Every few years we release a new operating system and, no matter how much testing, training and documentation we have, some unexpected behaviors occur. We at Microsoft spend a lot of effort to try and prevent problems from occurring in our products at...

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...

I was recently asked to help out on an issue with a similar theme to other cases we have seen over the years. The topic has never been one that has generated a high number of calls to us but the calls we have received are not easy ones to get an initial...

I find myself doing blog posts on things that are not frequent enough for most experienced admins to be aware of since it wouldn’t come across their desk often. The reason for that is that in my role I receive the least common unresolved issues...

A while back I wrote a blog post about setting up Kerberos constrained delegation. As a bit of an re-introduction, a lot of the value of the Kerberos authentication protocol is that it allows an application or service to impersonate a user in order to...

There are an ever increasing number of scenarios out there in the business world where two different companies, or company divisions, may be using Active Directory for their directory service but may not be setting up an actual trust between the two....

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...

Something that is becoming more prevalent over the past few years has been great investments into our security technologies for application oriented reasons. Impersonation, people, that’s what I’m talking about. If anyone ever asks you what the big deal...

I’ve had several blog posts about the improved security in Windows Vista and Server 2008, particularly around cryptography. Here’s one more, albeit a short one. This post is about how, generally, Encrypted File System (EFS) works using Advanced...

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...

Howdy folks! I've posted another PowerShell script which may come in handy for IT admins no matter what services you administer. You can read more about it below, and you can download it from this TechNet Script Center link . Public Key Infrastructure...

The past year and a half have been active for us in support in terms of dealing with MaxConcurrentApi issues. We’ve created a great deal of new documentation , updated existing documentation , successfully advocated some changes in product to help reduce...

It’s been months since I last did a blog post, so that may have led three or four people to wonder “what happened?”. Since October I’ve been working on a project to add functionality to our customer’s support experience.  Many of you out there have...

A watershed is where things come together into a single point.  Think of a collection of streams coming down off mountains, coming together at a single body of water, like a river. Bill Laing is Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of the Shared...

We use the term single sign on (SSO) to describe a variety of behaviors in Windows and other applications where the result is simply to prevent the user from being prompted to provide their credentials again and again; to ideally enter their credentials...

I wanted to do a quick post on an important security bulletin. It’s Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-018 – Critical . This security update is to address a vulnerability in Active Directory. I’m pasting the Executive Summary below, but I highly recommend...

It’s easy to forget that when we say “Directory Services” we are really talking about multiple technologies. I remember when the idea that what we support is so much more than simply a user account repository first hit me. It happened when I first read...

Weeks ago I blogged about how single sign on and credential providers work and a scenario you can run into with them. One reader faced a slightly different scenario but was able to apply that topic toward getting his issue resolved. He had installed a...

There are a whole host of issues that are simply never seen unless you have a large distributed environment. I know that sounds startling but here’s a hypothetical example. Imagine that you are an online retailer and for every identity that you are transacting...

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...

Eight years ago today people had started their day at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and on a few planes. Some were commuting to work destinations and others were already at work. These were people that were working...

In this blog post we’re going to go over a few techniques that are a bit old school but will come in handy for understanding how things work even if you ultimately use a great monitoring suite like MOM. Now, there are great articles here and here that...