LarMiB

Windows 2003

So I don’t normally have problems with Activation of Windows because normally my servers have access to the Internet. This was however a Hyper-V Virtual I was having a problem with. I made an image a few months ago, and brought it back up. Went to login and was “forced” to activate the Virtual. That’s a little hard since it doesn’t have an IP Address assigned to it’s NIC. Let alone the fact I don’t want to call Microsoft’s Telephone number. Here’s what I did to gain access to my Virtual, so I can add the proper IP Address, and legally register my Virtual.

1. When you get the Activation screen press Windows Key and U. Click on the “Microsoft Website” link.
2. When Internet Explorer pops up in the Address bar type c:\windows\explorer.exe and click GO, or push enter. If prompted to run explorer.exe simply click Run.
3. You now have access to your computer.

Windows 2008

Yes, I had a similar issue with Windows 2008 not wanting to let me in due to activation problems. Here’s what I did to gain access to my server. Again, I do this to gain access to our servers to make them legal when they don’t have internet access.

1. Click on the link to get help.
2. Click on the Options menu, and choose print.
3. Choose Add Printer, and find explorer.exe, right click and choose “open”.
4. An Alternate is to use the “Ask” option and click on one of the links, then open explorer the same way you would for the 2003 options by typing c:\windows\explorer.exe.

I decided to look into impersonation a bit more and how I could force our Windows Platform to impersonate, without letting our users change it back in their web.config file. I found a good number of google searches, but nothing really stuck until I realized I could simply add in the web.config of the machine a location, set allowOverride to “false” then tell it what to do, without users being able to modify it!

Here’s the line I added at the top of the web.config located at c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG.

 <location allowOverride="false">
 <system.web>
 <identity impersonate="true"/>
 </system.web>
 </location>
 <location allowOverride="true">
  <system.web>
   <securityPolicy>
    <trustLevel name="Full" policyFile="internal"/>
    <trustLevel name="High" policyFile="web_hightrust.config"/>
    <trustLevel name="Medium" policyFile="web_mediumtrust.config"/>
    <trustLevel name="Low" policyFile="web_lowtrust.config"/>
    <trustLevel name="Minimal" policyFile="web_minimaltrust.config"/>
   </securityPolicy>
   <trust level="Full" originUrl=""/>
  </system.web>
 </location>

I had a need to make a Windows Service, but I was using Visual Studio 2010 Express. You may notice does not come with a Windows Service template. I’m not sure why they decided not to include this template, other than they want to force people to purchase their product to get basic functionality. Little do they know savvy people like you and I do google searches and figure out what we want anyway.

I create this template for Visual Studio 2010 Express: Windows Service with a System.Timer

I created my template by using an existing Visual Studio 2008 (non-express) Windows Service project. I took the service, cleared out the stuff I added, then exported it.

To make it a template simply copy the zip file under %userprofile%\My Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Templates\ProjectTemplates\

If it helps let me know!