Author Archives: Jack

[Office 365] Access to the registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSOLCoExistence" is denied

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If you receive the error when configuring the Microsoft Directory Synchronization Tool to communicate with Office 365:
"Access to the registry key 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MSOLCoExistence' is denied"

Make you you right click and run the tool as an administrator 🙂

Microsoft Online Service Directory Synchronization Configuration Wizard in the Configuration step. The error

Upgrading SolarWinds 10.3 to 10.4 With NetFlow 3.9 to 3.10

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Earlier this week I decided to update NetFlow and came across some weird stuff. I updated NetFlow first, all went all. Updated NPM to 10.4 and all heck broke loose. The following messaged started to popup when going to the Netflow tab of SolarWinds:
"Error: NetFlowService inaccessible. Verify that service is 'Started'. » More Information"

I had tried restarting the SolarWinds Netflow service, rebooting the whole machine, running the repair option of Netflow via the installer, and creating a whole new database; neither of which prevailed.

Finally I opened up a ticket with SolarWinds and it turned out to be database connectivity issues. After troubleshooting with a tech for a few hours, eventually I had this escalated to the dev. team. Turns out that the database configuration file has issues reading "s and they have you replace the passwords with 's.

So the fix:

  1. Open c:\Program Files (x86)\SolarWinds\Orion
  2. Edit the SWNetPerfMon.db file using Notepad
  3. Replace all double quotes (") with single quotes (') around your passwords.
  4. Restart all Solarwinds services using the Orion Service Manager.

Wait a few minutes and you should now start to see the fancy NetFlow charts in SolarWinds 🙂

DNS name does not exist. - Windows Activiation

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Issue:
When activating Windows (in this case Server 2008 R2), you receive the following dialog box:
"Code: 0x8007232B Description: DNS name does not exist."

Solution:

If you receive this error, you are more than likely using an ISO from the Microsoft Volume Licensing Center when in reality you want to just use your license key (the OS is looking for your KMS server (Key management services), and if you don't have one, then you receive this DNS failure).

How to:

  1. Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, and then right-click Command Prompt.
    1. Click Run as administrator.
  2. Execute the following command (where the X's are your license key :)):
    1. slmgr -ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
  3. You should get a popup saying the key has successfully been installed after you execute the command (there is a delay).  Once you see that, go ahead and activate windows as you normally would.
    1. Start->right click properties on My Computer->Activate...

Get MD5 Hash of a file via PowerShell/Windows

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Want to check the hash of a huge file you downloaded on your shady network and have a machine running powershell? Then you are in luck!

Execute the following script to output the hash of the file you want to validate:

$FilePath = "c:\Users\MyAwesomeUser\Desktop\myreallybigfilethatisprobablyaniso.iso"
$md5 = new-object -TypeName System.Security.Cryptography.MD5CryptoServiceProvider
$hash = [System.BitConverter]::ToString($md5.ComputeHash([System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($FilePath)))
Write-Host $hash.Replace("-","")

Hope this helps!

VMware View Composer Installation Error - Unknown Software Exception

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When installing VMware View Composer, I was receiving the following error:
"Application Error, The exception unknown software exception (0x0000409) Occurred"

Turns out this was an issue with installation privileges. Rather than installing the software as a domain administrator, I simply logged into the local Administrator account on the machine and installed it.