Windows 10 safe mode

Had a very odd problem with a Dell OptiPlex 7440 All in one.  The keyboard and mouse stopped working.  But when you go into the bios they work fine.  I found a post in the Dell forums indicating it might be because of the power management settings in device manager for the USB Root Hub.  That sounds like a plan, so I try to boot while hitting F8 but I can never seem to get it into safe mode.  Apparently Microsoft is aware of this.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2012/05/22/designing-for-pcs-that-boot-faster-than-ever-before/

I guess you need to interrupt the boot sequence 3 times to force windows recovery environment that allows you to get into safe mode.  I just pulled power 3 times and it worked but safe mode still didn’t give me keyboard and mouse control.  So I used RDP to get access to the box and found the USB controller driver was bad in device manager.  After removing it and scanning for hardware changes it worked again.  I still unchecked the box in properties that says, “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” just to be safe.

Key Management Service migration

Ran into a little problem today.  Got notified by a user that a workstation wasn’t activated.  We did all the regular stuff like verify DNS, check to make sure the KMS server is running, verify we can ping the KMS server and firewalls aren’t messing anything up.

The indication was that we logged into the workstation and entered slmgr /ato and got the error: The Key Management Service (KMS) is unavailable.  Like most problems, this was an artifact of a change, but a change that occurred many months ago.  We migrated our KMS service to a new server at a new site.  At some point in the past this machine must have been activated by manually entering slmgr /skms <ip of server>.  This disables auto discovery of the KMS service with no obvious indications.  To re-enable auto discovery enter slmgr /ckms.  Then you can enter slmgr /ato and verify it activates.

Hope this helps someone.

Hyper-v host can’t migrate virtual machines

We finally found the problem that has been plaguing us for years.  The situation is a 3 node 2008 R2 Hyper-V cluster.  When trying to live migrate a virtual machine off of one node to another it fails.  Trying to logon to the host machine fails with the message of no logon servers.  In the past we ended up rebooting the host and taking an outage and never figured out why.  This third time we dug a bit deeper before rebooting and found out there was port exhaustion.

Here is how we found the problem:  http://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2014/10/viewing-killing-tcp-ip-connections-windows/

There were thousands of ports in the TIME_WAIT state.  So after digging some more we found the hotfix:  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2553549

We did find out that doing a quick migration still works and each virtual machine only took about a minute, so that limited our downtime significantly.

iOS 9.3 verify failed

So apparently Apply has really messed up this update.  When corporate told me it was time to update, after they tested it of course, I tried to do the update.  When it was verifying the update it would error out with the message that I was no longer connected to the Internet.  Well after a few days of that error and multiple reboots I went looking on the net.  It appears that Apple had a huge problem with iOS 9.3 on “older” devices like my 5C (first mistake).  When they realized the problem they pulled the patch and programmed the Internet connection error for those devices that already downloaded the update (second mistake).  Yesterday they put up a fixed version but kept the same 9.3 version (third mistake).

The way to fix this is to go into storage, manage storage and delete the downloaded 9.3 update.  Then go back to settings and tell it to update.  It will pull down the new 9.3 and all is good except I’ve read that there are a bunch of problems with 9.3 so they will be coming out with a patch soon.  What a mess.

Scroll lock lives

I was doing some drawing updates using Visio yesterday and noticed that I couldn’t move a selected shape using the arrow keys.  I figured it was just some configuration in the file and I’d try to figure it out later.  This morning I’m working in Excel and notice that the arrow keys scroll the window instead of moving to another cell.  A quick google search revealed it was caused by scroll lock being on.  Yep; and now I remember I was cleaning my keyboard yesterday and must have inadvertently hit that key.

Garage Mod Part 2 – Lights!

Back in late 2014 I did my first garage mod by connecting a door sensor to a Raspberry Pi single board computer, so I would get an e-mail if the door was left open more than 5 minutes.  You can read more about that one here.  Since then I’ve made 2 more mods that I’d like to share.

Parts so you can fix it instead of replacing it

There are some things that just can’t be fixed.  Usually because the device was never meant to be repaired.  But you can find parts for many durable goods but it’s not always easy.  In my case it is a corded drill and a gas grill.  I found my neglected 1/2″ corded drill out in the shed and decided it needed some help.  The first thing was a bunch of electrical tape around the cord.  I wrote down the model and serial number and found a great site for tool parts.  It is eReplacementParts. I found the cord and the cord protector.  After ordering I looked at what other parts they might have and came across Weber Grill parts.  My 2003 Weber Genesis grill is showing its age but still working great except for a broken caster and a finicky igniter.  This was an expensive grill back in 2003 and I’d like to keep it running.  First I needed the model number.  That took a while, but I finally found it behind the tank.  Well that number isn’t on the eReplacementParts site so I start digging around the Internet and found a couple useful pages at the Weber site.  First a page that makes it easier to find your serial number and then a way to find the schematic along with the model number here.  That gave me a good model number that eReplacementParts had and a bunch of parts that they have in stock.  They also have parts for lots of other things like exercise equipment, appliances, lawn equipment; you get the idea.  Now that I think about it, there is the dead Dyson vacuum in the garage, I think.

Time for a little plumbing

So anyone who knows me, knows that I am a jack of all trades.  From assembly language to C#, from carpenter to electrician to auto repair, I fix stuff.  Well over the weekend we had new quartz counter tops installed along with an under mount deep sink.  I would take care of the electrical, to include under cabinet lighting as well as the plumbing.  After the counter top people were gone I went to work to get the sink operational.  

Robocopy throttling

I’ve tried using Robocopy bandwidth throttling switch many times in the past but never seemed to figure it out.  Today I have the need to start a slow copy for many files over a T1 line and went in search of the solution again.  I came across this blog post that gave a formula that works perfectly.

D = (Ba-Bd) / (Ba*Bd) * 512 * 1000

Where D = the /IPG switch value you will enter in Robocopy.
Ba = the available bandwidth of the link in Kbps.
Bd = the desired bandwidth you want to consume in Kbps.

In my case the link is a T1 so I used 1500 for Ba and I wanted to use 200Kbps.  So I ended up with 2218 for the IPG switch and now it’s a nice slow copy that will go overnight.

Linksys WRT1900AC slow internet speed

Here is a strange problem.  Comcast recently doubled my internet speed according to an insert in my bill.  I have performance internet which means I should be getting 25Mbps download speeds.  Doubled I will get 50Mbps!  This is nice.  I follow the instructions to power cycle the modem, then the router and blow off rebooting the PC since I know that is not needed.  A quick speed test and I’m getting a whopping 16Mbps download?