Microsoft Surface Wifi issues

There’s an issue that seems to have been I introduced after the last round of updates, either a driver or firmware update.

Basically what happens is the connection drops into “limited” mode and you lose connectivity. People have reported various methods to reconnect, I find just disconnecting and reconnecting the connection worked fine… for another 20-30 minutes at least.

My access point has 2.4 and 5ghz so I just switch between them when it happens. Still a huge pain though. There are a few registry related hacks that have been suggested, but I’m going to wait and see if an official fix comes soon.

Microsoft Surface RT Tingle sensation

This didn’t really cause me any concern, but I thought it was very odd for a modern computing device to exhibit this. Considering all the shielding and insulation usually required of modern electronics it was rather unexpected.

Something I noticed a long time ago while laying in bed with the electric blanket turned on was that you could feel this small tingle when touching another person. While I haven’t exhaustively researched this phenomena my belief is that the electric blanket is generating a small electromagnetic field which is then inducing a simliar field in a person lying on the blanket. When lightly touching another person (using the back of your fingers is most obvious) you feel a small tingle like an extremely mild electric current. I’ve played with electronics a lot as a kid so I knew it wasn’t a “bad” thing.

I have not felt a simliar thing from a piece of computer equipment though except for when working with computers that had bad power supplies that didn’t have proper grounding.

Win8 HyperV Virtual switch bind failed

Just installed the Hyper-V role on my Win8 machine to do some lab work and I’m getting an error trying to create the virtual switch on my Ethernet Adapter (not wireless)

Error applying Virtual Switch Properties changes

Failed while adding virtual Ethernet switch connections
Ethernet port ‘{GUID}’ bind failed: The data is invalid. (0x8007000D).

HyperV virtual network bind failed

Microsoft Surface RT exchange process and experiences

My daughter dropped her brand new Surface tablet from a height of about 2 feet (from her lap while sitting). Somehow it managed to land in an orientation that wasn’t one of the 72 tested by Microsoft and managed to smash the glass in one corner of the screen. This happened about 3 hours after it was opened on Christmas day and was disappointing for several reasons, one of which was the significant points that had been made about how strong the tablet was supposed to be.

Anyway, long story short, we had several other issues with touch covers splitting and Microsoft agreed to exchange the tablet at no charge. Greatly appreciated.

It still took about 2 weeks to go through the process of organising the exchange. The tablet was still useable, however two weeks means there was now content that needed to be backed up and transferred to the new device. There were three different users profiles and various photos and documents that we wanted to save.

Finding the Opalis database

Picture this scenario:
You’ve just inherited an existing Opalis implementation and the guy that set it up didn’t write any doco (or it’s lost). You want to do something that requires connection to the Opalis database…but you have no idea what server the database is on.

Interestingly enough, while starting my learning of Opalis/Orchestrator I’ve discovered there is no obvious place that you can see what database is being used. I’ve searched the registry, the console, and all the files and the closest is a mention of the SQL server in a log file if an Action server can’t connect.
If you run the Database Configuration tool, you need to enter all details from scratch, it doesn’t tell you the current setting. I would have also thought there would be a setting in the console *somewhere* that would show the server.
So anyway, I’ll see if someone on the MS forums has an answer, and will see if the situation is improved in Orchestrator.

Workgroup computer has “Unidentified Network”

This one has bugged me for a long time. If I have a domain controller (only one DC coz it’s a small network) or a server in a workgroup, that starts up before the DC does then it can’t “detect” what type of network it is attached to. As a result the Windows NLA service defines it as “undefined network” and set the security profile to “Public”. This usually results in a lot of the remote access functions not working because the local firewall blocks them on Public networks.

Once this is set, the way I used to fix it was to go into the computers adapter settings and change the “default gateway” to something random, apply, and then change back to what it should be. This retriggered the Network detection which now finds the other servers that can be used to identify the network as Private. This is a problem though if I am remote and can’t get access to the physical server console (remote stuff is blocked by public!)

Access to drivers on Windows Update was blocked by policy

I’ve noticed these EventID:122 errors appearing on my Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V host. Its running in a workgroup and has registry settings defined to connect to my WSUS server.

Source: DeviceSetupManager

EventID: 122

Message: Access to drivers on Windows Update was blocked by policy

The only reference I can find is from here:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/D/F/ADF1347D-08DC-41A4-9084-623B1194D4B2/device-metadata-package-pipeline.docx

where it says only:

Event ID: 122 Warning: DriverInstallBlockedByWUPolicy.

Driver install failed because of WU opt-in policy. Users or group policy opt-out the WU driver download.

• Message: Access to drivers on Windows Update was blocked by policy

but no other mention of *what* policy that refers to.

New blog

[insert mandatory first, “now what?” blog post]

This will become my journal of interesting issues I come across during my daily dealings with computers. Mostly it will be issues and challenges I have encountered that a google/bing search didn’t help me resolve, and hopefully will be found by someone else also having problem finding the answer.