Author Archive
What We’re Playing – Week of July 2nd
Will Anderson
F.E.A.R. 3 for PlayStation 3
Child of Eden for Xbox 360 Kinect
Victoria Liu-Anderson
Alice: Madness Returns for Xbox 360
Mikeal-Paul Williams
inFamous 2 for PlayStation 3
Dominic Marzolino
Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 (XBLA)
Happy Birthday Sonic the Hedgehog!
Today, we celebrate one of the most iconic video game characters in the history of the industry. Nemesis to Nintendo’s Mario, this character launched the first console that would rival the Atari crushing juggernaut. 15 million copies of his first game were sold to catapult SEGA’s console market share to a staggering 65% when it was bundled with the Genesis, outselling the Super Nintendo by a staggering 2 to 1.
Sonic the Hedgehog would go on to spawn dozens of sequels and spin-offs to sell over 80 million units worldwide. Ten years after his creation he would arrive on his first foreign console, Nintendo’s GameCube having outlived SEGA’s ill-fated hardware line. Ever since, Sonic the Hedgehog has appeared on every major console since 2001, and today he turns 20 years old.
Here are some of Sonic the Hedgehog’s milestones over the years:
June 23, 1991 – Sonic the Hedgehog is released for the Sega Genesis (known in Japan as the Mega Drive)
November 21, 1992 – Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is released for the Sega Genesis in Japan. Introduces Tails as a playable character. Features cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes.
June 1993 – The Sonic the Hedgehog comic series’ first issue is released by Archie Comics. It is currently at issue #225.
September 6, 1993 – The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog animated series is launched on ABC. Jaleel White (Urkel) voices Sonic. The show runs for one season (65 episodes).
November 1993 – Becomes the first video game character to have a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
June 19, 2001 – Sonic Adventure 2 releases in Japan. Introduces Shadow the Hedgehog to the franchise.
December 10, 2001 – Sonic Adventure 2 releases for the GameCube.
November 2007 – Appeared on the same video game cover as Mario for the first time (Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games)
January 31, 2008 – First appearance on Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
To celebrate, SEGA is releasing Sonic Generations on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS on November 22, 2011. Generations will feature a collection of levels derived from some of the classic favorites across games of the past. Sonic will be playable in both his modern look, as well as his 90’s counterpart as a mysterious enemy has created time holes which pull Sonic and friends back into the past. Help both Sonics as they work together to find out who the evil mastermind is and save their friends.
So while we’re all waiting for his new adventure, let’s all bake a cake and wish a very happy birthday to Sonic. Here’s to another 20 years!
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What We’re Playing – Week of June 21st
Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition – Capcom – Xbox 360
Child of Eden – Ubisoft – Xbox 360
Press Release – EA UNVEILS MASS EFFECT 3
Continue Commander Shepard’s Epic Journey When BioWare’s Universally Acclaimed Action RPG Franchise Returns Holiday 2011
Interesting Issue – KMS Count Not Incrementing Over 6 Machines
So Windows 7 licensing has a requirement that 25 machines must be up and running on the network in order to allow the KMS (Key Management Service) Server to activate those Windows Machines and be recognized as Genuine Windows licensed machines. This is well and good for a company that leases their own machines and can roll them out en masse to a large number of users simultaneously. However, for the smaller company, this can be a bit problematic if you’re rolling out to just a few users everyday over a period of time.
To combat this, one would instead use the MAK (Multiple Activation Key) license to these machines. Furthermore, if you’re hellbent on using KMS, you can use this as a temporary fix until you can get the required 25 machines online, and then “flip” the machines to the KMS license.
Doing so is fairly simple, and extremely simple if you’re using SMS 2003 or SCCM 2007. If you follow the instructions found on Microsoft Technet, you can simply use the following commands in order to flip the key.
slmgr.vbs /ipk <KmsSetupKey> – Allows you to change the MAK key to what is called a Generic Volume License Key. Microsoft is nice enough to list the GLVK’s for you in the references KB Article. Next,
slmgr.vbs /ato – Allows you to force the machine to go find the KMS server and activate it’s license under your agreement.
By the way, for you to use SMS or SCCM 2007 to perform the above functions, you have to fully qualify the path of the vbscript in question, (cscript C:WindowsSystem32slmgr.vbs /switch) else the SYSTEM account which is usually what is running the app won’t know where to look. Also, make sure you qualify it as cscript, or else it’ll default to wscript and hang up because it’s waiting for the non-existent user to click OK to terminate the script.
Simple enough, eh?
Well. Not Exactly.
We did just the above steps, and our count did not increment over 6 for some reason. Did some googling around and I couldn’t find anything online, so I went to the awesome gurus at Technet to see what they would say. Darrel Gorter at MSFT brought up and awesome article regarding looking at the CMIDs of the clients to see if they were the same. Interestingly the article mentioned that this typically happens when you sysprep the image without using the /generalize switch, which I used.
Armed with this new information, and downloading the recommended Volume Activation Tool v2.0, I set about my work. First I downloaded the tool and installed it and ran it against my machines, finding that sure enough, only six were activated listed in VAMT as “Out of box grace” with the remaining machines all marked as “Notification”.
Problem.
So I go back to the article regarding the CMIDs and it shows how to parse your KMS Server logs to sort out the machines by CMID and take a look. And I’m seeing all of the machines have their own unique CMIDs. Until the day that I implemented the KMS to MAK flip. All of the machines when flipped picked up the same CMID.
Odd.
So I do a little bit of researching, and I find that supposedly running the slmgr.vbs /rearm switch allows the CMID to be reset (albeit according to MSFT, this is not supported). I run this on my machine and find out that the machine does in fact need to be restarted in order for this change to take effect. Also, even though it’s not specified, the user has to log back into the machine in order for it to call into the KMS server after the reboot. However, after this is all said and done, my machine now has a new unique CMID and is showing with its “Out of box grace and Genuine” status messages in VAMT. As well, my KMS Server count incremented by 1.
So, I go into SCCM and set up a new package to run the (cscript C:WindowsSystem32)slmgr.vbs /rearm. Then I set the package to only install if there is no user logged in, and then set the package to have SCCM reboot the machine after the command has finished running.
I then instructed my users to reboot or log off of their machines at the end of the day before they leave. And guess what? I’m now watching my KMS Server increment just fine.
So in short, if you have a problem with your KMS server incrementing, do the following:
– Download VAMT and see what’s going on.
– Check this article and look at your CMIDs.
– Perform a rearm on select machines to see if it fixes the CMID problem if you have one.
– Talk to the guys on TechNet, they are the bomb. And while they may not necessarily just toss the answer on a platter to you, they’ll get you pointed in the right direction.
~W75
