Active Directory Blog : Non-technical? You be the judge.

Bulking Up an ADAM Test Instance

Tim Springston — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:40:00 GMT

This week I’ve had the need to do some testing around ADAM (also known by it’s shiny new name of Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services or AD LDS). The tests themselves are not directly relevant to this blog post, but in order for the tests...(read more)

Downgrade "Attack"? A little more info

Tim Springston — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:56:00 GMT

I decided that we needed some more detail and to give a walk through scenario on this downgrade attack deal I mentioned a while back in a blog post . As a recap, a customer called in after noticing the events below appearing intermittently but repeatedly-and...(read more)

Gauging Size Differences in AD Databases

Tim Springston — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:45:00 GMT

We occasionally receive support calls which revolve around the topics of “why is the Active Directory database on DC A different in size than that on DC B?”. It’s easy to dismiss the question out of hand but there are real life scenarios where this can...(read more)

Tabula Rasa

Tim Springston — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:15:00 GMT

I was well and truly stumped a few months ago. I joke that once a year I am flat out wrong, and rarely do I have nothing to say on a subject. The 'once a year I may be flat out wrong' statement may be true simply because after 15 years in the IT industry...(read more)

Scary Sounding Errors

Tim Springston — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:44:48 GMT

We have a temporary role in CSS where support folks will help out in supporting prerelease (also known as beta) software. I’ve worked a couple of Windows betas, and it’s a great experience. I mention this since I remember a few...(read more)

Troubleshooting a Memory Leak in Lsass.exe

Tim Springston — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Although we have a team of engineers who are dedicated to troubleshooting general server performance related problems Microsoft Directory Services specialists are expected to be the “go to” people for Active Directory and domain controller related performance...(read more)

Loading the Active Directory Database Into RAM

Tim Springston — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:07:00 GMT

Here’s another question we get asked occasionally: is there a way to load the entire Active Directory database into RAM? The idea behind this question is that having the sought after data in physical RAM would prevent the delays of seek time and paging...(read more)

ADMT 3.1 Is Now Available for Download!

Tim Springston — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:36:00 GMT

There’s been a lot of interest in the next version of our free migration tool and guide. Well, it’s now available. The link below can get you to the new Migration Guide, ADMT itself, and a link to the Password Export Server (PES) 3.1 in both x86 and x64...(read more)

Just Another Odd Error

Tim Springston — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

We get a lot of “huh?” type questions…things that seem so obvious and straightforward that the instant instinctive thought is “well, yeah, of course that won’t work…” Case in point. One of my colleagues received a call where a customer was wanting to...(read more)

ADMT 3.1 Beta!

Tim Springston — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:04:00 GMT

For folks who have been interested helping test Active Directory Migration Tool version 3.1 your day has come! The ADMT 3.1 Beta is here! This is a beta , not the finished product, so please test it out in your non-production environment and file bugs...(read more)

Group Policy Best Practice Analyzer

Tim Springston — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:39:00 GMT

Ever heard of a Best Practice Analyzer , otherwise known as a ‘BPA’? It’s a type of tool that many of our product or support teams have been creating the last few years which can be used to gauge the general health of a component before things go catastrophically...(read more)

2008 Certificate Web Enrollment Pages - Available!!

Tim Springston — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I am very happy to announce that the Certificate Web Enrollment pages from Server 2008 are available as a free download at last. Just click on the links below to get the pages, then follow the steps in the KB article to install them on your Server 2003...(read more)

ADMT and Server 2008

Tim Springston — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:09:00 GMT

Whenever we release a new product or suite of products we at Microsoft want to ease the adoption of it. For that reason we’ve released tools and scripts over the years to help our customers out. We’ve typically given these as free downloads from the internet,...(read more)

Reminder::Daylight Savings Time In the United States

Tim Springston — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

In order to make sure everyone is prepared if they need to be I wanted to post a reminder about Daylight Saving Time (DST). DST in the United States will be March 9 th 2008 at 2:00 AM. Last year the United States Congress changed DST observance to the...(read more)

2008 Certificate Web Enrollment Pages for Download

Tim Springston — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:21:00 GMT

There’s be a lot of demand for the web enrollment pages from Server 2008. For those that have contacted me directly I apologize for the trouble I’ve had getting back to everyone on these. I also know that it some people expressed frustration over having...(read more)