• IT Systems Engineering

    Missing Administrative Tools in Windows 7

    I have a Windows 7 workstation which I had been using earlier as a different user. When I logon as a new user I don’t see the “Administrative Tools”. So I thought maybe the admin tools I enabled in control panel >> add windows features may be a user profile thing…..ummm…no it wasn’t; I checked…admin tools were all enabled. I found out a quick solution: Right click on any empty area in the Start menu and click “Properties”. Click the “Customize” button under the start menu tab. Scroll down to “System Administrative Tools” Check the radio button “Display on the all Programs menu…” Click OK. There you have it!

  • IT Systems Engineering

    Lost network connectivity

    I have seen this problem a couple of times now. All of a sudden a machine [usually a VM] loses all network connectivity. The Windows event logs show that IPsec is blocking network activity. Solution? Well, take a look at this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912023 The solution listed there solves the problem. I suspect file corruption is the issue. Happy friday!

  • IT Systems Engineering

    Make an external hard drive bootable

    ok, so I found a lot of information on how to make a USB flash drive bootable. But none of them worked on making an external USB mechanical hard drive bootable. I finally found a procedure which actually worked! It is posted here by Kevin. Note 1: On step #2 where he talks about running the bootsect command….there is something more which needs to be done. The CMD prompt on my win 7 machine had to be elevated (right click on the cmd and choose “run as admin”). After that this command made my external drive bootable: bootsect /nt60 G: Yahoo! (thanks Kevin!) Note 2: The tool from Microsoft does not work for external Mechanical HDDs. It only…