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Category Archives: Windows

Windows 8 – Running Windows 8 from USB stick or USB hard disk using Windows To Go (WTG)

Summary of what Windows To Go (WTG) is

In short, Windows To Go is a Windows 8 Enterprise feature that allows you to boot and run Windows 8 from a USB flash drive (USB stick).

Potential reasons and scenarios for using Windows To Go

There are many potential reasons and scenarios for using Windows To Go, but here are some of them from the top of my head:

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2013 in ICT, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 2012, Windows 8

 

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Home LAB – How to use Windows 8 Client Hyper-V and VMware Workstation on the same machine

In yesterday’s post I described that for my purposes it was still necessary to run VMware Workstation sometimes despite having Client Hyper-V installed on my Windows 8 machine.

What you have to keep in mind though, is that you’re already running a hypervisor when you have Client Hyper-V installed in Windows 8. Installing and running VMware Workstation might cause problems. So unfortunately you cannot run them at the same time. This is also true for other virtualization products like by example virtualbox.

As a workaround you can either uninstall or (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. When you want to switch between Hyper-V and VMware Workstation it is ofcourse best to just temporarily disable Hyper-V.

In this forum post, a couple of methods are described to (temporarily) disable Hyper-V. It includes creating a seperate boot menu entry to boot with Hyper-V disabled and modifying the setting either through registry or a command. All methods do require a reboot however.

PS:

  • This kind of configuration is ofcourse not supported and should only be used for testing purposes in non production environments.
  • Depending on both your hardware and what your planning to do, you might also want to consider:
    • Running VMware ESXi from a USB stick
    • Running Windows 8 from a USB stick with Windows To Go (WTG).
  • It should also work on Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and up, but I haven’t tested it.
 

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Event – Free Microsoft IT Camps

On a regular basis Microsoft and its partners host Free IT Camps. In the past I’ve blogged about them because I really think they’re a good way to quickly get up-to-date on products and technologies. Besides that it’s also a good way to get to know other people.

On the Microsoft Events website you can see which future events are available and not just IT Camps events.

Also should you not be able to attend an IT Camp, for Server 2012 you can also use IT Camps On-Demand.

 

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Powershell – Get GPO Report for an Active Directory domain

Sometimes you want to be able to quickly create a GPO report for an Active Directory domain. And ofcourse you can do this manually using the GUI as well, but with a PowerShell script you can automate and schedule it.

So here’s my script that will automatically save a time stamped GPO report for the current domain.

 

Windows 8 – Windows 8 Upgrade Offer (15 euros) and free Windows Media Center offer ending 31st of January

As some of you might know, at the 31st of January some special Windows 8 related offers are ending:

For more information, including how to perform a clean install when you’ve bough the upgrade, please check my previous post.

 
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Posted by on January 16, 2013 in Microsoft, Windows 8

 

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Security – Java releases update for major Java vulnerability

Last sunday I warned about a major vulnerability in Java.

It wasn’t expected that Java would come have an update available this quickly, but it is good that they did. So be sure to update to Java 7 Update 11 : http://java.com

 

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Free training – Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) hosting 3 virtualization related Jump Starts

Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) is hosting 3 virtualization related Jump Starts in January and February:

  1. Introduction to Hyper-V Jump Start (January 24th, 2013)
  2. Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals Jump Start (January 30th, 2013)
  3. Microsoft Tools for VMware Migration and Integration (Late February)

I’ve attended a couple of Jump Starts including those of Office 365, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 already and I think it’s a great way to quickly get up-to-date about a subject. Also there’s a great team of people working behind the scenes to answer questions and provide more detailed resources. Other attendees often also share their experiences and provide valuable insights.

The links above provide include a course outline and a link to register for the Jump Start.

I hope to see you there.

 

 
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Posted by on January 14, 2013 in ICT, Learning, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 2012

 

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Security – Major Java vulnerability, don’t become a victim

[EDIT 14-01-2013]

Oracle release Java 7 Update 11 to fix this security issue. Be sure to update: http://java.com/

[EDIT]

Normally when I read about security vulnerabilities, I don’t really get a sense of urgency.

With the current Java vulnerability however, I do feel like people have to act quick because there are so many respected companies and even countries actively taking action:

Apparently this vulnerability is actively being exploited already and Oracle hasn’t released a Java fix yet. You might want to consider a combination of the options below:

Personally I like the way FireFox is handling the issue because it blocks by default, but allows users to easily override this behavior for specific sites. Also I’m getting quite fed up with all these Java security vulnerabilities lately 😦

I’d like to know what you’ll be doing. Have you or are you going to disable Java ? Which methods will you use ? Why ?

 

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Home LAB – Virtualization and how to enable nested ESXi and other hypervisors in VMware vSphere 5.1

As a passionate ICT person, I work with multiple virtualization products including Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere.

At home I’m running Server 2012 with Hyper-V in my home lab and even though it works perfectly, I miss the option to be able to run multiple other hypervisors beneath it like by example multiple Hyper-V, VMware ESXi or Citrix XenServer instances.

With VMware products like VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation you can enable this with only a couple of minor adjustments as described in these great articles:

For me personally, I’ll stay with my Hyper-V based home server and my Windows 8 Client with Client Hyper-V installed. For testing purposes however, I’ll have to use VMware Workstation 9 on my Windows 8 machine.  (even though I have Client Hyper-V installed). This way I can still run other hypervisors when needed.

I still hope though that Microsoft will add a similar feature to Hyper-V in the future.

 

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PowerShell – Slipstream Office 2003 Updates

In yesterday’s post I described how you could extract Office 2003 updates. When they are extracted however, they still need to be slipstreamed into the package. I also created this script to automate the slipstreaming.

Basically for each extracted patch (.msp) file, it runs msiexec with the correct parameters. So if you have other msi packages that need multiple patch (.msp) files applied to it, you could use this script as a foundation as well.

 

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