Colin Desmond's questions

I have a single physical host, running 2008 R2 with Hyper-V, all fully updated. On that host I am running 3 clients, a DC, a web server and a SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1. All are running on Windows Server 2008 R2, again all fully patched.

Generally all is fine, but sometimes and not repeatably, when I shutdown the host properly, which suspends the Clients, when it all comes up again, SQL Server is no longer running and the IIS App Pool I am running the website in needs to be told which account to run in again!

Any ideas!?

I have a secure system running Server 2008 R2 and a GPO clamp based on the Microsoft secure baseline. I now want to install the McAfee ePO server onto the domain controller of the system and utilise the existing SQL Server (running on a different VM). Unfortunately I get an issue with one of the users involved not being able to log on as a batch process.

I understand that without giving a lot more detail of the system here, which I cannot do, it is not possible to tell me which user needs to be able to log into which machine as a batch process, but can anyone please point me at some documentation that describes what GPO permissions are required to install ePO?

I have a secure (not connected to the internet) system that needs to be kept up to date via WSUS. We have installed a WSUS server on it and have copied over 20+GB of update content and imported the corresponding configuration for them.

Now, a month later, we want to only add the 27 new updates from Microsoft, but we can't figure out a way of exporting only the new changes from out internet connected WSUS machine so we don't have to impex the whole 20+ GB again.

Is this supported by WSUS (Server 2008 R2)?

I have hit the limit of how many computers my domain admins will allow me to add to the Active Directory. Most of these are old VMs which are no longer in use. How do I query AD to find a list of all the machines I have added in the past so I can go about removing some of them?

For several months now I have been using Hyper-V (2008 R2) to host a Win 7 VM. For most of that time I was able to RDP into it, recently I have not been able to. I am not aware of having changed anything, but it has stopped working. Any suggestions?

I have recently moved my main machine from Windows 7 to Server 2008 R2. Just before I did the install, I used the Windows Backup facility to create a backup on a file share.

I am now using the Server Backup facility in 2008 R2 to restore this and it is not working. When I use another Win7 machine, I point the restore program at the folder containing the backup fileset and it lets me look through them. In R2, I point it at the same folder and it tells me that "The specified remote share does not contain any backup."

I naively assumed that the two systems would be compatible, is this not the case? Is there anyway to get that data back again?

As the title suggests, where does SQL Server store the paths to the MDF files it will load at start up.

Our SQL Server is trying to load a file that is not there, reporting errors in the log, but failing to show the database in the treeview of Management Studio. So what I want to do is edit the table(?) that tells it to try and load this file at start-up, thus not creating the database. This will allow me to recreate the DB.

During an aborted TFS import (2008 into 2010), I have managed to "lose" a database in 2008. The database is not visible in Management Studio, but the SQL Server exe has a handle on the .mdf file (according to UnLocker), it says it cannot attach it because the file is in use and it cannot attach a copy of the file (created when SQL Server was stopped), as it says a DB of the same name is already attached.

Given I am using the same TFS admin account I have always used and have always been able to see the database in, why is this database missing and, more importantly, how do I get it back again?

I am running Windows 7 RTM and have both physical drives BitLockered. Because my machine has a TPM it will boot all very nicely when I turn it on. But my employers would prefer if I was challenged for a password at boot time.

I have found this article: http://4sysops.com/archives/review-windows-7-bitlocker/ that tells me which group policy flags to set to get it BitLocker to challenge for a PIN at startup.

What I can't find is how to set this PIN given the system is already encrypted?

I have also come across http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd875532%28WS.10%29.aspx and am curious to know which of these recommendations it is safe to apply to an already encrypted system?

We want to be able to allow a user to delete an executable (during a re-install) but not execute it (forces them to use a less privilaged account for day to day operations). Is this possible using standard Windows file permissions?

I am running the Windows 7 RC which prevents me from running my companys VPN software (Juniper Network Connect). So I thought I could use the Virtual PC capability in Windows 7 to do it for me.

I have downloaded and installed the XP VM for the Virtual PC addition to Windows 7. I can log into my VPN in the XP machine via Network Connect.

What I'd like to be able to do now is bridge/share (?) the VPN connection to the Windows 7 host.

Is this possible, and if so, how?

EDIT Turns out on Windows 7 RTM, Network Connect seems to work fine all by itself!