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, in this case Dave-Win2k8.txt.

This application will not generate license keys, it will recover them from your system. It will not help you pirate software.

You can download Product Key Finder here.

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 be from a USB thumb drive.

If you’re keen to install ESX from a USB thumb drive, you’ll need:

• A USB thumb drive, I used a 1Gb Lexar
• An ESX iso, I used VMware-VMvisor-Installer-4.0.0-164009.x86_64.iso
• The latest version of syslinux (I used 3.82)

With those bits in hand, do the following.

1. Format the USB drive with a FAT32 filesystem
2. Use something like 7-Zip to extract the ISO to your USB thumb drive
3. Download the latest syslinux ZIP file and extract it somewhere
4. From the “syslinux\win” directory run
   syslinux.exe -s -m -f -a h: Where h: is the letter your USB thumb drive is assigned
5. Rename the hidden file isolinux.cfg on your USB thumb drive to syslinux.cfg
6. Safely Remove your USB thumb drive and install ESX

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 in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\

Bear in mind that you may need to alter the display name etc if you’re migrating the settings to a different individual.