NetBox is one of the best IP Address Management (IPAM) and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools available. It is an open source web-based application that will only cost you the time and resources to set up an internal server. However, while there is step-by-step upgrade documentation available, it can be ambiguous at times and also misses some important steps resulting in errors and service start failures (e.g., "Service Not Found" errors). The following guide will help you to make sure your upgrades are successful and will provide tips on how to troubleshoot problems that may arise.

Although NetBox can run on CentOS, we highly recommend Ubuntu since the CentOS Project is sadly transitioning away from their traditional solid Linux distro to their new CentOS Stream distro which tracks ahead of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) development. Therefore, the steps in this guide will be tailored toward Ubuntu Server. However, the ideas behind this guide can be transferred to a CentOS installation of NetBox as well.

Read on for the guide...

If you're like me, you've run into the following set of errors when trying to use CMake on Windows and especially when trying to compile Python code:

-- Building for: NMake Makefiles
-- The CXX compiler identification is unknown
-- The C compiler identification is unknown
CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:131 (project):
  The CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER:

    cl

  is not a full path and was not found in the PATH.

  To use the NMake generator with Visual C++, cmake must be run from a shell
  that can use the compiler cl from the command line.  This environment is
  unable to invoke the cl compiler.  To fix this problem, run cmake from the
  Visual Studio Command Prompt (vcvarsall.bat).

  Tell CMake where to find the compiler by setting either the environment
  variable "CXX" or the CMake cache entry CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER to the full path
  to the compiler, or to the compiler name if it is in the PATH.

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:131 (project):
  The CMAKE_C_COMPILER:

    cl

  is not a full path and was not found in the PATH.

  To use the NMake generator with Visual C++, cmake must be run from a shell
  that can use the compiler cl from the command line.  This environment is
  unable to invoke the cl compiler.  To fix this problem, run cmake from the
  Visual Studio Command Prompt (vcvarsall.bat).

  Tell CMake where to find the compiler by setting either the environment
  variable "CC" or the CMake cache entry CMAKE_C_COMPILER to the full path to
  the compiler, or to the compiler name if it is in the PATH.

Read on for instructions on how to get past this error...

Once in a while, when using the built-in VPN client in Windows 10, we would be able to begin to connect and actually authenticate, but not complete the connection. We would have an error similar to the following in the Application Event Log:

Even rebooting alone wouldn't fix the issue. But, the fix for us was easy. We only needed to delete and have windows recreate some items in the Device Manager. Try the following:

1. Open Windows Device Manager
2. Navigate to Network adapters
3. Uninstall all of the WAN Miniport (XXXX) devices
   • Or at least the one related to your VPN connection
4. Right-click on any item and choose to Scan for hardware changes
5. The WAN Miniport adapters should have re-created themselves.
6. Try connecting to your VPN again.

That seems to clear out the necessary bit of whatever the VPN service was hung up on.

If you've been having issues with your Windows 10 machines not connecting for a minute or even at all after a boot or reboot, you may have been hit with a bug that has affected Windows 10 since version 1709 rolled out. Even if you have a network SSID set to "Connect Automatically," Windows would not connect reliably after a cold boot. This would affect users using pre-shared keys and also 802.1x policies (for example using RADIUS or Windows NPS Server) and all flavors of Windows including Home, Professional, Enterprise, & Education editions.

One way to fix this is by disabling the "Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter" in Device Manager, but this came with some side-effects such as disabling the ability to wirelessly project through Miracast (also Intel's WiDi). Those who couldn't or didn't want to do that have had limited success making the issue less likely to occur by disabling the "EnableActiveProbing" registry parameter and/or using Group Policy to enable the "Turn off Windows Network Connectivity Status Indicator Active Tests" & "Do Not Show the Local Access Only Network Icon" policies.

Fortunately, Microsoft has just released a cumulative patch for Windows 10 1803 that seems to have fixed the Wi-Fi issue introduced with the 1709 feature upgrade. It is the October 24, 2018—KB4462933 (OS Build 17134.376) update. Microsoft also recently released an update for Windows 10 1709, but we have not yet tested to see if it fixes this issue. As for the recently released Windows 10 1809, we do not recommend upgraded to that feature update quite yet due to the major issues that still need to be resolved.

Please comment below and let us know if you have had success with the KB4462933 update!

In Windows Update, when you haven't installed patches for a little while, you will receive a notification in the system tray and also in Windows Update Settings that says "Your device is missing important security and quality fixes." In some cases, your computer might say this message, but when you check for updates from Microsoft servers, it says there are none available.

The possible solution is that your computer is only checking for Windows updates and not for updates to programs such as Microsoft Office. Even if you are up-to-date on updates for Windows itself, the message will still appear if you are behind on Office updates, etc.

To change the setting, go to Start > Settings > Update & Security and click the Advanced options link. Make sure "Give me updates for other Microsoft products when I update Windows" is turned On. After you do that, go back and recheck for updates. Once installed, the warning message should be gone.

The thing about Windows Update services (WU or WUS) is that so many things can go wrong. Microsoft provides a Windows Update Troubleshooter that you may want to try before messing around with items manually, but we've found it rarely solves issues when Windows Update is acting up.

First off, look in the Application event log for events with Event ID 1001 and the "Information" level. The Event Name for WU issues is "WindowsUpdateFailure3" and typically paired with a fault bucket of type 5. In the problem signature, look for the code in the P2 line (such as 80246008 or 800706d9). Those are the codes you will want to include in your Web searches to see if you can find the exact cause of your issue.

If that fails to provide you a solution or you just want to reset Windows Update without having to troubleshoot too much, we've found that the following general steps fix ~90% of Windows Update errors. This should work in Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and most flavors of Windows Server.

Continue on for the steps and some great tips...

If your Veeam backups are failing with the following or similar errors:

It lis likely that there is something messed up with the SQL Server. Even if you didn't install SQL, some programs use an instance of Microsoft SQL Express LocalDB. You will also see errors in the Application Event log such as:

Continue on for the simple solution...

In Microsoft Outlook 2013 & 2016, when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) account such as Microsoft Outlook.com (Hotmail, Windows Live, etc.) some users are reporting that the accounts are disconnected when you open Outlook or after a certain period of time. A workaround is to put Outlook in offline mode and then return so you are working online, but this is quite an annoying solution to have to do this everytime you open Outlook.

Read more to get the details and resolution...

Playing around with Windows 8 RTM has been quite an adventure! I tried working without the Start Menu for a few weeks, but the new Start Screen was usually such a horrible productivity sink that I ended up installing one of the 3rd party Start Menu add-ons (Stardocks's Start8). Most of my usual programs worked fine, though I did hit some walls on a couple forcing me to migrate to alternatives until Windows 8 compatibility is added. The Metro style (or Windows 8 style, now that MS can't use "Metro" anymore) apps.... some are good, but the majority are quite horrid and this unfortunately includes most of the default apps that come with Windows 8. For example, the Mail app doesn't allow you to adjust the three panes' column widths. Everything Metro is dumbed down to the point of being unusable. Also I've hit my share of bugs, even with the RTM release. For example, I added my Google calendar to the Calendar app and it loaded it without issue, but when I try adding events after hitting save everything I type in just goes into oblivion. Nothing shows up, yet no error message or anything else. Hopefully most of the worst show-stopper bugs will be fixed once the October release hits and since the apps are all on the App Store you can get updates quite easily. As for the back-end of things... beautiful. So many great features and improvements that I wish everything except the Start Screen (and the fact that they took away most of the old Desktop/Taskbar customizations) was simply part of a Windows 7 service pack. It's just that good from the Task Manager to the Copy/Move file dialogs.

Finally, the most absolute worst part of Metro is from a usability perspective. Absolutely nothing is intuitive other than tapping the tiles to open apps. Microsoft is trying to get us to learn this new environment that will be on all their device types, but throws you in without much of a tutorial at all. Here's my initial list of tips... I'll edit this post as I come across new ones. 

• Tip 1: if you aren't sure how to do something in an app, do one of two things -> (1) Right-click or (2) Move your mouse to the upper-right corner and move the mouse down or the lower-right corner then move it up. This will bring up other menus. Don't always expect left-clicking on things to do what you expect it to do or give you all the available options.
• Tip 2: To close the currently opened Metro-style app, grab the top of the app and drag it all the way down to the bottom of the screen.
• Tip 3: To view all the opened Windows 8 apps (Metro apps) move your mouse to the upper-left corner and move the mouse down or the lower-left corner then move it up. Right-click on any of them to get an option to close them.
• Tip 4: On the Start Screen, click the little minus "-" symbol in the lower-right corner to zoom out. Now you can more easily group tiles and even title the groups by giving them a name.
• Tip 5: Right-click on any Start Screen tile to Run as Admin, Uninstall, Resize the Tile, etc. You can right-click on multiple Start Screen tiles to select more than one so you can unpin multiple tiles at once.

Hope this helps!

If you've ever set your Internet Information Services (IIS) to only bind or listen on certain IP addresses using the httpcfg set iplisten command (e.g., to have Apache & IIS running on the same server), you may have inadvertently caused an issue for yourself if you want to use Windows Remote Managment (WinRM) from the command line or using PowerShell. A good idea of whether or not you have an issue is if running commands using WinRM (e.g., "winrm quickconfig") fail with the following error:

Message = The client cannot connect to the destination specified in the request. Verify that the service on the destination is running and is accepting requests.

Consult the logs and documentation for the WS-Management service running on the destination, most commonly IIS or WinRM. If the destination is the WinRM service,

run the following command on the destination to analyze and configure the WinRM service: "winrm quickconfig".

Error number:  -2144108526 0x80338012
The client cannot connect to the destination specified in the request. Verify that the service on the destination is running and is accepting requests.

Consult the logs and documentation for the WS-Management service running on the destination, most commonly IIS or WinRM. If the destination is the WinRM service,

run the following command on the destination to analyze and configure the WinRM service: "winrm quickconfig".

To get WinRM to start working again, continue on reading...