slim jims

PXE-E55 Error & Slow Load on TFTP in WDS

slim jim — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:37:52 +0000

Wow, that title is quite a mouthful right?! I couple of weeks ago I started experiencing a problem with WDS. Not much of a problem, but I one that annoyed me none the less. When booting to PXE the TFTP… part of the boot started to take a while and I couldn’t fathom why this was. It never used to be like that when I first installed WDS, but numerous server and client restarts didn’t resolve. I also couldn’t find anything in DHCP or WDS settings on the server that might be causing this, so I chalked it down as ‘one of those things’ and got on with work.

Then today, I went to image a machine and started getting the following error: PXE-E55 Proxy DHCP Service did not reply to request on port 4011

I had a bit play again in WDS and DHCP, and even disabled the 2nd and 3rd DHCP servers we have in case it was these playing pranks – turns out that wasn’t the issue. Then Google came to the rescue once again, where I stumbled upon this article: http://www.sysadminsblog.com/microsoft/microsoft-wds_mdt/pxe-e55-proxydhcp-service-did-not-reply-to-request-on-port-4011/

The content of the article (for my future reference in case it is removed at the link location) is:

All approved and rejected devices are added to a database. If a device is rejected WDS will not respond to requests coming from this device. The best way to solve this is to clear the rejected and/or approved devices database. To do this log on to your WDS server and run the following command:

Wdsutil.exe /delete-autoadddevices /devicetype:rejecteddevices

Wdsutil.exe /delete-autoadddevices /devicetype:approveddevices

So within a couple of seconds I created a new batch file on the desktop of the administrator user with both these commands in, and ran it. Tried again with the client and it went straight in, also fixing the slow TFTP problem I had too.

Two birds, one stone, and everything playing nice again makes Slim Jim a happy boy. And, it’s sat nicely on my desktop for future use.

Grow Your Own

slim jim — Mon, 02 May 2011 09:37:28 +0000

So, what is this blog about? I hear you – there’s technical posts, rants, coding snippets and a handful of software written by yours truly, and now there’s a new category. Yesterday I went to the trusty B&Q and spent a little on a small greenhouse – that’s right, I’m trying grow your own. I have absolutely no experience in anything like this, and everything is an experiment.

Yesterday, we planted various tomatoes, chilli peppers, peas, and herbs. I’m not exactly sure how often these things need my attention (i.e. watering), but it’s already inspired me to sort the garden out. We have a 60-foot garden, but it’s halved by 3 trees. The half closest to the house is looked after quite well, but the other half is hard to get to with our fence and trees blocking the way. So yesterday it was also decided to get our hands on a chainsaw and take the middle tree out of the equation, giving us easy access to the back half to possibly turn it into a little veg patch.

Anyhow, we now have another new category on the site, creating some kind of tranformer of a blog. As soon as I get something worth showing I’ll put some photo’s on of my new little green fingered project.

Holidays!

slim jim — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:58:34 +0000

So I don’t generally post random thoughts about nothing – I usually attempt to make them semi-helpful work related posts (am I succeeding at this?) but I just have to post this one.

So, yesterday I tested my image on 6 types of hardware, and it went well. Really well. Today, I have to test about another 4 types and then all our hardware is ticked off and our image can be classed as a success! I have about 6 hours to do that, and then it’s holiday time! Oh yes! We don’t go until Monday morning, but my holiday officially starts at 3pm today. And what better way to start the holiday than a family viewing of Back and Forth in HD – fantastic!

Anyhow, I hope you all have a great Easter and I’ll be back in a fortnight or so – hopefully with a ready to roll copy of ADMan for release.

SP3 & Roaming Profiles

slim jim — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:17:04 +0000

Wow, what a nightmare. I’ve just spent a good 2 or 3 days solid troubleshooting a problem with my image. Turns out that if you have SP3 installed as part of your image, and you have the checkbox ticked for “User must change password at next logon” in AD then you are going to run into problems.

Hopefully my extensive headache will mean your problem is solved quite easily. If you stumble on this, install this ‘request only’ hotfix from Microsoft.

Hotfix

SJLogoff

slim jim — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:16:00 +0000

Man, with this new vanilla network I’m implementing I feel like I’m going VB crazy! Anyway, I’ve created another application which sits in the bottom right hand corned of the screen and gives the user an easy logoff button. It also has an information button which gives the user some basic details.

Not much to this one, but sometimes the simple stuff is the best!

Download page

UPDATE: After a request on EduGeek, I’ve already updated this software to now include a change password facility. If you want to enable this, please read the INSTALL.txt after you have run the setup file.

ADMan

slim jim — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:54:00 +0000

Well, I’ve been so busy with this new network of late, but it’s all good fun. I started getting a bit worried that all the little tasks were going to fall on me, like changing passwords and creating user accounts, so I wrote ADMan. Here’s a video of ADMan showing a quick demo.

ADMan Demo

ADMan is by far the least feature rich Active Directory management tool, but that’s by design. I simply wanted something to do 5 simple tasks, without asking people to learn their way around AD, and have to remember to create folders and such lark.

Create accounts, including a bulk import tool for each new year
Reset passwords
Reset profiles
Browse user work areas
Delete accounts

That is all I have planned for ADMan, although if time allows I may do some stuff with groups too. I don’t want it to grow too big, so won’t be taking feature requests on this software. Anyhow, if you are interested in ADMan you could contact me or post a comment here and I will get in touch.

Internet Explorer 9

slim jim — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:38:39 +0000

You know the feeling you get when something is changed for the better? When your phone comes back with a new battery, and you get another half a day out of it’s charge? Or when your dog learns the sit command (next is the ‘stop greeding’ command!)? Or even when you go to fill your car up with diesel and it’s £1.39 a litre instead of £1.40? Well, that’s the kind of excitement I get when Microsoft releases a new product. Don’t get me wrong – I like linux, and it has it’s place in corporate IT, but Microsoft is a company that is flicking all my switches at the moment.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m excited about a Microsoft product, and I bet you can guess by the title of this post what that product might be. After all the rave reviews about how quick it is, I actually started thinking ‘could this really be the end of Firefox for me?’, but then something happened. Something terrible. Something that makes me want to see if all the kittie’s are still alive. You see, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 doesn’t work properly with RMMC. A problem, I dare say, with RMMC being as aged as my gran’s thoughts on imigration, but even still – RMMC is something we need, IE9 is something that we want, and in instances like this it’s always the need that beats the want.

So, it is with regret that I say farewell to IE9 after only minutes of knowing you. Perhaps you and I can try again in the not so distant future when I am waving farewell to RM.

Single XP Image for WDS

slim jim — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 10:54:12 +0000

Sorry for the delay since my last post, things have just been manic of late. I’m currently in the process of implementing a brand new Vanilla network, and part of this process is to create an XP Pro image that simply works across all* hardware.

I have video documented the process, partly for me for future use, but mainly because a couple of people have asked how I achieved this. So, here are the links to the video documentation:

Note: for some reason the start is jumping out of the intro – simply drag the slider at the bottom all the way to the left and click the play icon to pause at the intro screen.

Part 1

Part 2

I would love to hear feedback about these videos, so please leave a comment or send me a mail (contact link is above).

*By all hardware, this tutorial is only designed to work on XP 32-bit Intel machines. It should work on both Uniprocessor and Multiprocessor machines, but I have not tried created an image for 64-bit as we have no plans for it yet. Nor have I tried to do the same for AMD hardware as we don’t have any. If you followed my instructions for either of these setups and it worked, please let me know so I can update this post.

BookIT Delay

slim jim — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:20:07 +0000

Well, I guess it’s time I came out with it. I promised a lot of people updated features in a newer BookIT version, and I promised this to arrive shortly after the new year. The truth is, I’ve broke that promise. When I went through and checked the feature request list, BookIT has already grown well and beyond what I’d ever imagined it to. True, it was only in beta, and it had only been alive for a number of months, but I just couldn’t work on it to bring the new features.

That is why, I’ve been secretly working on the release version of BookIT. That’s right! I don’t have a date for it yet, but I can tell you that it IS coming, and it’s coming fast! So please, I beg of you, continue to use the beta, and I will continue to graft my backside of in attempt to get you something crisp, clean, and polished.

There are no screenshots yet, and I don’t intend to release them until I release the software – otherwise we may as well open Christmas presents now, instead of at Christmas. It WILL be worth the wait.

Life is Modular

slim jim — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:30:16 +0000

I was driving to work this morning, and I realised to myself that life itself is modular. I mean, once upon a time it never used to be. A time when everybody had to kill their dinner, milk their cow, make their clothes, fix their car. Now, we have trades for just about everything so that if I want milk I don’t need to milk a cow. I can just import the farmers class, and enter a quick Farmer.BuyMilk(2);. I would like a cookie to go with that, but I can’t be bothered to bake my own, and why should I – that’s just reinventing the wheel – Baker.BuyCookie(200);.

And so you see, this is the case for most things in our life, and now I know what you are getting at: “what’s your point?”. Well, my point is this. Everybody likes an easier life, but it’s good to be ‘procedural’ at times. I made my own wine before Christmas – it wasn’t the nicest, but it was definately the most potent. I tattooed myself last year, as well as my Dad – it’s not the prettiest tattoo, but it’s my own work. We were put on this earth to live life – I’m not saying go and milk a cow everyday, because that becomes cumbersome, and turns into work in a certain degree. But at least milk a cow once. Make a list now of things you want to do just ONCE, just for the sake of doing them, just for the sake of living life……. and then start tomorrow by ticking one of those things off your list – it is the weekend after all.