Upgrade to ESXi 7.x: Missing dependencies VIBs Error

I have been getting this error frequently lately while doing upgrades from ESXi 6.5 and 6.7 to 7.x regardless of the hardware vendor.    

If you add an upgrade baseline to the cluster or host, and you try to remediate the host, the task fails with a dependency error. When taking a closer look into the tasks details, you were getting told that the task has failed because of a failed dependency, but not which VIB it caused.

You can find the name if the causing VIB on the update manager tab of the host that you tried to update. The status of the baseline is “incompatible”, and not “non-compliant”.

To resolve this issue you have to remove the causing VIB. This is no big deal and can be done with esxcli. Enable SSH and open an SSH connection to the host. Then remove the VIB.

You need to reboot the host after the removal of the VIB. Then you can proceed with the update. The status of the upgrade baseline should be now “not-compliant”.  Just start the upgrade again and it will complete properly provided there are no other issues.

Good luck!

Fixing Windows Updates Failed with Error 0x80244022

 If you have a workstation failed to Windows Update with the error 0x80244022 from a WSUS, the fix is pretty simple and straightforward.

The reason why the error occurs is because the Application Pool that runs the WSUS service stopped.

Go to the WSUS server and open IIS Manager. Click Application Pools, select WsusPool and click Start to restart the Application Pool.

This takes care of it the bulk of the time.

Good luck!

Mount ISO in Windows Server

 I ran into an interesting issue today.  Windows Server 2012 R2 had no options to mount an ISO file.  I tried a couple of 3rd party programs to do it but they would not work either.  I found a command that can be used with PowerShell to mount an ISO and it worked perfectly.  Here's the text of the command.

Good luck!

Mount-DiskImage -ImagePath 'D:\Path\To\Image.iso' -StorageType ISO -PassThru | Get-Volume

How to Enable or Disable the News and Interests Taskbar Windows 10

The latest updates to Windows 10 has now enabled the News and Interests taskbar by the clock on Windows 10.  Right away this started generating questions from staff on what it is or why it was turned on.   Again Microsoft pushes something out that you may not want running.

Since the GPO ADMX for it doesn't seem to be working on Windows 10 Professional, here is a quick command you can run that will make an immediate registry change and turn it off.

reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Feeds" /v ShellFeedsTaskbarViewMode /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /f

This fully hides it.  If however you want it back on change the DWORD value.  Enter 0 (show icon and text) or 1 (show icon only).

Disk Management and Explorer Show Different Drive Size

 I ran into this issue today when trying to extend out the drive size on a data drive on our primary file server.  After expanding the virtual disk in VMware, I brought up computer management (compmgmt.exe if you want to go command line quicker).

I expanded out the disk and immediately noticed that explorer didn't reflect that change after a refresh.  Also, disk management could no longer access the disk to make any edits.  I restarted the virtual disk service with no success.  A restart also proved futile.

MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE RUNNING THESE COMMANDS!

After some quick research, here is the fix.  Use DISKPART from an elevated command prompt.  Just follow the commands below and choose the proper disk on your VM.  After running the command, a quick refresh of explorer now shows the correct size.

Good luck!