Table of Contents

Windows Desktop

Installing Windows from bootable USB Flash disk

Partition the USB Flash drive as needed

Use EaseUS partition manager: Free EaseUS Home Edition

Using Diskpart

In the command shell window, type diskpart and then press Enter.

  1. Type “list disk” and then press Enter. You should see an entry for each hard disk that is installed on the computer. You should also see an entry for the attached USB drive. Write down the disk number (for example, Disk 2) that represents the USB drive.
  2. Type “select disk <n>” (where <n> is the disk number you wrote down) and then press Enter.
    • WARNING: Be sure you have identified the correct disk number of the USB drive. You are about to delete all files that are stored on the selected disk.
  3. Type “clean” and then press Enter.
  4. Type “create partition primary” and then press Enter.
  5. Type “select partition 1” and then press Enter.
  6. Type active and then press Enter.
  7. Do one of the following:
    • Type “format fs=fat32 quick” and then press Enter.
    • Type “format fs=ntfs quick” and then press Enter.
  8. Type “assign” and then press Enter.
  9. Type “exit” and then press Enter.

Installing Windows XP from USB FLASH drive

Note: The size of the FLASH disk must be ⇐4GB, it must be formatted with FAT16 for XP to install

Instructions:

Installing Windows 7 from USB FLASH drive

The easiest and reliable tool to use is Windows 7 USB DVD download tool from Microsoft: Windows7-USB-DVD-tool.exe.

You can use USB FLASH drive > 4GB for installing Windows 7 using the Microsoft tool

Offline disk cloning

Use Clonezilla from USB

Clonezilla live USB: https://clonezilla.org/liveusb.php

  1. Download Tuxboot on your MS Windows computer.
  2. From MS Windows, run the Tuxboot program and follow the instructions in the GUI to install Clonezilla Live on your USB flash drive.
  3. Boot from USB and clone

Running Symantec SRD from USB

  1. Use diskpart to create partition, format as ntfs
  2. When complete, the formatted USB drive is ready to be made bootable.
    • Insert a Windows Vista or Windows 7 Setup disk into the DVD-ROM drive and note the drive letter of the DVD-ROM drive and USB drive.
    • At the command prompt, change to the DVD-ROM drive by typing D:and press Enter. Where D is the drive letter of the DVD-ROM. Then type CD BOOT.
    • Type bootsect /nt60 x: (Where x: is the drive letter of your USB drive).
  3. Copy SRD files to the USB drive

How to change the Remote Desktop port in Windows XP

  1. Start Registry Editor.
  2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber
  3. On the Edit menu, click Modify, and then click Decimal.
  4. Type the new port number, and then click OK.
  5. Quit Registry Editor.

Note When you try to connect to this computer by using the Remote Desktop connection, you must type the new port. 304304 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304304/ ) How to configure the Remote Desktop client to connect to a specific port when you use Windows XP

Howto enable ICMP ping response in Windows 7

To enable ICMP ping response in Windows 7 you need to add Windows Firewall rule: 

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name="ICMP Allow incoming V4 echo request" protocol=icmpv4 dir=in action=allow

Windows Server

Howto Export and import DHCP reservations from and to Windows DHCP server

Quickly Export and Import DHCP Reservations Windows 2008, Winows 2003 This simple process describes the how to migrate a DHCP reservation list without having to migrate the entire scope.

Export the DHCP reservations, from the Old server which is to be migrated using netsh:

netsh dhcp server [ip address] scope [scope address] dump>c:\temp\reservations.txt
e.g. netsh dhcp server 172.20.2.33 scope 172.16.0.0 dump>c:\temp\reservations.txt

Edit the exported file in notepad 'reservations.txt' , Simply do a Find and Replace for the old DHCP server IP you ran the export on and change to the New DHCP server IP you are importing to and remove out everything else in the text file except for the reservations config section.

On the New DHCP server, make sure you create the new scope first, and ten just simply run the following command: 

netsh exec C:\temp\reservations.txt

Done

Setting up the NTP server on a domain controller

For USA use timservers from NTP pool project: 

   server 0.north-america.pool.ntp.org
   server 1.north-america.pool.ntp.org
   server 2.north-america.pool.ntp.org
   server 3.north-america.pool.ntp.org

per http://www.pool.ntp.org/zone/north-america

From Technet:

Configure External Time service on DC holding PDC emulator role Here we will have to make use of External Time Source ( Internet). To Accomplish this follow below steps.

  1. Open a Command Prompt.
  2. Type the following command to display the time difference between the local computer and a target computer, and then press ENTER:
w32tm /stripchart /computer: target /samples: n /dataonly
  1. Open User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port 123 for outgoing traffic if needed.
  2. Open UDP port 123 (or a different port that you have selected) for incoming NTP traffic.
  3. Type the following command to configure the PDC emulator, and then press ENTER:
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist: peers /syncfromflags:manual /reliable:yes /update
w32tm /config /manualpeerlist:"0.north-america.pool.ntp.org,1.north-america.pool.ntp.org,2.north-america.pool.ntp.org,3.north-america.pool.ntp.org" /reliable:yes /update

Verify the settings in the Windows registry:

Notes: