Microsoft, we know, like to retire old versions of servers. That does not, however, help engineers who are migrating customers from On Prem to Azure AD but have no budget to spend on an upgrade to 2012 R2, and have focussed that spend on Azure / 365 instead. So, for all you legends out there, making the SME work, and… Read more →
Category: Windows Server
VSS Permissions issue
I was working today on a 2012R2 server that would give random error messages during the backup relating to registry permissions. Unexpected error calling routine RegOpenKeyExW In my case this was showing FRS and WINS VSS issues, but vssadmin list writers would show all error free. In the end, to fix this issue, I checked further into the details tab… Read more →
Stuck in reboot and cannot rename pending.xml file?
“We couldn’t complete the updates Undoing Changes Don’t turn off your computer” loop? Yes, so were we today and it was a pain in the ass to get that Pending.xml file out of there, even with full admin rights. We had a VM on HyperV, so we mounted the VHDX file and used FastCopy (Great Tool) to Delete it…. like… Read more →
Server stuck in endless Windows Update Reboot?
Yes, that happens from time to time. You have already cleaned up Windows Update, you have reset the Software Distribution folder. But yet your server still asks you to reboot every restart or worse, it does it for you without even prompting. The fix is actually quite easy (if you hit the same issue as me) Backup the following registry… Read more →
Is your Active Directory Authenticated website broken?
OK, this is old news to some, but it seems that this months Patches from Microsoft broke authentication to websites hosted on your domain…. There is a detailed and lengthy thread on Eric’s blog here, so I wont repeat it. But suffice to say, if you are getting unexplained prompts on your IIS server, the answer actually lies on your… Read more →
And not & – HyperV 2012 R2 backup
Well, there goes about 40 Hours of my time on a support case with Microsoft. A short while back I wrote this article which fixed once, but the problem returned. This time, I opened a case with Microsoft and for the last month or so, the case has been doing the rounds of Microsoft PSS people. Finally, the issue was… Read more →
Windows Backup not showing Messages and Jobs, but is running?
Another weird one today…. Windows Backup on Server 2012 R2 was showing me this: Notice how the “Last Backup” shows nothing, and also the Messages at the top are blank? Well, this was the case even though the backups were running perfectly in the background. I opened a Microsoft case on this one, because I thought it would be something… Read more →
Disabling Data Deduplication on Windows Server 2012R2
Sometimes you have to give up a technology because it doesn’t suit all scenarios…. Today, I had to remove Windows Server 2012R2 Data De-duplication, which is a very clever technology that reduces disk space use. The downside in my scenario was that it also seemed to cause massive slowdown in Windows Server Backup, and whilst it gave me great disk… Read more →