So this had me cursing for quite a while. Case was a VMware virtualised 2003 R2 32-bit server, running IIS (customers intranet) which was pretty essential for the customer. At an increasing frequency, these two error messsages were pounding the log: Event ID 11 The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0. Event ID 15 The device, \Device\Scsi\symmpi1, is not ready for access yet. In effect the server was useless at times, completely unresponsive, and [...]

If you’re using MDT to deploy images, and the deployment crashes or you for some reason abort the installation in the middle of the installation; you might get a lingering installation. So when you retry, you get the “LiteTouch has encountered and Environment Error (Boot into WinPE!)” error message. This is because setup detects that there is an installation in progress, and decided to about (specifically, it reads the c:\minint folder). If this is a [...]

By default, XenDesktop users with Citrix Receiver 3.x can choose window size as they please. I recently had a customer who required (through use of thinclients with write-filter) that the desktop always launched in fullscreen. Citrix have never been particularly good with documentation; so it’s no surprise that this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Citrix\XenDesktop\DesktopViewer Dword:ForceFullscreen = 00000001 …is undocumented. But it works! Problem solved, and one less headache. Thanks to Andrew Morgan at the Citrix forums.

After plowing the web for quite some time looking for a guide on how to set up certificates on a RDS-farm using an internal CA; I figured out a couple of things: 1) It’s actually pretty easy; but a bit tedious. 2) Apparently noone bothers making guides for easy things; and after writing this guide, I fully understand that.   Don’t be intimidated by the length of all of this, you only have to do [...]

This is actually a problem I had at home. My Cisco Linksys E3000 wireless router had performed exemplary until about a month ago. Though I hadn’t touched it, it started giving me ~500-1000ms latency and dropping packets; even when I was standing right beside it. The solution was something I know I did with my old d-link routers aswell: setting fixed Channel Width for both the 2.4gHz and the 5gHz band. It defaults to Auto, [...]

Hi, Just a quick post to let everyone know how to get rid of the annoying problem with Internet Explorer 9 not launching .ica files properly. Because the regular citrix clients on Citrix.com is not marked as NOT compatible with IE9, some digging was required. – Uninstall any former Citrix plugins. – Download new plugin here: https://www.citrix.com/English/ss/downloads/details.asp?downloadId=2313030&productId=186#top – Install new client and restart browser window. There you go, user! All better now!

Last week I had a customer who started having problems sending emails to one particular recipient. The user was getting bounce mails with the error > #550 4.4.7 QUEUE.Expired; message expired ## Which typically would mean that the sending server has given up. Protocol-logs show that the server initiates a connection, but that’s it, no further logging. It never gets as far as trying to send an email. The queue says the error message is Helo [...]

New blog is set up! Running wordpress CMS on a hosted server. This site will be home to tips & tricks of the trade, with posters Olti, Kristoffer and Terje, A.K.A. The 3 Techies!