Archive for the 'Howto' Category

Windows: Disabling the system beep

3 ways to tackle this:

  1. sc remoteMachine stop beep && sc remoteMachine config beep start= disabled
  2. sc stop beep && sc config beep start= disabled
  3. Net Stop Beep && Reg Add HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesBeep /v Start /d 4 /t REG_DWORD /f


Vista: Remove Pre SP1 Files

Open command prompt.
Type ‘vsp1cln.exe’ press enter
Follow the prompts.
Done.

Disable the Insert Key in Windows

1. Go to Start -> Run -> regedit
2. Go to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout
3. Right-click on the right half of the screen and choose New -> Binary Value
4. Name the new Value Scancode Map
5. Enter 000000000000000002000000000052E000000000
6. Close regedit
7. Reboot.

Configuring Flash Player auto-update notification

Create a file called mms.cfg and add the following to it:

AutoUpdateDisable=1

For Flash 8 or later place the file in the following location:

Windows NT, 2K — C:\WINNT\System32\Macromed\Flash
Windows XP, Vista — C:\WINDOWS\System32\Macromed\Flash
Windows 95, 98, or ME — C:\Windows\System\Macromed\Flash
Macintosh — \Application Support\Macromedia

Those using anything earlier - time to update.

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=16701594&sliceId=2

Ubuntu / *nix: Gain root privileges (w/o password) and a root shell.

Select Recovery mode the version of the kernel that you wish to boot.
Select the line that starts with kernel and type e to edit the line.
Go to the end of the line and add init=/bin/bash to the end of the line.
Press enter key to exit edit mode.
Type b to boot into single user mode.
This causes the system to boot the kernel and run /bin/bash instead of its standard init.
You need to remount partitions to write
‘mount -rw -o remount /

Breaking the 2TB (2 TeraByte) File System Limit

Silly me, didn’t realise that NTFS had a limit of 2TB partitions (This is why you research.).
I have a Dell Poweredge DP500 with 6x 1TB disks.

My options:
Go Linux - not at this point in time. Though I seriously considered it.
Use GPT partitions (System drive cannot be a GPT drive, hence I lose some drives still)

What I ended up opting for was:

1x RAID 1 array for OS - 1TB
1x RAID 5 array for data - 3TB (Converted the disk to GPT)

So I lose 2 drives to redundancy in this config instead of the 1 I would have liked.

Ideally what needs to happen is:

- Manufacturers (maybe some do) to support EFI firmwares so we can boot GPT partitions.
- For them to make it well known that there is a limit when buying these items and configs.

*Update: Been told Server 2008 and Vista don’t have this problem but I don’t have licenses for those yet.

Good reading for this topic:

https://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT-on-x64.mspx
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/4b35160a-4e27-4258-9e8b-e2088f8a757a1033.mspx?mfr=true
http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Microsoft_Operating_Systems/Server/2003_Server/Q_23066074.html
http://www.carltonbale.com/2007/05/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit/