VMware View – Windows Pool ‘Stuck’ on Customizing
Nov17

VMware View – Windows Pool ‘Stuck’ on Customizing

KB ID 0000646  Problem While trying to deploy a Windows XP Pool yesterday, I hit upon this problem. Windows 7 works fine, but as soon as I tried to roll out a Windows XP pool, they stopped like this; After a couple of hours, the whole operation timed out, and each machine shows as; Status {Date}{Time} o’clock {Time-Zone}: Customization operation timed out I tried to deploy the pool with both ‘quick prep’ and...

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Windows XP Service Pack 3 Hangs on “Performing cleanup”
Nov17

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Hangs on “Performing cleanup”

KB ID 0000364 Problem Saw this a while ago, and just thought it was a “One Off”. Then on a visit to a client yesterday I saw it on both machines I was working on. Solution This might scare you, but you need to kill the update, don’t panic at this stage SP3 is already on. Update 05/04/11: Before continuing please read the feedback below. Ive never personally seen any adverse effects from doing this and I’ve...

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Windows XP (Safe Mode) Cannot access USB Drive(Access Denied)
Nov17

Windows XP (Safe Mode) Cannot access USB Drive(Access Denied)

KB ID 0000368 Dtd 31/12/10 Problem A few weeks back I was working on a Windows XP machine that had been infected with some rogue AV spyware, I was having no luck installing my usual cleaning tools so I booted to safe mode, I have a USB thumb drive that I keep a set of up to date AV/Spyware tools on for this very purpose, but the machine did not want to let me open it.   Solution 1. OK, I admit this is not really a...

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Windows XP – Sysprep (for imaging)
Nov17

Windows XP – Sysprep (for imaging)

KB ID 0000599  Problem A client who we recently did a WDS (Windows 7) install for, needed to image a couple of Windows XP machines, (They had some software that either would not run, or was not supported on Windows 7). They asked me for some documentation on how to do this, it’s been such a long time since I imaged any XP machine, so I took the opportunity to document it properly. Solution Before you begin, be aware you need to...

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Make Vista RDP Behave Like XP RDP
Nov17

Make Vista RDP Behave Like XP RDP

KB ID 0000098 Problem If Like me you haver to open multiple RDP sessions to lots of different clients, who all have differend domain names and passwords then the move to Vista can be a shock to the system, as far as RDP goes anyway. If you want to bend the version of RDP shipped with vista to behave like the old one did in XP you will need to the following. Solution 1. Locate your default.rdp file (it’s usually in my documents). 2....

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