Savill's FAQs: Using chkdsk and Networking Protocols in Azure

Three times a week (Monday/Wednesday/Friday), John Savill tackles your most pressing IT questions.

Read through the FAQ archives, or send him your questions via email.

Today he covers using chkdsk and various networking protocols in Azure, plus why PowerShell's OpenBaseKey does not work on a Windows 7 device.

Q. Should I use chkdsk in an Azure IaaS VM?

A. Chkdsk is used when there is a corruption on the file system. In theory, this tool could still be required in an Azure-based VM. If you have some kind of logical corruption, then you should run chkdsk within the guest OSe.

Q. Can I use protocol x in an Azure virtual network?

A. Azure supports TCP and UDP in Azure virtual networks. Other protocols will not work unless they can be encapsulated in TCP or UDP. For example, NAT-T (NAT Traversal) encapsulates the IPSec ESP in UDP.

Q. I'm trying to use OpenBaseKey on a Windows 7 machine but its not working, why?

A. OpenBaseKey enables a registry key to be opened. This was introduced with PowerShell v3, so it won't work with Windows 7, which uses PowerShell v2.

For Windows 7 users, the solution is to use OpenRemoteBaseKey instead. For example instead of:

$Registry = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenBaseKey('CurrentUser', 'Default')

use:

$Registry = [Microsoft.Win32.RegistryKey]::OpenRemoteBaseKey('CurrentUser','localhost')

You can then use this to interact with the registry. For example:

$key = $registry.OpenSubKey('SoftwareMicrosoftInternet Explorer')
$key.GetSubKeyNames()