Turn Windows 2008 Server into a Workstation

Lots of posts today…

Here is a great walkthrough to turn 2008 Sever into a usable workstation.

2008 Server R2 – WTF? Where’s my WI-FI?

So configuring 2008 Server R2 on my laptop and would like to connect to a WLAN.  After verifying that the driver was functional, there was no way to connect to a network, WTF?

So it looks like you need to install the Wireless LAN Service to work.  Seriously?

Open Server Manager > Click on Features > Add a Feature > Locate Wireless LAN Service and install.

No reboot required, now your WNIC is able to connect to a WLAN.

That took way too long to figure out…

Expand virtual hard disk size with Hyper-V

It is easy to re-size a VHD with Hyper-V:

• First, make sure you have the VM powered off and you do not have any snapshots associated with the machine.  Changing the VHD size will invalidate any snapshots.
• Open the Hyper-V Manager, on the left pane, click on Edit Disk…
• Click Next to continue pas the Before You Begin page
• Browse to the VHD you would like to expand
• Choose what you would like to do the VHD:
  • Compact – Shrink the VHD by removing blank space
  • Convert – Convert a dynamic VHD to a fixed VHD
  • Expand – Adds capacity to the virtual disk (what we are doing here)
• Type in your desired size and click Next
• Click Finish to apply your changes
• Now power on your virtual machine
• You can verify that the space has been added to your disk by checking Disk Management.  You should see unallocated space at the end of your disk
• You can now extend the drive using your favorite method (2003 – diskpart, 2008 – disk management)

Make sure you change the root password on your Jailbroken iPhone

There are a few reports of Trojans exploiting Jailbroken iPhones that have not changed their default root password.  Be sure to avoid this by changing your password today!  It took me 5 minutes.

Best instructions come from Just Another iPhone Blog via Lifehacker:

The app to use on the iPhone is called MobileTerminal and it’s available for free in the Cydia store.

Once you have MobileTerminal installed, launch it and you should see a prompt saying this or similar:

iPhoneName: ~ Mobile$

• At that prompt, type: passwd
• You’ll be prompted for the ‘old’ (current) password for the mobile user.  Enter this as the old password: alpine
• You’ll then be prompted to enter the new password – so just type in your desired new password.  Use good password principles if possible (long and stong).  You will not see characters appearing on the screen as you type – that’s normal, not a concern.
• You’ll then be prompted to re-enter the new password.  Do that.
• You should then be returned to the Mobile$ prompt that you started on when opening the MobileTerminal app.  There’s no success message to say the password was changed – but if you’re returned to the prompt and do not get an error, the change was successful.  And you’re done with change for the mobile account.
• The second primary admin account for the iPhone is called root – so now you need to change that as well.
• Type this to switch to the root user: login root
• You’ll be prompted for the root user’s current password.  Enter this: alpine
• Type this to start the password change routine again: passwd
• Enter the old password for root (it is ‘alpine’, same as for the mobile user) and enter your desired new password twice, just as you did for the mobile account

Done.