While working here at Microsoft, I have noticed over the years that many administrators have been creating large single volumes for file shares.   This has become more prevalent as storage space has become cheaper.   With SAN attached storage...

Microsoft Learning hosted another new and exclusive Jump Start virtual training event – Microsoft Virtualization for VMware Professionals .  We are thrilled to announce availability of the HD-quality video recordings – FREE – on TechNet Edge and...

I have worked a few customer cases lately that have had the same issue.   Explorer shows that a disk has plenty of disk space available.   When you look at the same disk in Disk Management, you see that it is almost full.   One thing that...

Its Robert Mitchell again and I’m back to talk about my favorite subject, storage.   I’ve had a number of people ask me about how GPT disks are used in conjunction with Windows Failover Cluster.   So I wanted to take a few minutes to clear up...

Today’s blog will discuss support for UEFI with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and other deployment tools.  First we should discuss why this change is occurring.  Today’s BIOS has been around for a long time.  Some of the limitations include...

Cluster Shared Volumes is a new feature of Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering intended to enhance the capabilities of Highly Available Virtual Machines. It is recommended to utilize Cluster Shared Volumes if you intend to use the Live Migration...

We have updated the KB that deals with this error to include a new script to get users out of the 0xc0000034 condition and allows SP1 to install properly. This fix will only work for users who are currently in a 0xc0000034 state after applying Service...

I know that one of the workarounds everyone is using is editing the pending.xml file and rebooting the machine.  This is seemingly working for everyone that the SetupExecute registry value does not.  I wanted to give a brief rundown as to why...

I've seen several reports now of the following error (or something similar): !! 0xc0000034 !! 142/53007 (_0000000000000000.cdf-ms) Note If you restart the computer, you experience the same error message. If you're hitting one of these errors, you have...

Hello, my name is Manoj Sehgal. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover “BitLocker Drive Encryption and Active Directory” BitLocker Recovery Information (msFVE-RecoveryInformation) can be backed up in...

Just one week after Microsoft Management Summit 2011 (MMS), Microsoft Learning will be hosting an exclusive three-day Jump Start class specially tailored for VMware and Microsoft virtualization technology pros.  Registration for “ Microsoft Virtualization...

Hi, My name is Kim and I’m a support engineer in the Core Performance team.  I recently joined this group about six months ago and noticed that there are a variety of ways to gather the same data. I’d thought I share some of the tricks I’ve learned...

With the release of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1(SP1) we have also released a new version of the Windows 7 AIK or WAIK.  The SP1 version is more of a supplement to the current version and not a full replacement of the AIK. ...

Hello everyone. With SP1 almost ready to be available to the general public, I thought I’d send out a quick e-mail with a couple issues we’re seen and their resolutions. Issue: RSAT tools will not install after installing SP1 Remediation: The new version...

Hello, my name is Emmers Presson. I am a Support Escalation Engineer for Microsoft in the Windows Core team. The purpose of this blog is to give you the steps to install a hotfix (or any other “package”) on the currently running operating system using...

Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 SP1 has shipped. Here’s the bottom line: Volume Licensed, MSDN and TechNet subscribers get access February 16 . All customers get access February 22 through Windows Update and direct download The Windows Server team...

Today’s blog will cover KMS volume activation and the KMS count. Many times customers will contact us and report that their KMS count is not as high as they think it should be or it is not increasing. You may also see the following error message when...

Every once in awhile, we reach out to the IT community to get an idea of what kinds of topics you’d like to see in our blog. AskCore covers a lot of stuff (setup, deployment, cluster, bitlocker, activation, Hyper-V, etc.) If there’s any content you think...

  Cluster shared Volumes (CSV) is a new feature implemented in Windows Server 2008 R2 to assist with new scale-up\out scenarios.   CSV provides a scalable fault tolerant solution for clustered applications that require NTFS file system access...

Today’s blog posting is based on documentation written for our activation specialists to answer some of the most common questions for customers that are new to our current activation technologies.   Depending on the size of your organization and...

Today’s blog is going to cover an issue we have seen a couple of times now with customers utilizing Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to Deploy Windows although it can happen with any deployment tool out there. Issue: During deployment of Windows or...

  Hello, my name is Manoj Sehgal. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover “How to use Bitlocker Data Recovery Agent (DRA) to unlock Bitlocker Protected Drives In Windows 7, we have option to unlock...

GUID Partition Table or GPT is a standard that’s been around for a while but is still not completely understood by the masses.  So I wanted to do a quick blog to address some of the common questions we  hear from day to day. Previously in my...

I am sure many of you are aware that Microsoft provides several options for our customers in terms of support services. The Support website provides information about our support offerings. We have Consumer support, Professional support and various levels...

Hello, my name is Scott McArthur. I am a Senior Support Escalation Engineer in the Windows group and today’s blog will cover a common question we get involving product keys. Many times you may have a product key but you need to find out what type of key...