Tag Archives: Microsoft

Clear space on Windows Server 2003 with Symbolic Link

Posted by on November 2, 2011 No comments

I kept getting “out of space” warnings on a  server 2003 at work , backups were failing and updates were reporting error.

From my online research I see that  many systems Admins are now having the same problem with a Windows server 2003 installation in a 25GB partition, which was the default guidance from Microsoft.

I  looked into some partitioning software to make use of my large D: partition, but was wisely warned away from doing it as it may cause future problems if you need for some reason to restore your server.

As a Linux Admin I am very familiar with the concept of Symbolic Links, which has been around for a long time. On Linux the command LN is all you  need.

Well, to my heart’s content Microsoft does have a very useful, and yet not well publicised, command line tool called LINKD.exe, which is part of the Windows server 2003 Resource Kit.

Please note that a symbolic link is not the same as a Windows shortcut file, which is a regular file. The windows shortcut may be created on any file system (such as the earlier FAT32), and is not transparent to applications. SymLink is transparent to applications making it great for clearing space on your drive, without compromising file structure.

My example scenario.

  • Drive C:\ free space 2Mb
  • Drive D:\ free space 200GB
  • Identified a large folder to move to D:\ -  (Drive C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\AMSP\BackupAmsp -  size 6.5GB)
  • Moved the large folder to D:\  (I created a folder called “moved from C” and saved the large folder inside it)
  • Installed Windows server 2003 Resource Kit  (also to Drive D:\Program Files\RKTOOLS)
  • Opened Command Line (START\RUN\CMD), navigated to D:\Program Files\RKTOOLS
  • Run command: linkd “C:\Program Files\Trend Micro\AMSP\BackupAmsp”  “D:\moved from C\BackupAmsp”
  • Done.

Disclaimer: I used Symbolic Link on a non system critical folder. If you plan to use this on a system critical folder, do at your own risk.

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Fix Java install error 1334 and Error 1723

Posted by on September 25, 2011 No comments

I was getting the following installation errors while attempting to install Java on a client’s laptop.

Error 1334. The file ‘patchjre.exe’ cannot be installed because the file cannot be found in cabinet file ‘Data1.cab’.

Error 1723. There is a problem with this Windows installer package.

Both errors can occur while installing Java and similar errors can occur while installing or uninstalling any other software. This is caused by an error during the uninstall process which corrupts the registry.

Microsoft has a very nice tool for fixing installation problems which is part of its Fix it Center Online (currently in Beta).

To fix this error go to http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

  • Run the application
  • Select option “Recommended (find and fix)”
  • Select Uninstall Program
  • Select program from list and click next

If you have more than one programme giving you trouble, run this same procedure for each one of them.

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Microsoft’s Street Slide View is so unMicrosoft

Posted by on July 30, 2010 1 comment

Microsoft Research Street slide View managed to do what Google’s Street View failed to do.. oops “is missing”. After watching the video my only comment was, wow this is so unMicrosoft, this is cool.  Microsoft Research has not yet announced if and when it will be making it to the Bing Maps, or any Microsoft products. But for now you can see a quick demo of how it works.


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The future of gaming is OpenGL

Posted by on March 11, 2010 No comments

As a Linux user and Open Source enthusiast I always want to see people moving away from the proprietary stuff and into the Open Source world, but sometimes it’s easier to keep them where they are (stuck to Windows), specially when it comes to gaming. I am not a gamer, and would rather spend my time on other more fulfilling tasks like testing a ClearOS installation, but when it comes to helping people migrate from Windows to Linux, there’s always that dreaded question  “Will my games work?”  The answer could easily be “yes very well, better than before!”  but in reality a majority of the games won’t. Why? The proprietary monster that is Microsoft has allured programmers, graphic card manufacturers and the common citizen into the idea that DirectX is the best, and it could not e further from the truth. While DirectX only runs on Windows, OpenGL offers equal or better results and runs on every platform. 

But don’t let me talk to you about this, as I said I am not a gamer, let those who know what they are talking about tell you. This great article will help you understand Why should you use OpenGL and not DirectX (Wolfire Blog), and you may also enjoy reading this article Commercial Gaming coming to Linux?  from the Linux Magazine.

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Linux ClearOS to rival Microsoft’s SBS

Posted by on January 7, 2010 1 comment

Microsoft has dominated the small enterprise market with its out of the box feature rich SBS (Small Business Server). Linux has always trailed behind it and although most of the technology to rival Microsoft has been in place, it has always been a mammoth task to setup a server from scratch  to do that.  ClearOS came to fill in this gap.

“ClearOS is a powerful network and gateway server designed for small organizations and distributed environments.  Though ClearOS comes with an extensive list of features  and integrated services, the solution is easy to configure thanks to the intuitive web-based interface.” (extracted from Clear Foundation website)
 
Take a look at how ClearOS’ features match the MS SBS:

Microsoft SBS

Centralized Authentication (Active Directory)
Mail, calendaring and instant messaging (Exchange)
Webserver (IIS)
Firewall (ISA)
Content management system (Sharepoint)
Antivirus (Forefront)
Database (MS-SQL Premium version only)
Remote Desktop Services
Virtual Private Network (VPN)

 ClearOS Linux

Centralized Authentication (LDAP)
Primary Domain Controller (Samba)
File and Print Services (Samba and CUPS)
Mail (SMTP, POP, IMAP, Webmail)
Calendaring (Kolab groupware)
Webserver (Apache)
Firewall plus intrusion protection (iptables, Snort)
Antimalware (Clam Antivirus, Antiphishing, Antispyware)
Antispam (Spamassassin)
Database (MySQL)
Virtual Private Network (IPSec, OpenVPN, PPTP)
Web Proxy (Squid)

The Linux Magazine published an in depth article comparing and explaining this “new” Linux distro. 

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