Stuff I Learned at Work Today

tl;dr: Skip towards the bottom for the simple step-by-step

ATTENTION: It's been brought to my attention that this may violate the terms of Windows 8 OEM licenses. I was pointed in the direction of Windows 8's Create a recovery drive functionality as a way to get a functioning installer for a clean install without violating the license terms. Supposedly you can uncheck an option to ignore the OEM's recovery media so the recovery drive won't include an OEM customizations, but I'll need to test this myself to confirm. Keep that in mind as you read the rest of this guide:

Whenever I purchase a new laptop or am called in to set up someone's new PC I typically perform a clean install of Windows to clear out any prebundled applications and other OEM customizations and otherwise clear the slate. For any version of Windows 7, it's a simple and well-documented task:

Grab a Windows 7 ISO from the internet or make one from existing install media

Prepare an 8GB USB stick as an installer using Microsoft's Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool

Remove a CFG file to make the installer a generic one for any version of 7 (hint: the Windows 7 install media is all the same! it's the EI.cfg file in the \sources folder that determines what version of Windows it'll install!)

For retail versions of Windows 8, the above steps are by and large the same. The source of the ISO is a bit different: convenient Digital River downloads have been replaced by the need to run Microsoft's Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant and then choosing to save the install media as an ISO. Once you have the ISO, though, you can can perform Steps 2 and 3 as listed above (ignore the fact that the program in Step 2 is called the Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool, it'll work just as well with Windows 8 ISO's).

Unfortunately, clean installs of OEM versions of Windows 8 are less cut-and-dry! It turns out that OEM keys can't be used to authenticate retail versions of Windows 8, nor can they be used to even download a retail ISO! Instead you have to grab a specific Windows 8 ISO available exclusively through TechNet and a generic Windows 8 product key (provided by Microsoft) to get past the initial key check. In addition, since Windows 8 abolished the practice of placing Certificates of Authenticity on each machine, you also have to grab your device's actual product key from the BIOS.

If that sounds overly complicated, fear not! Fortunately for you I've done the hard work of sleuthing out proper ISO's, product keys, and figured out a painless procedure by which all of this can be accomplished. Without further ado, here's the guide you've been waiting for: 

Performing a Clean Install of Windows 8.1 with an OEM Key

Download a copy of Windows 8.1 with Update (multiple editions) (x64) DVD ISO from TechNet. If you don't have a TechNet subscription, then you'll have to get creative in finding it elsewhere. Either way, here's the hash of the ISO so you can be sure you've grabbed the right one

File Name: en_windows_8.1_with_update_x64_dvd_4065090.iso SHA1: 4652DC6EBFEBE02C6A63E167C36E3FAEDFB93999

Make a note of one of these generic, Microsoft-provided Windows 8.1 OEM installation keys for whatever version of 8 you intend to install:

Home: 334NH-RXG76-64THK-C7CKG-D3VPT Professional: XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB

Use Microsoft's Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool to turn an 8GB USB stick into an installer or to burn the ISO to a DVD.

If you opted for a USB stick in Step 3, to save you some work during the install process, create plaintext EI.cfg and PID.txt files according to either of the following two sections. Copy these files to the USB stick's %ROOT%\Sources\ folder.

EI.cfg: For Windows 8 Home Edition: [EditionID] Core [Channel] Retail [VL] 0 For Windows 8 Professional Edition: [EditionID] Professional [Channel] Retail [VL] 0

PID.txt: [PID] Value=<Generic installation key from Step 2 (minus the carats)>

Example of EI.cfg and PID.txt files:

Install Windows 8.1 to the target machine

Once booted to the desktop, grab your device's embedded Windows 8 key using a program called RWEverything. For the purposes of this guide, the Portable version is sufficient:

Open RWEverything as Administrator. Click File, then click ACPI Table. In the window that appears, click the MSDM tab, then look for your device's key at the bottom under Data:

  It's time to activate Windows! Open up System properties, then scroll down to Windows Activation. Click Change product key, then enter the key from Step 6

And that should be it - your clean installation of Windows 8.1 should now be activated with your device's OEM key! It's not nearly as cut and dry as installing a retail copy of Windows 8, but it's definitely not impossible.

I feel I should mention that this should work even if your device has an embedded Windows 8 key (versus an embedded Windows 8.1 key...yes, they're different!) My laptop came with a Windows 8 key, but using this guide I had Windows 8.1 installed and authenticated with no problems. Short of saying that it's guaranteed to work, I feel pretty safe in saying that you shouldn't have any such issues either.

If a client computer running Windows 7 with a resolution set to 1366 x 768 remotes into a Windows Server 2008 R2 server in full-screen mode, then switches focus away from and then back to the MSTSC window, the remote session will not go full-screen despite you clicking the Maximize button on the window. This is a known issue with Remote Desktop, and a hotfix is available from Microsoft: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2582172

Run the following in Windows 8 from the Command Line or a shortcut to lock, hibernate, sleep, or restart your machine:

Restart: shutdown.exe -r -t 00

Lock: rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

Hibernate: rundll32.exe powrProf.dll,SetSuspendState

Sleep: rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0

The default Windows 7 desktop, Start Menu, and Taskbar have, in my opinion, a lot of cruft that is unnecessary in a corporate environment: a busy background, a bunch of Windows applications that no one typically uses, and pinned items that waste space. When I prepare an image, my end goal is for my users to see this when they first log in:

Getting Windows to look like this for a single account is pretty simple. Problems arise, however, then you attempt to make this appearance apply as the default theme after you image a machine and log a user in for the first time. Customizing the taskbar and start menu using conventional deployment-related techniques (unattend.xml configuration, MDT tasks, etc...) failed me, but fortunately I was able to find some solutions addressed the issues with a minimal amount of scripting. I figured I should document now to save further trouble later, and to maybe save you some time.

Specifically, I've figured out how to:

Remove the IE, Explorer, and Windows Media Player items that are pinned to the taskbar

Clear the list of "recent programs" on the Start Menu without inhibiting its typical functionality

1. Remove the IE, Explorer, and Windows Media Player items that are pinned to the taskbar

Regardless of what you do to customize a user profile in an image, when you deploy that image to a PC, new users who logs into the machine will have IE/Explorer/WMP items pinned to the taskbar by default. This is intended behavior on the part of Microsoft and there is nothing you can do via the unattend.xml file to remove them. Thankfully, there's a solution: this page includes a VBScript that you can run to remove those items.

I did some testing and discovered that the script must be run when the user is logged in. Because of this, I added a couple of files to my image that will fire off the script when a new user account is created, and then delete the script:

The VBS file above to C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\

The following batch file to C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup\

SET SCRIPTPINNED="C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Roaming\RemoveDefaultPinned.vbs" %SCRIPTPINNED% del /Q /F %SCRIPTPINNED% del /Q /F %0

Now whenever any user logs into an imaged machine for the first time, those shortcuts will be removed and both scripts will be cleaned up from the machine.

Note: I commented out the block of code in the VBScript that removes the IE pinned item because I wanted it to remain on the Taskbar. You can easily do the same to prevent Explorer or WMP from being removed if you so choose.

2. Clear the list of "recent programs" on the Start Menu without inhibiting its typical functionality

I discovered a local group policy that you can set in the image to clear the Start Menu's "recent programs" list when a new user logs into the machine:

Open gpedit.msc and enable the Clear the recent programs list for new users policy under User Policy\Admin Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar. This will take care of those 10 or so default items that Windows throws up underneath the pinned items on the Start Menu. Note that it will only apply when the user's profile is first created - after the user is logged in, the list of recent programs will work as you'd expect it to and update to include and move programs around as they're used.

"dig" is a Linux command that lets you query your DNS server for records related to an address. If you want to make sure that your DNS server is responding with the proper IP address when you resolve an address, do the following:

dig servername.fq.dn.com

Using dig in this manner requires you to type out the server's fully qualified domain name instead of just the server name. If you want to avoid typing out the server's FQDN every time, go into /etc/resolv.conf and add the following lines:

domain fq.dn.com search fq.dn.com 

Then, the next time you use dig, add +search to the command, like so:

dig servername +search

If the command was successful, you should get an output that looks something like this:

[root@nas samba]# dig nas +search

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-20.P1.el5_8.1 <<>> nas +search ;; global options:  printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 44121 ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;nas.fq.dn.com.   IN      A ;; ANSWER SECTION: nas.fq.dn.com. 3600 IN    A       10.0.1.100 ;; Query time: 0 msec ;; SERVER: 10.0.1.10#53(10.0.1.10) ;; WHEN: Thu Jul 12 10:31:35 2012 ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 61

Problem You try to navigate to a webpage in Chrome. Unfortunately, the page fails to load and you receive the following error:

Error 324 (net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE): The server closed the connection without sending any data

PIP (a Python package manager) and Distribute (another Python package manager...?) are required to install new Python modules from the command line. Here's a guide on how to install these on Windows (since most other guides assume you have access to non-Windows things like curl):

Download distribute_setup.py from the Python repository and save it to C:\Python32 (or wherever you have Python installed)

Open an elevated command prompt and CD to wherever you saved distribute_setup.py

Enter "python distribute_setup.py", press Enter, then wait for Distribute to install

Repeat Steps 1-3 for get-pip.py

Add "C:\Python32\Scripts" to the computer's PATH variable

After that you can install stuff via the command line with "pip install <package name>".

If you need to find out who's logged into a computer you're trying to remote into, run the following from an elevated command prompt (XP through Windows 7):

If you attempt to stream a video through Netflix.com and you receive a "Digital Rights Management (DRM) Error" code N8156-6013, try the following:

Log out of Netflix

Close all browser windows

Go to %ProgramData%\Microsoft\PlayReady\

Delete the mspr.hds file

Log back into Netflix

Problem:

You purchased an upgrade version of Windows 7 to save a few bucks. Unfortunately, when you go to activate it, you're told that the key can only be used to upgrade an existing installation of Windows.

Solution:

Hit Win+R to bring up the Run dialogue, type "Regedit" (without the quotes), and then press Enter

In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Setup\OOBE

On the right pane, double-click MediaBootInstall to modify it

Change its value from 1 to 0, click OK, then close the Registry Editor

Open the Start Menu, type "cmd" (without quotes) into the Start Menu search bar, then press Ctrl+Shift and Enter to open up an elevated Command Prompt

In the Command Prompt, type "slgmr -rearm" (without quotes) and then press Enter.

Wait a few seconds - when a window appears notifying you that the computer has been rearmed, click OK

Restart the computer

If you're running Windows 7 in a corporate environment and use Remote Assistance to offer help to users, there's an easy way to bring up the "Who do you want to help?" window. Create a shortcut with the following as the location:

%windir%\system32\msra.exe /offerra

To add a printer by IP in Windows, follow the steps below:

Hit Win+F to open up Search

Click on Settings

Enter "printer" into the search box

Click Advanced Printer Setup

I was looking for a way to convert an HTML copy of Cory Doctorow's, "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" into an ePub document for easy reading on my iPod Touch when I came across 2EPUB. Basically, it's a website that lets you upload a wide variety of text documents (see below) for conversion into ePub, a common (and open) ebook format. The whole process is pretty basic - you can convert a document in all of three clicks or so.

From the site: