BSOD: Stop 0×0000007e CPQDTCT.SYS on HP Compaq dc7900 sff

Hi guys, long time no see … I’m back with some news for owners of HP Compaq dc7900 sff machines (obviously) who may experience BSOD under certain conditions (generally during logon phase, or at logon screen).

After experiencing this crash on a dozen of machines and analyzing the minidumps, I figured out that the crash was caused by a nasty service installed on the comps which is called CpqDtct (The CpqDtct.sys file is HP Compaq Client Management Driver). Various attempts to remove the service/file were unsuccessful, and I couldn’t afford to lose any minute (since the issue happened in production environment, during deployment).

Here are the steps taken to disable the nasty little service :

• From a remote computer, access the faulty machine registry through regedit.exe
• Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\CpqDtct
• Delete all values and subkeys (but not the CpqDtct key itself)
• modify permissions on CpqDtct key to DENY ALL (Permissions / Advanced / Untick Inherit Permissions / Click on Remove / OK / OK)
• Repeat operation with all other ControlSetXXX keys

Enjoy!

Enable SSH on vmWare ESX 3i [3.5.0]

Hi all,

first of all my apologies for not having updated this blog in a long while. I’ve been overloaded with work, sick, overloaded with work, had my tonsils removed, we then moved offices and finally holidays came. During this time I’ve been extensively playing with the free release of vmWare ESX, ESX 3i release 3.5.0. After painstakingly efforts I managed to make it run on several HP Proliant ML 110 G4 servers, although they are unsupported. A lot of patience is required to make it run.

First steps to configure it properly, assuming you have burned the ISO on a CD and installed it on the machine:

When the VMWare Hypervisor screen loads after boot, press CTRL+O to enter boot options. Type in there nousbboot and press ENTER. This will make sure that it starts without attempting to mount the USB filesystem. Once the system has loaded, press F1 to access the console, type unsupported and press ENTER. You will be prompted for username, type root. You’ll have access to a regular shell prompt. To enable ssh, type vi /etc/inetd.conf – once in there, edit the file by removing the hash sign before sshd ( before: #sshd, after: sshd ). Save and exit by pressing the : sign to enter command mode in vi, then type wq (write and quit) and finally press ENTER.

Now you must restart the inetd process. Do so by doing a ps ax|grep inetd, get the PID and kill -HUP <PID> to restart the process. Once you’re done, you can access your ESXi machine through vmWare Infrastructure Client and go modify the settings to disable USB boot. Once the settings are saved, you can safely reboot your ESXi system.

You can then have fun remoting into the ESXi through SSH and most of all using SCP to copy/move virtuals.

More to follow soon!

Cheers,
Max

ccmsetup.log / State message with Topic Type 800 and TopicId

This error happened to me when deploying the ConfigMgr 2007 client to a machine who happened to be without certificate (you know, the PKI stuff you setup when installing ConfigMgr 2007, setting up root certificate authority & certificate autoenrollment).

wmiprvse.exe launched ccmsetup.exe which terminated almost immediately. I went on to check the ccmsetup.log file (located in %windir%\system32\ccmsetup) and found on the last line the following item:

State message with Topic Type 800 and TopicId followed by random numbers.

I checked without luck on the net and went on to check if the computer had a proper certificate. I opened mmc.exe, clicked on File, Add/Remove Snap-In.., added the Certficates snap-in and selected Computer then Local account. Then I issued a request for certificate :

• Expand Certificates (Local Computer)
• Expand Personal
• Right-Click on Certificates (under Personal)
• Select All Tasks / Request New Certificate
• Resolve “à la Microsoft” (Next/Next/Next/Finish)
• You’re done!

Push again the ConfigMgr 2007 client and enjoy a coffee cup!

EventID 2080 – DsAccess & SACL Right fix

We’ve had one of our AD Domain Controllers reporting that it didn’t have the SACL right. This was logged constantly on event ID 2080. We tried nearly everything but without success. This morning I came up with a solution to fix it, while trying to desperately find the ntSecurityDescriptor property in ADSI Edit and other places. Well, it’s more simple than that!

On whatever DC, fire up Active Directory Users & Computers, click on the View menu and select Advanced Features. Then browse to Domain Controllers OU, right click on the DC which misses the SACL right and select Properties. Click on the Security tab and select Advanced. Be patient… then on the Permissions tab, click on Add … Select the Exchange Servers security group and click on OK. You will see a dialog with two tabs: Object and Properties. Select Properties. Then scroll down until you find Read nTSecurityDescriptor. Check Allow, click on OK as much as needed to close the window. Then check your event log after a while. Your DC should now report that it has the SACL right.

TF84037: There was a problem initializing the Microsoft Excel Team Foundation AddIn. Re-installing the Team Foundation Client may be required.

Having this error ? Here’s a link to the solution.

(btw, yep, I’m back from holidays, and coping with work lag and tasks!)

How about some holidays?

It’s going to be nice to fly back to France to see my family on the French Riviera! I’m going to take a little break from ConfigMgr 2007 and my other projects. Just a little note to say that I’ll be online and following the blog, if you have any comments or questions, you’re welcome!

Cheers,
Max

Sharepoint: end of “exception state”

Good morning,

this weeks starts brilliantly thanks to the help of Chris Winebarger. He gave me a solution to put an end to the most infamous sharepoint 0×80020009 exception when trying to activate Sharepoint Publishing Infrastructure on a site collection. Here is the solution with stsadm :


stsadm -o activatefeature -filename publishing\feature.xml -url http://URL -force
stsadm -o activatefeature -filename publishingresources\feature.xml -url http://URL -force
stsadm -o activatefeature -filename publishingSite\feature.xml -url http://URL -force
stsadm -o activatefeature -filename publishingweb\feature.xml -url http://URL -force
stsadm -o activatefeature -filename publishinglayouts\feature.xml -url http://URL -force
stsadm -o activatefeature -filename navigation\feature.xml -url http://URL -force


(Obviously, replace the URL above with the URL of the site collection)

Many thanks to Chris for saving my day!
Max

Being a Shiva

I’m trying, but it’s a bit difficult with only two hands! My current menu is Configuration Manager 2007, Sharepoint, and various infrastructure-related tasks.

Sharepoint is still driving me mad with the exception error 0×80020009, and I’m still trying to deploy my first package with SCCM 2007, unbelievable.

I hope to be more successful in the coming days!

Besides that, Acer will be fixing my laptop, they’re even sending a courier to pick it up. Unbelievable!

EDIT: As incredible as it seems, two of my hands are working fine and they even managed to get package deployment on SCCM 2007 to be a success!

ConfigMgr 2007 and PKI

Hi all,

just one little note today: I’ve finally successfully configured and installed Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. The thing is very tricky to install, mainly because most of the tasks pertaining to PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) that is, setting up the certificate infrastructure on your domain, are barely documented in SCCM 2007 Administrator’s companion. Thankfully, most of this is documented in this Technet article.

Make sure to do everything as mentioned and read it slowly. The most tricky part for me was the IIS certificate. I did it in a totally wrong way – I was probably doing something else at the same moment – and it was quite a mess! Thankfully it was fixed quickly enough. Provided that you reboot the machine.

One thing you should carefully consider is to make sure that your Active Directory domain controller is installed with the Enterprise edition of Windows Server 2003 otherwise you will not be able to deploy certificates using modified templates.

Have a lot of fun!

Smooth monday (almost)

Despite dealing with the (bad) tonsillitis, today (especially towards the end) proved to be productive. On tonight’s menu : dead domain controller demotion, plus checking Service Principal Names duplicate entries. That made me discover a lovely little utility included in windows : LDP.exe

Removing the SPN entry drove our Sharepoint blind, couldn’t see the database server anymore! That’s certainly linked to Kerberos. I’ve added again the SPN entry in ADSIEdit.msc and all is fine again.

More tomorrow!