Unable to install Symantec 12.1.4xxx on Windows 8.1 VM

I had a bit of trouble today trying to install Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.4xxx on a Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit virtual machine. The installer would fail and give cryptic advice through the windows event viewer console which was almost worthless. I followed the random number given to me (1603) to a few articles on Symantec's website but all referenced an issue that was supposed to have been fixed in 12.1.3xxx.

Sad to say I must have found a loophole.

I did check into a few things but was not able to find a work around. (Disabled Windows Defender, looked for a bad KB update)

I opened a case with Symantec and will report back my findings.

EDIT 2/4/14:

We were able to resolve this after running the clean wipe utility from Symantec. After that the installation completed successfully!

New Bumper Sticker Idea

While laying in bed reading the doom and gloom of April's XP-mageddom I wanted to type out a warning to friends and family about running the ancient OS.

I came up with a saying that even impressed me after saying it

"For the love of IT, dump XP"

Didn't even realize is kinda rhymes. Now to just find some place to make the bumper sticker I'll never use.  I've got a dislike of those things unless they are in your cubicle somewhere.

Monoprice Cables and Dell Switches - A Strange Affair

I spent most of my day today trying to replace cabling in our closet to tidy up the place. After purchasing 2 pass through patch panels to route cables from the back of the rack to the front in a neat manner I came across issues with some ports not working and coming online with my Dell switches.

All ports in the pass through jacks tested fine, cables tested fine and the switches worked after testing as well.

After 2 hours of fooling around and trying this and that I found my culprit.

The cables I ordered from Monoprice (in this case 3ft and 1ft yellow Cat6 cables) seem to have their pins clamped a bit higher than other cables I have ordered (especially in this case since I ordered blue 3ft cables in the same order and their pins are placed lower in the RJ-45 ends) and cause a loss of connectivity with my Dell switches.

I am assuming at this point that Dell switches have their "spring" pins set just a tad bit lower than normal as my Fluke tester worked just fine with said yellow cables. Looking under a microscope to compare the blue 3ft to yellow 3ft and 1ft cables I was able to confirm that in fact the pins were in fact higher on them.

What a mess, I will have to return the whole order and reorder new ones (and this time maybe from Cables 2 Go). Be on the lookout for the strangest issues, they can creep up anywhere.

Installing .NET Framework 3.5 (3.0, 2.0) on Windows Server 2012 R2

.NET 3.5 and previous verions do not come standard on Windows Server 2012 R2 and tripped me up the first time I needed to install it for a software installation. Its easy enough to get through but I thought this would be a great quick write up in case anyone ran into issues or were curious of the process. You will need your 2012 R2 installation disk for this process.

Step one is opening the server manager

Next click on Add roles and features

Click Next

Make sure Role Based or Feature Based installation is selected and click Next

Make sure Select a server from the server pool is checked and your server is highlighted and click next (may be different for more complex installations)

Click Next

Select .Net Framework 3.5 Features and click Next

On the Confirmation page select Specify an alternate source path

On the Source Path window that pops up note the part that talks about where these source files would be found. We will need to pull them from the 2012 R2 installation media. Place it into your computer (or mount it to the server if in a virtual environment). We will go to the noted path and copy the address into the field next to the word Path:.

Open Windows Explorer and navigate to "This PC", right click on the media drive and select Open

Open the Sources folder

Open the "sxs" folder

Move your cursor to the address bar and highlight the entire path, for me it is D:\sources\sxs

Copy this to your clipboard

Paste the path into the Path: box in the Source Path window and click OK

Click Install and you are finished! If you have any issues just post up and I will try to help.

AutoCAD 2014 / 2013 / 2012 / 2011 Setting Default Save Format By Registry

We have come into an issue recently that new deployments of AutoCAD LT needed to be set to save as the 2007 format by default.

Unfortunately I was unable to find much information pertaining to ACAD LT for this issue, but was able to use a blog post on changing the old AutoCAD settings and used that as a spring board for solving my issue.

AutoCAD Post can be found HERE

Our versions of LT range from 2010 to 2014 and so far I have only nailed down the 2014 LT path, but will work on the others and post them as well.

I focused on mapping the following formats and their respective  hexadecimal codes in the registry:

2013 DWG = 0000003c
2010 DWG = 00000030
2007 DWG = 00000024
2004 DWG = 00000018
2000 DWG = 0000000c

For ACAD LT 2014 the path is located here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT\R20\ACADLT-D001:409\Profiles\<<Unnamed Profile>>\General

If importing into the registry here is the line for the save attribute

"DefaultFormatForSave"=dword:00000024

This one is set for 2007.

Let me know if you have any questions and ill try to help out.


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EDIT : Adding ACAD LT 2013 Path

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT\R18\ACADLT-B001:409\Profiles\<<Unnamed Profile>>\General

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EDIT : Adding ACAD LT 2012 Path

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT\R17\ACADLT-A001:409\Profiles\<<Unnamed Profile>>\General

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EDIT : Adding ACAD LT 2011 Path

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Autodesk\AutoCAD LT\R16\ACADLT-9001:409\Profiles\<<Unnamed Profile>>\General