Does Acer Aspire 5951G support Virtualization (VT, Hyper-V, VMWare)? YES

I got a great deal on a Acer 15 inch laptop (5951).  As this laptop has 4 SoDIMM slots it can support up to 16 GB of RAM.  Combining with a SSD makes this a great lab machine for less than $850 all in.

The major problem I had was trying to determine if Acer had enabled VT be default.

Booting into the BIOS in the store I couldn't find any settings to enable VT.  A quick google showed that many (?) other vendors close off parts of the BIOS.

Finding this link: http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g  -

Enabling Intel VT on the Aspire 8930G (and other InsydeH2O-based laptops) showed it was possible...Although I'd have to do some assembly programming.  I figured I did so well in the Microsoft Assembly course 7 or 8 years ago (I kept up for the first day - which I was told was the review part, then became completely lost as the dev monkeys went off on which HEAP manager was better) that this wouldn't be a major problem.

Doing something I don't normally do, I figured I would test the system first to see if VT was enabled by default.  Using the VMWare VT testing ISO it looked like it was.  I then loaded Windows 2008 R2 on and things looked good...Too good.

When I went to launch the first VM i got a ERRORS:

Event ID: 3430 & 3040

Source Hyper-V-Worker

'DC01' failed to set/change partition property: The system cannot find message text for message number 0xDC01 in the message file for B8CD1409-2147-453F-97FE-D00A6167DF8B. '0x8007013D'

This seemed very familiar...Looking back in my notes I found a reference to this on my Dell from earlier this year.

You cannot start virtual machines on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 R2 and on which a CPU is installed that supports the AVX feature - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2517374 things were back on track.

Not sure why windows update didn't install it...I believe I've rebuilt my Dell since the spring and haven't had to re-install this hot fix.

Hope this helps someone else.

Acer Aspire 5951G Failed BIOS Update (won't boot / Black Screen / No POST)

Version 1.04 to 1.11 upgrade using the Windows EXE.

After a lot of researching (close to 2 hours) I was able to fix the corruption using the following process.

1. You will need a USB drive reformat with FAT (not FAT32 or xFAT)
2. Then you need to go to the ACER website and download a bios file. I used the same failed version 1.11 but any should work.
3. Once downloaded, extract the file using the WinRAR self-extracting version supplied with the BIOS.
4. Then expand the extracted files.

To do this run the BIOS EXE the first time to extract and then run again then browse to the extracted files.  Open the extracted folder and then open the "windows" folder. Right click on the application file (.exe) and press extract here. This expands the EXE.

1. You now want to copy the file called ZRH.fd onto the USB drive.
2. Plug the USB drive
3. Holding FN and ESC, press the power button on your 5951G. The power button should flash if done correctly.  After around 30 seconds the USB drive should show activity.   After a few minutes the system should reboot and display POST.

Boot from VHD (Windows 8 Server Developer Preview)

Note: VHD has been previously created and OS installed onto it. (as per MSDN download)
Note: Using en_windows_server_developer_preview_with_hyper-v_virtual_machine_x64_735222 VHD for this but renamed to Windows8.vhd for Lab.

As the system had windows 7 (or 2008 r2) on it the system partition existed.
(dir/a will show the files if you mount the partition bellow.

Boot with Windows 7 DVD
Shift+F10 at welcome screen to open a CMD promt

Attach USB drive with VHD on it

From the CDM Prompt
diskpart
list vol

Make a note of what partitions (Volumes) are what
There should be a minimal of 4
C: (Boot) 100MB
D: (old system) XXXGB
E: DVD\CDROM
F: (USB) YYYGB

Select the previous install system partition (Vol 2 based on the list)

sel vol 2

Format to get rid of the previous install

format fs=ntfs quick
exit

copy vhd to formated vol

copy F:\*.VHD D:\

To update the boot partition (100MB Vol 1 or C: in this case) with the system files of the Windows 8 Server Dev VHD

diskpart
select vdisk file=C:\windows7.vhd
attach vdisk
list volume
select volume <volume_number_of_attached_VHD>
assign letter=v
exit

cd v:\windows\system32
bcdboot v:\windows /s C:

Now add VDH to the boot options

bcdedit /copy {default} /d [D:]\windows8.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} device vhd=[D:]\windows8.vhd
bcdedit /set {guid} osdevice vhd=[D:]\windows8.vhd
bcdedit /default {guid}

Remove the old OS from the boot options

bcdedit
 copy {guid} of now deleted OS
bcdedit /delete {guid}

REBOOT

ADD Mount (UnMount) VHD to SendTo Menu

open up an Explorer window, and then paste in the following to the address bar.
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo

Past in the following batch files

MountVHD.BAT

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL
SET DiskPartScript="%TEMP%DiskpartScript.txt"
ECHO SELECT VDISK FILE="%~1" > %DiskPartScript%
ECHO ATTACH VDISK >> %DiskPartScript%
DiskPart /s %DiskPartScript%
ENDLOCAL

UnmountVHD.Bat

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL
SET DiskPartScript="%TEMP%DiskpartScript.txt"
ECHO SELECT VDISK FILE="%~1" > %DiskPartScript%
ECHO DETACH VDISK >> %DiskPartScript%
DiskPart /s %DiskPartScript%
ENDLOCAL

Issue: 1.0.522.103 CX700 (tanjay) OCS / Lync Phones were succeeding only 80% of the time in updating to

Note: The update was being done in an isolated Lync 2010 environment due to delays on the PROD

deployment.

Looking into it I could not find anything wrong with Lync 2010 environment.

Tried "Hard Reset on tanjay

http://support.polycom.com/global/documents/support/setup_maintenance/products/voice/Polycom_CX700_Deployment_GuideRevA.pdf

Nope.

I a google search I found others having the issue...

Taking a phone home I thought to try in my Lync 2010 lab. Still does not update. Logs show all clear.

Taking a different approach I decide to "quickly" build out a OCS 2007 R2 lab and try the updates there.

Lab Build out:

OCS 2007 R2 installed using a Windows 2008 R2 CA

Due to devices use a SHA / 2K cert. length and add the web enrolment feature (I always add this but forgot why for some reason this time).

Followed: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982021

Lab Issues (brain farts)

1. The OCS wizard will failed on cert creation.

Looking at CA its issueing certs fine.

Copy the cert over and try to use the wizard to assign.

No workie.

Looking at the error messages its due to PKCS#7 files not being default anymore and the CA

issuing a standard cert.

Create the request in OCS wizard.

Go to web enrolment (http:\\server\certserv) and choose advanced, paste OCS request and download as a PKCS#7 file (chain)

From the wizard import the new cert

From the wizard assign the new cert

2. Update Database

This is the 5th time I forgot to run OCS2009-DBUpgrade.msi...

Other Lab changes:

1. OCS R2 Management Console, right click the pool and select Device Updater. From the Tools menu,

click Upload .cab File

2. OCS Management Console, right click the pool name, select Filtering Tools and then Client Version

Filter made sure it supported the phone edition I am expecting.

3. Added a voice location and simple dialing plan:

Name: Local extension

Phone pattern regular expression: ^([1-9]\d{3})$

Translation pattern regular expression: +1403555$1

Changed Default Policy to allow Ent Voice

4. Modified password to allow simple and short.

5. Created test users:

user pw:user email: user@ocs.lab

lab pw:lab email: lab@ocs.lab

Reset Phone and logged in....

Total BS...Nothing happened...

Start of Tshooting:

http://Pool_FQDN/DeviceUpdateFiles_Int/UCPhone/Polycom/CX700/A/ENU/3.5.6907.31/CPE/CPE.nbt

This should prompt a dialog to save the file. Restult:a blank page

The IIS 7 log is giving the 200 success entry, which indicates everything is fine.

Google search seemed to hint at the following "fixes"

1. Disable client filtering for OC Phone (by removing)

Tried a few things before removing totally

No workie

2. WINS and adding static entries for UCUpdates and UCUpdates-R2

This doesn't seem like my problem

Tried and no workie

3. WMI settings missing for ExternalUpdatesDownloadURL and ExternalUpdatesStoreURL

Again does seem like my problem but worth a try...

Instructions in the readme are a bit obsure on what the poolbackenddatabase format should be

http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/5/E/85E9537C-5F96-4B5B-9E8C-60099699D708/Office_Communicator_2007_R2_Phone_Edition_Relnotes.htm

Found it explained here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb964083(office.12).aspx

( Select * from MSFT_SipUpdatesServerSetting where BackEnd="(local)\\rtc" )

No Love again...

While I was there looked at the internal urls and they look fine...

I then tried a simple txt file in the root of the iis folder...No workie...that is strang...

First thing first. Look at security. Looks good. Look at logs. Still says 200...

Looking into IIS further I realized I couldn't produce any errors...Makes sense as I had not installed HTTP Errors in the web role (Note: This is not listed as a requirement - should add as a default requirement for all IIS installs)

Now things get better.

Getting 500.19 error

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/942055/en-us

Read the error description to determine the duplicate entry

In my case it was .cat being listed in the Devices (_ext & _int) sections and in the mime configuration section.

Updates worked!!!

Removed WINS (using only DNS records for UCUpdates & UCUpdates-R2). Still works.

Removed WMI settings. Still works.

Added default client filtering back. Still works.

Need to

Useful Links Found During this:

Troubleshooting OCS 2007 R2 Device Update Service for Communicator Phone Edition:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/ucspotting/archive/2009/03/11/troubleshooting-ocs-2007-r2-device-update-service-for-communicator-phone-edition.aspx