Jimmy Poynter's Blog

How to Enable Windows 7 Secret God Mode

poynterjw — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 01:31:04 +0000

We have started to let workers within our organization Pilot Windows 7 and one of our Microsoft MVP’s (Dustin Hannifin) came across this. Pretty cool way to manage centrally all settings.

How to Enable Windows 7 Secret God Mode

God Mode is easy to set up too, just do this:

Create a new folder anywhere.
Rename the folder by pasting this name exactly as it appears (copy it first):
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Useful Office 2010 links

poynterjw — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:15:03 +0000

Here are some useful links for Office 2010

Office 2010 Deployment Options
Office 2010 Technical Preview
Office 2010 Engineering Blog

Finding Location of Active Directory object

poynterjw — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 04:45:02 +0000

This procedure allows you to view full path of a rogue active directory object.

1. Open Active Directory User and Computers > View > Advanced Features

2. Now search for Active Directory object by Right Click on domain > Find
3. Once you have found object double click and you should now see and object field like below.

Error message when you start a Windows 7 or Windows Vista-based computer after you change the SATA mode of the boot drive: “STOP 0x0000007B INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE”

poynterjw — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:45:29 +0000

I was setting up a Lenovo T61 and must of been used for something else or had a hard drive crash before because BIOS was set for SATA to Compatibility instead of AHCI. I received the dreaded Blue Screen of Death after setting to AHCI and rebooting. Found this KB below that worked quick and easy. Weird thing was Windows Startup Repair couldn’t resolve this issue.

In prior version of Windows(XP) you were doomed regarding recover from a situation like this with having to possible recreate machine or sysprep with SATA driver included. This issue occurs if the AHCI driver (Msahci.sys) in Windows 7 and Windows Vista is disabled. This driver must be enabled before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive since machine was created thinking it was using IDE Controller.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Compacting Virtual Box VDI files to regain hard drive space

poynterjw — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:42:53 +0000

I was working on a corporate image this past week for Windows Vista\7 using a virtual machine. During this I noticed I was losing alot of space from removing files from the virtual machine because once you delete the files it doesn’t resize the VDI file for you. Here is a process that is simple and easy to do to gain back lost hard drive space.

Couple things to note before I begin. I had a VDI that was 47 GB with only 22 GB actually used currently. Location of my VDI file was on D:\VDI\ drive. I used qoutes around command to ensure VDI was recognized.

Steps to compact VDI:
1. Delete all extra files you don’t want in virtual machine.
2. Download this utility inside your virtual machine if using Windows as guest OS. SDelete Utility
3. Extract SDelete to virtual machine.
4. Run command SDelete -c C: (drive letter in virtual machine). Wait for process to complete, took about an 45 minutes in my virtual machine.
5. Run VBoxManage modifyvdi “D:\VDI\Vista SP2.vdi” compact

After running this, I now have VDI showing as only taking up 22 GB of space so works great.

How Word 2007 populates file name when Saving document

poynterjw — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:15:39 +0000

In our company we recently migrated to Office 2007 and came across where if you do a Save or Save As it default to a specific name every time. For example Normal.docx instead of populating the first line in the document. Below are instructions on either setting a default Save As file name or getting Word to populate itself from first line in document.

In Windows XP:
1. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates
2. Right Click > Normal.dotm > Properties
3. Summary Tab > Title field, if you put in a name here when you go to File > Save As it will choose this name every time. If you leave this field blank then Word populates file name.

How to Enable Hidden Administrator Account in Windows 7

poynterjw — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:02:18 +0000

I ran across this when working on our company image and thought this may be beneficial. Link to site with original post listed below with full pics.

1. Command Prompt

First you need to run Command Prompt as an administrator. You can do that by right clicking on the command prompt in the program list and choose “Run as administrator”.

After that you only need to enter the simple command below to activate it.

net user administrator /active:yes

You can also specify your password for this particular account by using the following command

Net user administrator password

where you can replace “password” with your own password. You can see the account immediately after you logoff your Windows 7. In order to deactivate it, you can use the command below

net user administrator /active:no

This will effectively turn off the administrator account.

2. Local Security Policy

Another way of activating the administrator account in Windows 7 is via Local Security Policy. Type secpol.msc in the search bar and hit enter. After the Local Security Policy pops up, navigate to Local Policies-> Security Options where you can see an entry that reads Accounts: Administrator account. Double click the entry to enable it.

How to Enable Hidden Administrator Account in Windows 7

Resize a VirtualBox disk partition

poynterjw — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:25:11 +0000

I had a problem where a VirtualBox template image I used was 40 GB and needed to resize to better utiliize space. Check out this post with pictures on how to do. Worked great and in very little time, only concern is having enough space on host OS.

How to resize a VirtualBox disk partition

Allowing Ghost\Cloned image to work in Virtual Machine

poynterjw — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:19:32 +0000

I’ve played around with different virtual machine software before (VMWare, Virtual Box, Virtual PC). VMWare is the only one of those listed that has a utility to convert current host machines to VM’s. This all has to do with the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) in older Windows OS. Virtual Machines tend to use the “Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC” HAL, at least my experience. Most of the newer machines purchased use ACPI Multiprocessor PC or Uniprocessor PC HAL which if imaged to a virtual machine gives you the black screen with flashing cursor.

Here is a trick that works for me.

1. Image the Virtual Machine with your ghost image or cloned image. After finishing then reboot.
2. Delete following files from C:\Windows\System32\drivers (AGP440.sys and intelppm.sys)
3. Copy “Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC” files to C:\Windows\System32. You can copy these from a machine with this HAL. File names are HAL.DLL, ntkrnlpa.exe and ntoskrnl.exe.
4. Reboot and system should boot up normally as long as there are no conflicts with recognizing hard drive driver. (SATA or IDE)

Migrating Existing Windows OS to Virtual Box

Problem Steps Recorder in Windows 7

poynterjw — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:01:03 +0000

This is a pretty cool utility that will defintely help out end users and IT staff within our company. “Problem Steps Recorder” gives the end user ability to record each step to duplicate issue they are having with comments or IT Staff to create screenshots of a problem or steps to resolve a problem to put in their knowledge center.

In Windows 7 go to Start > search bar type psr.exe. This will launch Problem Steps Recorder.

Simply hit Start Recorder > Stop Recorder when finished > Save zip file of mht file with screenshots, application and operating system version, comments.

Windows 7: Problem Steps Recorder Walkthrough