Wolfgang Riedmann Blog

Basically, if you would save your old Windows XP machine to your new Windows 7 machine, the best thing you can do is to virtualize your old machine.

There are three cost-free virtualization solutions available:

• VMware Server or VMware player from VMware ( www.vmware.com )
• Microsoft Virtual PC from Microsoft
• Oracle VirtualBox ( www.virtualbox.org )

I have tried all three, and I’m preferring VirtualBox for this because it seems to be the solution with the smallest overhead. VMware has become very fat, and also Virtual PC seems a little bit slow.

For the conversion of a living machine, there are only two handy tools available:

• Sysinternals Disk2VHD tool creates a VHD image from a living machine (but please pay attention: there is a 127 GB limit) and can prepare it for use in MS Virtual PC ( live.sysinternals.com )
• VMware vCenter Converter Standalone from VMware creates a complete VMware virtual machine (VMDK file) ( www.vmware.com )

The easiest way is using of VMware Converter to create a virtual machine and use these in VMware Player or server.

The Microsoft way can be easy also, but when there is something that does not work you can spend several hours until the entire thing works (there are two limits: 127 GB max for the virtual disk, and as host you need a Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate, no Home).

The personally preferred solution is to use VMware Converter to create a VMDK file, and use this then in VirtualBox, and this will be described more detailled here:

• before launching the conversion with VMware Converter, you need to apply the MergeIDE tool (you can find the link here )
• convert the machine saving the files to a network or USB drive
• copy the virtual machine to the host machine
• create the new virtual machine using the copied virtual machine files
• in the settings of the virtual machine, you need these settings:
  enable APIC
  

  Enable APIC in VirtualBox

  select PIIX4 als IDE controller

  

  Enable PIIX4 in VirtualBox

• After this you can try to start your machine. Unfortunately, probably you will have to re-activate Windows because of the “hardware” change.
  It is not so easy because before activating Windows over the network, you will need to make the network to work.
  If you are lucky, you have 3 days to do this, but on a Fujitsu Siemens machine (with a BIOS locked XP license) the only way to logon was a prior activation over the phone: the network can be configured only after login, but without activation a login was impossible.
• if your machine was member of a Windows domain, its will be the best to configure the network as passthrough, not as NAT, because otherwise the domain controller cannot be reached.

Links:

Howto convert from VMware to VirtualBox
VMware Download Center
Howto migrate a Windows machine to VirtualBox

The Buffalo Technology TeraStation of a customer needed a firmware update – and after this the Web GUI was in Japanese language.

Unfortunately I could not find any solution because all I could find were targeting an older web interface (before 2010) totally different from the actual one.

Fortunately I had another LinkStation Mini in my network with the same Web GUI, so I could look where to find how to switch the language.

Please look at the screen shot below:

Language setting

Problem: Windows SBS 2011 don’t has 32 Bit drivers. You can use the ones from Windows Vista, but they don’t work for Windows XP.

You need:

-         A Windows Vista 32 Bit machine, and precisely the folder c:\windows\system32\driverstore\FileRepository\prnms002.

-         The fax driver files from a Windows Server 2003. Alternatively you can find them here: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverprint/thread/adabe510-89ef-4856-935c-5cfbcecfe038/

There is a Microsoft KB article on this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2532185

The solution comes most from the Technet forums post, but was tested by myself.

Steps:

• In the share properties from the fax printer on the server, add 32 bit drivers, using the ones from the Windows Vista installation
• Stop the spooler: net stop spooler
  This will ask you to stop also the fax service.
• Copy the files FXSAPI.DLL, FXSDRV.DLL, FXSRES.DLL, FXSTIFF.DLL, FXSUI.DLL and FXSWZRD.DLL from the Windows Server 2003 installation (please look at the KB article where to find them or download them using the link in the Technet forums) to the folder c:\windows\system32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3 overwriting the existing ones
• Insert this in the registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Environments\Windows NT
x86\Drivers\Version-3\Microsoft Shared Fax Driver]
“Configuration File”=”FXSUI.DLL”
“Data File”=”FXSUI.DLL”
“Driver”=”FXSDRV.DLL”
“Help File”=”"
“Monitor”=”"
“Datatype”=”RAW”
“Dependent Files”=hex(7):46,00,58,00,53,00,57,00,5a,00,52,00,44,00,2e,00,44,00,
4c,00,4c,00,00,00,46,00,58,00,53,00,54,00,49,00,46,00,46,00,2e,00,44,00,4c,
00,4c,00,00,00,46,00,58,00,53,00,52,00,45,00,53,00,2e,00,44,00,4c,00,4c,00,
00,00,46,00,58,00,53,00,41,00,50,00,49,00,2e,00,44,00,4c,00,4c,00,00,00,00, 00
“Previous Names”=hex(7):00,00,90,90
“Version”=dword:00000003
“TempDir”=dword:00000000
“Attributes”=dword:00000001
“Manufacturer”=”"
“OEM URL”=”"
“HardwareID”=”"
“Provider”=”"
“DriverDate”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00
“DriverVersion”=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00

• Restart the spooler: net start spooler
• Restart the fax: net start fax
• Install the fax on the XP clients like a shared printer. It could be that the client is asking for a Windows XP CD, so better you have one.
• Done!

Welcome to my blog!

This will not be a normal blog, but a collection of various tech tipps as I encounter in my daily work.

Themes will be Windows networking, Linux networking and programming with Visual Objects and Vulcan.NET.

So I hope this blog will be useful for the readers….

Wolfgang