How to manually merge Hyper-V snapshots into a single VHD

Okay, so you have to recreate your VM configuration and you absolutely know that your VM had a snapshot at some time. 

You also realize that if you just link to the base VHD that you will lose the current state of your VM - what do you do? 

You manually merge your snapshots into your base VHD before you boot your VM. (I am assuming that you know how to connect to an existing VHD using the new VM wizard). 

Merging of snapshots can be performed manually. This is achieved by: 

1. On your Hyper-V host.Power off the Virtual Machine. 
2. Make a copy of the VHD and its corresponding AVHD files. 
3. Rename the AVHD extension to VHD. 
4. Write down the order of the disks from youngest to oldest (the oldest should be the root VHD). You can do this by looking at the last modified time stamp on the origional AVHD files, find the one that last changed. And find the last one that changed before it. 
5. In the Hyper-V manager, open the Edit Disk wizardBrowse to the youngest VHD in the chain, then choose 'reconnect' to point to the next youngest (the one that came before). 
6. Open the Edit Disk wizard a second time and merge. 
7. Then repeat the process until you have only a single VHD. 

In a disaster case, you need to recover a copy of the root VHD prior to attaching it to a new VM and booting it (the act of booting it, modifies it) 

Usually the most difficult part of this process is finding the last AVHD (differencing disk) in the chain. 

The easiest way to do this is to find the configuration file for the VM. 

Then open up that configuration file and locate the information for the virtual hard disk. In the screen shot below is the location of the current running state of the VM. The snapshot is a point in time to return to, the current running state is the "Now" and is contained in a differencing disk (AVHD) after a snapshot has been taken. 

Now, find that AVHD file within the file system and rename it to VHD. 

Now, go back tot he Hyper-V manager and open the "Edit Disk" wizard - Select the disk that you renamed above, and merge this disk into the one before it. 

This process can be continued until all of the snapshots are merged back into a single VHD (the base VHD). 

Pasted from <http://itproctology.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-to-manually-merge-hyper-v-snapshots.html>  

Activesync Working But Only For Some Users On Exchange 2007 / 2010

There are some issues with ActiveSync for both Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 users whereby some users can connect their Mobile Devices (Windows Mobile Phones / iPhones / Motorola Droid etc) quite happily and ActiveSync pushes mail to the devices, but other users cannot connect and cannot sync anything at all. 

There appear to be plenty of potential solutions for this problem around if you search the web, but the solution to the majority of these problems can be solved quite simply. 

If you open up Active Directory Users and Computers and locate one of your users that is not working, Double-Click into the account and click on the Security Tab (if this is not visible, Click on View> Advanced Features from the Menu at the top of the screen then navigate back to your user). Once on the security tab, click on the Advanced Button and make sure that the ‘Include Inheritable Permissions From This Object’s Parent’ is ticked. Click OK twice to close the user account. 

Once the box is ticked, you should then be able to connect up your Mobile Device to your Exchange Server and receive your mail like the rest of your users. 

This particular problem seems to only affect migrated users and not users that were setup on the server post migration. 

You may also find that if you use an account that has Admin privileges, and you Check the ‘Include Inheritable Permissions From This Object’s Parent’ check box, that it works for a while, and then stops working again about an hour or so later. 

The reason this happens is because Active Directory uses something called the AdminSDHolder to define what permissions the default protected security groups receive. Whilst you can change the inherited permissions, a process called SDPROP will run, by default every 60 minutes on the domain controller that holds the PDCe role. It will check the ACL of the protected groups and reset their inherited permissions and the users within the groups, with what has been defined by the AdminSDHolder object. 

Microsoft’s recommendation and best practice is that if you are a domain administrator that you have 2 accounts. One for your everyday user which is restricted in the same way that every other user is and a second for your administration role. 

The built in groups that are affected with Windows 2008 are: 

Account Operators 

Administrators 

Backup Operators 

Domain Admins 

Domain Controllers 

Enterprise Admins 

Print Operators 

Read-only Domain Controllers 

Replicator 

Schema Admins 

Server Operators 

The built in users that are affected with Windows 2008 are: 

Administrator 

Krbtgt 

Pasted from <http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/Server_Software/Email_Servers/Exchange/A_2861-Activesync-Working-But-Only-For-Some-Users-On-Exchange-2007-2010.html#discussion>  

Exchange 2007 sp3 when moving from one storage to another 1056749164 Error occurred in the step: Moving messages. Failed to copy messages to the destination mailbox store with error: MAPI or an unspecified service provider. ID no: 00000000-0000-00000000

I had this issue just now, working on Friday after 7pm, and broke the move of mailboxes from one SG to another and I kept scratching my head what happened for this to break like that.
After searching and looking I found that I ran out of space in the disk so, I enabled circular logging and remounted the database then I ran the move wizard again and everything look smiley so far.

Takes long time to open documents in Office 2007

Try this

1.) Open My Computer. 

2.) Go to Tools -> Folder Options, and click on File Types. 

3.) Find the extension of the file in question (XLS, DOC, etc.) 

4.) Highlight the extension, and click \"Advanced.\" 

5.) Highlight the \"Open\" Action, and click \"Edit\” 

6.) Click into the \"Application used...\" field, and scroll to the end of 

the command. 

7.) Put a space at the end, and type in \"%1\" (With the quotes.) 

8.) Uncheck \"Use DDE.\" 

9.) Click \"OK.\"

Open Tools, Options, and check "Ignore other applications that use DDE"

Pasted from <http://www.technologyquestions.com/technology/microsoft-office/287228-takes-long-time-open-documents-office-2007-a.html> 

XCOPY: Use It To Copy Folders Structure ONLY

Sometimes you want to copy the folders structure only but not the content and xcopy is a great free tool to accomplish this.
at the command prompt type the following:
xcopy source destination /T /E
this command will copy the folders structure that is why you need the /T and /E even if the folder is empty

Error code: MapiExceptionADNotFound: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x80004005, ec=2417)

If you have the above error during creating a Mailbox Database using the GUI in Exchange 2007, all you need to do is un-tick the box that will mount the database automatically and then after it created you can mount the database after 15 seconds.

How To Access Your Wireless Network From VirtualBox?

If you want to access your wireless network from virtualbox at home or in a place you can't use your network cable, you need to create the first network to your local LAN and then create a second network as a bridge using the wireless card and this way you will have access to the host pc even if there is no cable connected to the RJ45 and you will use the wireless to access the internet and other resources.

What is the actual size of a Database in Exchange 2003?

If you scratch your head when you inspect an Exchange 2003 SP2 database size and found something like this

Exchange PRIV1 Database has dropped below minimum threshold for free space on machine: hbalonex1.hba.online-support.  Maximum size permitted is 75GB, current size is 79.337234GB

I have an answer for you:

How to change the mailboxes size in exchange 2007 or 2010?

1-    Check the mailbox sizes, you need to run this command from the Exchange Management Shell (EMS)

Get-MailboxStatistics -server servername | Sort-Object TotalItemSize –Descending | ft DisplayName,@{Label= “TotalItemSize (MB)”;expression = {$_.TotalItemSize.value.ToMB()}},ItemCount

2-    Check the mailboxes limit from the EMS

Get-mailbox -server servername| Sort-Object DisplayName | ft DisplayName, IssueWarningQuota, ProhibitSendQuota, ProhibitSendReceiveQuota

Why in SBS 2008 after a short period DNS stopped and needed a reboot?

For a permanent work around, the MaxCacheTTL value needs to be changed to a value larger than the TLD TTL (Default value is 1 day, maximum value is 30 days). On SBS2008 there is no negative impact since this is the TTL for the cache of Resource Records. This is just the maximum value that it will be stored on DNS server. If the actual TTL is shorter, the

Error: The User Profile Service failed the logon

When you log on to a Windows Vista-based or a Windows 7-based computer by using a temporary profile, you receive the following error message:

The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded.

This error may occur if the "Do not logon users with temporary profiles" Group Policy setting is configured

Method 1: Fix the User Account Profile To do this, follow the steps below:

Get organized: 7 ways to better sort, store, and search your email

A cluttered and unorganized mailbox can make it difficult to find the email you need. This messy situation can be remedied.Microsoft Outlook offers great tools that help you sort your email and organize your messages in meaningful, easy-to-control ways. Outlook can even help increase your efficiency and productivity. Whether you're using Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2003, you'll be better able to stay on top of your mail.

Not using Outlook email at all? Perhaps you're using Outlook Express, or maybe you’re using Windows Live Mail or Windows Live Hotmail. These programs offer some features similar to those described here for Outlook, but they don’t offer the same breadth of tools for email management. Use the Microsoft Office Outlook Hotmail Connector to add your Hotmail account to Outlook, and then you can use these tips to also organize your Hotmail. Or read about the Hotmail features that can help you organize information in your Hotmail system. For instance, you can combine mail from your other email accounts, like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, so that you can receive, read, and respond to all your email in one place.

You can use one or more of the tools covered in this article to help shrink your Inbox and to make it easier to find the information you need.

1. Sort messages quickly

Outlook 2010 has a great new feature for organizing messages by date and arranging them by Conversation. Using this feature, messages that share the same subject appear as Conversations that can be viewed and expanded or collapsed by clicking the icon to the left of the Subject line. The messages within each Conversation are sorted with the newest message on top. When a new message is received, the entire Conversation moves to the top of your message list, helping to make tracking email threads a snap.

To turn on Conversations, on the View tab, in the Conversations group, select theShow as Conversations check box. You can reduce the size of a conversation with the Clean Up feature, which deletes duplicate messages in the Conversation. On theHome tab, in the Delete group, click Clean Up, and then click

Speed up your PC: Automate your computer maintenance schedule

Speed up your PC: Automate your computer maintenance schedule

Most people do one of the following when their computer begins to slow down (besides get angry):

1.       Speed up their computer by buying more memory.

2.       Try to tweak their computer's settings.

3.       Give up. They figure that their computer is old, there's nothing else they can do, and it's probably time to buy a new computer.

All these solutions can help increase PC speed. However, what's to keep your newly blazing PC from slowing down again after a couple months or years? A badly fragmented hard drive will bring even a top-of-the-line new computer to a grinding halt.

One option is to create a preventive PC maintenance plan—a computer maintenance schedule that's easy to set up and put in motion so you never have to think about it again. The plan outlined in this paper uses tools that are built in to your Windows operating system,

Basics for safer downloading

Whenever you download a file—whether you open a spreadsheet attached to an email message, grab a cool little screensaver or mouse cursor from the web, or download music or video files from someone else's computer—you could be putting your computer at risk.

You can take some basic steps to protect your PC and your company's network:

·         Set up your computer with security protection. When you upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows XP, you automatically get a lot of security protection built right into the system.

·         Increase your awareness of attack methods so that you can be on the lookout for them.

·         Use tools to remove unwanted software that has been downloaded to your computer (despite your best efforts to prevent it).

Here's how:

1. Get ready: Strengthen your computer's defenses

Start by checking with your system administrator to find out about your company's security tools and policies. Read the articles Understanding security and safer computing and How to boost your malware defense and protect your PC to get an overview of the kinds of threats that exist and what you can do to defend against them. Because new threats are identified every day, remember to keep your security components—including those on the following list—up to date.