Posts tagged Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003: taskmgr giving “Logon failure”

Feb 25th

Posted by Christian in Life

I had myself a lot of fun today. I ended up patching a Windows Server 2003 x64 SP1, where the Task Manager wouldn’t start anymore. It simply failed (or in case of right clicking on the task bar wouldn’t even appear), so I went downstairs and pulled a hard disk out of the RAID1 array, just to be sure.

Really weird Windows errorI went ahead, installed SP2 (as you can see on the above picture) while having the jitters. Also installed the VirusScan I was scheduled to install, and the system came back online. Phewww.

After my maintainance window was over, I looked into this issue a bit deeper. First tried copying over a taskmgr.exe (both 32bit and 64bit) from another Windows Server 2003 x64 SP2 system with no luck. The next step, was looking at PATH. As it turns out it has something to do with that ….

C:\>echo %PATH%
C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem
C:\>taskmgr
The system cannot execute the specified program.
C:\>set PATH=C:\WINDOWS\SysWOW64;C:\WINDOWS\system32;C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem
C:\>taskmgr
C:\>

As you can see, after fixing up the PATH environment variable, it works apparently .. Weirdly though, this issue doesn’t come up on another (identical) system, same PATH modifications, main difference: calling taskmgr.exe from the Run dialog works .. while it doesn’t on this particular system.

*Shrug* Gonna have to talk to my SAP guys tommorrow … :-)

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VBscript: Query remote OS and SP info (continued)

Feb 15th

Posted by Christian in Life

After some more crunching on my VBscript, I think I finally have a working script that runs through a csv-list I point it to and walk onto each system (by ip-address only sadly) and query the os and the Service Pack that is installed. The CSV may look like this:

Hostname;IP;Model;Description;OS;Service-Pack;BL;Priority
epimetheus;10.0.0.2;VMware guest;File-Server
hades;10.0.0.1;VMware guest;Core-Router

After saving that one, and running a cscript //NoLogo win_sp_level.vbs you should find a completed list like this:

Hostname;IP;Model;Description;OS;Service-Pack;BL;Priority
epimetheus;10.0.0.2;VMware guest;File-Server;Windows Server 2003 Standard x64 Edition; SP1;;
hades;10.0.0.1;VMware guest;Core-Router;Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition; SP0;;

The final script looks like this:

On Error Resume Next
 
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemOBject")
 
If objFSO.FileExists("Rollout_SP2.csv") = 0 Then
  CleanUp()
  Wscript.Quit
End If
 
Set CSVin = objFSO.OpenTextFile("Rollout_SP2.csv", 1)
CSVin_read = CSVin.ReadLine
 
Set objFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile("Rollout_SP2_result.csv")
Set objFile = nothing
Set CSVout = objFSO.OpenTextFile("Rollout_SP2_result.csv", 8)
CSVout.WriteLine("Hostname;IP;Model;Description;OS;Service-Pack;BL;Priority")
 
Do While CSVin.AtEndofStream <> True
 
  Dim os, servicepack
  Dim user, password
 
  os = nothing
  servicepack = nothing
  user = vars(1) & "\chrischie"
  password = "hah-this-password-is-easy"
 
  current_line = CSVin.ReadLine
  vars = Split(current_line, ";")
 
  Set objSWbemLocator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
  Set objSWbemServices = objSWbemLocator.ConnectServer _
    (vars(1), "root\cimv2", user, password, "MS_409",, 128)
 
  objSWbemServices.Security_.ImpersonationLevel = 3
 
  Set colOperatingSystems = objSWbemServices.ExecQuery _
    ("Select * from Win32_OperatingSystem")
 
  ' The set returns an Err.Number of 91 on success
  ' Don't ask me why though.
  If Err.Number <> 91 Then
    CSVout.WriteLine(vars(0) & ";" & vars(1) & ";" & vars(2) & ";" & vars(3) & ";NA;SP?;;")
  Else
    For Each objOperatingSystem in colOperatingSystems
      os = objOperatingSystem.Caption
      servicepack = objOperatingSystem.ServicePackMajorVersion
    Next
    CSVout.WriteLine(vars(0) & ";" & vars(1) & ";" & vars(2) & ";" & vars(3) _
	                 & ";" & os  & "; SP" & servicepack & ";;")
  End If
Loop

The only thing I still need to improve is the error handling (as in notify when a system is being skipped due to RPC being unavailable).

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