Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Installing additional drivers at setup via USB floppy

Installing Windows Server 2003 can fail if the disk controller hardware is relatively new and the drivers are not contained within the Windows Server standrad driver set. (i.e. SATA)

You will need to download the driver from the manufactures website and then copy the matching .sys, .cat, .oem and .inf drivers to a floppy disk.

If you are installing to a machine with out a floppy disk driver you will need to use an external USB floppy disk drive.

During the installation after you have configured the partitions, the installation will request the driver files again if the driver fails to load it may be that the driver .OEM is not optimised to look for the USB floppy drive.

You will need to edit the TXTSETUP.OEM file adding the following information:

[HardwareIds.scsi.MSAS2K3]
...
...
id = "USB\VID_03F0&PID_2001", "usbstor" #--HP
id = "USB\VID_054C&PID_002C", "usbstor" #--Sony
id = "USB\VID_057B&PID_0001", "usbstor" #--Y-E Data
id = "USB\VID_0409&PID_0040", "usbstor" #--NEC
id = "USB\VID_0424&PID_0FDC", "usbstor" #--SMSC
id = "USB\VID_08BD&PID_1100", "usbstor" #--Iomega
id = "USB\VID_055D&PID_2020", "usbstor" #--Samsung
id = "USB\Vid_0930&PID_6540", "usbstor" #--MY USB KEY

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Internet Explorer 7 open multiple tabs

Internet Explorer 7 does not support a built-in command to open multiple tabs at startup, and Group Policy only allows you to configure one home page.
Although you can specify multiple URL’s as default homepages, this might not be what you want.A solution to open several tabs at once for only one time, can be made with Windows Scripting Host, or wscript.

First, create a new text document with Notepad or some other text editor and add the following content:

var navOpenInBackgroundTab = 0x1000;
var oIE = new ActiveXObject("InternetExplorer.Application");
oIE.Navigate2("http://www.itexperience.net");
oIE.Navigate2("http://www.google.com", navOpenInBackgroundTab);
oIE.Navigate2("http://www.whatismyip.org", navOpenInBackgroundTab);
oIE.Visible = true;

Save the file as launchie7.js (so change the extension from *.txt to *.js) to your C:\ drive

To launch Internet Explorer with multiple tabs, run the following command from Start - Run:
wscript.exe C:\launchie7.js


Taken from http://www.itexperience.net/2008/09/30/open-multiple-tabs-in-internet-explorer-7/