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A simple way to access Shadow Copies in Vista

In the past, I presented various ways to browse these mysterious device objects called "shadow copies". Shadow copies are static images in time (snapshots) of your volume contents, at some point in the past. These shadow copies are volumes on Read More...
Posted Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:37 AM by AdiOltean | 29 Comments

Demo: New virtualization technologies in Windows Server (Longhorn)

A nice demo that shows you several things: - Windows Server virtualization (a separate partition running a striped-down version of Windows to manage all other virtual machines) - Running an 8-proc virtual machine - 64-bit and 32-bit machines running concurrently Read More...
Posted Friday, March 02, 2007 12:32 PM by AdiOltean | 1 Comments

WS-Management? Already here in Vista!

WS-Management is a new web services-based management protocol. It's SOAP-based of course, and it is compatible with the rest of the specifications in the WS-* Web Service stack, like WS-Transfer, WS-Enumeration, WS-Addressing. WS-Management is enabled Read More...
Posted Friday, August 18, 2006 10:19 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

How to run Defrag on a scheduled basis

On Windows XP, it's simple. Just run this command and you are done: schtasks /create /TN defrag /RU "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" /SC weekly /TR "defrag %systemdrive%" Read More...
Posted Friday, April 07, 2006 12:18 AM by AdiOltean | 5 Comments

More VSHADOW stuff: how to backup Exchange, SQL, NTFS

While researching for the previous post, I just started a few searches for VSHADOW on the internet, and I found more interesting usages of it. One example: EqualLogic published a nice technical report of using VSHADOW to backup/restore Exchange, SQL and Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 25, 2006 12:47 PM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments

Fast backup of Virtual Server images (using VSHADOW)

Jeff Trumbull published a very nice script on how to backup a Virtual Server image wiht about one minute of downtime! The solution uses VSHADOW.EXE, a small command-line utility that can be used to create shadow copies. VSHADOW is part of the VSS SDK Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 25, 2006 12:39 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Unix guy shares his experience in switching to Windows

Simon Gerber wrote a slightly-negative article titled Switching to Windows: Not as easy as you think . Any Windows developer should read this article. Why? Beyond anything else, it is a perfect example of how a Unix/Linux-oriented people are sincerely Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:22 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

How to do atomic writes in a file

Let's assume that you want is to write some simple code that writes to a text file. A few assumptions: 1) You need avoid corruptions of any kind. 2) Either all of your writes have to make it to the disk, or none of them. 3) The file is updated serially Read More...
Posted Wednesday, December 28, 2005 2:51 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

DOSDEV.EXE - a misterious tool

Once in a while, you might encounter this tool in some Microsoft-provided SDKs, or Resource Kits, for example in the Windows Resource Kit, the Exchange Report Toolkit, and others. But this tool never came with any relevant documentation. It just displays Read More...
Posted Tuesday, October 04, 2005 6:51 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

CMD programming - elements of style

Everyone knows how to write CMD scripts. And this is the reason why we have so many messy CMD scripts around. Unfortunately, I haven't seen anywhere some guidelines on how to write clear, maintenable batch files. So here is my take: 1) Think about discovery Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 22, 2005 11:51 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

When CoCreateInstance returns 0x80080005 (CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE)

A sneaky error The following post summarizes my personal experience with a subtle COM error. CO_E_SERVER_EXEC_FAILURE (0x80080005) is an error which can be randomly returned by CoCreateInstance() if you are using an out-of-process COM server. As far as Read More...
Posted Friday, June 24, 2005 7:29 PM by AdiOltean | 3 Comments

Playing with transportable snapshots

Transportable shadow copies are another practical consequence of a new paradigm - the data is stored in the (SAN) cloud. The data availability is not anymore tied to your machine. This simple fact has far reaching consequences. One consequence is the Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 16, 2005 2:31 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Script recipe of the week: multitasking and syncronization in batch files

Multitasking is an easy call. All you have to do is to start a separate process using the start command. Unless you specify the /WAIT option (which would cause a syncrhonous execution) the START command will simply start the other process, and return Read More...
Posted Tuesday, March 15, 2005 11:40 PM by AdiOltean | 0 Comments

Tricks around the "copy" command...

The copy command can be very useful for quick operations. However, there are a number of tricks that are not widely known. 1) Copying the contents of a source directory into the current directory: just specify the source directory! y:\privates>copy Read More...
Posted Friday, February 25, 2005 9:19 PM by AdiOltean | 6 Comments

Script Recipe: How to evaluate numerical expressions in the command line

Here is a little known feature of our beloved CMD.EXE. It is extremely easy to evaluate an arithmetic expression! All it takes is a five characters. Just type set /a followed by your expression . Here is an example: E:\>set /a 1+1 2 Or, if you want, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, February 16, 2005 3:32 AM by AdiOltean | 2 Comments
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