Is Your PowerShell Slow to Start?

I ran into a scenario last week where we had loaded the Compellent Storage Center Command Set for Windows PowerShell on a server.  When we launched the shell shortcut, the window opened but took a long time to get to a PowerShell command prompt.

So, what causes slow start-up when loading PowerShell?

The most common reason seems to be that machines experiencing this slowness are not connected to the Internet.

What?

Well, when Since PowerShell is loading the Compellent Command Set DLL externally, .NET has a security feature to check Microsoft’s CRL, or Certificate Relocation List.  This process verifies the authenticity and validity of the software publisher’s certificate.  If this check can’t reach the Internet, the process will time out after several minutes.  Now, this doesn’t prevent anything from loading (which seems odd), but it takes a couple minutes for a process that should take only a couple of seconds.

The easiest resolution at this point appears to allow Internet access to the server.  If that is not possible, you can disable the check for the publisher’s certificate revocation.  You can do this from Internet Explorer (or Control Panel, Internet Options) by clicking on Tools, Internet Options.  Under the Security section of the Advanced tab, uncheck “Check for publisher’s certificate revocation”.

NOTE: These type of security features are in place for a reason.  Take extreme caution when considering disabling these.

Hidden Windows 7 Themes

I came across this one this week.  Did you know there are a few hidden themes built-in to Windows 7?  They’re in a hidden directory, so you’ll have to type their path directly or use search with the option to location hidden files or folders.

If you navigate to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT you’ll find several different directories.  Inside of each of those folders is a directory called “Theme”.  If you open that folder, you’ll see a .theme file which you can double-click to activate the theme.  My favorite is the UK theme.

Microsoft Web Platform Installer 2.0 RC

If you haven’t checked it out, do it now.  The Web Platform Installer makes your life a lot easier, especially when it comes to installing and configuring applications like WordPress on your own server.

I provisioned a new Windows 2008 R2 Web Server and needed to move my websites off of an old 2003 server and on to this new box.  In the past, installing mySQL, PHP, and other required components to get WordPress to work properly on a Windows server was a huge pain, that is, until the Web Platform Installer came along.

A number of applications have decided to use the WPI.  Applications like WordPress , DasBlog, Visual Studio Express products, and even SQL 2008.  You click through an interface, select the stuff you want to install, enter the requested config info, and the WPI takes care of the rest.  I actually used it to install WordPress flawlessly today.  It identify pre-reqs and other requirements and makes sure you have what you need before it gets started.

You can read more about, and download the Web Platform Installer here.

Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) for Windows 7

Not that all my desktops and laptops are running Windows 7, I wanted to get the newest tools for administering my Windows environment, including Hyper-V.

It took a little bit of searching, and a lot of the search results pointed to the beta tools or the RSAT for Windows Vista, neither of which will work with the released version of Windows 7.

So, if you’re looking for the link, here it is:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d&displaylang=en#filelist

From there, you’ll find the direct download links to both the x86 and x64 versions of the tools.  Happy administering!

Checking Partition Alignment with PowerShell

Here is an easy way to determine the partition alignment of any given disk on the local system or remotely.

$OffsetKB = @{label=”Offset(KB)”;Expression={$_.StartingOffset/1024 -as [int]}}

$SizeMB = @{label=”Size(MB)”;Expression={$_.Size/1MB -as [int]}} 

Get-WmiObject -ComputerName "localhost" -Class "Win32_DiskPartition" | ft`

SystemName, Name, DiskIndex, $SizeMB, $OffsetKB  -AutoSize

This will output table that looks like this:

Why should you care about this?  This is particularly useful for determining partition alignment of existing disks that may be running applications like Exchange or SQL.  Exchange recommends a 64K partition alignment as does SQL in most cases.  In Windows Server 2008, partition alignment is automatic and defaults to 1024KB for new partitions. Note that the alignment of partitions on servers that were upgraded from Windows 2003 to 2008 are not changed.