Category Archives: Microsoft

Windows fails to see Autounattend.xml from ISO

I’m working on setting up a bunch of servers, so I used the Windows System Image Manager to create an image with answers to all the questions of a basic install.

I used VMWare to boot the ISO image I was creating to test.

Placing the autounattended.xml on the root of the DVD ISO gets the image in VMWare fully setup.

Try it out on the actual server and nothing works. I am prompted just like a normal install. It is not reading the autounattended.xml file at all.

Turns out the autounattended.xml file will only work if the BIOS considers the device removable, like a USB thumb drive or something. The BIOS I am using is mounting the ISO as a fixed disk so the Windows installer will not use the autounatteended.xml that lives in the root of the ISO.

Good news, there is a solution to this problem of the Autounattended.xml not being picked up by the installer. The process inegrates the Autounattended.xml into the boot.wim file so it is always picked up.

You need the following items beforehand:

  • WAIK
  • The USB or ISO disk you plan to make your install disk

Then do these steps:

Mount the boot.wim image located on your USB HDD disk (in this example H: is the USB disk) using ImageX from WAIK

imagex /mountrw H:\Sources\boot.wim 2 C:\temp

(assumes you have a folder “C:\Temp”)

(the number 2 stands for Index 2 within the boot.wim image)

Fire up your Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Temp. You will see your boot.wim image mounted and all. Drop your “autounattend.xml” file you created directly into this folder (right next the the Setup.exe file)

Close Windows Explorer and unmount the image:

imagex /unmount /commit c:\temp

Is Windows Slowing Down Your Internet?

This post does not apply to most people, but if you have high speed Internet – it might. My daily driver is a 300 Mbps fiber line. It is fast and I can saturate the link but it takes multiple connections to do it (quite a few connections actually).

If I download a file single file via the web or FTP I might get 30 Mbps per second. That is fairly quick but it is a lot less than 300.

If I download two files at once, from the same remote server both files will come down at 30 Mbps for a combined speed of 60 Mbps.

If you are in the same situation, the problem is probably related to your TCP receive window. The TCP window combined with the distance in MS you are away from the source server determines your maximum download speed.

I found a great article that someone wrote that explains both the calculations of your maximum download speed potential – AND how Windows may actually be limiting your download speed. Yes, it is true!

After reading the article, titled How Windows is Killing Internet Download Speeds I learned that indeed Windows was limiting my connection speed.

I saw major speed increases when downloading from a server that was far away from me. Why Windows limits your connection speed is unknown to me, but simply by executing this:

netsh interface tcp set heuristics disabled

I was able to remove the limit and now download at full speeds.

Windows Display Scaling

I needed a new laptop (have not had one for years) and a nice Dell was just announced at CES 2015 – the XPS 13 2015 model.

Dell XPS 13It has a super thin design, three processors to choose from and a super high resolution display option with a maximum resolution of 3200 x 1800. Their base model has a resolution of 1920 x 1080.

Got the new laptop a couple days ago, it defaults to a resolution of 3200 x 1800, it needs to use Windows desktop display scaling at 200% or everything on the screen is so small you can’t read anything unless you are superman.

At this point I don’t see the advantage of a high resolution display and then having to boost everything up by 200%. Essentially you are reducing your screen resolution though the enlargement process. What happens if you try and enlarge a photo, have you ever tried it? You loose resolution of the photo, you can’t create something out of nothing.

When an application does not specifically support display scaling the application ends up looking very blurry. My main text editor for development is Suplime Text, the latest non beta is version 2… it does not support display scaling so the text is blurry and impossible to work with (it is supported in the newer beta builds).

I tried explaining this to a friend but he did not get the point, suggested I may need glasses. So here are a couple screen shots to demonstrate the problem, without using display scaling. A firefox browser is on the screen, sized to 1024×768 on both screen shots so you have a point of reference on both images.

1920 x 1080 No Display Scale

1920 x 1080 No Display Scale

This resolution may actually be a little small on a 13 inch screen for some. I still have 20/20 vision despite my age and decades of 8+ hours of computer usage every day so the resolution seems about right for me.

3200 x 1800 No Display Scale

Notice how much smaller the firefox window is in the second screen shot – and look at the desktop icons and the icons in the toolbar on the bottom. On a small 13 inch screen they are impossible to see, even with 20/20 vision.

There is nothing wrong with the product itself, the issue is putting a high resolution display in such a small screen. If you take a high resolution display and need to zoom everything up 200% so you can see it, why bother with the high resolution display?

I paid a premium to get this model laptop, but in the end it is not worth it. A native screen resolution of anything higher than 1920 x 1080 in a 13 in inch display just seems wasted.

Oh no, Microsoft says Windows 2003 is dead!

windows-server-2003Microsoft has announced July 14, 2015 as the end of support for Windows Server 2003. Since there will be no support, patches, or security updates for your servers running Windows Server 2003 you might find yourself between a rock and a hard place.

I for one still have production servers that are running Server 2003, it has proven to be a very stable operating system for some systems.

If you still have systems running 2003, you might want to start planning your upgrade path. Leaving 2003 systems in production past the end of support could leave you with your pants down.