Seen on Windows 10, and Server 2012, when attempting to open or mount an ISO file, (even downloaded direct from Microsoft). You get the following error;
Note: Can also been seen with .VHD files.
Couldn’t Mount File
Sorry, there was a problem mounting the file.
Solution
Before you try anything else simply COPY the iso file to the root of your C: drive, and try again.
99% of the time simply copying the file to the C: drive will fix the problem, but if you’re still reading then that’s probably not the case for you? The problem is most likely that the ISO file has had the sparse attribute set.
Option 1
Download Remove Sparse > Extract the Contents and > Run the .reg file.
Now you have the option to remove Sparse on the right click menu.
About a week ago a client asked me how to do this, and I was surprised I’d not got it covered on the site. I have already covered how to do this with VMware Workstation, but never got round to doing the same for ESX.
There are a myriad of reasons why you may need to do this, either to connect a UPS, a printer, thumb drive, or a software dongle etc. But the process is identical.
Solution
1. USB pass through support was brought in with ESX 4.1, so make sure your Host machine is 4.1 or newer.
2. Also the “Hardware Version” of the virtual machine itself must be (at least) version 7.
3. Your first task is to add a “USB Controller” the the VM. (You will need to power the VM down before you can do this). Edit Settings > Hardware Tab > Add.
4. Select USB Controller from the list > Next > Next > Finish.
7. Once you have a USB controller, you can present the USB devices that are connected to the Host ESX server.
8. Add Hardware.
9. You will now see “USB device” as an option > Next.
10. Now you can see the USB devices that are connected to the Host (In this case an HP UPS) > Select your device > Next > Finish > OK.
Note: The option “Support vMotion while device is connected” option will do exactly as is suggests, if the VM is vMotioned to another Host, the USB device will remain connected to this VM. (That is very cool if you think about what it has to do to make that happen).
11. The first time you boot into the operating system, (In this case Server 2008 R2) it will detect the hardware, here I’m opening Device Manager.
12. And you can see the USB controller, it will need a reboot before it starts them with the correct drivers.
13. Post reboot, the USB controller and devices will load, and be connected successfully.
Note: After this you can simply add and remove USB devices, without the need for any downtime.
14. Now in Device Manager everything looks a lot healthier.
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I was called to a 2003 Server yesterday, that was riddled with malware, whatever was on there was generating a lot of network traffic, so the first thing I did was disconnect it from the network.
That’s fine, but if I wanted to use my usual ‘weapon of choice’ Malwarebytes, how was I going to get the latest database installed?
Solution
WARNING: There is a note on the Malwarebytes website that discourages this procedure, as it breaks the incremental update mechanism of Malwarebytes. They recommend that you use this utility to do the job, and that it should be updated every week (though the page currently has December 2011 as the update date!) . In my case once the machine is clean, I’ll remove Malwarebytes and install Trend Worry Free on it anyway. Either way, I prefer to know for a fact I’m using the latest database.
1. Install and update Malwarebytes on a nice clean machine (In this case, my Windows 7 laptop).
2. Find out what version of Malwarebytes you are running (on the about tab).
3. Navigate to the following location, and take a copy of the rules.ref file, i.e. put a copy on a USB thumb drive.
This weekend I needed to install Windows 7 on my shiny new Acer HTPC, but having no internal CD/DVD drive I needed to do this via USB.
Quite a few times now I’ve needed to install Windows (Particularly Server 2008), on a machine that has no DVD Drive. You can now install both products from a bootable USB drive by doing either of the the following.
Note: You will need a USB Drive with enough free space on it to hold the Windows setup files (Windows 7 and Server 2008 require 4GB ish, depending on versions).
Solution
Option 1 (The quick and dirty techie way!)
1. Pop in your USB Drive > open a command windows and execute the following commands:
[box]diskpart {enter} [launches the disk partition program]
list {enter}[Displays all the disks you can work with]
select disk x {enter}[Select the USB Drive number]
clean {enter}[Wipes the USB Drive][/box]
2. Execute the following commands:
[box]create partition primary {enter} [Creates a new primary partition]
select partition 1{enter}[Select the partition you have just made]
active {enter}[Makes the partition bootable]
exit {enter}[Closes diskpart][/box]
3. Now use a utility like 7-Zip to extract the Windows Install media .ISO file to your USB drive.
4. Now boot your device from USB, (Enter the BIOS boot section and change the boot order), or press the key the machine says will load the boot options when you first turn it on.
Note: Some machines require you to change USB emulation before you can boot from them like so.
I don’t have many clients left that still have Exchange 2003, so this will probably be the last time I have to do this (famous last words).
Exchange databases NEVER get smaller, if you delete information out of them, it simply creates white space, that Exchange will reuse, (so they will steadily grow in size). Before you carry out this procedure, get your users to clear down their mailbox’s. Also delete/purge any unused mailboxes, this will make your defrag more efficient.
Solution
In my case the server the database was on was short on drive space. Remember you need 110% of the size of the database free space to carry out this procedure (so a 50GB database needs 110GB of free space to defragment). I did this with an external USB Drive.
Note: Moving large databases to USB media can take a while, at USB 2 Speed (48MBps (480Mbps)) took about 45 minutes to copy the database files to it.
1. You don’t need to to do this but, locate where the log files for this database are being stored, because in a minute we are going to take a copy (just in case). Right click the storage group the database is in > Properties > General > Transaction log location.
2. Now for the database itself, right click the Mailbox Store (or public folder database if that’s the one you are going to defrag) > Properties > Database > Exchange databases.
3. On my external drive I’ve created two folders, one holds the original untouched database files and the logs, the other (EDB_Files) holds a copy of the priv1.edb and priv1.stm files for the mailbox database that I’m going to defragment.
4. Eseutil.exe lives in the Exchange program folder in the bin directory, change to that directory;
[box]
cd “c:Program FilesExchsrvrbin”
[/box]
Now if we simply run eseutil on the database, it will create a temporary database on the C: drive, which I don’t want (remember we are tight for drive space). So I will specify where the temp database will be, and start the defragmentation.
[box]
eseutil /d {Path to the Database} /t {Path to the temp Database}
e.g.
eseutil /d H:EDB_Filespriv1.edb /t H:EDB_FilesTempDB.edb
[/box]
How long will eseutil take? That’s a horrible question to answer, it depends on the CPU/memory of the server, and the size of the database itself. in this case it was a 70GB Database, on an HP G4 Series server, it took 11 hours and 6 minutes (approx).
5. When done it should say it has completed successfully.
6. You can now delete the original EDB and STM files from the Exchange Server.
7. Then copy and paste your defragmented versions back into the original folder.
8. You can now mount the mail store(s).
9. Finally make sure you get a full backup of the Exchange database, (with some Exchange aware backup software).
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