Life was simpler when we had DVD Drives and a wallet full of CD/DVDs! I was building an HP DL360 This morning and needed to install Windows. I created a bootable USB with Unetbootin and selected a Windows Server ISO, it wouldn’t boot. So I thought ‘Fine I’ll play the game” I pressed F10 for Intelligent Provisioning.
After selecting USB media – the system could not see my USB Drive?
After a couple of seconds head scrathing the penny dropped, it wants the iso not a bootable drive, (doofus!) So I used a FAT formatted USB and that didn’t work either?
Option 1: Use iLO
Before you all start emailing me, you can install an operating system from virtual media WITHOUT and advanced iLO licence! Annoyingly I was building the server on the bench, so I had to connect my laptop into the iLO with a crossover cable but, here’s me proving it works.
Option 2: Use ExFAT
Format your USB drive using ExFAT, luckily I use macOS and Disk Utility will format a drive using ExFAT for me.
Note: Windows will also format as ExFAT 🙂
Then simply put your install .iSO file(s) on the media.
Now you can see your install media.
Option 3: Use the HP Media Creator
I didn’t try this option, but feel free to download it and give it a try, comment below to let me know how you get on.
Assuming that’s all done, your task now is to upgrade your hosts, if you have a vanilla VMware ESXi version installed. You COULD simply SSH into the host, and execute the following commands;
Well that’s great but if you are using a custom ESXi image, the process won’t even start, you simply get warned that this won’t work, as it will break all the vendor specific drivers/software, (which is a good thing I suppose, the warning I mean, not the breaking things!)
Still, if you have a vendor modified copy of ESX what do you do? Well the following procedures will work for any version of the software, either vanilla VMware or HP/Dell/IBM etc. AND IT RETAINS ALL THE HOST SETTINGS, i.e. licences, vSwitches (standard and distributed), certificates etc.
Solution 1: Use an ‘Offline Bundle’ update
Firstly, you need a copy of the appropriate ‘offline bundle’ update, below you can see this is the customised one for HPE servers.
Upload the offline bundle into a datastore, (that the host to be upgraded has access to!) While in here, shut down the guest VMs on this host, and put the host into ‘maintenance mode‘.
NOTE: If you are updating an HPE Server, there will be a gen-9 and a pre-gen-9 update bundle! Pick the correct one!
Or, you can upload the bundle via SCP into the appropriate datastore, if you prefer.
SSH into the host you are going to upgrade. Below you can see me navigating to the Datastore;
And there’s my offline bundle ready to be installed.
Remember: Even if you’re in the correct directory, you need to specify the ‘full path’ to the ‘offline bundle‘ (or it looks in the ‘/var/log’ directory and won’t work). Execute the following command;
For a while it will look like nothing is happening, (don’t panic.) After a while a LOT of text will scroll past (quickly). Scroll back up to the TOP of all that text, and you are looking for, is ‘The update completed successfully‘.
Reboot the host.
Solution 2: Use VMware Update Manager
Warning: You CANT deploy an ESXi image, thats OLDER than the Update Manager you are running, i.e. if your vCenter is 6.5 you cant upload an ESX 6.0 image, (it will fail – this cost me two hours onsite!)
Warning 2: You need vCenter 6.0 Update1 or newer to perform this function.
I’ve got two hosts, one’s a Dell PowerEdge and the other a HP Proliant, I’ve already upgraded the HP server, you will see that in the screen shots below, now I’m going to upgrade the Dell.
Before Starting;
Download the install .ISO file that has the newer version of the ESXi software.
vMotion all the VM’s off the host being upgraded, (to save time).
If you have two hosts, (like me.) You might want to disable HA and DRS on the cluster as well temporarily!
There are many reasons why you might want to do this, someone has managed to change a user password and that person is not available, you might simply have forgotten it. Or you might have been given a machine, or bought one from ebay that has come without a password. Also there have been a few times when a user has looked me in the eye and said “I’m typing my password in, but it’s not working”, I have never seen a password change on it’s own, so I will just put that down to the evil password gremlins.
The procedure will also work on the Windows local administrators password, just bear in mind that his account is disabled by default, (after Windows 8). This procedure will not work if the machine in question has had its hard drive encrypted using BitLocker.
You can use this procedure to blank, (or reset) a Domain Controllers DSRM (Directory Services Restore Mode) password.
You can avoid this procedure if you have access to another account on this machine that has administrative access. If you can log on as an administrator, then you can change the password of other local accounts on the affected machine without the need to do this.
2. Download ImgBurn and install, Launch the program, if it does not look like this you need to select View >EX-Mode-Picker. Select the ‘Write image file to disc’ option.
2. The file you downloaded is a zip file that contains the disk image, you will need to extract the image from the zip file (i.e. drag it to your desktop). From within ImgBurn launch the browse option and navigate to the disk image you have just extracted > Open.
3. Select the burn to disc icon (Note: This will be greyed out, until there is a blank CD in the drive). The image is very small, it will not take long to burn.
Carry Out a Windows 8 Password Reset.
This procedure uses the boot CD you have just created, for it to work you need to make sure the machine will attempt to boot to its CD/DVD Drive before it boots to its hard drive. (Or it will simply boot into Windows again). This change in ‘Boot Order’ is carried out in the machines BIOS, how you enter this varies depending on machine vendor, when you first turn on the machine watch for a message that looks like Press {key} to enter Setup. Typically Esc, Del, F1, F2, or F9. When in the BIOS locate the boot order and move the CD/DVD Drive to the top of the list.
1. Boot your machine from your freshly burned CD, when you see this screen simply press {Enter} to boot.
2. Depending on how many disks/partitions you have it will discover them and assign a number to each one, here I only have 1 so I will type ‘1 {Enter}’.
Note: You may see a small 300Mb partition, ignore that. You may also see your machines recovery partition if it has one, if that’s the case you may have to carry out some trial and error to get the right one.
3. The system is set to look for the default registry location C:WindowsSystem32Config so simply press {Enter}. If it fails at this point you selected the wrong drive/partition.
4. We want password reset so select option 1.
5. We will be editing user data and passwords, so again select option 1.
6. You will be presented with a list of the user objects that it can locate, here I want to reset the password for the ‘PeteLong’ user object so simply type in the username you want to edit.
Note: As mentioned you can see here the administrator account is disabled, if you want to work with that account, you will need to unlock and enable it on the next screen before you blank or change the password.
7. You can choose option 2 and type in a new password, but I’m going the blank the password, then change it when I get back into the machine by selecting option 1.
8. To step back you need to enter an exclamation mark.
9. Enter a ‘q’ to quit.
10. To write the changes you have made enter a ‘y’.
11. As long as you are happy, and have no other accounts that need changing, enter ‘n’.
12. Now remove the boot CD, and press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot the machine.
13. As the user object we are dealing with was the last one that has logged on, it will select that account as soon as the computer boots, and now it has a blank password it will automatically log on.
14. To change the password, press Ctrl+I > Change PC settings.
15. Users > Create a password.
16. Type and confirm your new password, and enter a password hint > Next.
17. Log off the account and test the new password.
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
Last week while trying to create a Linux VM on a VMware ESX 6.5 server, I saw this;
No DEFAULT or UI configuration directive found
Solution
Normally the error indicates theres something wrong with the install media, so I deleted it and uploaded it again, same error. So I downloaded the setup iso file again and checked its checksum, to make sure it was OK, (it was, but the problem persisted).
To fix the problem I simply had to connect to the host, using a different browser, (I used Firefox). Upload the .iso file and start again. Once I did that, hey presto;
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
I first saw this problem a few months ago, when I wasted to download some .bin and .pkg files from a web server running IIS, into a Cisco firewall. Then again this week I needed to get a large .iso file into a clients network so I put it on a publicly accessible web server running IIS, and had the problem again.
Solution
On the IIS server, open administrative tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager > Drill down to the default website > Locate the ‘MIME Types‘ and open them.
You will probably find there is not one for the file extension you cannot download (in this case .iso) > Add one in > Set the MIME type to;
application/octet-stream
Then re-try your download.
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
I had a vCenter 6.0.0.1 appliance on my test network and wanted to update it to version 6.0.0.2. But I didn’t want to reinstall the whole thing from scratch.
Solution
Let’s assume it’s going to go wrong! Take a snapshot off the appliance first.
Go to the patch update site and get the latest patch for your version of vCenter.
Upload the ISO file into your vSphere storage, and present it to your vCenter appliance.
SSH into your appliance (you can enable this from DCUI, but mine was enabled). Issue the following commands;
Go get a coffee it takes about 15-20 minutes, when complete it should say ‘Packages upgraded successfully’. You then need to reboot the appliance to complete the upgrade.
[box]
shutdown reboot -r Updated
[/box]
Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links
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.
