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# Personal website of Dave Hope

Open source projects, sysadmin stuff and the home of Product Key Finder

## Posts

- [Deleting the TFS workspace for a missing account fails (TF50605)](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/deleting-the-tfs-workspace-for-a-missing-account-fails-tf50605/) - Having decommissioned a few legacy AD DS domains over the last year or so we've had a few references in TFS to missing accounts. When attempting to delete the workspace you get the following error: TF50605: There was an error looking up the SID for OLD-DOMAIN\CCNETNIGHTLYBUILD. In order to delete the workspace, we need to
- [Join Ubuntu to Active Directory](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/join-ubuntu-to-active-directory/) - Having recently deployed a handful of Ubuntu Linux systems for proxies and other roles I wanted to join them to Active Directory for Single Signon. Nobody wants to remember lots of different passwords, lets face it. I came across a product called Likewise, the free open-source version is available in the standard Ubuntu repositories. Here's
- [Convert Dell Service Tag to Express Service Tag](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/convert-dell-service-tag-to-express-service-tag/) - Over the last few weeks I've found myself more and more frequently on the phone to Dell. They've recently introduced a system where you can key in the Express Service Tag of the system you're calling about. Most of the records we keep are of the service tag, not the express service tag. Keen to
- [Sorting your photos with Bash](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/sorting-your-photos-with-bash/) - In early 2009 my Buffalo Terrastation died. I replaced a faulty RAID-5 member and when rebuilding the array something went horribly wrong and I lost a lot of data. Inspired by a colleague who'd written a PowerShell script to sort some photos, I decided to write a bash script to sort all the photos stored
- [Implementing PBR and Squid3 as a transparent proxy](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/implementing-pbr-and-squid3-as-a-transparent-proxy/) - There are various methods of implementing URL filtering in an organisation, my preferred approach is to silently route traffic through a proxy server. This has a few distinct advantages: No end user configuration is required (via wpad.dat or Group Policy etc); If something breaks, it's extremely simple to remove; Most people wouldn't even know it
- [Product Key Finder v2.2.2 released](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/product-key-finder-v2-2-2-released/) - After nearly 18 months I'm pleased to release a new version of Product Key Finder (2.2.2). Some of the major changes are as follows: Recovery of license keys from external registry hives (such as those on second partitions) is now supported; I've switched from MinGW to VC++ for better WinAPI support; Better support for the
- [MD5 Hash of all proxy addresses](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/md5-hash-of-all-proxy-addresses/) - If you haven't heard, most of the commenting accounts on Gawker Media sites have been compromised. A copy of their database, including MD5 hashed e-mail addresses and DES hashed passwords has been published. If like me, you're concerned people in your organisation may have been effected here's a quick script which will provide hashes for
- [Automating Active Directory account creation with Powershell](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/automating-active-directory-account-creation-with-powershell/) - Earlier this year I set about simplifying the user account creation process for the company I work for. Previously when someone joined the company the user account creation was a manual process. Some of the tasks we manually undertook were: Create the account and Exchange mailbox; Set relevant attributes (Job Title, Office Address etc); Enable
- [Backup your Linux system to Dropbox](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/backup-your-linux-vps-to-dropbox/) - As an adovate of Dropbox I've been keen to find a simple way to backup by webserver/VPS to Dropbox. With up to 10gB of storage space for free there's plenty of capacity for me to backup some MySQL databases and webroot. Unfortunately the Linux command line dropbox client doesn't provide any way to synchronise a
- [A question to vendors: Why do you protect your licensing information?](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/why-do-you-protect-your-licensing-information/) - For the past 5 or so years I've been updating Product Key Finder in my free time. If you're not already familiar with this simple utility, it's a free application to recover license information from computers. Occasionally I come across a vendor who encrypts license information before storing it on a customers computer. If the
- [Windows 2008 SSTP Configuration](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/sstp-vpn-server-setup/) - A few weeks ago I was asked how to configure SSTP on a Windows 2008 RRAS server. Most of the MCP documents say that a certificate needs installing, but fail to mention what needs to be done. So I've written up the notes I sent, hopefully it'll help someone out. The requirement for SSTP connectivity
- [Find accounts without a thumbnail photo](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/find-accounts-without-a-thumbnail-photo/) - Exchange 2010 introduces the thumbnailPhoto attribute for user accounts, allowing you to have photos of staff displayed in Outlook 2010 (or 2007 if you have the social connector installed). Here's a quick powershell snippet to find accounts that don't already have a photo set: Import-Module ActiveDirectory Get-ADUser -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=Staff,DC=nwtraders,DC=msft" -properties thumbnailPhoto | ?
- [Automatic backup of IP Office configuation](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/automatic-backup-of-ip-office-configuation/) - I've recently been looking at automating backups of network devices such as switches, access points and other devices. I recently knocked up a quick batch script to backup Avaya IPOffice phone systems (It'd probably work on the older Lucent ArgentOffice too). Save the following as Backup.bat: @echo off REM ================================================================ REM CONFIGURATION INFO REM ================================================================
- [Dell PowerConnect vulnerability](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/dell-powerconnect-vulnerability/) - Whilst trying to automate backups of our network device configuration I stumbled across a major disclosure vulnerability with Dell PowerConnect switches. Under the default configuration the running config if the switch can be downloaded without authenticating. Simply open a web browser and navigate to: http://switch management IP/filesystem/running-config I've tried writing back to the switches by
- [Extract bandwidth information from lighttpd log files](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/extract-bandwidth-information-from-lighttpd-log-files/) - I was recently looking for a simple way to get some bandwidth statistics for websites that I host. Interested in historical data my only option was to look back over my webserver log files. My webserver of choice on linux systems is currently lighttpd. Here's a quick shell script to get the bandwidth statistics out
- [Automate backups of Netgear WNDAP330 & WNDPA350](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/automate-backups-of-netgear-wndap330-wndpa350/) - As part of my ongoing battle to backup all our network devices, I've cobbled together a batch script to backup Netgear's ProSafe range of access points. Save the following as Backup.bat: @echo off REM ================================================================ REM CONFIGURATION INFO REM ================================================================ set CFGFILE=BackupList.txt set DESTDIR=C:\Backups\ set NET_USERNAME=admin set NET_PASSWORD=netgear REM ================================================================ REM STOP CHANGING HERE OR
- [Free Avaya IP Office SMDR receiver](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/free-avaya-ip-office-smdr-receiver/) - I recently needed to log all calls made via one of our Avaya IP Office phone systems (running software version 5). The only way to do this was via a protocol known as SMDR. This is a process by which the phone system sends call data to another service for recording. I put together a
- [PowerConnect vulnerability fixed](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/powerconnect-vulnerability-fixed/) - Dell have recently released a firmware update for the PowerConnect line of switches to resolve the security vulnerability I discovered. Firmware version 4.1.0.19 lists the following fix: Access is allowed to files on the switch without log in permissions required. If the file name is known, the file can be downloaded through the web browser
- [Configuring the Cisco 877W with BE](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/configuring-the-cisco-877w-with-be/) - I recently wanted to update my Cisco knowledge so replaced my old Juniper home router with a Cisco 877W ADSL2+ wireless router. I thought I'd share the config for any other UK BEthere.co.uk users with a static IP address: ! version 12.4 no service pad service timestamps debug datetime msec service timestamps log datetime msec
- [Product key finder 1.1 released](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/product-key-finder-11-released/) - Product Key Finder 1.1 has now been released. New features in this version are: Silent Mode (/q) Data Mode (/d) Vectors used for data storage Thanks to some recent submissions from Dan Rowe support for a few more applications has also been added. For more information on this release see the Product Key Finder page.
- [Product Key Finder v2 released](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/product-key-finder-v2-released/) - After 3 years of part time development I've released version 2 of my product key finder. The project started as an internal tool I wrote to isolate which licenses staff were using at the company I worked for at the time. This application will not generate license keys, it will recover them from your system.
- [Product Key Finder now supports network cd key recovery](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/network-cd-key-recovery/) - The latest version of Product Key Finder now supports recovery of product keys (CD keys) from network computers. Usage is simple, run the program with the /remote argument, like so. CPP-ProductKeyFinder.exe /remote Dave-Win2k8 The keys will be logged to a txt file in the working directory in a file named whatever the computer name is,
- [Security update for SQL Server KB970892 fails to install](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/kb970892-fails-to-install/) - Over the last few days KB970892 has consitently failed to install on our SQL Servers via Windows Update. The following instructions will get it working. Once the update fails to install, you'll likely have to reboot as the system will be flagged as pending a reboot. Once rebooted we need to attempt to complete the
- [Automatic backup of Netscreen configuration](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/automate-backups-of-netscreen-configuration/) - I spent some time earlier automating the backups of our appliance configuration to a restricted network share and thought I'd share a simple batch script to backup the configuration from multiple Juniper Netscreen (ScreenOS) firewalls. @echo off REM ================================================================ REM CONFIGURATION INFO REM ================================================================ set USERNAME=backupAccount set PASSWORD=superSecretPassword set CFGFILE=BackupList.txt set DESTDIR=C:\Backups\ REM ================================================================ REM
- [Review of PACKT publishing Cacti Network Monitoring](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/packt-publishing-cacti-network-monitoring/) - I recently received a copy of PACKT publishings new book titled Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring. You can grab yourself a copy of the same chapter here. Facts 8 Chapters, 116 pages with an RRP of $34.99 US / £31.99 UK The book is aimed at anyone who wants to manage a network using Cacti. No
- [Test Exchange and OCS connectivity](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/test-exchange-and-ocs-connectivity/) - When attempting to troubleshoot an OCS connectivity issue earlier this week I stumbled across the following websites, they're definitely worth bookmarking. Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer OCS Remote Connectivity Analyzer Both domains look to be owned by Microsoft and are hosted on servers run by Microsoft. Even so, I'd suggest using a test account rather
- [Product Key Finder updated](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/product-key-finder-updated/) - After a bit of inactivity I've updated my product key finder with support for the following applications: AutoCAD Adobe Acrobat 6 Adobe Acrobat 8 Office XP Office XP Publisher If anyone has any feature requests feel free to drop me a line. This application will not generate license keys, it will recover them from your
- [Turn an old Google Appliance into an ESX server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/turn-an-old-google-appliance-into-an-esx-server/) - So, you've got an old Google Appliance kicking around? Maybe from an expired Google Enterprise Partner Program (GEP) agreement? Why not turn it into an ESX server. Once your license has expired, you'll want to do is check with Google and make sure they don't want the hardware back (they never do, but best to
- [Install ESX from a USB drive](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/install-esx-from-usb-drive/) - Last week I was trying to repurpose an old Google Appliance for a development ESX server. Since the Google appliance was essentially a Dell PowerEdge 2950 it had dual 2.33 GHz Xeons, 16Gb memory and six 250Gb drives. Unfortunately the system didn't come with a CD drive so the next easiest installation was going to
- [Migrate SharePoint user settings](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/migrate-sharepoint-user-settings/) - Last week I was migrating a SharePoint (WSS) installation from a domain to a workgroup and needed to clone a users configuration to a different account (so, from NWTRADERS\Dave Hope to LONDON\Dave Hope). Thankfully Microsoft provide a tool to do just that: STSADM -o migrateuser -oldlogin "NWTRADERS\Dave Hope" -newlogin "LONDON\Dave Hope" -ignoresidhistory STSADM is stored
- [Reset HP System Management Homepage Password](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/reset-hp-system-management-homepage-password/) - I recently needed to access the HP "System Management Homepage" on one of our servers however I didn't know the system management password (and it hadn't been setup to use Windows Authentication as is usually the case). I was unable to retrieve the password, however I was able to reset it. First, navigate to c:\compaq\wbem\homepage
- [Unable to login to OCS edge server with error C3E93D86](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/ocs-2007-edge-server-error-c3e93d86/) - When trying to login to my newly configured Edge server clients were getting presented with the following error. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 Cannot sign in because the server is temporarily unavailable. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator. A few tries later and the Edge server eventually logged the following. EventID: 14502 Event Source:
- [Compacting all MSSQL databases](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/compacting-all-mssql-databases/) - Now that my hangover has just about worn off from a rough night out, I thought i'd post something useful. Below is a quick and (very) dirty way of clearing down the log and shrinking MSSQL datbases. Something useful for people who want to keep their Windows systems/networks tidy. -- DECLARE STUFF. DECLARE @rowCount int
- [Zune 30Gb Bug Sourcecode](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/zune-30gb-bug-sourcecode/) - As you may have heard, all 30Gb Zune's refused to work on December 31st 2008 due to a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year. Somehow, the sourcecode to the RTC clock driver code has appeared on the internet. The code itself was written by Freescale
- [A 300ft bungee jump?](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/300ft-bungee-jump/) - I usually try and avoid blogging personal things, but am going to make an exception just this once. For my birthday back in May by friends teamed up and bought me a 300ft bungee jump in Datchet, Berkshire. I finally managed to pluck up the courage and take a jump. See below for the video
- [Prevent .DS_Store creation on network shares](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/prevent-ds_store-creation-on-network-shares/) - At home I have a HTPC with some SMB shares for Music and Videos. Much to my annoyance my beloved macbook insisted on creating .DS_Store files on these shares whenever I used them. That is, until I found out how to prevent it doing so. Open Terminal.app, type the following and hit return defaults write
- [TFS SP1 Problems](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tfs-sp1-problems/) - Had to upgrade our Team Foundation to SP1 today, part of which required "KB919156". What fun I had. The error I was getting was the following: The application pool identity required by Team Foundation Server (TFSWSS) for the content virtual server is not using the Team Foundation Server service account. To proceed, you must exit
- [Creating a deny by default SRP](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/software-restriction-policy/) - Software Restriction Policies are a way of limiting what can be executed by a user. For more information see this page on technet. Basically, they allow you to limit what a user can run (No games etc). To create a basic Software restriction policy just follow the below guide. 1: Create the policy Firstly you
- [Exchange 2007 Migration notes](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/exchange-2007-migration/) - At work I started off an exchange 2007 migration which has been long overdue. In the hope of providing some insight into migrations that others may still have to do, here are some notes. Combining the CAS & Mailbox roles prevents OWA proxying If like me you start off your Exchange migration by just adding
- [Windows Storage Server - initiator login problems](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/windows-storage-server-initiator-login-problems/) - I came across a problem whilst trying to repair a broken Windows Storage Server 2003 R2 system yesterday and thought my findings might help someone out. When using the Microsoft iSCSI initiator I was able to login to the iSCSI portal but not able to login to a target. In the system event log of
- [Dedipower review](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/dedipower-review/) - In 2006 the company I work for migrated some of its managed hosting infrastructure from Newnet (in Fareham) to Dedipower (in Reading). We’ve just moved out due to two acquisitions which have created a desire to consolidate our hosting offerings to our own datacenter (in Bristol). Now that we’ve left Dedipower, I feel that I
- [OSX Click the mouse via code](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/osx-click-the-mouse-via-code/) - A few weeks ago I needed to be able to click the mouse via code on my MacBook. After some digging I came across this article, which provided some useful basic code. I quickly got fed up of having to work out the screen coordinates so have extended the application to use the current coordinates
- [Backup your NAS](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/backup-your-nas/) - For the last 3 years I've had a Buffalo Terastation (HD-HTGL) at home storing photos from my Nikon D200 SLR, my music collection, films, documents and so on. I'd configured it with RAID5 which left me with just under 750Gb storage capacity. This meant that if one drive failed it'd continue on with degraded functionality.
- [VMware Announces First Open Source Virtual Desktop Client](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/vmware-release-open-source-client/) - According to Yahoo Finance, VMWare are releasing an open source client named "VMware View Open Client". VMware’s vClient Initiative is to deliver universal clients, desktops that follow users whilst providing a rich personalized experience that is secure, cost-effective and easy for IT to manage. VMware View Open Client is licensed under the LGPL v 2.1
- [IRIS PAYE-Master password](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/iris-paye-master-password/) - At work we're in the process of migrating data from IRIS PAYE-Master over to our Sage accounting package to standardize payroll across our different offices. We called Sage asking if it was possible to import the data direct and were told that unfortunately that was not going to be possible. After some investigation it turns
- [Create Virtual Machine fails with error 3101](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/create-virtual-machine-fails-with-error-3101/) - Over Christmas I completed migrating our SCVMM 07 environmentover to SCVMM 08. An issue appeared this week which had me stumped, all of a sudden creating VMs from some templates started to fail when trying to "Install VM Components". Error (3101) VMM failed to mount VHD file D:\BOH-DHOPE-V07\BOH-DHOPE-V07_disk_1.vhd on the * server. A timeout occurred.
- [BT limiting BitTorrent speed](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/bt-limiting-bittorrent-speed/) - For the last month or so my ISP, British Telecom, have been limiting BitTorrent download speeds (upload speeds have remained unaffected). When I signed up with them I quizzed their sales people about what traffic shaping technology they employed and whether they used bitfield mangling or similar technologies. They said no, it was a truly
- [Removing a child domain that no longer exists](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/removing-a-child-domain-that-no-longer-exists/) - I was asked to remove a child domain at work today. Usually that wouldn't be a problem but unfortunately the final DC had been wiped and not been dcpromo'd (Cleanly removed from the domain). So I thought I'd document the process should anyone else find themselves in a similar situation. To do most of the
- [Top 10 things the IT guy would like you to know](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/top-10-things-the-it-guy-would-like-you-to-know/) - I was reading Matthew Osburn's blog a few moments ago and came across a post which I'd like to share: If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because
- [SCVMM 2008 Delayed](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/scvmm-2008-delayed/) - Microsoft were due to release SCVMM 2008 yesterday (8th October) but according to a forum post by Carmen Asher (a Program Manager at Microsoft) the release has been delayed until October 30th. Ohh well, I guess that pushes our upgrade to SCVMM 2008 back a month - Darn.
- [Deploy Visual Basic Express 2008](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/deploy-visual-basic-express-2008/) - A UK college recently e-mailed me asking for help deploying Visual Basic Express 2008. Here are the basic steps to extracting an MSI from the 2008 Express ISO. Download the Visual Studio 2008 Express ISO to your local system and mount it using something like MagicDisk. Locate the "VBExpress" directory and copy it somewhere locally.
- [Book review of Zenoss Core, Network and system monitoring](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/zenoss-book-review/) - In early September I was contacted by PACKT Publishing. They provided me with a review copy of their new book, Zenoss Core Network and System Monitoring (ISBN 978-847194-28-2) by Michael Badger. The books eleven chapters cover everything from basic installation to extending Zenoss: Introduction System Architecture Installation and Set up The Zenoss User Interface Device
- [SQL Server 2008 RTM](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/sql-2008-rtm/) - As Neil points out in his blog, SQL 2008 RTM'd and is available on Technet / MSDN. Typical, I only setup 2005 Enterprise for SCCM in my lab environment yesterday. Time to take this for a spin. Keep an eye on Neil's blog, he has more SQL2008 goodness planned.
- [Juniper SSG140 PPTP Routing](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/juniper-ssg140-pptp-routing/) - At work I've just replaced a custom Linux box I've been running as our firewall and proxy with a Juniper Netscreen SSG140. I had a few problems forwarding PPTP traffic so thought I'd document the problems I came across and the solutions. PPTP Forwarding Firstly, I was having problems even forwarding the PPTP traffic. I'd
- [Register connection's addresses in DNS](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/automatic-dns-multiple-ips/) - In the last 12 months I've been through the acquisition once and am now going through it again. In June 2007 Immediacy (the company I work for) was acquired by Mediasurface PLC. A month or so ago Alterian PLC announced their intention to acquire Mediasurface. As part of the acquisition I've had to change our
- [Microsoft break support.microsoft.com for Squid users](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/microsoft-break-supportmicrosoftcom-for-squid-users/) - It seems that Microsoft have managed to break their support site for anyone behind a Squid proxy server. Danny has posted a fix for this on his website, though for newer version of squid a slightly different approach is required. ## # Fix support.microsoft.com ## acl fixSupportMicrosoft dstdomain support.microsoft.com reply_header_access Accept-Encoding deny fixSupportMicrosoft request_header_access Accept-Encoding
- [Remotely check Windows firewall status](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/remotely-check-windows-firewall-status/) - As part of my routine auditing process I wanted to check to ensure that the Windows firewall is enabled and set to use its domain profile on all of our Member servers. Here's a script to do just that ' Configuration. '==================================================================== Dim strFirewallStatus, strComputer, arrComputers arrComputers = Split("london,brisbane,perth,chicago", ",") WScript.Echo "-------------------------------------------------------" WScript.Echo Left("Computer Name"
- [WSUS SP1 Upgrade fails](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/wsus-sp1-upgrade-fails/) - Came across a problem when upgrading to WSUS SP1 earlier today. If you've moved your WSUS database as per my post your upgrade will fail with the following: Success MWUSSetup Validating pre-requisites... Success MWUSSetup Creating database backup... Success MWUSSetup The SQL server instance is remote. No database backup will be created Success MWUSSetup Removing Wsus...
- [Decrypting DPAPI (aspnet_setreg) stored credentials](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/decrypting-dpapi-aspnet_setreg-stored-credentials/) - I came across a problem at work where I needed to recover credentials that had been stored in the registry using .Net's DPAPI (aspnet_setreg). Thankfully the open source NCrypto library came to the rescue. Here's a simple bit of code making use of the NCrypto.Security.Cryptography assembly to decrypt the data:
- [Izarc MSI and Transform](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/izarc-msi/) - At work I try to use as many free software alternatives as possible, after a bit of hunting I came across an MSI that someone has built for IZArc. The only problem the MSI above is that it's in French. Here's a transform (mst) to change the language to English and remove the "What's new"
- [Open source network monitoring](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/open-source-network-monitoring/) - I've used various network monitoring tools over the last few years, in particular Cacti, System Center Essentials and now Zenoss. Cacti is great for monitoring SNMP hosts and has some incredible graphing abilities. The problem I had with Cacti is simply that there's no useful OS error monitoring. So, there became a requirement for either
- [Exchange 2007 restore using NTBackup](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/exchange-2007-restore-ntbackup/) - Now that I'm well under way with my Exchange 2007 migration I figured it'd be a good time to test the new Exchange recovery process. To cut a long story short, it's a long process as most of the functionality is via Powershell rather than the Exchange Management Console. Anyway, here's a quick guide. 1.
- [System Center Essentials (SCE) SP1 error 3604](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/system-center-essentials-sce-sp1-error-3604/) - Our latest ActionPack subscription came through the other day and I noticed licenses for System Center Essentials so figured I'd give it a try. We already use WSUS to update management, so am still not toally convinced of the benefits. Anyway, after a few problems with the initial install I went to install SP1 only
- [Squid top-site report generator updated](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/squid-top-site-report-generator-updated/) - I got an e-mail from Marco Stefanini asking if the Perl script could sort sites by the data transfer rather than the frequency of the visits. Not wanting to disappoint I added the functionality last night and tested when I got into work today. So, without further ado go checkout my Squid Top Site Report
- [It runs on legs of steel and is a master of defence](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/it-runs-on-legs-of-steel-and-is-a-master-of-defence/) - As I sit here waiting on SC:Essentials installing (I really wish I understood all the different SC applications, and how they differ) I came across the new Windows Server 2008 Unleased website. Go take a look, it's pretty good. It's got a neat animated robot on it so it wins my vote!
- [The internet is expanding](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/the-internet-is-expanding/)
- [I'm now OpenID enabled](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/im-now-openid-enabled/) - For a while now I've been hearing about OpenID and have liked what i've heard, without being 100% sure of what it is or how it works. Sam Ruby has a good article on OpenID, and how to set it up. Well worth a read. If only more developers would add OpenID support to their
- [LHC Network](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/lhc-network/) - The Times Online had an interesting article on the network Cern is having to setup for the LHC. To summarise, they're going to have an annual data transfer of 37,384TB of data (They said 56m CDs, so that's just an estimate). Their grid network has been built with dedicated fibre optic cables and modern routing
- [Microsoft 70-292](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/microsoft-70-292/) - I finally got around to taking my 70-292 exam to upgrade my MCSA from 2000 to 2003. Passed first time which is a good thing too, since today is the last day you can officially take the exam. Prometric currently seem to be offering the exam to mid May, but there's no guarantee that'll be
- [Deploying Office 2007 File Format Converters](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/deploying-office-2007-file-format-converters/) - Since moving our network over to Office 2007 is a lot of work, and requires a fair ammount of user retraining I decided it best to just deploy the File Format Converters Microsoft realeased so that users with Office 2003 can open 2007 format documents. For reasoning unknown to me, Microsoft released them as an
- [Deploying the Java runtime environment (J2RE)](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/deploying-the-java-runtime-environment-j2re/) - This post will try and walk you through deploying J2RE using Group Policy Software Deployment.Firstly, download "Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6" from here, you'll need the offline installer for this. Once downloaded, run it and an MSI will be extracted to your AppData folder, you can find it here: %HOMEPATH%\Local Settings\Application Data\{3248F0A6-6813-11D6-A77B-00B0D0150060} You then need
- [Windows 2008 SP1](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/windows-2008-sp1/) - For those of you who have played with the Windows Server 2008 RTM you may be left wondering why the version is shows as "Build 6001: Service Pack 1". Hang on, Servcie pack 1? But it hasn't even shipped yet! Iain McDonald explains why over on his blog. Vista and Windows 2008 are have an
- [Skype Transform / Deploying Skype](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/skype-transform-deploying-skype/) - First things first, grab the Skype business version from the Skype business site. This has no adverts and is an MSI file for simple deployment. You'll probably want my Skype Transform which will remove the desktop shortcut and prevent Skype from auto starting with windows. You can now deploy Skype in your prefered way (Group
- [Windows 2008 RTM](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/windows-2008-rtm/) - If you havn't already heard, Windows 2008 hit RTM today. You can read a brief story and see pictures of the room where it all happens (Room 26 - "the shipping room") on the teams technet blog. The Hyper-V version isn't out yet, but no doubt will be in the next few months. If you're
- [Detecting VMWare](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/detecting-vmware/) - Interested in how to detect the presence of VMware / VirtualServer I came across this bit of code to detect whether an application is being run in virtual environment. int swallow_redpill (){ unsigned char m[2+4], rpill[] = "\x0f\x01\x0d\x00\x00\x00\x00\xc3"; *((unsigned*)&rpill[3]) = (unsigned)m; ((void(*)())&rpill)(); return (m[5]>0xd0) ? 1 : 0; } This works by abusing the SIDT
- [Deploying Visual Studio 2008 Express via Microsoft Deployment](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/deploying-visual-studio-2008-express-via-microsoft-deployment/) - So, you want to deploy VS2008 Express? - I did (We use it in our testing VMs). 1: Download the offline installer First things first, get the offline installer for Visual Studio 2008 Express. 2: Extract the files from the ISO Grab whichever edition you want to deploy from the ISO you've just downloaded (i'm
- [Deploying SQL Server with Microsoft Deployment](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/deploying-sql-server-with-microsoft-deployment/) - This guide focuses on VS2005 Express Edition with advanced services, though this applies to any version of SQL2005. The first thing you'll need to do is copy the install files to your distribution share via the Deployment Workbench. Be sure to choose a directory structure without spaces as this seems to cause problems during setup.
- [Changing "IT Organization" text](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/changing-it-organization-text/) - After a bit of investigation and asking around I thought I'd share this simple Microsoft Deployment tip. On the actions window by default it reads "IT Organization", to change this add the following to CustomSetting.ini _SMSTSOrgName=NWTraders There, it's that simple.
- [Microsoft Deployment & WSUS](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/microsoft-deployment-wsus/) - Microsoft have recently launched the latest version of BDD, now called "Microsoft Deployment" If you ask me, BDD sounded better but oh well. If like me you don't want to create packages for each and every windows update for your deployment image, here's how you can point the build process at your WSUS server. Firstly,
- [Wordpress Optimization](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/wordpress-optimization/) - Just recently I've redesigned by blog (or rather, used the free ColdBlue) theme). I put off moving from my own Perl blogging software to Wordpress due to performance reasons for a long time but have finally bitten the bullet. I used to spend a fair amount of time using WebsiteOptimization.com to check for large page
- [Upgrading a Linksys WRT54G](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/upgrading-a-linksys-wrt54g/) - For a longtime now I've been running a custom firmware on my wireless access point at home (OpenWRT WhireRussian) but have finally given in and upgraded to Kamikaze 7.09. I ran into some problems along the way, which I thought I'd go through in the event others come across them. The first important thing to
- [Squid Reporting](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/squid-reporting/) - A month or so I ditched ISA 2006 in favor of Squid 2.5 running on a Debian Linux box. I've looked around at various reporting tools and now use SARG to produce per user/address reports. However, I wanted to produce a report visible to anyone who wanted to view the previous days statistics so modified
- [Blackberry SSH](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/blackberry-ssh/) - I've just been implementing some Linux systems at work (Proxy, Firewall and monitoring system) and stumbled across an SSH client for Blackberry devices. It's really sweet, not had much chance to play with it yet but it even seems to support public key authentication. Hurray! It is a little slow over GPRS but picks up
- [To goatse or not to goatse...](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/to-goatse-or-not-to-goatse/) - I've started to feel the brunt of various people starting to embed images on their websites which are on my server. To begin with this didn't bother me too much, but my bandwidth this month has hit my limit (Well, my limit since on my new site. I've got through 1.7Tb of bandwidth before, but
- [Windows 2003 Datacenter Guest NIC Driver for Virtual Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/windows-2003-datacenter-guest-nic-driver-for-virtual-server/) - Came across a problem the other day with running Windows 2003 Datacenter Edition as a guest on Microsoft Virtual Server. The problem? Windows 2003 Datacenter edition doesn't have a suitable driver for Virtual Server, meaning that it's fairly usless as a guest operating system (which negates one of the main benefits of having datacenter edition
- [Moving a WSUS 3.0 Database](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/moving-a-wsus-database/) - Due to seemingly non-existant documentation on moving a WSUS 3.0 database to a new server, I figured i'd write up my experience. Database configuration is all stored in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\UpdateServices\Server\Setup The keys you're interested in are SqlServerName and SqlInstanceIsRemote. Microsoft only officially support Windows authentication, so that's what i'll cover here. You'll be able to connect
- [Moving Team Foundation Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/moving-team-foundation-server/) - For scalability and performance reasons I had to move our Team Foundation Server over the bank holiday weekend and thanks to some superb Microsoft documentation it was a fairly easy process. The documentation may at first seem fairly daunting just by the length of it, but most of it is just cretinous things like how
- [Apply Group policy to Windows XP and Windows Vista only](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/apply-group-policy-to-windows-xp-and-windows-vista-only/) - Had an issue at work today on my work network where I wanted to have a group policy object apply only when they login to their desktops and not member servers. SELECT * FROM Win32_OperatingSystem WHERE Caption LIKE '%Windows Vista%'OR Caption LIKE '%Windows XP%' By applying the above WMI filter to the group policy you
- [Move ISA Tracing Location](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/move-isa-tracing-location/) - Looking to free up some space on your Windows drive? Here's a nifty tip for ISA Server users out there. By default, ISA stores it's debug tracing in c:\Windows\Debug, which is about 1Gb in size. This can be moved to somewhere else (i.e a bigger drive) by modifying the following registry keys: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\ISATrace] "AlternateTracingFile"="D:\ISA\Tracing\ISALOG.BIN" "UseAlternateTracingFile"=dword:ffffffff

## Pages

- [Product Key Finder](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/product-key-finder/) - Product Key Finder is a free Windows key finder applications that retrieves license key information (CD Keys) from the Windows registry. Product Key Finder currently supports retrieval of 200+ licenses from applications such Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat. If you'd like additional key finding capabilities to be added, just drop me an e-mail.
- [Contact](https://davehope.co.uk/contact/) - If you'd like to contact me, please use the webmaster@davehope.co.uk email. If you're asking about additional recovery support for Product Key Finder please include the application name and version you'd like supported.
- [Other projects](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/old/) - On this page, you can find stuff that's either old, or not major enough to warrant a page of its own. Unless otherwise stated everything below is licensed under the GPLv2.0 ASCII Shifter A simple program to shift ASCII characters. Shifts aaa to aab, aac then aad etc. Windows download (exe)Sourcecode download (C++, tar.bz2) Image
- [SMDR Receiver](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/smdr-receiver/) - The SMDR Receiver will record call details received from an IP office phone system (for that matter, it'd probably work with any IP PBX that uses the SMDR format). SMDR Receiver is a Windows Service which outputs the data in CSV format. Installation The service must be installed using 'installutil', from an elevated command prompt
- [Driver Backup](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/driver-backup/) - A .Net 2.0 application to backup non-Microsoft drivers on a Windows box. Extremely useful when you're about to reformat or re-install Windows. Download The below downloads are provided free of charge, with no warranty or guarantee as to their functionality. Sourcecode (GPL v2.0)C# 2.0 Visual Studio Project Windows XP - 7 (x86 and x64)Released January
- [STSRG](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/perl-squid-reporting/) - STSRG (Squid Top-Site Report Generator) is a Perl script to analyze the previous days squid access.log log file and produce a report of the most frequently visited URLs. It's reasonably quick processing about 100,000 lines of log file in 12 seconds. Screenshot The below screenshot may not reflect the latest version of the download but
- [Network Boot Floppy](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/network-boot-floppy/) - A floppy disk image which will boot up a machine, connect to a network share and begin a windows install. Included are network card drivers for Qemu and VMware. Configuration values are stored as variables in CONFIG.SYS At present, there are two bundled network card drivers, one for Qemu and another for VMware. These can
- [Projects](https://davehope.co.uk/projects/) - My most popular open source applications are available here; A driver backup tool, network boot disk, squid report generator and MD5 brute force tool.

## Categories

- [Uncategorized](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/category/uncategorized/)

## Tags

- [Drivers](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/drivers/)
- [Virtual Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/virtual-server/)
- [Windows Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/windows-server/)
- [WSUS](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/wsus/) - Posts about Windows Server Update Services
- [SQL Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/sql-server/)
- [Group Policy](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/group-policy/)
- [Team Foundation Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/team-foundation-server/)
- [Blogging](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/blogging/)
- [Blackberry](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/blackberry/)
- [Squid](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/squid/)
- [Proxy](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/proxy/)
- [Perl](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/perl/)
- [OpenWrt](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/openwrt/)
- [Microsoft Deployment](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/microsoft-deployment/)
- [BDD](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/bdd/)
- [Visual Studio](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/visual-studio/)
- [Windows Vista](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/windows-vista/)
- [VMWare](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/vmware/)
- [Software Deployment](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/software-deployment/)
- [Skype](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/skype/)
- [Exchange](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/exchange/)
- [Certifications](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/certifications/)
- [Networking](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/networking/)
- [Powershell](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/powershell/)
- [Disaster Recovery](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/disaster-recovery/)
- [NTBackup](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/ntbackup/)
- [System Center Essentials](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/system-center-essentials/)
- [vbScript](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/vbscript/)
- [Windows Firewall](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/windows-firewall/)
- [Zenoss](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/zenoss/)
- [SNMP](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/snmp/)
- [network monitoring](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/network-monitoring/)
- [IZarc](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/izarc/)
- [Netscreen](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/netscreen/)
- [SSG140](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/ssg140/)
- [Routing](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/routing/)
- [PPTP](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/pptp/)
- [C#](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/c/)
- [Microsoft .Net](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/microsoft-net/)
- [datacenter](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/datacenter/)
- [SCVMM](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/scvmm/)
- [Active Directory](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/active-directory/)
- [BitTorrent](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/bittorrent/)
- [Zune](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/zune/)
- [NAS](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/nas/)
- [Backup](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/backup/)
- [OSX](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/osx/)
- [Windows Storage Server](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/windows-storage-server/)
- [iSCSI](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/iscsi/)
- [SAN](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/san/)
- [OCS 2007](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/ocs-2007/)
- [HP](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/hp/)
- [Compaq](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/compaq/)
- [SharePoint](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/sharepoint/)
- [WSS](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/wss/)
- [ESX](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/esx/)
- [Windows Update](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/windows-update/)
- [Cacti](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/cacti/)
- [Linux](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/linux/)
- [Ubuntu](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/ubuntu/)
- [Dell](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/dell/)
- [Product Key Finder](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/product-key-finder/)
- [Security](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/security/)
- [Bash](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/bash/)
- [Dropbox](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/dropbox/)
- [IPOffice](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/ipoffice/)
- [Avaya](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/avaya/)
- [ArgentOffice](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/argentoffice/)
- [Lucent](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/lucent/)
- [PowerConnect](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/powerconnect/)
- [Cisco](https://davehope.co.uk/Blog/tag/cisco/)