They want to take my Internet Keyword

On occasion when bored, I will decide to get involved with various scam emails or “support centre” calls for a bit of fun. More often than not, it’s not nearly as amusing as I’d hoped because the people on the other end really have no idea about anything, and don’t deviate much from the script they have been given.

This time it was an email from a Chinese domain registrar kindly informing me that another company wanted to register several domains and the “internet keyword” of my company.

Note: Thank you to all the people who have responded to this post and shared the emails they have received. I’m happy to discuss anything if anyone has any questions, but to reduce the size of the comments section I’ll just approve emails if they are significantly different to the ones we already know about. Thanks.

Creating a Windows RT Recovery USB Key

PLEASE NOTE: Now that Microsoft has released their officially supported fix I am no longer providing the download for the recovery drive. If you wish to keep a small recovery drive then repair your system using the instructions from Microsoft, then follow “Option 1” to create a new small boot drive.

Microsoft have now released the Full Recovery Image for WinRT (3.7GB download). You can get it here http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/surface-rt-startup-error-0xc000000d?lc=1033 

It uses the same steps to complete the upgrade with the last part being to recreate the full recovery volume. Some news sites are saying the MS image will revert you to 8.0, it does not. It will complete the 8.1 upgrade and then the extra steps are to recreate the on-device recovery volume with the 8.0 image which only applies if you rollback sometime in the future.

COMMENT: I’ve also received confirmation that my approach works on a Japanese and other non-English language WindowsRT devices, which is good news as that’s not a test I could have done, and hadn’t even considered tbh. Also, While I refer to “Surface” because that’s what I have. these steps will also apply to any WindowsRT tablet device.

So something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. You do of course have the USB key you created shortly after setting up your Surface, don’t you?

Don’t worry, even though I do this sort of thing for a living, even I hadn’t created a recovery USB Key. Luckily for me though (or unlucky depending on how you look at these things), I have two Surface tablets. After the Win8.1 upgrade, one worked fine, the other suffered the Boot Configuration failure – https://kickthatcomputer.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/windows-rt-8-1-upgrade-fails-with-boot-configuration-error/

So here I’m going to describe the ways I’ve found to create your recovery USB key. Make sure to read to the end because you will most likely also need to recover your BitLocker encryption key as well (it’s like the complications never end!)

Windows RT 8.1 upgrade fails with Boot Configuration error

UPDATE 19 August 2014 regarding KB14-045 bluescreens:

Although I don’t have a fix, there seems to be a lot of people finding this post while searching about the recent bluescreen issue caused by Microsoft Updates KB14-045. I have started a new post about this issue here:

https://kickthatcomputer.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/windows-update-kb2982791-ms14-045-causing-bluescreen/

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Microsoft have now released the Full Recovery Image for WinRT (3.7GB download). You can get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/warranty-service-and-recovery/surface-rt-startup-error-0xc000000d?lc=1033

It uses the same steps to complete the upgrade with the last part being to recreate the full recovery volume. Some news sites are saying the MS image will revert you to 8.0, it does not. It will complete the 8.1 upgrade and then the extra steps are to recreate the on-device recovery volume with the 8.0 image which only applies if you rollback sometime in the future.

First point – How annoying is it that you can only update Windows RT from the App Store, although probably not a drama if you only have one tablet. Slightly annoying if you have two. Both need to download the update, so that’s 2x the several GB needed. If you happen to be an enterprise/business that decided to buy several of them (does such a entity exist?) then it would appear you are about to have a ton of downloads happening unless you boost your proxy cache size.

And now for todays story. I updated one Surface RT with no drama. It took a long time but I just let it run overnight and it was all good the next morning. The other tablet, not so good.

Recovery
Your PC needs to be repaired
The Boot Configuration Data file is missing some required information
File: \BCD
Error code: 0xc000000d

Yay.

Although it takes a while, and might be a bit tricky, it does seem to be fairly easy to recover from. (UPDATE: I have now received multiple confirmations that this works, and no data is lost!)

“Required” Automatic Deployment Rules

The Automatic Deployment Rule (ADR) feature in ConfigMgr2012 is quite handy, especially for people moving from WSUS that aren’t too worried about updates being automatically deployed.

Many larger organisations however tend to have a more controlling approach to which updates are approved for deployment and will approve/decline each update as required.

One thing I liked in WSUS was the ability to have updates automatically approved, but being able to set the client policy to say “Notify Only”. On my servers I could have them scan and determine applicable updates, but then I would manually approve them and reboot as required, or I could exclude some updates if they were causing problems on a per-server basis (e.g. .NET). Sure you could do all that through WSUS itself if you wanted to setup lots of different computer groups, but for small environments with half a dozen servers it’s easier this way.

In ConfigMgr2012, there is no way to “auto create” and update group unless you use an ADR. However the ADR configuration makes all deployments Mandatory with a deadline and does not give a “Required” notify only type option.