NewSID v4.10

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As Mark Russinovich decided to retire this. Here it still is. I don’t totally agree with the retirement. We, even after using MDT for deployment, would still, rarely run into some weird network issues with a machine. Putting it down to possible SID issues, running NewSID would fix it.

NewSID v4.10

HASH starting with 07FA is for the zip file
MD5 Hash 07FA425D722FD5E63BFE6B1BAC26EC5B

HASH starting with 73E7 is for the newsid.exe file
MD5 Hash 73E708D1126E7AF86A4EF820C24D80E4

 

MD5 Hash created with Chaos MD5

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897418.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/11/03/3291024.aspx

UPDATE: Should point out I’ve never used MD5 HASHes before so prob cocked that up, not sure. But file is clean, do a scan to check.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Joe for pointing out the HASH above was off.  But I realise now the HASH I originally stated (which will state in the comment) is for the zip file.  To show it hadn’t been tampered with since downloading it ages ago from Microsoft when it was still available.  I’m going to add a HASH for the .exe as well.

wsus installs failing-Relating to XP

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Can be caused by WSUS not downloading the updates properly and sending you the failed downloads. You may have to uninstall those updates.

Go to services and stop the Automatic Updates service

Go to the C:\WINDOWS\ and delete the SoftwareDistribution folder.

Restart the automatic updates service.

Then in the Run box type

wuauclt.exe /detectnow

To force a check with WSUS.

Shrink a VMware .VMDK virtual disk

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Ran into an issue recently with one of my VMs. Wanted to back it up but was 200GB. I knew there wasn’t that much data on it anymore, it had just grown to that. But in Windows when you delete a file you don’t delete it really, Windows just flags it to be overwritten.

You can use this tool first but don’t think it’s needed. CCleaner and Fileshredder can do the same. That is, wipe the free space while in Windows.

SDelete Sysinternals as MS

In Windows go to a CMD and to the location of sdelete and type

sdelete -c

That cleans the free space. Then shut down the VM.

Once shut down go to a CMD and go to where VMWARE is installed. Mine is

D:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation

Then run vmware-vdiskmanager.exe to shrink the VM. This is done with the -k switch.

My VM was in a different location to the diskmanager tool so ended up like this

vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -k “f:\vm\test lab\xp.vmdk”

Once you hit enter you should see a Shrink: 0% meaning it’s started. Could take a while. I just left mine running while at work so don’t know how long it took.

The ” are needed it appears.

It works great. Mine went from 200GB to 26GB.

This site helped with this discovery.

http://www.itstuff.ca/2009/06/how-to-shrink-vmware-virtual-disk-files.html