Virtual PC 2004 Issue...

Richard Rousseau — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 04:34:41 GMT

I use virtual envionrments fairly regularly at work. I mainly use them for app debugging in a clean environment, permissions testing, and automated deployment testing.

I have a Virtual PC 2004 setup with my base OS installed on it's own virtual hard drive. I create a new differencing vhd on top of that when I need a fresh environment to work in. This has worked very well for me until today.

I created a new differencing vhd and booted into it. Everything was fine until I tried to login. I received the following message box...

Windows cannot connect to the domain, either because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable, or because your computer account was not found. Please try again later.

At first I thought that my domain wouldn't let me logon because I had a bunch of updates to install. After letting the vm run for 20 minutes I restarted it, installing all the updates it downloaded. (On a side note, I didn't know windows would download updates even when you're not logged in.). Even after that, no luck.

Google to the rescue...An old newsgroup post hinted that it might be because my (virtual) computer already existed on the domain. The solution, login as the local admin, take the computer off the domain and put it back on. Success!

I'm posting this in hopes the answer will be more accessible to future generations of googlers.

Excited...

Richard Rousseau — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 19:17:21 GMT

My new employee starts today. I say "my" because I did the interviewing and hiring and he will be in my charge. That makes me a kind of manager, which is a kind of scary thought. I'll try to keep from becoming a PHB, though there is little chance of that. I'm not a manager in the normal sense that all I do is attend meetings, go to lunch and make unattainable schedules. I'm more the guy who still does the job that he manages, but now has another person to be responsible for. I'm pretty pumped about all this. The position is completely entry-level so i'll be doing a lot of training. I have lesson plans setup and I brought in about 95 lbs. of my old books today.

The preparation for this has really caused me to reflect on my own knowledge and all it's gaps. I know there are things I know really well and I know there are things I don't know really well. I think the latter part of that sentence is the most important. I know there are things I don't know and I try hard every day to get to know them, which of course brings up more things I don't know about.

Anyways, this was just supposed to be a short post on how excited I am. I'm looking forward to the point where the new guy is all trained up and a full contributing memeber of our team. Once we're there we're going to be unstoppable. It'll be great. You'll see.

Work

Virtual PC 2004 Issue...

Excited...