Windows 8 now introduced taskbar options when using multiple displays! You can set it to show all programs, show only those which are active on the display, or just turn the feature off (but WHY would you do that?).
Month: September 2012
Enabling Write Cache on PERC H200
The Dell PERC H200 is a very basic RAID controller that does not have battery-backed cache, and therefore does not let you enable Write Caching within the OS. Writes using the H200 adapter can be very slow, so much that Windows Updates could take 2 to 3 hours on a RAID1!
To force enable write cache on an H200 adapter (at your own risk), do the following:
Missing CPU Power Management from Win8
Just found out that if you are running Windows 8 with the Hyper-V Platform installed, some important settings in your “Processor Power Management” section under Power Options go missing. This is because Hyper-V decides to keep your CPU clocked at 100%.
This is obviously bad if you’re on a laptop, since your CPU will no longer clock itself down when not in use, and your battery will drain considerably faster.
Unfortunately, the only way to re-enable power management for your CPU is to uninstall the Hyper-V Platform from the OS. More of a reason for me to keep using VMware then…
Setting timezone on Server Core 2008 R2/2012
To set the timezone on a Server Core 2008 R2/2012, or any other version if you fancy CLI, use the following:
TZUTIL /G to list the current timezone
TZUTIL /L to list all available timezone settings
TZUTIL /S “Central Standard Time” to set your timezone to CST as example
Also useful is the w32tm tool to change settings around the Windows Time Service, such as setting up a manual NTP peer or forcing a time resync.
Getting started with Windows Server 2012 Core
If you’re reading this, chances are that you just installed Windows Server 2012 in the recommended instance of Server Core, and upon boot, you get the nice little cmd.exe window but nothing else. Here’s how you get started using PowerShell cmdlets to configure it:
Rename: Rename-Computer computername
Reboot: Restart-Computer
Configure an IP: New-NetIPAddress -IPAddress x.x.x.x -InterfaceAlias “Ethernet” -DefaultGateway x.x.x.x -AddressFamily IPv4 -PrefixLength 24 (or whatever your subnet mask is)
Configure a DNS server: Set-DnsClientServerAddress -InterfaceAlias “Ethernet” -ServerAddresses x.x.x.x
Join a domain: Add-Computer -DomainName domain.com
You can start using Server Manager after that to install roles and features, and configure them. If you can’t use Server Manager remotely, you might want to run Configure-SMRemoting.exe -enable and maybe disable/modify the Windows Firewall rules using MMC from another system