I'm running Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2.1 against some servers that don't have outbound access to the Internet, by design of firewall restrictions, and therefore I'm wishing to run MBSA in offline mode.
In order to do so, I need the list of updates in the file named "wsusscn2.cab". Is there a well-known page or URL at Microsoft for downloading the most up-to-date version of that file for MBSA offline mode?
I have a Windows Server 2003 box on my small network. In it is a Promise Fasttrak RAID controller and two parallel ATA Western Digital drives in a RAID-1 (mirror) configuration. When I set this up I expected that it would be a reliable storage system, and the RAID controller would tell me when there's an issue so I could react.
However, it is failing on both counts now. When I copy files from that server, I find large files have been corrupted. For instance, I was recently copying the XP SP3 network install (~320MB) to another PC. The extraction failed. I thought that odd since I'd used that executable before. So I copied it from the network again twice, and using FileAlyzer, I discovered that the MD5 & SHA1 hashes of the 3 different copies varied. I performed similar tests from other PCs on my network, and I could replicate the fault. Worse, the RAID BIOS never complained about anything being wrong! Which leads me to believe the controller itself may be bad. (Note: I don't think it's the network, since other PCs can reliably copy files to each other.)
But my question is: What kind of tools exist for Windows to "certify" a file system is behaving reliably, RAID or otherwise?
For instance, I purchased a tool called GoldMemory to run an exhaustive memory test when I build a new PC. I won't trust a new PC until it survives 24 hours under GoldMemory with no memory errors. I also purchased Steve Gibson's SpinRite to test individual ATA disks.
Is there a tool I can run within Windows to test an NTFS file system, whether RAID-based or not, that will repeatedly read and write and check for corruption?
I can't trust my current server as is, and if I swap out components to try to repair, or else build a new system, I'd like to be reasonably sure my file systems are operating reliably before betting the farm. While I'd like to trust that a brand-name RAID controller and decent hard drives would be reliable, I now need to take a Horatio Caine approach: "Trust, but verify."
Thanks for your help! :-)
UPDATE:
So, I ran some local tests on the server (within cygwin) to rule out the network as the problem. This should give you an idea of what I am contending with. The problem happens most of the time with BIG files. (The one below is 462MB.)
$ md5sum VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
7bf6145eb7d3e4fbcc945d87017fb6bd *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
$ for (( c=1; c<=50; c++ )); do md5sum VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe; done
545c2f8e9363823af3aa703a1cbd35e3 *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
b47d4aa75aae27264cfd6396fbfe646a *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
b47d4aa75aae27264cfd6396fbfe646a *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
... etc... (repeats)
$ for (( c=1; c<=50; c++ )); do md5sum VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe; done
9d2fbb3fa46194f6915d6328f0881a24 *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
9d2fbb3fa46194f6915d6328f0881a24 *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
... etc... (repeats)
$ for (( c=1; c<=50; c++ )); do md5sum VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe; done
512181c3838e91a02a92280462e2f4c3 *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
512181c3838e91a02a92280462e2f4c3 *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
...(repeats a dozen or so times, then changes!)
7a84da59a83f203506244e23507bb4df *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
7a84da59a83f203506244e23507bb4df *VMware-workstation-6.5.2-156735.exe
... aargh!
We had some databases decommissioned recently, and my SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager still shows the server group I originally created containing those servers. I tried deleting the entire server group, but Enterprise Manager won't let me do so because the group still contains server registrations. When I right-click on individual server registrations to try and delete them one-by-one, Enterprise Manager tries to connect to the server and complains when it can't. I don't get to see the option to delete the server registration.
So ... how can I work around that and get these dead server registrations out of my Enterprise Manager configuration? Thanks :-)