Windows XP / Server 2003 Installer cannot found any SATA hard drive

Newer motherboards with Intel and AMD-ATI chipset might have a default SATA mode called AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface.)

If you can’t seem to install Windows XP or 2003, with the error cannot found any hard drive, the easiest way is to disable the AHCI mode or switch to IDE SATA mode from the BIOS. However, if you insist to use the advance features of AHCI , then you need to load first the SATA controller driver when Windows installer prompts you.

For further info regarding AHCI Mode, here’s a quick info i’ve taken from this site => http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bogno=316

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AHCI is the acronym for the Advanced Host Controller Interface. It is a new interface specification that allows the SATA controller driver to support advanced features like Native Command Queuing and Hot Plug. This BIOS feature controls the AHCI function of the SATA controller.

When enabled, the SATA controller enables its AHCI features when the computer boots up.

When disabled, the SATA controller disables its AHCI functions when the computer boots up.

If you would like to make use of the SATA controller’s AHCI features, you should enable this BIOS feature. But please note that enabling this feature requires you to load the SATA controller driver during the Windows XP installation routine.

If you do not intend to use the AHCI features, it’s recommended that you disable this BIOS feature. This allows you to use the native Windows XP driver. You won’t need to load the SATA controller driver during the Windows XP installation routine.

Please note that changing this BIOS feature after installing the operating system may cause a boot failure. You may be required to reinstall the operating system.

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Repair Volume Shadow Copy Service error in Windows

With the availability of virtual machines from VMWare, i finally found a tool to replicate the Volume Shadow Copy Service error problem that seem to haunt WIndows 2003 Servers and fix it. To all fellow admin with this problem and still doesn’t want to format their Windows Server, this is for you guys:

First, my advice is to try ALL you can find solution from MS website. You can do this by searching goggle with the site:microsoft.com keyword (e.g. search vss repair fix site:microsoft.com)

The VSS Problem cripples your NTBackup and Disk Management MMC, and other backup programs that rely on vss (like symantec veritas backup exec). To be sure this fix is applicable to you, kindly check your Disk Management by Right clicking on My Computer > click Manage > then go to Disk Management. An “unexpected error” popup will appear.

1. First you need a secondary domain controller. If you don’t have one yet, create one Windows Server 2003 virtual machine and promote it as domain controller.
2. If you already have one, transfer the Operation Master Role to the other domain controller (or the virtual machine you created after you dcpromo it as domain controller)
3. Now try to run ntbackup or start > run > cmd and execute from the console “vssadmin list writers” and it will now return proper list of writers unlike before which doesn’t

Based on my 1 month testing, the VSS errors are somehow connected to the trust of other domain controllers on your network. On my situation, I have a Linux Samba implementation that runs as domain master within the same network.

With this new analysis, i can somehow recommend to Windows Administrators to have one windows server virtual machine acting as writable domain controller within each domain you host in your network.  This will give you a safe option fixing creep-tic Active Directory and Windows domain problems that MS seems couldn’t properly fix.

Hope this helps.

Timestamp on Windows world

A colleague of mine asked me how to make a batch file script that will put time stamp on his file/s on a Windows environment. Given that this is easy in Linux systems, I was quite amused in doing it on a Windows system. Flashback of old school scripting in DOS era came as I try to recall the batch file commands and environment restrictions in Windows.

Finally, after about half an hour, I came up with a batch file script that will put date and time stamp to a file. Here’s the short batch file for it…. (copy-paste it on a text editor and save the file with .bat or .cmd extension)

@echo off
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=:." %%a in ("%time%") do set timestamp=%%a%%b%%c
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=/." %%a in ("%date%") do set datestamp=%%a%%b%%c
echo >"testfile-%datestamp%-%timestamp%".txt

This code can be integrated on other batch files to stamp log files or rename files with timestamp or datestamp information.

A Windows Admin nightmare

The past weekend is one of the most tiring i had for years. Staying late here in the office to fix what I think, one of the worst problem in Windows 2003. It’s none other than volume shadow copy services (vss) that’s been hunting Microsoft and the NT systems administrators for several years now. The vss error below makes your NTbackup program crippled (as well as other 3rd party backup program that relies on shadow copies to backup open files).

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 Event ID: 8194
 Description:
 Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error querying for the IVssWriterCallback interface.  hr = 0x8007000e.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
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 Event ID: 12302
 Description:
 Volume Shadow Copy Service error: An internal inconsistency was detected in trying to contact shadow copy service writers.  Please check to see that the Event Service and Volume Shadow Copy Service are operating properly.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
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This is the first time I exhausted the power of google trying to find a working solution. There were a lot of unresolved posts about the same problem; One of the concern is that this started form Windows 2003 but even the latest Vista suffers from the same problem.

I’ve tried most of the like-able solutions suggested by Microsoft Engineers and other professionals but those fixes were unable to repair the problem. The only solution that came to me as i have no other options anymore, was to do a repair-installation (not clean installation) on my Windows 2003 PDC. But that damn idea came up after 3 tiring nights of trying to solve the problem.

Well, hopefully, by tomorrow, the helpdesk team will no longer report another backup failure.