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Sharing thoughts and ideas on business, security and photographyRecovering your Hyper V VM after a BIOS upgrade
Posted on June 30, 2015I recently performed a BIOS upgrade on my Dell Latitude E5540 laptop. This had a couple of unanticipated consequences.
Firstly, Microsoft Bitlocker wouldn’t run – it recognised a hardware change and required the recovery key to be entered before it would proceed. Thankfully I had saved this into OneNote and could access this from my phone.
Secondly, my VM’s would boot in Hyper V. I was getting a message along the lines of : Hyper v failed to restore VM XXX using processor-specific features. The virtual machine ‘<VM Name>’ is using processor-specific features not supported on physical computer ‘<Hyper-V Host>’.
This one stumped me for a while. I googled various options and tried some solutions, including helpful (but unhelpful) ones suggesting that during the BIOS upgrade some BIOS options had been changed and I need to go and change them back. I spent an hour going through all of the options, but for the life of me could not identify any that had changed, and if they had I certainly had no idea.
In desperation I decided to create a new VM, and point it back to the existing virtual disks. This probably would have worked, but in the process of doing this I noticed that in Hyper-V manager if I right clicked on my existing VM there was an option to reset the state. This worked like a charm and the problem was solved, now the VM booted from scratch. Simple really when you know how.
Discussion of 2013 CISA Review Q,A&E sample exam:ISACA CISA Exam (Session 15) live on Hangouts OnAir
Posted on June 09, 2015On Saturday the study group went through a mock exam, and using the Sample Exam from the 2013 Review Questions, Answers and Explanations Manual. This evening we will be discussing questions and areas which the participants struggled with from the Exam as well as any other areas of concern. Please join us.
This session will be hosted by yours truly, Justin Williams. Top placed candidate in the Dec 2014 exam.
Hangout link : https://plus.google.com/events/c9rkl5fnpaavk2m6n0u66loopsc
Youtube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxbIgR6kuOw
Tips and Techniques for the ISACA CISA Exam (Session 14)
Posted on June 06, 2015Apologies for the delay in getting up the slides from Tuesday’s session. The video is up on Youtube and you can find it below. I have also uploaded a copy of the very useful guide by Shirish Deshpande & Rafeq. Goodluck to all candidates, hope that things are going well with your studies, and don’t forget to use the CISA discussion forum on the ISACA website if you have any specific challenges.
Link to video on Youtube
Download the slides : ITSec CISA Prep June 2015 session 14 2nd June 2015 Exam tips
Download Shirish Deshpande & Rafeq’s excellent Tips guide : tipsforcisaexam
The last session before the exam will be next week Tuesday. The video will be broadcast live through hangouts and available on Youtube pretty soon thereafter.
Working with SQL Server error logs in Log Parser Studio
Posted on April 05, 2015Microsoft Log Parser Studio (LPS) has become one of my favourite (free) tools whenever it comes time to work with log files of any significant size. In the past I have always used one of the pre-define log type formats when working with log files. Recently I needed to work with SQL Server error logs and was a little concerned initially that there was no pre-defined format for these logs and trying one of the standard log types didn’t give me the output I expected (or needed).
With a little bit of effort I managed to figure out what was required, it turned out to be fairly simple. The trick was using the TSV format and then customising the settings.
The new Nespresso Limited Edition Monsoon Malabar is available
Posted on March 31, 2015
The new Nespresso Monsoon Malabar is available to try. It’s an Indian coffee of a fairly high (8) intensity that is ideally enjoyed as an espresso. Time to head on down to the Nespresso shop and grab some to try.
Will report back once have had a chance to sip on some.
Slides for Facilitated CISA Study Sessions 24/3/2015 & 31/3/2015 : Chapter 1 Part 2 & Chapter 2 Part 1
Posted on March 31, 2015Last week we held the third of the CISA facilitated study sessions at the ITSec offices. The number of attendees is still growing and we have an increasingly diverse group of attendees which is greatly beneficial to all participating. The last two sessions were broadcast on Google Hangouts on Air. Our listener count was up to two 
The benefit of doing the broadcast is that it is recorded and now available for anybody to watch / listen to. Check it out (links in post below) and let us know if it is useful.
This evening’s session beings in about two hours. Please feel free to join us.
Attached below are the slides from the session of 24/3/2014 as well as tonight’s session (they are also in the recorded hangout).
ITSec CISA Prep June 2015 session 3 24th March 2015 Chapter 1 pt 2
ITSec CISA Prep June 2015 session 4 31st March 2015 Chapter 2 pt 1
Facilitated CISA Study Session 31/3/2015 : Chapter 2 Part 1 to be broadcast via Google Hangouts
Posted on March 31, 2015The sessions from the last two weeks have been reasonably successfully broadcast and recorded on Google Hangouts On Air so we will try and do the same for this afternoon’s session. If there is something we can improve ahead of the next session please let us know.
Link to the Google Hangout event
Link to Youtube live broadcast
Hangouts are limited to a maximum of 10 people participating via video / audio and many more who can watch the video feed and participate in the chat. First come first serve.
Facilitated CISA Study Session 24/3/2015 : Chapter 1 Part 2 to be broadcast via Google Hangouts
Posted on March 19, 2015Last week’s session seemed to work reasonably well on Google Hangouts On Air so we will try and do the same for the next session. If you have missed it the recording is available. If there is something we can improve ahead of the next session please let us know.
Link to the Google Hangout event
Link to Youtube live broadcast
Hangouts are limited to a maximum of 10 people participating via video / audio and many more who can watch the video feed and participate in the chat. First come first serve.
Slides for Facilitated CISA Study Session 17/3/2015 : Chapter 1 Part 1
Posted on March 18, 2015Last night we held the second of the CISA facilitated study sessions at the ITSec offices. The number of attendees is growing and we have an increasingly diverse group of attendees which is greatly beneficial to all participating. We also broadcast the session on Google Hangouts on Air. We had a total of zero live listeners to the event. The benefit of doing the broadcast is that it is recorded and now available for anybody to watch / listen to. Check it out (links in post below) and let us know if it is useful. I encourage anybody who would like to join the live session next week to listen to this week’s session and just leave a comment here or pop me a mail / message on twitter to let me know you will be joining.
Attached below are the slides from last night for your reference (they are also in the recorded hangout).
ITSec CISA Prep June 2015 session 17th March 2015 Chapte 01 part 1
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