Tag: microsoft

Using vim-cmd to remedy a bsod

Here’s a great tutorial for vim-cmd if you haven’t had experience with it before by my friend, Steve Jin: www.doublecloud.org/2013/11/vmware-esxi-vim-cmd-command-a-quick-tutorial/

This is a real-world situation I got myself into when I tried connecting to my client VM and found a BSOD that looked like this:

It’s pretty obvious that the reason for the crash is the USB stick that’s plugged in from the usbuhci.sys line in the blue screen. Since I tunnel into my client VM via SSH and VNC, the easiest way for me to shutdown my VM and remedy this issue is through vim-cmd. This only works if you have SSH allowed onto your ESXi host or if you are connecting to the host with the VMware CLI or vMA or whatever they’re calling it these days. I have the former.

The first thing I do after logging into the ESXi host as root is run:

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

I need to know which one of my VMs is the one to manage. I get this:

Vmid Name File Guest OS Version Annotation
1 windows7 [BIG_DISK] windows7/windows7.vmx windows7_64Guest vmx-07
3 thimble [BIG_DISK] thimble/thimble.vmx ubuntu64Guest vmx-08
4 chunli [Datastore 2] chunli2/chunli2.vmx ubuntu64Guest vmx-08
5 zangief [Datastore 2] zangief2/zangief2.vmx ubuntu64Guest vmx-11

With this information, I know that it’s VM 1, so I power it off by running:

vim-cmd vmsvc/power.off 1

Thinking the USB issue might be a fluke, I try to power the VM back on to see if it will boot.

vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on 1

I see that it starts booting, but as the resolution changes on the VM, my VNC viewer freezes. Since I normally don’t know exactly when it freezes, I didn’t know when I got the BSOD again.

Until I decided to at look at the vmware.log file. This is what I saw there:

2017-10-18T22:27:05.519Z| svga| I125: SVGA disabling SVGA
2017-10-18T22:27:05.545Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (20) 'Technical information: '
2017-10-18T22:27:05.545Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:05.546Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (22) '*** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0xFFFFF88000BF2000,0x0000000000000002,0x0000000000000001,0'
2017-10-18T22:27:05.546Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:05.546Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (23) 'xFFFFF88004206E49) '
2017-10-18T22:27:05.546Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:05.557Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (26) '*** usbuhci.sys - Address FFFFF88004206E49 base at FFFFF88004200000, DateStamp'
2017-10-18T22:27:05.557Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:05.557Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (27) ' 57b37a29 '
2017-10-18T22:27:05.557Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:05.557Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (30) 'Collecting data for crash dump ... '
2017-10-18T22:27:05.557Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:05.573Z| svga| W115: WinBSOD: (31) 'Initializing disk for crash dump ... '
2017-10-18T22:27:05.573Z| svga| W115:
2017-10-18T22:27:07.547Z| mks| W115: Guest operating system crash detected.

Okay, so I see that my hunch is correct. I guess it’s time I remove the USB device from the VM. So I power off the VM again and open up the vmx file and just start removing all instances of USB.

These are the lines I removed. Don’t worry about breaking anything. The hypervisor will put them back if you need them later. Back up your vmx file before doing it though just in case.

usb.pciSlotNumber = "34"
usb.present = "TRUE"
usb:1.speed = "2"
usb:1.present = "TRUE"
usb:1.deviceType = "hub"
usb:1.port = "1"
usb:1.parent = "-1"
usb.autoConnect.device0 = "path:1/1 autoclean:1"
usb:0.present = "TRUE"
usb:0.deviceType = "mouse"
usb:0.port = "0"
usb:0.parent = "-1"

After you’ve saved your changes, you’ll need to reload the changes so that ESXi will reread the .vmx file to remove the USB device. You can do this by running this command:

vim-cmd vmsvc/reload 1

Now you’re ready to power on the VM.

vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on 1

The VM powers up and I’m back in business. I just had to figure out the USB issue later. Turned out that I just needed to reconnect the device and reformat it. I haven’t seen the issue come up again.

 

HOW TO force VirtualCenter to load after SQL Server on the same system

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193888

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\<Service name>

<Service name> = vpxd for VirtualCenter
modify the DependOnService key and add MSSQLSERVER

MS Age of Empires Settings

How to get pop 200 offline , Click start, programs , microsoft games , age of empires , then Right click on the Age Of Empires Icon and go to Properties and then select the Target Box it should say “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires\Empires.exe” u need to add limit=200 and the end of it so it reads “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires\Empires.exe” limit=200 and then Launch the game from Start / Programs / Microsoft Games/ Age Of Empires / Age Of Empires When it has opened , go to MULTIPLAYER , then type in anyname , then Internet tcp/ip , then click ok , Now press CREATE then enter any game name , And your ready to play with pop 200 Offline Its seems hard the first time but u get the hang of it easy]]>

Windows Offline Update is AWESOME!

It’s downloadable here: http://www.heise.de/ct/projekte/offlineupdate/

It’s so cool! It’s also very useful. You don’t need to be on the network when you do the updating. If you use Windows and get on a public network, you most certainly will get a virus before you even get fully updated! This software has saved me so much time! Almost like downloading a service pack and installing it, it pulls all of the Windows updates from Microsoft’s website and puts them into a big folder or iso for you so that you can just install an OS, pop in the cd that you made with this and just install all of the patches in one fell swoop. Awesome! … and FREE!

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Microsoft FUD that idiot’s writing a story about …

This is a total load of FUD. Like most of the comments here, I must agree. Even WHEN this so-called HyperV does come out, it still will lack the features that VMware currently HAS! If you’re already running VMware, why would you DOWNGRADE!? If you’re not, why would you adopt an UNPROVEN LOSER 1.0 release!? Just like a lot of people are upgrading from Vista to XP, people will be upgrading from HyperV to VI3, which will be 2 years OLD by the time HyperV comes out. VMware stays atop for at least 5 years as nobody comes close just yet.

Here’s the story:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/m … teid=yhoof

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WinXP doesn’t hibernate if RAM is ~2gb or more.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000555.html

Here’s the hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=909095
http://www.u-g-h.com/InsufficientSystem … LIVED.aspx

To prepare the computer to hibernate, the Windows kernel power manager requires a block of contiguous memory. The size of this contiguous memory is proportional to the number of physical memory regions that the computer is using. A computer that uses lots of RAM is likely to use more physical memory regions when the computer prepares to hibernate. Therefore, a larger amount of contiguous memory is required to prepare the computer to hibernate.

Additionally, the number of physical memory regions varies according to the programs, services, and device drivers that the computer uses. Therefore, the hibernate feature occasionally fails.

When the Windows kernel power manager detects that the hibernate feature has failed, the hibernate feature remains disabled until you restart the computer.[ad#ad-1]