OK... so all who know me would probably say that I'm enthusiastic to the point of zealotry with regards to Microsoft stuff and the company in general.

But I had windows issues today..... here is a link to my 'Your server shut down so give us a reason' log entry... if you are offended by colorful language please continue for the problem and resolution....

windowserror.jpg (62.05 KB)

So anyway... our domain controller ran out of disk space- one of my lovely team memebers decided to check WinXP SP2 plus a few other goodies into source control

So no major you say.... but it was.

You see windows (server 2003 SBS) decided to make some registry tweaks when it ran out of ram. Now these were just GUI tweaks...

So no major you say.... but it was....

You see these GUI tweaks involved making my whole #%^#&^ing user interface black. Yes. EVERYTHING was black. Text boxes were black, text was black, buttons black everything was black. The result was not being able to see the login box- but I could work that much out by groping the OS under it the sheets. It's when it threw up the 'why did you boot your machine' dialog that I had no idea what it was doing.... I mean I could see the nice SBS logo on all the dialogs but no *UI elements.

So of course I stressed out... this server does

Domain Controller, Source Control, DNS, Exchange and DHCP... all pretty critical. I fumbled around, in the dark so to speak, for about 1.5 hours. Pulled the drive out of the machine, changed gfx cards. But I had better things to do with my time.

I rang my mate Wraz (paul@metasys.co.nz) who is a chain smoking former DEC uber tech (and general good bastard)... I dragged the poor man away from his wife and loungeroom fire and he managed to find and resolve the issue in under an hour... WRAZ you are a GOD

Details on the issue can be found here.....

So now I have to waste my evening working on the tasks I was going to do this afternoon..... So. If the bloody Windows shell team ever read my blog they should really really really really fix this issue.

[UPDATE: Wraz has commented (below) on how he f1x0r3d my fux0r3d b0x3n.]