Adventures in Software Development … by David Young
QSL Query, the Glassware I wrote for amateur radio operators using Google’s Go programming language, has been featured in the Eclectic Technology column of the December 2013 issue of QST! QST is the monthly journal of the Amateur Radio Relay League. It is free to all ARRL members and can also be found at most major bookstores and supermarkets.
I’ve been using Windows 8 Enterprise with Oracle VirtualBox on my MacBook Pro, which runs OS X Mavericks (10.9). Now that Windows 8.1 has been released, I decided to upgrade. I had read that the upgrade was fairly easy, and could be done through the Windows Store. This is not always the case – such as when you are running the Enterprise version.
If you are running the Enterprise version of Windows 8, you must install from DVD media, or a mounted .iso, or equivalent. I downloaded the iso file from MSDN and mounted it in OS X to install the upgrade. At this time, I came across an error I had never seen before:
“You can’t install Windows 8.1 because your processor doesn’t support CompareExchange128″.
Fortunately, this can be easily fixed. Open a Terminal Window and change directories to your VirtualBox.app directory. (This step may be unnecessary if your path is set up correctly.)
Next, at the command prompt, type:
vboxmanage setextradata [vmname] VBoxInternal/CPUM/CMPXCHG16B 1 <ENTER>
“[vmname]” should be the name of your VM, which in my case was “Windows 8 Enterprise”. Quotes are necessary if there are spaces in the name.
Restart your Windows 8 VM and try to install again!
Let’s say you have a whole lot of scheduled tasks you want moved into a subfolder in the Task Scheduler. Since you can’t just drag and drop the tasks, and must export the jobs into XML files to be imported, we will use similar commands as yesterday’s post.
For this, you will need an empty folder. I use C:temp for this example. If your folder does not already exist, create one. Also, you will need a folder in the Task Scheduler GUI to exist. Create it using the Task Scheduler GUI.
Export all jobs you want to move into XML files:
This will create all XML files in the C:temp folder. You can then delete from that folder any XMLs for jobs that you don’t want moved.
Next, delete the jobs in the original folder either using the command line or through the GUI.
Lastly, enter the following command and press Enter:
FOR /R c:temp %F in (*.xml) do schtasks /Create /S <<server name>> /RU <<username>> /RP <<password>> /XML “c:temp%~nF.xml” /TN “<<Task Scheduler folder name>>%~nF”
This will recreate the job files and put the tasks into the folder (in the GUI) of your choosing.