Category Archives: Windows

Windows & Microsoft related topics

Server (lanmanserver) service fails to start on Server 2008 after iSCSI config

Just had an issue with three newly-configured Hyper-V Servers (Server 2008 R2 Enterprise) where the Server, or lanmanserver, service was failing to start. Incidentally, all of these (blade) servers are hooked up to a HP LeftHand P4xxx SAN, but are … Continue reading

Posted in SysAdmin, Windows | 20 Comments

Use the current date in a batch file

I’d done this before, but couldn’t remember how to do it. I found this useful article on support.microsoft.com If you want to grab just the date digits section of today’s date, do the following (echoed in this example) echo %date:~-10,10% … Continue reading

Posted in Scripting, SysAdmin, Windows | Leave a comment

Use Group Policy Preferences to hide a physical drive

Just saw this note whilst browsing the help on Drive Maps in Group Policy Preferences: You can use a Drive Map preference item to configure the visibility of a physical drive rather than a mapped drive. To do so, select … Continue reading

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Vista: “Access denied” error when attempting to map a printer

Another printing-related issue I experienced this week was as follows: I set up some new printers on the print server, and shared them out I then used Ricoh’s “Default Editor” application to lock down the colour printing options When attempting … Continue reading

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Vista: Print spooler crashing repeatedly

Had a problem today where a printer driver became corrupted on our print server. This, in turn was causing the Print Spooler service on the workstations to crash repeatedly. I was unable to delete the mapped printers through the normal … Continue reading

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