Windows General Archives

VT-x is not available Oracle Virtualbox Windows 10

This one stumped for for a while, I’m not going to lie. VT-x was enabled inside the BIOS of my computer and it’s an i7-7700HQ which according to ark.intel.com supports VT-x. Just the same, Oracle Virtualbox could not seem to start any VM I created giving me the following error:

VT-x is not available (VERR_VMX_NO_VMX).
Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: ConsoleWrap
Interface: IConsole {872da645-4a9b-1727-bee2-5585105b9eed}

Some quick searching just tells me to enable VT-x in my BIOS….but it’s already enabled. Other results talk about Hyper-V grabbing hold of the processor and not relinquishing control. Advisement there is to use bcdedit to disable and then re-enable the hypervisor service. I was desperate so why not right? In that instance, you first set things to off and then back to on using bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off and then to auto.

Still no go.

After much head scratching with a pinch of teeth gnashing, I ran across an old support ticket on the Virtualbox ticketing system that showed the exact error I had (VT-x is not available). The ticket referenced Avast Antivirus (which I run the free version of) as the cause. I saw no way in which I could toggle “Enable Hardware-Assisted Virtualization” because that setting is not present in Avast Free (at least I couldn’t find it).

Uninstalled Avast Free. Enabled Windows Defender.

The problem is now solved and VM’s now boot with no issues. I wanted to record this here in case others had the same issue. Avast Antivirus Free has this on by default and I couldn’t find a way to disable it and a 4 year old ticket submitted to virtualbox saves the day.

Missing BitLocker Recovery Tab ADUC in Windows 7

I spent hours looking for a solution. I was missing the BitLocker Recovery Tab in Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) on Windows 7. Honestly, there are a lot of posts about this…but almost all of them detail how to do things in Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 is nowhere to be found. Of course, I tried to use them for Windows 7…but nothing worked.

The problem: I was missing the BitLocker tab that displays the BitLocker recovery key for Active Directory Users and Computers. No amount of DLL re-registering or Remote Server Administration Toolkit (RSAT) installing (those 2 are solutions in Server 2008) helped me display that tab.

When I finally did solve this problem, I found I was very close the entire time…and it was simple. As the saying goes, that only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I found the simple solution by my non-Sherlock Holmes power of deduction….I knew BitLocker was a part of RSAT from Microsoft and so I figured that viewing the tab might be a feature add-on…and my suspicion was absolutely right. Screenshots of everything for a visual representation of this solution below.

Note: You must install Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7 before the feature we need to enable will become available. Install that first, then come back here and perform the following steps:

Windows-R to get run dialogue, type ‘appwiz.cpl’ and click ‘OK’

featureonoff — Click on “Turn Windows features on or off”

RSAT — Find Remote Server Administration Tools and expand it

RSATBitlock — Expand ‘Feature Administration Tools’ and check the box on ‘BitLocker Password Recovery Viewer’

That’s it. Now when you go inside ADUC, you’ll have a recovery key tab available on PC’s you’ve encrypted using BitLocker. All that fuss and hunting for a solution that takes about 3 minutes to fix. Simple right? I sure hope that in publishing this, I make it more readily available and searchable for those looking for the solution in the future…because it sure took me a long time to find it! Thanks for reading!

Revisiting BlackBerry Desktop Software 6

I decided to see if BlackBerry had solved their install problem with the Desktop Software version 6 that I tried to install back in September 2010. I’m sad to say their software is full of FAIL still.

As you can see from the errors above, you can’t even launch the application. It makes me wonder if programmers at RIM even QA their software at all. I’m not the only one having this problem either.

I could go on and on but I figured I’d need to stop somewhere. It’s pretty bad. It seems users have been reporting this even a few months before I tested it out in September 2010…so this problem has been around for more than 6 months and RIM hasn’t done anything to fix it…and they wonder why Android is chewing up their market?

The worst thing is that when googling around this particular error…you find it is a simple fix in .NET framework inside the application and the app just needs a reference fixed and a recompile. Figures. Something that could be done simply and quickly to solve pain and suffering of many goes unnoticed…but hey, let’s make sure we make big bucks on everything else!!

Bottom line is…I have to revert back to previous version. This means I can’t update my BlackBerry and I can’t call customer service because they won’t help me unless I’m running the most recent version. So at least they have THAT going for them…they don’t have to address any concerns about BlackBerry Desktop Manager 6 because they can just ignore people that call in that aren’t running that version of the software…and since the people CAN’T get to that version, they get lost in the void.

Hat’s of to RIM! They’ve cooked up a good way to ignore people in this case. I hope they fix their problem sometime in the next 6 months.

Cannot Create Scheduled Task Server 2003 R2

I hit a snag at work today while trying to create a scheduled task to run a batch file daily on a server. The problem was after creating a scheduled task using the wizard, a popup displayed this:

The new task could not be created.
The specific error is:
0x80070005: Access is denied.
Try using the Task page Browse button to locate the application.

Of course, the task wasn’t created. Googling around wasn’t much help…most of the stuff references Windows XP and a bunch of the results want you to go inside the registry. I figured there must be a better way. Something that all the posts had in common was saying that something had changed the permissions on the Windows Tasks directory. So, I figured running CACLS to reset the permissions on that tasks directory should fix things. I was right. So this fix is MUCH simpler than all those forum posts and mailing lists posts said.

To fix: Open up a command prompt and change directory to C:\WINDOWS. Next issue the following command:

 CACLS Tasks /E /G builtin\administrators:F

it should echo back ‘processed dir: C\WINDOWS\Tasks’ and return you to a prompt. After this, you should be able to schedule a task quite easily. The skinny of this problem is that the tasks directory just gets its permissions wrong and you’re using CACLS to reset things. Hope this helps someone out there! It took me a couple hours to figure it out!