Changed Block Tracking (CBT) on virtual machines

In order to use Iperium Backup with Vmware’s esxi environment, you need to enable Change Block Tracking.

In vmware esxi, edit settings -> VM Options -> Advanced -> Configuration Paramaters, Edit Configuration and add: ctkEnabled = “TRUE” scsi0:0.ctkEnabled = “TRUE”

The option ctkEnabled = “TRUE” is a VMX option which controls the general CBT configuration […]

Create an Ubuntu Cloud VPS PC on Oracle Cloud using xRDP

This works, I can confirm as of Dec 2022. The signup process is a bit maddening, as is the way of Oracle, but the service is legit. Does require a CC# to get going, but the service is using the free tier. I have not been charged.

The future is cloud based computing for sure. […]

101 Free Hyper-V Management Tools, Scripts and Resources

This is a great collection of tools for Hyper-V. It has been a while, but I think many of these are still working. This is a reprint of altaro’s site.

Free Hyper-V Management Tools

This is a collection of utilities intended to make Hyper-V management easier. The criteria to be included here are that […]

Fix BSOD 0x0000007B on virtualized Win7 (and Server 2008)

Ran into this problem when I P2V’d my main Win7 box.  It had a broken Intel (software) raid on it (Raid1 with the second drive missing). I don’t know if this is why it was bluescreening, as I had used the heck out of this box for many years and it had every driver […]

How to manually install Integration Tools on a Hyper-V Virtual Machine

TLDR; Before you make the image!

Moving Win7 boxes to VM’s during decommissioning is a practical way to keep access to old systems. You can fire them back up when needed and access old data and applications safely. Even if migrating from one OS to another, making a VM is a easy […]