Category: Misc

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Windows: Win7 DVD Doesn’t Boot from USB DVD ROM Drive

This became an issue due to an old Dell Poweredge 750 Server which we were trying to build into a simple SAN. The long and the short of it was that we needed to upgrade the BIOS to A06 (which can be found here). The BIOS is installable via floppy (no floppy drives), Red Hat Linux (tried, installer didn’t work) and Windows (Oh no, really?Can’t we just have a bootable iso image?).

OK then, let’s install XP. Hang on, it doesn’t include SATA drivers and the BIOS doesn’t do AHCI – we need to customise an XP iso. Sod that.

OK, let’s install Windows 7 then. Hang on, there’s only a CD drive in the 750. Hmm. Wait! We have a USB DVD drive! Load it in, no joy. Apparently some BIOSes don’t play with the UDF file system in the DVD. This was annoying so we gave it some further thought.

Google came up with the following – Customising a Windows Install ISO – which is a very good technical explanation of the whys and whatnots of the boot sectors and how to convert the UDF system to an ISO conforming to Joliet / ISO 9660 using Linux. I didn’t have a Linux machine handy and needed a quick fix so after reading the article I reckoned I could do it quicker with PowerISO. And it works a treat with minimum fuss:

1) Open the Windows 7 DVD image in PowerISO and go to File -> Image Properties, you will see the following:

poweriso1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2) De-select UDF and select Joliet, making sure you have long filenames selected in the settings below:

poweriso2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3) Save the image, burn to DVD, insert in the USB DVD-Rom and install! Simples!

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Windows: Controls on this property sheet are disabled because one or more other Network property sheets are already open ..

This article details how to fix the seemingly eternal windows error from XP onwards: “Controls on this property sheet are disabled because one or more other network property sheets are already open ..”

Controls on this property sheet are disabled

Scenario: You boot your PC and want to change your IP / DNS / other network setting and you get:

“The controls on this property sheet are disabled
because one or more other Network property sheets
are already open. To use thse controls, close all
these property sheets and then reopen this one.”

Except you don’t have other property sheets open. Reboot, no joy.

To be honest, I don’t know how this happened, the only change I think I made was to re-enable the bluetooth service on my laptop but who knows, maybe there was an auto-update.

Anyways, checking through my startup programs using startup.cpl by Mike Lin (a great utility) I found the following:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce]   “NCInstallQueue”=”rundll32 netman.dll,ProcessQueue”

Delete the string value or untick it if you’re using the utility, reboot and you are now the master of your own network settings again.

Hope this helps!

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