro>

Macro #2 – HP Inc Download Source Cleanup Part 2 – ALT+F10

<Macro name="HP Inc Download Source Cleanup Part 2" Ctrl="no" Alt="yes" Shift="no" Key="121">
<Action type="3" message="1700" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1601" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="http:" />
<Action type="3" message="1625" wParam="0" lParam="1" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1602" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="\r\nwget -c -N -T 20 -t 20 http:" />
<Action type="3" message="1702" wParam="0" lParam="896" sParam="" />
<Action type="3" message="1701" wParam="0" lParam="1609" sParam="" />
<Action type="0" message="2318" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="1" message="2170" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
<Action type="1" message="2170" wParam="0" lParam="0" sParam="" />
</Macro>

As always – Use any tips, tricks, or scripts I post at your own risk.