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Endpoint Management Community Blog

Showing posts tagged with Tip/How to
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Hash checker command line options details here!
Ludovic Ferre | 03 Dec 2009 | 3 comments

What are the hashchecker [1] options? If you run it with /? it runs on a server, instead of showing an help message. So what are the command line entries, or how can we access the help message?

In order to see the error message (help message) you need to run the hashchecker with no argument, as shown below.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>HashChecker.exe

[03/12/2009 10:59:31] Incorrect Arguments


Usage: HashChecker.exe <dataclass guid> -a -e -l -n


-a      All Data Classes
-e      Send an email with the results
-l      Run HashChecker at a lower priority
-n      Recreate empty Data Hashes (expensive operation)
 

So we find there the known -a option, but what is really interesting is that there's a -n which can be costly but should can help reduce database workload during forwarding reception!

...

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How to check the NS various event queue statuses (at once)?
Ludovic Ferre | 30 Nov 2009 | 0 comments
When something goes wrong in a Notification Server some of the event queues can quickly build up and get filled (returning status_full = true). In these cases the best option to check all of the event queues at once is to go to the registry and to look into "HKLM > Software > Altiris > eXpress > Notification Server".
 
As shown on the featured image (also available below), this registry key shows a number of elements related to the event queues generalized and detailed here:
  • <QueueName>CurrentCount
  • <QueueName>Size
  • <QueueName>Full
  • <QueueName>InvalidCurrentCount
  • <QueueName>InvalidCurrentSize
Where <QueueName> can be:
  • EvtQFast
  • EvtQLarge
  • EvtQSlow
  • EvtQueue

So in a single screen you can check which queue are full (you can see on...

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Week end and Linux, to stop thinking about SQL, database and COM mutexes ;).
Ludovic Ferre | 30 Nov 2009 | 0 comments

The week end is coming! And so is winter. Tomorrow I'll probably drop in at an Ubuntu 9.10 install party, but that's about it for IT during the week-end.

Now looking back I can say this week was rich with problems and solutions, and a steady backlog of tiny cases that are queuing up (to be resolved).

What was very interesting this week:

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Patch Management for Mac - Return Codes
Andrew Bosch | 25 Nov 2009 | 0 comments

If needed, during troubleshooting, this quick reference may be of assistance.  Below is a list of return codes that can be expected from client tasks within the default rollout jobs that are created with Patch for Mac.

PatchMacReturnCodes.png 

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Optiplex 755 Spontaneous Reboots and Hangs in XP
ianatkin | 23 Nov 2009 | 0 comments

 For the last many months, we've been looking into reports of Dell Optiplex 755 computers spontaneously rebooting. The reboots are random, and we've never found a way to force the behavior on demand. In parallel we've had another issue of the 755s hanging on login with a specific image. The image is hardware independent, and only hangs (although not reproducibly) on the 755s.

Because of the reproducibility issue, its been a long road to troubleshoot. We have a test network, and the problems have not manifested there. What we've found is,

  • For the computer hangs on login we've discovered the problem vanishes if the Intel disk controller is configured from AHCI to 'Legacy IDE'
  • If we disconnect the DVD drive with the controller in AHCI mode the issue vanishes

So, degrading the controller to 'Legacy IDE' seemed to be good resolution/workaround at least for the hanging issue, so we were going to proceed by...

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Quick links to KB articles and MS security bulletins
KSchroeder | 18 Nov 2009 | 2 comments

One trick I use to speed up my daily administration involves using some IE search prefixes.  Basically these allow you to type a short keyword followed by your search term and hit enter to go to a site.  You can set these using TweakUI in the Internet Explorer > Search section, or manually create them in the registry.   A few I use on a daily basis are "akb #####" to go to Altiris KB articles, "mskb ######" to go to MS KB articles, and "bulletin 09-062" to go to a particular security bulletin.  You can save each "Code" section below as a .reg file and merge it into your own registry to set these up.  So then you can type "akb 50212" into your Address bar and go directly to Altiris KB article 50212.  Hopefully someone else finds these as convenient as I do.

Altiris KB:   akb ##### ...

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Demonstrating vPro: Internationalization (or the lack thereof)
Terry Cutler | 16 Nov 2009 | 3 comments
Sharing an experience and looking to validate some of the challenges vPro demonstration might present in markets outside of North America - especially if the original demonstration environment was created in North America.
 
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Germany for a training event.   The equipment for the training event was sourced locally in Germany.   The result was 13 systems.  (For those that are superstitious – you might quickly identify that this will get interesting).  
 
Among those 13 systems, there were 4 different OEMs, 3 different keyboard layouts (US, UK, German), 3 different power connectors, 2 generations of Intel AMT (2.6 and 4.x), 3 different versions of Windows (XP, Vista, and Win7), 2 different versions of VMware workstation, and a single VMware workstation image created in North America.   Very little standardization.   A...
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Windows 7 Migration Documents
R Gines | 16 Nov 2009 | 3 comments

For those who are staring at the incoming tsunami called Windows 7, here are some resources that might help get you going.

There will be more to come, but this is a good start...

Here is a link to the general philosophy around how to pull off a Windows 7 migration or namely, the 7 Steps to Windows 7.

and here is a link to a technical whitepaper on using DS 6.9 SP3 for a Windows 7 migration.

Be sure to check out general Symantec Windows 7 support site at Symantec.com.

Enjoy!

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Ghost 2003 problem
Mark Downing | 16 Nov 2009 | 3 comments

I recently installed Windows XP SP 3 oin my new laptop (Dell Studio 1555) and  necxt installed Ghost 2003 after all device drivers for the OS were installed. I normally create a Ghost image DVD affter a new O/S is installed so I can always get back to a working system in short order.
This time when I went inbot Ghost it's normal menu in PC DOS came up but it is stuck in a loop and won't clone, go inot ghost or go back to Windows.
Instead, it seems to freeze up when I hit either option. It says in option 2 to go back to windows but it says returning to windowws and just never get's there.

How do I get out of this loop and get back inbto windows? I have read everything I can find and I have a hunch there is a problem with the Ghost instalation or  perhaps it hangs from a device driver  in DOS mode? I'm guessing because I've used Ghost a number of years and never seen anything like this before.

Any ideas? I need to get this fixed ASAP as...

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Using Ghost with Solid State Drives
Randall Newnham | 11 Nov 2009 | 0 comments

Preface:
Ghost was not designed to work with solid state drives. The recommendations below may or may not work in a given environment, though they have been tested and verified on at least some machines. Please not that before trying this in a production environment, you should try this in a test environment so as to not risk data loss.

Officially, Ghost does not support solid state drives. I have verified that these steps worked on Dell Latitude E4200 machines:

1. Take the image with these command line switches:

-FNI -FFX -NOIDE -NOUSB

2. Restore the image with these command line switches:

-FNI -FFX -NOIDE -NOUSB -NTEXACT

This  has been verified to work. This has only been tested with the same model of machine, so it is not expected that this would work to deploy to different models. I would expect that you could restore a solid state image to an IDE/SATA drive,but not the other way around. Assuming this is...

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