In Microsoft Windows, we have Safe Mode. In SQL Server 2008, we have the Dedicated Administrator Connection, or DAC. We can use DAC to obtain emergency access to a SQL Server 2008 database instance in cases where the instance is blocked up, locked up, or just plain hosed.

SQL Server 2008 keeps a dedicated scheduler available at all times for the DAC. Therefore, you should (almost) always be able to connect to SQL Server by using the DAC.

You can log into the SQL Server instance with a DAC while other users are logged in at the same time. However, only one DAC session is allowed at any one time.

Enabling Dedicated Administrator Connection

By default, local connections to a DAC are enabled in SQL Server 2008 R2. Therefore, you can use the DAC during an interactive logon or a quasi-local logon through VNC, Remote Desktop Services, or the like.

To enable remote access to DAC, open an elevated command prompt on the SQL Server, start sqlcmd, and issue the following instance configuration commands:

sp_configure 'remote admin connections', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE;
GO

In order to use the DAC, your domain or SQL Server user account must be a member of the sysadmin server role.

Accessing DAC from SSMS

A common mistake that some DBAs use in trying to use DAC with SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) is to attempt DAC access to Object Explorer instead of the Database Engine Query window.

That is, SQL Server 2008 will throw an error if you attempt to use DAC with a standard SSMS login.

Instead, fire up SSMS, cancel out of the logon dialog box, and instead click New > Database Engine Query, as shown in Figure 1.

Starting the DAC from SSMS

In the Connect to Database Engine dialog box (shown in Figure 2), simply prepend admin: to the server name.

NOTE: The admin: string is case insensitive. Therefore, ADMIN:, admin:, and AdMiN: are equivalent.

Logging into SQL Server with the DAC

Accessing DAC from sqlcmd

To access DAC from an elevated command prompt, simply add the –A parameter to the sqlcmd utility.

If you supply the command string sqlcmd –A, then SQL Server assumes the following regarding the connection attempt:

• Target server is localhost
• Login credentials match the currently logged on OS user
• Target database is the default database of the current user

On the other hand, you can use additional switches to customize precisely how you enter the DAC environment. For instance, the following sample code connects us to a SQL Server machine named sqlsrv1 using the corp\admin Active Directory domain credentials. Additionally, we connect to the master database.

C:\>sqlcmd –S sqlsrv1 –U corp\admin –P Pa$$w0rd –d master –A
1>

What can you do next?

Once you’ve logged into SQL Server by using the Dedicated Administrator Connection, you can issue Transact-SQL statements to perform whatever troubleshooting and/or administrative tasks you need to undertake.

Accessing the DAC by using sqlcmd

For instance, from the DAC you can perform the following actions:

• Run T-SQL scripts
• Run DBCC utility commands
• Access Dynamic Management Views (DMVs)
• Access catalog views

Conclusion

At this point you should have a firm understanding of what the Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) is in SQL Server 2008. You should also understand how to access the DAC by using the sqlcmd command-line utility as well as SQL Server Management Studio.

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• Microsoft System Center Advisor – Part 2: Usage and privacy (0)
• Microsoft System Center Advisor – Part 1: Overview and installation (0)
• FREE: SimpleSysInfo – A customizable system information tool for Windows (0)

Part 1 of this review gave an overview of System Center Advisor. Today, I will discuss how SCA can be integrated in your network.

A typical troubleshooting session without SCA starts when you’re tracking down a problem; when you’ve identified the symptoms and any event log / error log messages you use your favorite search engine to try to come up with a solution. This can sometimes take hours of searching and implementing different solutions until the right one is found.

Using System Center Advisor

Sometimes, having gone through the above process and not fixed it you reach for the phone and call Microsoft’s support. They have a checklist of configuration items and will work through this with you. The vision of SCA is to help you avoid the trawling of forums and KB articles as well inspecting the checklist for you and simply present a solution based on your particular configuration. Each item that is surfaced in SCA has a thorough explanation of the context and why the issue might appear as well as details of how to fix it.

If you have a decentralized IT departmental structure or if you’re a consultant that uses SCA across multiple companies you can create one company per department and select each of them in a drop down menu. Users are divided into administrator roles and user roles. The only difference between the two is that users can’t close accounts or create additional users. Otherwise a normal user can do all other activities available in the console.

System Center Advisor Console Configuration

The console itself has several panes; the first gives a list of current critical and warning alerts and can be sorted by severity and / or server name. The Current Configuration pane presents all relevant data that you’d need at the time of troubleshooting in one place, whereas the Change History panel is my personal favorite. Think about it, if you’re helping someone troubleshoot, isn’t your first question – “what did you change”? And the answer is (almost always); “nothing”. So this panel keeps track of recent configuration changes that could be the cause of your current troubleshooting woes.

System Center Advisor Console History

The other difference between SCA and other monitoring products like SCOM is that the suggestions offered by SCA will change over time, as hotfixes and updates are incorporated into Service Packs and Update Rollups they will be retired from SCA when you’ve upgraded your servers.

Data collected by Systems Center Advisor

SCA looks in the registry, event logs and the SQL error logs for its data as well as using WMI calls, SQL OleDB queries to understand your environment. There’s a full list of what data is collected in an Excel spread sheet (see resources).

Data collected is stored in XML files, these are compressed into a CAB file and subsequently copied to the gateway which then uploads these to your account. For companies that are worried about what data is uploaded to Microsoft’s cloud there’s a very comprehensive privacy statement, particularly making is crystal clear that no licensing information is included. For those of a suspicious nature it’s easy to open the cab files waiting to be uploaded on the gateway server and inspect the xml files directly to see what data is involved.

Conclusion

Exchange and SharePoint support is the next obvious step and is on the roadmap for SCA but won’t appear in the first release, which is due towards the end of the year. A future improvement that I hope Microsoft considers is integrating SCA into SCOM so that a separate online console isn’t necessary.

Overall SCA is an interesting product, perhaps paving the way for other parts of the Systems Center suite to be offered as cloud services in the future. It spotted several problems in my lab environment that I definitely wouldn’t have seen without extensive research.

Resources

System Center Advisor homepage Go and sign up for the release candidate to get the feel for what SCA can do for your servers.

Microsoft Connect The RC is supported through the connect site with forums and other resources.

System Center Advisor Configuration Data Points The Excel sheet that lists all the data points that SCA collects.

Microsoft System Center Advisor Technical Overview System Center Advisor technical overview session at TechEd US last month.

• SCOM 2012 review – Part 8: Dashboards (0)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 7: Linux and JEE monitoring (4)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 6: Application Performance Monitoring (APM) (1)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 5: Network Monitoring (0)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 4: Infrastructure improvements (0)

Imagine that you’re a systems administrator troubleshooting an SQL or AD server that’s misbehaving. Now envision a gadget that could send you all the accumulated knowledge and skill contained in a senior Microsoft field engineer to sit right next to you and help you. That gadget is not System Center Advisor, at least not yet, but the vision is there.

System Center Advisor (SCA), formerly known under the codename Atlanta is a new cloud service from Microsoft that assesses server configuration and helps you proactively avoid problems. It gives you access to current and historical configuration data as well as reducing downtime by proposing improvements and notifying you of updates.

System Center Advisor Console

Overview of System Center Advisor

As mentioned there’s no server infrastructure on site, only an agent to install on every server that you’d like to oversee with SCA. One (or more depending on the size of your environment) server is designated as the gateway through which the data from the other servers flow to the cloud.

You then login to www.systemcenteradvisor.com to access your company portal. The current release candidate is free and open to all but when the final product is released it will only be offered as part of Software Assurance (SA). This means that each product you want to monitor on each server, (Windows Server, SQL Server and in the future Exchange and SharePoint) needs to be covered by SA.

The products monitored currently are SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 as well as some Windows Server 2008 / 2008 R2 features, notably Active Directory (AD). This will be extended to cover additional products in the future. SCA is NOT a replacement for your current monitoring systems such as System Center Operations Manager – it doesn’t provide real time monitoring, instead collecting data every 4-8 hours, aggregating this once per day and uploading it once per day. SCA’s role is to proactively help you avoid downtime, not warn you when a server or service is already down. SCA is currently available in English only.

Installation of System Center Advisor

System Center Advisor Deployment Info

The agent is downloaded (31 MB in size) from the systemcenteradvisor.com website and installs in a minute with no reboot required. Deploying a gateway is just another check box in the wizard.

System Center Advisor Agent Installation

All data communication over the internet is protected by a digital certificate that’s generated when you sign up for SCA, during the installation of the gateway you have to point to this .pfx file. The gateway server needs outbound connectivity on port 80 and 443 while the agents only need network connectivity to the gateway server. Data volume is in the region of 100 KB per day per server.

System Center Advisor Agent Installation Certificate

SCA utilises the same agent as Operations Manager 2007 R2 so if you don’t use SCOM in your environment that agent is installed. If you do have the SCOM agent already installed it’ll be put into multi homing mode and one channel will provide the information SCA is looking for while another channel will continue to gather normal SCOM data.

As the gateway syncs data to the cloud it also checks for updates to Management Packs as additional common problems are discovered by Microsoft’s support.

You can change the frequency at which uploads takes place as well as the scheduled time and day through documented registry settings. Likewise the agent can be configured for upload frequency (every 12 or 24 hours or once per week).

System Center Advisor Registry Settings

In the next post you will read how System Center Advisor helps with troubleshooting and what kind of data is sent to Microsoft’s cloud.

• SCOM 2012 review – Part 8: Dashboards (0)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 7: Linux and JEE monitoring (4)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 6: Application Performance Monitoring (APM) (1)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 5: Network Monitoring (0)
• SCOM 2012 review – Part 4: Infrastructure improvements (0)

So many sysinfo tools exist for Windows, and I’m guessing you already have a couple of them in your tool box. But SimpleSysInfo is worth a look. It is quite useful for help desk personnel who need to get an overview of a PC’s configuration, and it is also an interesting option for sys admins who have to retrieve the same PC settings frequently.

SimpleSysInfo displays system information in multiple tabs. Most of the data is useful for troubleshooting in a corporate environment. For instance, the NIC tab displays the IP address, whether DHCP is enabled, gateway and DNS information, etc. The operating system tab shows the service pack level, installation date, uptime, profile folder, and more. I made a screenshot of each of the tabs, so you can get an idea of the information that the free sysinfo tool provides. The fact that you can launch Windows tools such as the Registry Editor, System Restore, or Computer Management emphasizes the purpose of the program as a troubleshooting tool.

But what makes SimpleSysInfo stand out is that it allows you to retrieve any kind of information from the Windows registry. For this, you have to edit the ini file that the system information tool creates when you launch it the first time. You can add any registry key that SimpleSysInfo should display in the Registry tab. Since the tool is portable, you can launch it on any Windows PC to retrieve any kind of information with just a mouse click.

This also makes the tool helpful for help desk staff. Admins can pre-configure the registry keys that contain information that is typically needed in your environment. All sysinfo data can be saved as an HTML file, an XML file, or a text file. You can also print or email the information right from SimpleSysInfo’s user interface. This allows help desk staff to easily forward the information to the second-level support.

Other useful features are the ability to automatically set environment variables whenever you launch the tool, and the ability to use the tool on the command prompt. The latter feature makes the system information tool scriptable.

I tested SimpleSysInfo 2.8 on Windows 7.

SimpleSysInfo

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Microsoft’s Sysinternals tools are essential for every Windows admin. The Sysinternals Suite is a collection of all Sysinternals troubleshooting tools. What all the Sysinternals utilities lack is an update feature. So you have to check regularly whether a new version is available. Or, you subscribe to 4sysops because I always publish a notice if an update of a Sysinternals tool is available. Yet another option is to use SysInternalsUpdater.

The free portable tool allows you to check for new Sysinternals updates. You can then select the tools you want to update, and SysInternalsUpdater will download them to your Sysinternals directory. After you launch the SysInternalsUpdater the first time, you have to tell the tool where it can find the Sysinternals Suite. The utility will store the information if you didn’t configure it to forget the settings on exit.

SysInternalsUpdater can automatically kill running Sysinternals programs before the update starts. But I guess it is better to do this manually.

More sophisticated tools to manage the Sysinternals Suite are the Windows System Control Center and NirLauncher. But if you just want to check for new versions, SysInternalsUpdater is a nice tool with a small footprint.

I tried SysInternalsUpdater 1.0.1 on Windows 7.

SysInternalsUpdater

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• FREE: SimpleSysInfo – A customizable system information tool for Windows (0)
• FREE: EVT LogParser – A Windows event log parser (0)

The new event log viewer that came with Windows Vista is a major improvement that every Windows admin should appreciate. The filter and search features are great. However, one tiny feature is missing. You can’t filter the output according to a full text search through its GUI. You can only use Event Viewer’s search function to find specific terms in the event log message. But this means that you have to jump from entry to entry, which can be a bit cumbersome in some situations. Of course, you can also write your own parser. If you don’t like to mess with XML, however, you should have a look at EVT LogParser.

The free event log parser allows you to load saved event logs and then filter the output according to the event ID, event sources, event type, and a keyword in the message text. The latter feature is the only thing you can’t do with the Windows Event Viewer.

To save events, you have to select one of the Windows logs and then click “Save all events.” You can also use Event Viewer’s own filter and then use this output for your search in EVT LogParser.

Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2008 R2 save event logs in the evtx format, which you can load into EVT LogParser when you run the tool on one of those Windows versions. If you use EVT LogParser on Windows XP, you can only load the old evt format because the event log parser uses the API of LogParser.dll to parse event logs.

You also can’t load evt files on Windows versions that work with the evtx format. However, you can convert the evt format to evtx if you have some old saved event logs that you would like to parse. You can load the evt file in Event Viewer on Windows 7 (or Vista) and save it as an evtx file. If you have many evt files you want to convert, you can use the Windows command tool WevtUTIL. The programmer of EVT LogParser has more information on his blog.

EVT LogParser

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• SCOM 2012 review – Part 6: Application Performance Monitoring (APM) (1)

Analysts keep preaching the cloud gospel, and it appears that quite a few CIOs have become believers. What many underestimate is that the connection between earth and heaven, respectively the cloud, can sometimes get clogged when too many believers knock on heaven’s door because they all want "to be in" (as Steve Ballmer would express it).

So, before you leave the solid ground of your LAN to find blissfulness in higher spheres, you might want to simulate what happens when the network connection between your clients and the almighty cloud servers becomes slow. The free portable tool TMnetSim Network Simulator enables you to simulate a poor or slow network connection in your lab.

TMnetSim sits between the client and the server and allows only as much network quality as you admit. You can launch the tool either on the client or on the server. It is also possible to run the client and server on the same computer. The configuration for these scenarios is a bit different. The example below explains how you have to set up TMnetSim on the server if you want to test a slow RDP connection.

First, you have to tell TMnetSim to listen to a free TCP port on the server. I used 3390 for this example. Then, you have to configure the destination to which TMnetSim will forward the packets. Since the Remote Desktop Session Host is on the same machine as TMnetSim in this configuration, you can use 127.0.0.1 as the outbound IP address. The RDP port is 3389 by default, which is why you have to use this as the outbound port (see screenshot above).

To connect the RDP client to the RDS host, you can use the IP address of the server. But instead of connecting to the default RDP port 3389, you have to tell your RDP client to connect to port 3390 (see screenshot below) because this is the port where TMnetSim is waiting for packets to be forwarded to the RDS host.

TMnetSim supports two ways to simulate a bad network connection: You can configure the network latency (packet delay), or you can configure packet loss. For packet delays, you can choose between Fixed, Normal, Gaussian, and Markovian. A fixed packet delay gives you a general idea of how a slow network connection affects the performance of the application. But for a more realistic test, you should use one of the three other methods that work with a random network latency that is common in WANs.

The Markovian packet delay is the most realistic method. If you choose this method, you have to configure the Delay Base and the Jitter in milliseconds. The Jitter determines the maximum range the packet delay can vary. For instance, if you use a Delay Base of 1000ms and a Jitter of 200ms, TMnetSim will randomly choose a delay for each packet in the range from 900ms to 1100ms. More information about the different packet delay methods can be found in TMnetSim’s manual.

TMnetSim allows you to configure the network latency for the inbound and the outbound connection, but, to keep things simple, it is enough to use just one method. The configuration example above will let you experience a very jerky RDP connection. With a packet delay of 300ms, I could already feel the difference from a solid LAN connection.

Packet loss is quite common in WANs. TCP can compensate packet losses by retransmitting lost packets. However, this reduces the network’s throughput. Some higher protocols such as RDP have a low tolerance for packet loss. A loss rate of 3% in each direction can break an RDP connection.

After configuring the IP address, the ports, the network latency, and the packet loss, you have to click "Start" to make TMnetSim listen on the Inbound Connection port. As soon as the connection is established, the tool will display some useful data in the lower pane, such as the current packet delay, the bandwidth, or the lost packets. TMnetSim Network Simulator can also capture the packets and copy them to text files.

I tested TMnetSim Network Simulator 2.4.0.0 on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Do you know of another good network simulator tool?

TMnetSim Network Simulator

(Search for TMnetSim on the page.)

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• Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) in SQL Server 2008 R2 (3)
• Set up a 802.1x in a Active Directory domain – Part 2 (5)
• Set up an 802.1x Wi-Fi network in a Windows Active Directory domain – Part 1 (0)

By default, installing and uninstalling programs is disabled in Safe Mode in Windows 7. The reason for this is that, in Safe Mode, only a reduced set of services is running. This might cause problems with some installers, which is why the Windows Installer service isn’t running in Safe Mode.

On the other hand, installing and—in particular—uninstalling programs can fail because of interfering services. Thus, if you suspect that such interdependencies are the reason for installation problems, you can try running the setup program in Safe Mode. To start your Windows machine in Safe Mode, press F8 before Windows boots up.

Before you can start the Windows Installer service in Service Manager, you must first add the registry key MSIServer with the default value Service in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SafeBoot\Minimal\

Admittedly, this procedure is a bit longwinded. The free tool SafeMSI adds the registry key and starts the Windows Installer service. All you have to do is double-click the program. You can then install and uninstall in Safe Mode just like you are used to.

Note that the tool doesn’t allow you to remove the aforementioned registry key. You have to do this with the registry editor. However, it doesn’t hurt if you just leave the key as is because it is only effective in Safe Mode.

SafeMSI

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As I outlined in my memory diagnostic primer, memory diagnostic tools that are integrated in modern BIOSes can’t guarantee that a memory module is flawless. This also applies to Memtest86, a free standalone memory diagnostic tool. However, the utility is more sophisticated than most BIOS memory diagnostic tools. You can also use Memtest86 if you are uncertain which of the RAM modules has flaws and you just want a second opinion.

For this review, I tested Memtest86 v3.5b. At the time of this writing, Memtest86 v4.0 is still in beta. When I tried the beta version on a virtual VMware Workstation machine, the tool froze. However, I admit that testing virtual memory for physical flaws doesn’t make much sense. Memtest86 v4.0 has important additional features, such as support for multiple CPUs and machines with large memory. It is also quite likely that v4.0 works better with most physical main boards. The download of Memtest86 v4.0 also includes v3.5b, so you can change versions easily if problems occur.

To run Memtest86, you have to boot up from a floppy, CD, or USB stick. The download file contains the ISO image that you have to burn on a CD. The floppy disk package can be installed from Windows; for the USB version, you will need a Linux installation to create the bootable USB stick.

After you boot from the Memtest86 medium, you can choose which version you want to run: v3.5b or v4.0. The memory diagnostic tool will then immediately start testing the memory. The tool continues diagnosing until you stop it. Once it finishes testing the whole RAM, it just starts all over again. Thus, you can use the tool to rule out temperature-related problems by running the tool on a cold server until it reaches its normal operation temperature.

Memtest86 has quite a few options that you can access by pressing the C key. The Test Selection allows you to choose different test algorithms. Test Range is for configuring the memory range you want to diagnose. You can use the Memory Size option if Memtest86 doesn’t correctly detect the size of your memory. Read the Memory Sizing section under Technical Info on the tool’s homepage for information about different detection methods. The Error Report Method lets you configure how many details the utility displays about detected errors. DMI Memory Info gives you information about the memory modules in the computer. Important is the ECC mode setting. If you use ECC memory, you should enable this function. If the computer has multiple CPUs, you can tell Memtest86 to use only a single CPU or to use the different CPUs sequentially or in round robin mode.

Another popular memory testing tool is Microsoft’s Windows Memory Diagnostic tool.  One advantage of Memtest86 over comparable free tools is that it supports computers wit more than 4 GB memory. Do you know of other good memory diagnostic tools?

Memtest86

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• Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) in SQL Server 2008 R2 (3)
• Microsoft System Center Advisor – Part 2: Usage and privacy (0)
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• FREE: SimpleSysInfo – A customizable system information tool for Windows (0)

Physical memory failures do not happen often, but when they occur they are fatal. Sometimes they won’t just crash the operating system but will also cause hard disk corruption. In the worst case, a destroyed database is the end result. This is just because one of the billions of memory cells confused a zero with a one. ECC (Error-Correcting Code) memory improves fault tolerance, but it is expensive and so are the supporting motherboards. And, of course, ECC doesn’t guarantee that RAM failures won’t occur.

Memory diagnostic tools exist for Windows. However, testing RAM while a full-blown operating system has been loaded doesn’t make much sense because too many memory cells can’t be probed that way. Thus, it is important to use a standalone memory diagnostic tool that allows you to boot up from a CD or a USB stick.

Of course, you can also use the memory diagnostic tool of the BIOS. You can typically choose between a quick and a thorough memory test. However, even if the BIOS confirms that your memory is okay, this does not guarantee that all memory cells are working properly.

For one, BIOS memory diagnostic tools usually can’t find intermittent memory problems—that is, problems that only occur at specific conditions, such as when two adjacent memory cells affect each other. Moreover, old memory modules in particular sometimes only fail at certain temperatures. Frequent temperature changes make silicon brittle, causing micro fractures on the chip. Those micro fractures often only produce problems at very specific temperatures because of the uneven expansion of the chip at different temperatures.

Hence, I recommend starting the memory diagnostic tool when the machine is still cold and then running the test for 20 minutes or so until the computer has reached its operating temperature. Unfortunately, even then you can’t be 100% sure that all memory cells are working properly. Since memory diagnostic tools use different algorithms to probe memory cells, it can’t be wrong to obtain multiple opinions.

The ideal way for diagnosing memory is to write a certain value (1 or 0) to a memory cell, then write the opposite value to all adjacent cells and probe the original cell to see if it still holds the right value. This method ensures that writing to a memory cell doesn’t affect adjacent cells, which is often the cause of intermittent errors.

The problem is that different chip designs make it difficult to determine adjacent memory cells. Memory diagnostic tools thus work with strategies that approximate this testing method. Usually they fill the memory with certain patterns, verify that the pattern has been written correctly, and then do the same with the pattern’s complement. This still doesn’t guarantee that a memory chip is flawless, but it increases the likelihood considerably.

If the memory diagnostic tool finds an error, it can be unclear sometimes which memory module contains the corrupt cells. In this case, the best way to find the faulty module is to test all modules independently by inserting them one by one into the computer. If this isn’t possible, for instance because the board requires an even number of modules, you can rotate modules and see if the memory diagnostic tool reports the error at different addresses. Another option is to replace a single module and then check if the error recurs.

If you are uncertain whether a memory module has flaws or not, replacing it is usually the best option. It certainly depends on the importance of the corresponding machine, but in most cases the crash of a productive server is more expensive than buying new RAM. In any case, I recommend testing the memory of old machines every now then, for instance if you have to reboot the server anyway. In my next post, I will review a free memory diagnostic tool that can be used for this purpose.

• Visualizing your server rack with Microsoft Visio 2010 (10)
• Dedicated Administrator Connection (DAC) in SQL Server 2008 R2 (3)
• Microsoft System Center Advisor – Part 2: Usage and privacy (0)
• Microsoft System Center Advisor – Part 1: Overview and installation (0)
• FREE: SimpleSysInfo – A customizable system information tool for Windows (0)

Software testing is an important part of an administrator’s daily routine. There are various tools and different approaches for making this task easier and more efficient. Some use virtual machines as test environments, and others prefer sandboxes for software testing. Time Freeze Free is kind of a hybrid. It combines aspects of both approaches, which makes it a perfect software testing tool.

Time Freeze expands the sandbox approach. Rather than launch the software you are testing in a sandbox, the tool turns your whole Windows installation into a sandbox. Every change that is made to your Windows installation is logged. As soon as you turn Time Freeze off, you have exactly the same system as before you started testing the software. So it works more like the snapshot feature of virtual environments such as Hyper-V. The difference is that you can only have one snapshot, but on the other hand you have better performance than in virtualized environments.

Although Time Freeze Free is freeware, you have to register it after a 30-day trial period if you want to continue using it. A commercial version is also available that offers a few additional features such as MBR protection, physical memory buffer mode, customizable folder protection mode, and USB stick protection. The major drawback of the free version is that it doesn’t support 64-bit OS.

Once Time Freeze is downloaded, the installation is straightforward. You will see a window with three tabs when you launch the tool:

On the first tab, you can turn the system protection on or off and view the amount of buffer that is left for storing the changes on your Windows installation. On the second tab, you can protect folders from modifications by adding the folders to the list and turning the folder protection on. The last tab is for changing the application’s settings. As you can see in this screenshot, not many options are available:

All in all, Time Freeze Free is a very handy tool for software testing. The application is lightweight and easy to use. If you don’t have the hardware to do your software testing in virtualized environments, Time Freeze Free is a very good alternative.

Time Freeze

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In recent times I had to deal with a few of my Terminal Services servers that were hanging or becoming very unresponsive. And the problem was difficult to investigate because the system was not creating a crash dump since the servers weren’t technically crashing. Once I configured my servers to allow me to force a crash and create a dump file, I was able to begin the journey of resolving the issue. For a quick overview on the different types of dump files please check out this article.

After a few days of waiting for the problem to reoccur I was able to force a crash on one of the servers. It worked just as I had planned. With the help of the software vendor whose product was responsible for the problem at hand, we were able to fix the issue and the servers have been problem free ever since that time.

As you can see from this article, configuring your Windows based system to crash upon typing a hotkey sequence is very easy. There are only two changes that need to be made. They are:

1. Enable the Kernel or Complete Memory Dump option in the Startup and Recovery tab under the Advanced tab which can be accessed in the System Properties. Either of these choices will give you the greatest amount of information in the dump file.

1. Add and enable one of the following registry keys depending on keyboard type:

A. USB Keyboard -KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\kbdhid\Parameters, create a DWORD (32bit) value named CrashOnCtrlScroll and set the value to 1.

B. PS/2 Keyboard – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters, create a DWORD (32bit) value named CrashOnCtrlScroll and set the value to 1.

Once those options are set, reboot the system for the changes to take effect and then wait for the slowness or hang to reoccur. When it does you will be able to hold down the right Control key and press the Scroll Lock key twice to force a crash of the system.

TIP – For this to work, it is best to be physically located at the console of the system on which you are performing this hotkey sequence. Running it from a local, remote or IP KVM may prevent the key sequence from being triggered correctly.

You can use Microsoft’s Debugging Tools for Windows (WinDbg) to analyze the crash dump file. Once you have the debug tool installed you will need to set up the symbols server which you can find instructions on how to set up here. From there open the application and choose to open a Crash Dump.

If you have any questions about this article or need additional help in forcing the system to crash or analyzing the crash dump please leave a comment for me and I will respond as soon as possible.

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First you have to download it here. During setup, the tool checks your software and hardware configuration. Depending on this configuration it offers to install different so-called troubleshooters. After you choose which of these troubleshooters to install, you are asked if you want to create an online account. (The benefit of having an online account is that you have access to Fix it Center Online.) Here is a picture of the Troubleshooters that were selected for my system:

Click Next to finish the setup. When you start the program, you see a list of the troubleshooters that have been installed on your configuration and a button labeled Run next to them.

After you click the Run button, you are asked if the fixes should be applied automatically or if you want to manually choose which fixes to apply. If you previously chose to create a Fix it Center Online account, every action you take here and every fix that is applied is logged in the online platform. If you attach different Fix it Centers with the same account, the tool tracks the actions for each computer so you get an automatically generated and centralized report inventory for your computer problems. Here‘s a screenshot of the platform:

In the screenshot, you can see the results of an “Im prove performance, safety and security in Internet Explorer” Troubleshooter run. As you can see, the tool does perform useful checks and automatically fixed some problems. For an inexperienced user, and even for professional Service Desk staff in certain situations, the Microsoft Fix it Center would have provided some solutions. But you can also see that other problems wouldn’t have been solved. The time when computers solve their problems themselves hasn’t yet arrived.

The bottom line is that Microsoft Fix it Center is very useful for home users or small companies with no professional in-house support, as it is capable of fixing common problems. The integrated direct link to Microsoft support, the approach of a personalized support center, and the Fix it Center Online are big pluses for enterprise use. However, if you consider that running Microsoft Fix it Center on an enterprise level creates additional maintenance costs, I think the main advantage won’t be in cost reduction but in a better structured and organized problem solution. All in all, the application points in the right direction, and with additional features and Troubleshooters it might become a very valuable tool in the future. After all, it’s still in beta.

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Many free memory diagnostic tools are available, but if you are running Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 (R2) a memory diagnostic tool is already included. You just have to execute the command mdsched and choose to restart the computer. If you still use Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you can download the tool here. In this version you have to run the .exe file and create a startup disk or save a CD image. Then you have to insert the media and boot from it. It is a lot less hassle in the newer versions of Windows, because there you just tell the tool to restart Windows and it takes care of everything. No matter which version of the tool you use, the tool starts to check your computer’s memory after your computer reboots.

The tool does three different memory checks and two passes. After both passes are completed, the computer restarts and Windows will boot again.

This so-called basic test mix is the default setting. If you want to thoroughly check your computer’s memory, I recommend running the standard or extended test. The standard diagnostic includes 8 different memory tests; the extended one includes 17. To choose one of the more intensive diagnostic checks, you have to press F1 when the Memory Diagnostic Tool is running. If you do this you encounter two more options: You can enable or disable the cache, and you can set the number of diagnostic runs. When you are finished with your customizations, you start the memory check by pressing F10.

If the Memory Diagnostic Tool does find a problem during a diagnostic check, you are informed in the status display area. If everything runs smoothly, the tool just reboots the computer after all diagnostic passes are done.

Update: Also check out the review of the memory diagnostic tool Memtest86.

Windows Memory Diagnostic tool

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Disable Windows Error Reporting in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2

In Windows 7, you can disable Windows Error Reporting in the Action center (Control Panel\System and Security\Action Center). In the sidebar click “Change Action Center settings” and then click the “Problem reporting settings” link at the end of the Action Center applet. You can also start typing “problem reporting” in the Windows Start Menu search prompt and then click “Choose how to report problems.”

The four options appear to speak for themselves (see screenshot), but, I think, at least two of them are a bit misleading. The default setting is “Automatically check for solutions” and the second option is “Automatically check for solutions and send additional report data if needed.” I guess most people believe that with the first setting no error reports are sent to Microsoft. However, when I checked my Problem Reports, I realized that in most cases Windows Error Reporting has sent error reports to Microsoft, anyway. It is unclear to me what the “additional report data” in the second option means here.

I think, Microsoft should be more transparent with the information that Windows Error Reporting sends to Redmond. The link “What information is sent” at the top of the Problem Reporting Settings applet is commendable; however, the corresponding information that is provided in the Windows help file is, in my view, insufficient.

Hence, if you want to be on the safe side, you should choose the last option “Never check for solutions.” Note that you can also change the setting for all users of this computer and you can also select programs to exclude from reporting in the Problem Reporting Settings applet.

Disable error reporting in Windows Vista and Server 2008

The Advanced Settings of the Problem Reports and Solutions applet in Windows Vista offer similar options as in Windows 7 (see screenshot). You can find it in the Control Panel (Control Panel\System and Maintenance).

Disable error reporting in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003

Error reporting in Windows XP is a bit simpler than in Vista and Windows 7 (see screenshot). It contains one feature that I miss in the Vista and Windows 7 error reporting applets–you can change the settings independently for Windows and third-party programs. You access the error reporting settings through the Advanced tab in the System Properties applet, which you can find in the Control Panel.

Disable Windows Error Reporting through Group Policy

Of course, you can also manage Windows Error Reporting through Group Policy. It is interesting to note that Group Policy offers more options than the corresponding Control Panel applets (see screenshot). For example, you can configure a central store for the error reports for all your machines.

The Windows Error Reporting setting in Group Policy can be found under Computer Configurations\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Windows Error Reporting.

I didn’t cover all Windows Error Reporting features in this series. For additional information, you can read the detailed descriptions of the Group Policy settings. More details can also be found in this Technet article.

By the way, if you want to test Windows Error Reporting settings, you can use the free tool Bad Application. The main purpose of this really useful utility is to crash itself.

Also check out the related articles about Windows 7 automatic troubleshooting and its limitations.

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Send error reports to Microsoft?

Of course, Microsoft and third-party hardware and software vendors are highly interested in Windows error reports because these reports help improve the stability of their applications. You might also benefit from this Windows feature if the developers get the chance to solve your specific problem.

However, more cautious admins might feel uncomfortable sending error reports to Microsoft. Even though the contents of the .wer files are relatively harmless, parts of the Windows 7 Privacy Statement sound somewhat unsettling:

Microsoft may access or disclose information about you, including the content of your communications, in order to: (a) comply with the law or respond to lawful requests or legal process; (b) protect the rights or property of Microsoft or our customers, including the enforcement of our agreements or policies governing your use of the software; or (c) act on a good faith belief that such access or disclosure is necessary to protect the personal safety of Microsoft employees, customers, or the public.

Basically, this means that Microsoft or third parties can use the information provided by Windows Error Reporting against you or your organization. Well, if your license management is perfect, you have nothing to worry about, right?

The “program has stopped working” dialog

By default, whenever an application crashes, Windows Error Reporting displays a message informing you the program has stopped working and that Windows is collecting more information about the problem. Until this process is finished, you can’t re-launch the application. You can always cancel the data collecting, but then Windows Error Reporting becomes less useful.

If you have to work with an unstable application these “has stopped working” messages can get on your nerves. In this case it makes sense to either disable Windows Error Reporting altogether or at least disable it for this particular application.

However, you should know that by doing so, you won’t be informed at all when a program crashes. If you are currently working with the application, you will notice it immediately. But if an application is running in the background, for example on a server, a pop-up message that the program has stopped working could be helpful.

Of course, the main reason not to disable Windows Error Reporting is because the error reports can help you or your software or hardware vendor’s support team to identify the problem. As far as I know, there is no way to configure Windows to create error reports and store them only locally without sending them to Microsoft. Update: It appears there is a way. See comments below.

In my next post I will outline how you can disable Windows Error Reporting in Windows 7, Vista, and Windows XP.

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First of all, Windows Error Reporting does not show all available information. Whereas AppCrashView shows you the exact content of the .wer files, the Windows Error Reporting applet displays only the most relevant data. For example, you can’t see the DLLs that have been loaded by the corresponding application when it crashed. Thus, if you want to know exactly what information is sent to Microsoft, you should use AppCrashView.

This free tool automatically collects all .wer files and displays them in a table with configurable columns. You can move the columns and sort the list according to each column. The Windows Error Reporting applet also allows you to sort the .wer entries, but it only offers four different columns. What I am missing in AppCrashView is the ability to group error reports.

Another advantage of AppCrashView is that it displays the contents of the .wer file in the lower pane, enabling you to easily skim over multiple .wer files by scrolling through the list. Conversely, with the built-in WER applet you always have to move back and forth between the technical details view and the listing.

AppCrashView also works under Windows PE 3.0. To view the Windows error reports of an offline Windows installation, you have to tell AppCrashView where it can find the user profiles folder and the ProgramData folder when you launch the tool from the command line:

appcrashview /ProfilesFolder c:\Users /ProgramData c:\ProgramData

Last but not least, AppCrashView comes with a reporting feature that allows you to export all or some selected error reports into a text or HTML file. You can also use the tool in scripts to collect the information of all .wer files in your network.

In my next post, I will discuss the question of whether it makes sense to disable Windows Error Reporting or not.

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Windows Error Reporting has been available since Windows XP, although changes have been introduced in Vista and Windows 7. Whenever a Windows application crashes, a WER file is created, which contains valuable information that can help you analyze why the crash happened.

While software vendors have to sign up to Microsoft’s Winqual service to access the crash data from their customers, admins can access it by opening the .wer files, which are simple text files that Windows stores at different locations. In some cases, the problem description will help you to understand why an application crashed.

However, it is often only the developer who will really understands the contents of the .wer file. But, you can’t go wrong having a look at these files before you decide whether you want to enable or disable Windows Error Reporting (if you are worried that confidential data will be sent to third parties). Furthermore, you can also send the files to the support service of your software or hardware vendor in the hope that they can figure out what went wrong.

In Windows 7, Windows Error Reporting files can be stored in a subfolder somewhere deep down in the ProgramData or User directory. The name of the subfolder is simply WER, and the file extension is .wer.

You can use Windows Search or another desktop search tool to locate them all. However, the information in these .wer files can also be accessed through the Windows Action Center (Control Panel\System and Security\Action Center).

You’ll find a list of all crash reports behind the link “View problems to report” in the Maintenance section. If you type “view problems” in the Windows Start Menu search prompt, you will probably get quicker access the Action Center applet. Clicking on “View technical details”, will then display the information in the corresponding .wer file.

In Vista, you have to type “problems” in the Windows Start Menu search prompt and then click on “Problems and Reports and Solutions”. The list of .wer files is behind the “View problem history” link. To view the contents of the .wer file, you have to right click on one of the entries.

In the next post of my Windows Error Reporting series, I will review the free tool AppCrashView, which has some additional useful features for accessing the information in .wer files.

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For Windows PE 1.0, the minimalist Windows based on Windows 2003/XP, you needed an SA (Software Assurance), OEM, or ISV license. When Windows Vista was released everyone had access to Windows PE 2.0. This also applies to the Windows 7-based edition, Windows PE 3.0. Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment) was originally designed to deploy Windows. However, it is also useful in creating your own customized rescue boot media. In this article, I will describe how you can create a bootable Windows PE 3.0 (WinPE) USB stick, and, in my next post, I will show how to add your own rescue tools and how to keep your rescue stick up-to-date without much hassle. You will see that the procedure described here is much more convenient than most solutions you’ll find on the web.

1. Create a bootable USB drive

Before you get started, you have to make your flash drive bootable. I have already described this procedure in my post about the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. For your convenience here is the command sequence, which you should run on a command prompt with admin rights:

1. diskpart
2. list disk
3. select disk #
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. select partition 1
7. active
8. format quick fs=fat32
9. assign
10. exit

Replace ‘#’ with the drive number of your USB drive. Be careful to choose the right disk in 3 because this procedure will erase the whole drive!

2. Copy the WinPE 3.0 files to the USB drive

WinPE 3.0 is part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7, which you can download here. Once you have installed the WAIK, you’ll find a folder of the Windows AIK on the Windows Start Menu. Launch the Deployment Tools Command Prompt and enter this command:

1. copype.cmd x86 c:\winpe_x86
2. Then, copy winpe.wim to the correct folder:
3. copy c:\winpe_x86\winpe.wim c:\winpe_x86\ISO\sources\boot.wim
4. Now, copy WinPE to your USB drive:
5. xcopy C:\winpe_x86\iso\*.* /e G:\

In this example, ‘G:’ is the drive letter of your flash drive.

Now you should be able to boot from your WinPE 3.0 USB drive. In my next post, I will outline the interesting part—that is, how to prepare your USB drive so that you can add new tools without starting again from scratch.

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Request Tracker is Open Source software that supports the organization of the Service Desk. It is written in Perl so it runs on various platforms. For those who can’t or don’t want to install the software in house there is also the option to pay for a hosting service. Once installed you can adjust and configure the software via a web interface.

Request Tracker offers everything you need to build an ITIL compliant Service Desk. You can receive requests by email or via a web interface. Using the web interface, you can search for, prioritize, assign, escalate, and close the tickets. You can also define different queues for e.g. Problem and Incident Management.

The logon/home screen looks like this:

Here  you find an overview of your open tickets and of unassigned tickets. There is also a form to submit a new support case.

Another important page is the “Ticket metadata” page. This page shows the history of a support ticket such as the initial problem description and a list of the steps taken to solve the problem. The page also shows blocks of metadata about the ticket, including the ticket’s status, the involved people, the timeline, and a list of links connected with the ticket. Here is a picture of a typical ticket:

Request Track er also offers some reporting functions. For example, you can display the total numbers of tickets created or resolved and sort tickets by ticket owners. I miss at least one option here, though: It would be helpful for measuring helpdesk costs if the amount of time spent for resolving a ticket could be tracked.

All in all Request Tracker is a simple ticketing software that offers the most basic functions. This might sound a bit negative, but it isn’t meant to be. I highly value the credo “keep it simple,” especially if the software is used in a smaller environment and no resources are available to train users. Instead of irritating the user with thousands of possibilities, Request Tracker only offers the necessary functions. This keeps the user focused on the important tasks and reduces the time needed to learn the system. As a result the operating costs are low and users are happy. However, for bigger companies with a well-trained helpdesk staff the offered functions might not suffice and these companies might be better served with a more elaborate ticketing system.

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