Sometimes you need to ensure that a hard drive is completely sterilized (erased) and that all data is actually removed.
So to securely wipe (zero-out) a drive, boot the system with a WinPE boot CD/Flash or boot floppy (Windows 98) that has a copy of the diskpart.exe utility on it.
Run the following commands in an elevated command prompt (assuming that the drive to be wiped, in this case, is disk 0.
DISKPART
Select disk 0
clean all
exit
Note: The time that passes between steps 3 and 4 is dependent on many factors including the hardware of the system, drive speed, and your patience level. Eventually it will return to the diskpart prompt and you can exit out.
Running a MD5 hash against the drive and getting a 0 checksum will confirm that the drive has been wiped.
Dave Bowman
Please note this post was last updated June 24th, 2009.
Here on the OEM team, we are often asked storage-related questions about the latest versions of Storport.sys, the iSCSI Initiator, and MPIO.
For easy reference, below are the latest available versions of Storport.sys, MPIO, and the iSCSI Initiator as of 6/24/2009. Both GDR branch fixes available directly from the Microsoft Download Center and LDR branch fixes available from Microsoft Support are listed.
Please note that all updates are cumulative within the same branch, so though the below updates may not resolve a problem you are seeing, a previous fix may resolve your problem. Look for more details on GDR fixes versus LDR fixes in David's post from 3/11/08: "What is the difference between general distribution and limited distribution releases?"
Please contact your storage vendor to discuss whether you should upgrade to the latest available Storport.sys, vendor-specific MPIO DSM, HBA drivers, etc.
Storport.sys
Server 2003 SP2
Latest version of Storport.sys available directly from the Microsoft Download Center:
KB 943295 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943295
Build 5.2.3790.4163 (October 2007)
Latest version of Storport.sys available from Microsoft Support:
KB 957910 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957910
Build 5.2.3790.4485 (March 2009)
Vista RTM
Latest version of Storport.sys available from Microsoft Support:
KB 953390 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953390
Build 6.0.6000.20885 (May 2008)
Vista and Server 2008 SP1+
Latest version of Storport.sys available from Microsoft Support:
KB 968675 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968675
Build 6.0.6001.22425 (May 2009)
iSCSI Initiator
XP and Server 2003
Latest version is 2.08 (December 2008):
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=12cb3c1a-15d6-4585-b385-befd1319f825&DisplayLang=en
Fixes for the following issues are included in this version:
- Fixed an issue where a rejected command may not be retried after the Initiator receives a REJECT PDU.
- Fixed a deadlock that may occur when shutting down the MS iSCSI software Initiator adapter.
- Fixed an invalid memory error that may occur when there are persistent targets configured in an IA-64 system.
- Fixed an issue where the iSCSI DSM may not recover failed paths.
MPIO
Latest version is 1.22 (December 2008)
Included with iSCSI Initiator 2.08
Fixes for the following issues are included in this version:
- Fixed a system hang on uniprocessor systems that may occur when handling device arrival/removal.
- Fixed a system hang in certain cases when handling throttling.
- Fixed a memory leak when handling reserve/release in a cluster.
- Updated install sample to use DSM to enable optional MPIO features.
- Fix to make path recovery interval customizable.
Windows Home Server has quickly become a mainstay tool in your electronic home as storage for your data and for automatic backup of up to 10 of your home computers. While the server is built to do what it was designed for very efficiently, people are looking for things to improve, and to enhance the experience they have with the WHS. As such a growing list of Add-Ins are being created regularly, some free and some for little cost, that help people customize and enhance the functionality, and the user interface of WHS, or for remote connectivity, reporting, etc.
Below is a list of several tools used by some Microsoft engineers at home. Near the bottom of this blog there are links for even more on the web.
http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide/homeserver.aspx (Webguide for WHS enables you to remotely access, listen, watch and stream your music, Photos and videos stored on your home server while away from home)
http://www.asoft.be/index.html (AutoExit allows you to shut down, sleep or hibernate your machines over WHS network. If your machines are WOL capable, you can also boot up your machines remotely)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/05/24/advanced-admin-console/ (Advanced Admin extends your administrative console to include access to various parts of your home server's administrative controls from within WHS console.)
http://www.digitalarchound.com/ (Not a freebie, but an excellent add-in for scanning & archiving docs)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/04/13/whiist/ (Whiist is a Windows Home Server Add-In that allows you to create and manage web content on your Windows Home Server.)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/04/06/windows-home-server-disk-management/ (more detail about server's storage status than what the standard WHS Server Storage interface provides)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/04/21/whs-bdbb/ (Windows Home Server Backup Database Backup)
http://www.mymovies.dk/ (With My Movies you are able to index your movies with automatically downloaded data from the My Movies WebService, and then browse movies, actors, directors and much more)
http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/03/media-browser-beta-11-new-vanilla-theme.html (Media Browser)
http://www.home-server-blog.de/add-ins/strom-und-laufzeitverwaltung/lightsout/ (This Add-In is used to put a Windows Home Server into suspended mode or hibernation and resume on user defined events.)
http://www.brendangrant.com/WHS/WebFolders4WHS/default.htm (Allows access to folders remotely via windows explorer which is a fast and easy way to get files in and out.)
http://www.themediamall.com/playon (Media server that streams Hulu and other TV content to the TV via PLAYSTATION 3, Xbox 360, or HP MediaSmart TV.)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/05/18/whs-file-manager-1003/ (WHS File Manager)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/04/11/squeezecenter-for-windows-home-server/ (SqueezeCenter (used to control and manage Logitech Squeezebox digital media receivers on your home server)
http://www.whsplus.com/2009/04/07/mss-fan-control/ (Fan Control Add-In for WHS Operating System. It is designed to work exclusively with the HP MediaSmart Server EX47x models, and will not work with any other WHS systems.)
http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2008/11/26/windows-home-server-toolkit-version-1-1.aspx: A Microsoft tool for troubleshooting WHS connectivity issues. It will also generate and send error reports for logging WHS bugs.
More add-ins:
Some add-ins are very popular and are listed in multiple sites, as well as in this document. Review the links below for more add-ins:
http://whsaddins.com/
http://www.whsplus.com/
http://www.brendangrant.com/WHS/add-ins.htm
http://mswhs.com/ (Philip Churchill's excellent WHS site)
http://mswhs.com/category/add-ins/ (Philip Churchill's WHS addins)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/add-ins.mspx
http://www.jungledisk.com/ (offline file storage)
http://www.hack7mc.com/ has a lot of good resources for Media Center.
If the drive is removable, supports hot swap, and the disk size is less than or equal to 32GB, then the default is the FAT file system. If its size is less than or equal to 2GB, then the default is FAT, otherwise the default is FAT32. If the disk size is greater than 32GB, then we will default to NTFS.
When asked to create a multilingual image for your company or organization, you may be tempted to start with your existing image and add Language Packs. This method can cause you problems down the road.
As a best practice, you should start with the Vista image as shipped and all of the Language Packs you intend to include before adding any hotfixes or applications. Keep in mind the OS and the Language Pack need to be the same Service Pack Level. A Vista SP 2 image needs an SP 2 Language Pack for example.
Why is this important?
For hotfixes:
Although the many security hotfixes do not contain language dependent parts, some hotfixes do. For hotfixes with language dependant parts, only the files for the languages currently installed will be copied to your system. You certainly won't want files for 100 (give or take) languages installed to your system (if you are not using 100 languages). So for example if you add French to your existing image with hotfixes, the French files from these fixes will not be in Windows image. While your next trip to Microsoft Update can resolve this problem, there are cases where you will break your Windows installation due to missing files.
For example:
If you add KB 940157 (Windows Search 4.0) before you add Language Packs your system will be missing key system files. In some cases your Windows Start menu will not function.
Also note that for applications that have Multilingual support, you neeed to install the application after you have installed additional languages..
Linda
Vista Package Manager is command line tool to install, remove or updates Windows packages to an offline Windows image. Used incorrectly you can easily corrupt your Windows installation image. Here are some tips to avoid this problem.
The first and most important tip is always save your previous images. You can not repair a corrupt image so you may need to go back to your most recent working image.
Below is a typical batch file I would use to install multple hotfixes to an offline image when booting from WinPE.
wpeutil CreatePageFile /path=c:\pagefile.sys
md c:\sandbox
Start /w \servicing\pkgmgr.exe /o:"C:\;C:\windows" /ip /m:c:\hotfixes\Windows6.0-KB9999-x86.cab /s:C:\sandbox /L:C:\WINDOWS\fixes.LOG
echo %errorlevel%
rd c:\sandbox /s /q
md c:\sandbox
Start /w \servicing\pkgmgr.exe /o:"C:\;C:\windows" /ip /m:c:\hotfixes\KB8888-x86.cab /s:C:\sandbox
/L:C:\WINDOWS\fixes.LOG
echo %errorlevel%
Once you have correct syntax for Pack Manager related to file name and path locations the above method avoids other types of common errors. Below are the details related to the above commands.
wpeutil CreatePageFile /path=c:\pagefile.sys
I create a pagefile on the local drive so pkgmgr doesn't run out of memory since WinPE now boots to a RAM disk.
rd c:\sandbox
md c:\sandbox
Pack Manager needs an empty sandbox for each fix or package. You can use multiple sandboxes or empty the current t one.
Start /w \servicing\pkgmgr.exe /o:"C:\;C:\windows" /ip /m:c:\hotfixes\Windows6.0-KB9999-x86.cab /s:C:\sandbox /L:C:\WINDOWS\fixes.LOG
You can create an xml file with multiple fixes but Package Mangers may run out of scratch space before you finish. The number of fixes before failure is going to depend on your system configuration and size of the fixes. I recommend install them one at a time in a batch file.
echo %errorlevel%
This returns the error code from Package Manager. Verify it is 0 (no error) as the first step to check if Pack Manger worked correctly. In addition you will need to verify the log file ends without error. The log file is in several formats but in this case since I use /l:c:\windows\fixes.log the one you want to look at is c:\windows\fixes.log.txt.
Be sure the log is complete for each fix It should contain something similar to as the last lines.
2009-05-27 15:25:31, Info CBS Pkgmgr: return code: 0x0
2009-05-27 15:25:33, Info CBS Pkgmgr: return code: 0x0
If the log just stops without this information, even if the previous errorlevel was 0 your image is likely to be corrupt. You will need to re-run your scripts with your original image after you verify the following:
You scripts have a clean sandbox for each fix.
You don't have other applications running.
You don't have hotfixes with order dependencies that you have not accounted for.
Linda
The Virtualization team is pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate for download. Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, our free standalone hypervisor, represents our continued commitment to providing high performance, hypervisor based virtualization for everyone, especially small and mid-market customers. This release underscores our customer focus by adding key new capabilities such as Live Migration and High Availability (and more.). The Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 Release Candidate is available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/hyper-v-server/en/us/default.aspx
For more information see the Windows Virtualization Team Blog here.
Ever wonder why some programs are highlighted in the “All Programs” list of the Start menu?
Start by reading this fine MSDN blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/11/24/496690.aspx
Even though it is written prior to Vista, it basically holds true for Vista as well. There are some exceptions, however. On Windows Vista:
1. Apps installed within 5 hours of Windows installation completion do not show up highlighted
2. 5 hour timer is not user-(or OEM)-adjustable
3. Apps remain highlighted for a week, or until the very first time they are launched.
4. 7 day timer is based on system time and is not affected by sleep, hibernate, shutoff time, etc.
5. Apps installed by other users are not highlighted for the current user before their first ever logon.
6. Apps you install but never launch will remain highlighted for 7 days, or until you launch them, whichever comes first.
These new Solid State Drives (SSDs) are utilizing Flash Memory, also known as non-volatile memory (NVM). The two types of Flash memory being used are MLC (Multi-Level Cell) memory and SLC (Single-Level Cell) memory. MLC (Multi-Level Cell) memory is less expensive and more common in low dollar cost items where you need large amounts of solid state storage; SLC (Single-Level Cell) memory has higher cost and greater performance. You'll find most SSDs and USB Flash Drives (UFDs) utilize MLC memory, MLC memory can also be found in consumer devices where performance is not as critical. Both offer advantages over hard disk drives, as they are resistant to shock, environmental conditions, generates less heat, and are silent and can be packaged into many different form factors. Hard Disk Drives are the dominant form of storage on modern computer systems, but we are seeing manufacturers offer computers that utilize a Solid State drive in conjunction with, or excluding, a Hard Disk drive. In the case of Ultra Low Cost Personal Computers (ULCPCs), Solid State drives may completely replace Hard Disk drives as the dominant storage technology. The biggest advantage Solid State drives hold over Hard Disk drives besides their compact size is that power consumption is greatly reduced as there are no moving parts, and no time is needed for platter spin up. Power consumption is one of the highest concerns for engineers designing any device that may need to run on battery power only (for example, laptops, MP3 players, Cell phones and other small consumer electronics). If you are purchasing storage for a solution that needs to minimize battery consumption, consider the differences between Solid State drives and Hard Disk drives.
For manufacturers, using SLC as a cache area for a much larger MLC bank of memory can be a way to overcome the increased cost of implementing an entirely SLC-based solution. MLC memory has lower number of potential lifetime writes than SLC memory. To help mitigate this, many MLC devices utilize wear leveling. Wear leveling essentially remembers what cells have and have not been written to, and tries to balance writes across all cells, so the controller is not wearing out some cells prematurely. For Windows, as Solid State drives are not as affected by fragmentation as Hard Disk drives, you will want to disable the Defragmentation option on a SSD to prevent premature wear from occurring. Another item to keep in mind is SSD differs from HDD in that they require the entire page to be cleared and re-written if data changes. These are typically 2-8k blocks. This makes reads inexpensive, but due to wear leveling writes are expensive, and erasures require the entire page or pages be cleared. The benefit is there are no seek times so performance is stable. (We could do the math but that not what this blog is about.) Generally, the progression of drive speed is as follows: fast DRAM > NAND > HDD. This is comparing HDD speeds of 5400 and 7200 RPM, and even high-end 15,000+ RPM drives for SLC. When adding SLC in a Storage Array Raid 0 against 15000 RPM HD the SSD will perform significantly faster but at a much higher cost point.
There is currently a shift in the market place, and solid state drives are the wave of the future. Does it make sense to adopt Solid State storage technologies now? For a ULCPC, it's a given that Solid State is the optimal choice when considering battery life. For a UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC), I would opt for a SSD if I was going to be away from the power grid, and not able to plug the laptop in for extended periods of time. As for some engineers, the memory stick has replaced the briefcase, but most will still want an ultra large HDD for their daily work.
Thanks,
David Winkler
Items that end in an extension with .msc are Microsoft Management Console Snap-in's, but did you know that you can run most of these directly from either the RUN line or the Search Bar in Vista? My personal favorites to run in this fashion are the Device Manager, Event Viewer and the Disk Management Snap-ins..
Here is a quick list from the Windows\System32 directory on a Vista SP1 system I looked at recently...
- azman.msc : Authorization Manager snap-in
- certmgr.msc : Certificate Manager
- comexp.msc : Component Services Manager
- compmgmt.msc : Computer Management
- devmgmt.msc : Device Manager
- diskmgmt.msc : Disk Management
- eventvwr.msc : Event Viewer
- fsmgmt.msc : Shared Folders Management
- gpedit.msc : Local Group Policy Editor
- lusrmgr.msc : Local Users and Groups
- NAPCLCFG.MSC : NAP Client Configuration
- perfmon.msc : Reliability and Performance Monitor
- printmanagement.msc : Print Management
- rsop.msc : Resultant Set of Policy
- secpol.msc : Local Security Policy
- services.msc : Services (Snap-in) non-DLL based
- taskschd.msc : Task Scheduler
- tpm.msc : Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on Local Computer
- WF.msc : Windows Firewall with Advanced Security on Local Computer
- WmiMgmt.msc : WMI Control (Local)
Knowing the name of the Management Console Snap-in that you want to run rather then loading it through the UI or the MMC can save time and clicks.
Thanks!
Chris
Windows Home Server (WHS) Power Pack 2 (PP2) was released on March 24th, 2009 in English, with more languages to follow shortly. What makes this a PP2 rather than SP2 is the fact that it not only fixes bugs and other known issues, it also adds new features to enhance the WHS experience. These enhancements include improvements to remote access configuration, improved functionality for computers running Windows Media Center software, and content streaming support for Media Center Extenders.
For more on this (including screenshots) and other WHS news and information, please visit the WHS team blog.
You have your nifty new hand-held ultra mobile PC running Windows Vista, but you wish your font size was a little larger so you could read the text. You hunt around and find that you can modify just the font size (from the classic view of Control Panel -> Personalization -> Adjust font size (DPI)), so you select "Larger Scale (120 DPI)" and click OK hoping to be able to read your text in larger font. You reboot the system but when it comes back the fonts are exactly the same size as before.
You may wonder "What happened?"
Here's the issue. When you make such a request to Windows (to increase or customize DPI), the first thing Windows does is check your screen height. If your screen height is greater than or equal to 600 pixels, it will do what you ask. But if your screen height is less than 600 pixels, it will totally ignore your request. The reason for it is the boxes and dialogs and even the start menu with the larger font won't fit on your display and may make it near impossible for you to close a dialog (because both the top bar and the OK/Cancel buttons are off the screen at the top and bottom). They could have added some sort of warning, but since Vista didn't support lower than 600 x 800 and there weren't many screens at lower than 600 pixels screen height at the time of development, this did not seem necessary.
So now you know. There is even a KB for this. KB969397
So you have a system with a processor with performance state control running Windows Vista/SP1/Server 08. On such systems, in the Control Panel "Power Options", in "Change advanced power settings" under your selected Power Plan (for example: "Balanced"), you'll see an expandable "Processor Power Management" setting, under which there is a "Minimum Processor State" and "Maximum Processor State" rated in percentages depending on the Power Plan. What can we do with this? Quite a bit: You can tweak the maximum and minimum frequency of your CPU based on the available p-states that fall within said chosen range that your CPU can run at.
Why would you not want your CPU to use all it can (100%)? Well, this may be a laptop where battery life is important, and limiting the maximum might lengthen how long your system can run off battery depending on use.
How can we see the CPU Frequency we're running at after changing the minimum and maximum percentages? Resource Monitor can help. This is available from Task Manager on the Performance tab. On a recent laptop, changing the Max Processor state setting had the following effects on running frequency:
- At 12% Max processor state, we saw 12% Max Frequency in Resource Monitor
- Setting the Max Processor state between 12% through 24%, we stayed at 12% in Resource Monitor
- Between 25 % and 36 % Max Processor, we showed 25% in Resource Monitor
- At 37% we showed 37 % in Resource Monitor ...
Going further, it looked like we were hitting a P-State about every 12/13% (0-100%) for this particular CPU on this particular system. More testing:
Max Processor in Power Options vs: What we see in Resource Monitor for this CPU frequency on this system
- 37% to 49% we showed 37%
- 50% we showed 50%
- 50% to 61% we stayed at 50%
- 62% we showed 62%
- 62% to 74% we stayed at 62%
- 75% we showed 75%
- 75% to 86% we stayed at 75%
- 87% we showed 87%
- 87-99% we stayed at 87%
- 100% we showed 100%
After getting an idea of what mapped to what, we were able to set the Max to 87% on this system to cap frequency at 87%. This did mean the system ran slower with CPU intense operations, but the trade-off was not necessarily plugging in the system to grab a charge quite as often.
Want to know more? See the "Processor Power Management in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008" whitepaper here, pages 10-11.
Thanks! ~Chris
If you've experienced an error just like this when using Windows Media Center you may have some issues with a corrupt data store and may need an additional hotfix.
“Windows Media Center Store Update Manager Has Stopped Working”
Problem Details:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: mcupdate.EXE
Application Version: 6.0.6001.18061
Application Timestamp: 480ea322
Fault Module Name: KERNEL32.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp: 4791a76d
Exception Code: e0434f4d
Exception Offset: 000442eb
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: fd00
Additional Information 2: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
Additional Information 3: fd00
Additional Information 4: ea6f5fe8924aaa756324d57f87834160
If you follow the following KB article you should be on your way to resolving this issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/KB947464
But if you're still having issues you may want to take things a step further:
-
Stop all Media Center processes and services.
-
Back up and delete the %ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\mediaCenterDataStore.db as well as all the files in the %ProgramData%\Microsoft\eHome\EPG folder except for the EPG\prefs dir.
Finally, if you need additional assistance head over to The Green Button.
So you pick up your new machine and start it up. During the initial screens you may be asked to select the language of your choice and then you are warned that the selection is not reversible. This usually occurs on computers that were built to be shipped to multiple countries. Some manufacturers usually load several pertinent language packs onto the machine and allow the user to select the one they will use. Vista Business, Vista Home Premium and Vista Home Basic allow only one language pack to be installed, and as a result there is no functionality to install more OR uninstall the extras. What happens after you've made your selection the first time, the system will take the available time (while you are working on the machine or have left it unattended) and will "unstage" all the unused language packs. This takes about 24 hours of idle time and may take longer if you are using your machine during the first 24 hours, or if you shut down your machine when you are not using it.
Due to a design limitation in the servicing stack of Windows Vista, when you try to turn on a Windows feature (i.e., a game, FTP, etc), the new feature must get installed for all the languages which are installed on your machine, regardless of whether they are active or "unstaged". Moreover, all the hotfixes you have applied to your machine will have to be applied to the new Windows feature as well. Thus it takes an exceptionally long time to do seemingly a very innocent "turning on a Windows feature". During this time there is an exceptionally high number of Windows Event Logs that are generated, most of which inform that the action did not apply to your machine (since you don't really have many language packs installed and thus they don't apply to your machine). However after all the extra language packs are finally "unstaged", it takes considerably less time to turn on a Windows feature, but still much longer than it would have with Windows XP. This issue is already redesigned in the next version of Windows, Windows 7.
If you need to help out the unstaging of the extra language packs, use LPREMOVE.EXE which is in your system32 folder. You may run it in an elevated command prompt with the /? switch to learn more about it. It will kick in next time you start windows and will automatically remove unused language packs to the unstaging area.
This issue is also present to a lesser degree in Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate. These two versions support multiple language packs and as such offer the functionality of adding or removing them using the add/remove programs. However due to the same servicing stack design issue and the fact that all hotfixes and updates have to be applied, turning on Windows features will take a bit longer than you might expect, but certainly not as long as it does with Vista Business, Vista Home Premium or Vista Home Basic.
The following article has been published: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967256
Additionally, a similar issue for Server 2008 has been published as http://support.microsoft.com/kb/967542
