Infinite Disorder

Today I was importing an image into hyper-v, found out some interesting things. You can’t install the integration tools for the client if an old version of integration tools is installed (for example, the image came from MS Virtual Server 2005).

The reason were going mouseless is because Hyper-V doesn’t allow any use of the mouse inside a client unless the integration tools are working.

Until you get the integration tools or RDP working, your mouseless. One (maybe the only) benefit of windows over OS X is that you can do anything with the keyboard, it just requires some creativity.

The image i was working with is pretty well secured. I couldnt the windows key to open the start menu, autorun and dhcp was disabled. So how do I configure RDP? Or how to I run anything without the start menu? Here is where the task manager comes in.

So control-alt-delete allows you to start the task manager. Once you get it open, you can go to Alt-F to open the file menu and select new task. Of course since I’m using vista I cant just run cmd, I need it privileged. So instead I run explorer.exe, navigate to c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe and select it (use the space bar for selecting). Then shift-F10 opens the right-click menu and I can select run as administrator. From there I can configure my IP address using the same commands we used in windows 2008 core (who thought those would be useful?) Then to enable firewall exceptions I go back to explorer.exe (alt-tab is your friend here). Then open gpedit as administrator and modify your firewall exceptions in Computer Profile > Administrative Templates > Network > Network Connections > Windows Firewall > Standard Profile:
Do not allow Exceptions: Disabled
Allow Remote Administration exception: Enabled
Allow File and Printer sharing exception: Enabled
Allow Remote Desktop exception: Enabled
(use * for the scope to be fully insecure!)

If you don’t know how firewall scopes work, this is a pet peeve of mine (and common interview question!) Basically if you configuring a hole in you firewall, the scope indicates what IP range your allowing that exception for. For example, if you create a remote desktop exception with the scope of 10.18.18.0/255.255.255.0 and someone tries to remote desktop from 10.18.19.50 then they wont even see the port open, because they are outside the scope.

Anyway, I digress. Get your control panels open using these commands here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192806 in order to complete your configuration.