Category Archives: Windows

Anything related to Microsoft Windows.

Why Are More People Becoming Mac Fans?

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I’m known at my job and with friends of being a Mac fan, which is true. It wasn’t always like that however. I’ve spent the majority of my IT career behind a keyboard of a PC (well, and a Linux machine when I was a Redhat Server Administrator) ;-) Customers and friends often ask why I use a Mac, and I thought that this experience of a blogger who works for a site called Tuaw summed it up nicely. Just like he mentions- Macs are not perfect- but even when things go wrong, the overall experience has been way less frustrating than experiences that I’ve had with a PC.

http://www.tuaw.com/2012/12/18/your-trusty-tuaw-blogger-tries-windows-8/

And people wonder why Mac’s are gaining marketshare, not only for the consumer, but in the enterprise as well.. ;-)

Interesting graphic on Mac’s market share:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-mac-gains-share-as-u.s.-pc-sales-drop

Userenvlog

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Figuring out why a pc or server is slow at logging on can be a long and difficult task.  Userenvlog logging existing in Windows XP and 2003 and there is a new process for turning this on in Windows Vista, 7, 2008.  This is a good step in the troubleshooting process to see if group policy could be slowing down the logon process. http://blogs.technet.com/b/mempson/archive/2010/01/10/userenvlog-for-windows-vista-2008-win7.aspx

VMware MSCS NPIV Support Clarified

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NPIV or N-Port Virtualization is a method of utilizing a single Fibre Channel port to serve multiple physical or virtual servers.  NPIV allows a single SAN device to service multiple WWNs without additional switching infrastructure.  NPIV is the technique used by blade system hardware to reduce the complexity of  SAN connected blades.  NPIV allows SAN connectivity without requiring Fibre Channel switches to be installed within the blade chassis.  VMware also uses NPIV within the Raw Device Mapping (RDM) infrastructure.

Due to a statement in VMware documentation, confusion has arisen over support of Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) in a VMware environment where NPIV is utilized.  In short NPIV is supported with VMware and MSCS where a hardware device such as HP Virtual Connect or Cisco UCS provides the NPIV functionality but not where VMware is providing the NPIV (checking the box in the guest config of a VM for NPIV).

Bootable Windows 7 thumb drive install

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Ok, so most of you probably already know this but I haven’t needed to install Windows 7 from a thumb drive…until today.  A quick search of google turned up this tool from Microsoft which automates the creation of a bootable thumb drive to install Windows 7 from.  You just give it the source iso, the destination (DVD or USB thumb drive) and start… it formats the drive and copies the iso to the drive.  If all goes well I’ll be installing in 20 min.

http://store.microsoft.com/help/iso-tool

How Do I: Get Started with xPerf and xPerfview to Analyze Server Performance?

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Eat up….been working with Kenneth today on some performance items and I found some good information I thought I would pass along.

With Windows 2008 and 2008 R2 there are lots more tools for diagnosing performance issues, if you’re not on 2008 what are you doing!!!! Jk, you can use SPA v2 on those boxes.

Check out xperf and this video…also check out the article on interpreting CPU utilization.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/deployment/dd883225.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/winserverperformance/archive/2009/08/06/interpreting-cpu-utilization-for-performance-analysis.aspx