DCPROMO Keeping You Up At Night? Do you schedule DCPROMO activities for the weekend? After hours? Middle of the night? I remember those days. Often it was hard to get in the right frame of mind to think through all of the exact procedural steps during those late night change controls. It was always...

Who owns your OUs? Have you ever lost your keys? It is a scary feeling. Someone out there could have keys to your house and your car. Your personal safety could be at risk. The same is true in Active Directory. Do you know who has the keys to all of your accounts? The Problem In Active Directory...

Even Spiderman would envy this web action. Today we're going to walk through setting up a portable PowerShell v3 Web Access demo . Using this demo guide you can explore PowerShell from any web-capable device: your phone, your tablet, or your Raspberry Pi . The links in this post will guide you to all...

Called Out Departing from the usual scripting today's post is a reflection on 2012 and a look ahead at goals for 2013. The overall theme today is the Heroes To Mentors vision we have embraced within Microsoft PFE . Brian Jackett is a coworker and friend of mine (pictured far left above) who specializes...

New Years Resolution Hi folks. It's your friendly, neighborhood PFE again. In order to avoid the long lines to buy a treadmill the first week of January I thought I would save you some time and give you an easier New Years Resolution… Learn PowerShell. It's time to part with "blankie". ...

Background Anyone who wants to write scripts for Active Directory will eventually run into the famous userAccountControl attribute. Usually this comes up when you are searching for disabled accounts. Actually this attribute is a bit flag for 22 different account settings! You can find them clearly...

Introduction Back in May I released a post on the Hey Scripting Guy blog showing how to create a shortcut to unlock a user account with a PowerShell desktop shortcut . That post was very popular, and the comments evolved into another shortcut to reset passwords. Due to the popularity and utility of...

Today I have the privilege of speaking at DogfoodCon 2012 in Columbus, Ohio. My topic is “Active Directory PowerShell Step-By-Step” . This post includes a download of the slide deck and demo scripts for the session. Here are the resource links that I shared today: RSAT Download for...

I remember back in high school the janitor had this massive ring of keys on his belt. The keys would jingle with each step as he pushed the broom down the hall. It was like his own percussion section accompanying the tune he whistled. So what does this have to do with PowerShell? The Scenario After...

PowerShell Saturday 002 Today I have the privilege of speaking at the second-ever PowerShell Saturday event. As a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer I get to meet many customers and help them with their Active Directory and PowerShell needs. I’ve taken some of that experience and wrapped it into...

Author's note: Before you dismiss this article you should know that the top two areas where I find issues for AD health are replication and DNS. If you're short on time skip to the bottom section "But Wait… There's More" and run that report in your environment. Otherwise I think you'll get a lot...

Summer of Speaking This summer has been a busy time for me speaking at events. In July I spoke at TechReady on the topic of "Active Directory PowerShell Notes From The Field". I'll be giving that presentation again at the second PowerShell Saturday event in Charlotte, NC on September 15th. Sign up...

TechMentor Last week I spent some time working on my presentation for the TechMentor conference coming up in August. It's not too late to get in on the action, and this year it's going to be in the heart of Microsoft country. I hope to see you there. Tapioca Goodness I love tapioca pudding...

Hey folks. In case you missed it PowerShell Magazine created some handy guides for getting started with the new PowerShell v3 features. We posted them here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30002 "Quickly learn tips, shortcuts, and common operations in the new Windows Powershell...

TechReady At Microsoft we have an internal event called TechReady that happens twice each year. It is similar to our public TechEd event. Approximately 5,000 Microsoft technical field people from all over the world gather to learn the details of the latest product releases and dialog with the product...

Today I posted over on the Hey Scripting Guy blog with a quick tip to unlock Active Directory user accounts . Check it out: Active Directory Account Unlock Shortcut for Help Desk

I was grocery shopping the other day and had to take a picture of this. What exactly differentiates a "fancy" octopus. I know. Do you? It's PowerShell. Fancy octopi always use PowerShell. I'm glad it's in an "easy open can". Today we're going to open up a can of PowerShell for the helpdesk . Helpdesk...

In honor of all things St. Patrick's Day what could be more appropriate than a PowerShell limerick ? I've drafted four for you to enjoy and share. Use the comment area to vote on your favorite or submit your own. There once was an admin from Charlotte Who didn't understand the cmdlet They are verbs...

The PowerShell Tool Belt For Active Directory This is huge. Today's post includes demo scripts for all five free ways to script Active Directory in PowerShell . I presented these last weekend at the first ever PowerShell Saturday event in Columbus, Ohio . You will also find attached a one hour audio...

Free. Double your money back. Cheap at twice the price. Today IT budgets are tighter than packets on a 56k modem. Have you ever asked your boss to buy some scripting tools to help do your job? Which response did they give you? "Where do you think you are? Wal-Mart?" "Sure. Email me an ROI...

On March 10th the Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson , is coming to Columbus, Ohio to kick off the first ever PowerShell Saturday community event. These events have been very popular with SQL and SharePoint user groups all over the US, and we are launching the first one for PowerShell on Saturday, March...

My last post on getting started with Active Directory was so popular that I thought I would do one for getting started with Group Policy . Once again this link list will satisfy everyone from beginner to advanced. I know there are many other third party resources and books, but I want to surface Microsoft...

This article is for all of the IT Pros who have inherited an Active Directory environment which they did not build. Today's post offers some simple scripts to document the history of schema updates. This is particularly handy when it comes time to extend the schema for a domain upgrade or Exchange implementation...

As a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer I frequently get asked for more information on Active Directory topics. Most of the time I end up passing along one or more of the links in today's post. I finally decided to put these all in one place for quick reference. This list will be extremely valuable for...

This weekend I'll be celebrating Christmas in the US. Today Santa brought me a 1500VA 865W UPS for my home lab server. Now I don't have to worry about those winter power hiccups rebooting all of my HyperV guests. Best of all the scripting elves will be able to write presents without interruption. ...