Posts under ‘Windows 2003’

Last week one of my servers had an strange issue. After pressing CTRL-ALT-DELETE to log on, the log on window turned almost completely black (as you can see in the screenshot).

Google gave me the answer, but I still have no idea how this could have happened.

When you start your computer, or try to start the DHCP client service, you may receive the following error:

Could not start the DHCP Client service on Local Computer.
Error 5: Access is denied.

This problem may occur after an upgrade from Windows 2000 to 2003, or after you’ve changed permissions in the registry.

After you have disabled the Parallel Port in your BIOS, the following error may occur every time you start Windows.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7000
Date:  8/13/2009
Time:  9:15:47 AM
User:  N/A
Computer: computername
Description:
The Parallel port driver service failed to start due to the following error:
The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

As an administrator, there may come a time that you have to upgrade the bios. A new firmware may fix some bugs and may have new functionality. It also may be a required before you can request support from the manufacturer.
In all these cases, the first step to take is to determine the current BIOS version / firmware version. Yes: you can determine the firmware version by rebooting the computer and going into the BIOS, but in production environments this is often not recommended. :-)
Especially for these situations, you can view the BIOS version while running Windows. There are two easy ways to determine your current firmware version.