HowTo: Compare SIDs after Imaging

Have you ever imaged a ton of systems and then wondered, "Did sysprep really work? Or am I going to have goofy SID issues down the road?"

Well, I did that today, so I went looking for a way to tell. Here's what I found. According to Microsoft you can look in the HKLM\Security\SAM\Domains\Account registry key.

This subkey contains two values, F and V. Figure 2 shows a sample Registry editor session that displays these values .The V value is a REG_BINARY value in which the computer SID is embedded (at the end of its data). However, because the data is in binary format, it's difficult to read. For this information to be useful, you also need to now the format of a machine SID in NT 4.0: three 32-bit subauthorities, preceded by three 32-bit authority fields. By comparing the V value on different machines, you can identify whether the machines have duplicate SIDs.

Now you can put your mind at ease that SysPrep or SidGen or whatever else you might be using to ensure the uniqueness of your SIDs is actually doing its job.

.Net Framework Unattended Install

Automation for Citrix deployments is pretty much old hat at this point, but the 64-bit version is another story. One of the annoying things is that Citrix still uses the 32-bit version of .Net Framework which, of course, is not installed with Windows Server 2003, 64-bit edition.

Why would anyone need .Net 1.1 when 2.0 and 3.0 are available, right? Right.

What's an enterprising administrator to do?

dotnetfx.exe /q:a /c:"install.exe /l /q"

Hat tip to Aaron Stebner.

HowTo: Remove Hidden Devices in Windows 2003

Devices that were in a system but now are gone, such as NICs, still linger and even get in the way of healthy operation. To get rid of them, follow these easy steps.

1. Open a command prompt.
2. At the prompt, type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 to set the Device Manager Console MMC to show the hidden devices, then press Enter.
3. Next, launch the Device Manager Console MMC by typing devmgmt.msc at the prompt.
4. Now, in the Device Manager Console MMC, click ViewShow Hidden Devices.

Now you can browse the device tree and find the pesky device that has outstayed its welcome.

Devices that are not loaded will be greyed out, but don't go crazy here. Just whack the devices you know you don't need; being overly zealous here could get you into VERY deep trouble.