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Hi all, Jonathan here again with the latest edition of the Intermittent Mail Sack. We've had some great questions over the last few weeks so I've got a lot of material to cover. This sack, we answer questions on: Issues upgrading DFSR hub servers to Windows Server 2012 AD FS Sign-out behavior...

Hello sports fans! So this has been a bit of a hectic time for us, as I'm sure you can imagine. Here's just some of the things that have been going on around here. Last week, thanks to a failure on the time servers at USNO.NAVY.MIL, many customers experienced a time rollback to CY 2000 on their...

Hi all, Ned here again with that thing we call love. Blog! I mean blog. I have a ton to talk about now that I have moved to the monthly format, and I recommend you switch to WIFI if you’re on your phone. This round I answer your questions on: Reattaching DCs in Windows Server 2012 DFSR...

Hi all, Ned here again. After a few months of talking about Windows Server 2012 to other ‘softies from around the globe, I’m back with the sack. It was great fun – and not over yet, it turns out – but I am finally home for a bit. The only way you don’t know that the next...

[This is another guest post from our pal Mark in Oz. Even if you don’t care about DFSR, I highly recommend this post; it teaches some very clever log analysis techniques, useful in a variety of troubleshooting scenarios – The Neditor] Hi there! It’s Mark Renoden – Premier Field Engineer in Sydney, Australia...

Hi folks, Ned here again. It’s been a little while since the last sack, but I have a good excuse: I just finished writing a poop ton of Windows Server 2012 depth training that our support folks around the world will use to make your lives easier (someday). If I ever open MS Word again it will be...

Hi all, Ned here again with an actual back to back mail sack. This week we discuss: Running out of USNs and Versions DFSR RDC LAN WAN FWIW AOK NPS and dotted NetBIOS domain names USMT and the case of the failing sourcepriority Revisiting NIC teaming Weird DFSR files MaxConcurrentAPI...

Hello all, Ned here again with our first mail sack in a couple months. I have enough content built up here that I actually created multiple posts, which means I can personally guarantee there will be another one next week. Unless there isn't! Today we answer your questions around: Detecting...

Hi folks, Ned here again. I know this is supposed to be the Friday Mail Sack but things got a little hectic and... ah heck, it doesn't need explaining, you're in IT. This week - with help from the ever-crotchety Jonathan Stephens - we talk about: Multiple WMI Filters LDAP MaxPoolThreads Many...

Hi folks, Ned here again with some possibly interesting, occasionally entertaining, and always unsolicited Friday mail sack. This week we talk some: DNS partition absence Controlling DCDIAG event messaging Inventorying SYSVOL replication architecture Weird WMI DFSR volume paths Tightening...

Hi folks, Ned here and welcoming you to 2012 with a new Friday Mail Sack. Catching up from our holiday hiatus, today we talk about: Disabling Administrative Shares Making Get-ADDomainController useful’er Kerberos group bloat USMT moving profiles back from other disks The DFSR...

Hi folks, Ned here again with your questions and comments. This week we talk: AD Garbage Collection behavior Applying Group Policy based on installed roles and features Apple hates .local domains More on auto site coverage from Lurch Fixing the mysteriously bad CPU performance of brand...

Hi folks, Ned here again. DFSR administrators usually know about its built-in filtering mechanism . You can configure each filter based on file name and extension; by default, files named like “*.bak, *.tmp, ~*” are filtered, as they are unlikely to be permanent or useful between servers...

Hi folks, Ned here again. This week we talk: CA migration from 1 to 2 tier ADAM/ADLDS P2V ABC 123 Managing AGPM security filters Multiple IIS App pools and Kerberos AGPM multi-domain comparison ADUC domain password weirdness DFSR deletion conflict handling Stale account deletion...

Hiya world, Ned is back with your best questions and comments. I’ve been off to teach this fall’s MCM , done Win8 stuff , and generally been slacking keeping busy; sorry for the delay in posting. That means a hefty backlog - get ready to slurp. Today we talk: Weirdness with NETDOM...

Hello folks, Ned here again with another Mail Sack. Before I get rolling though, a quick public service announcement: Plenty of you have downloaded the Windows 8 Developer Preview and are knee-deep in the new goo . We really want your feedback, so if you have comments, please use one of the following...

Hello folks, Ned here again. This week, we discuss: Computer and user name uniqueness DFSR file size matters The weird user unlock in ADUC RDC extras USMT versus full disk encryption DFSN and standalone interlink timing DFSR conflict folder growth Other stuff Things have...

Hiya folks, Ned here again with another week’s questions, comments, and oddities. This time we’re talking: GPMC inconsistent permissions error ADMT multiple servers DFSR staging calculation performance USMT and MAX_PATH DFSR port 5722 on members Common AD support topics...

Hiya folks, Ned back with a palette-cleansing Mail Sack after this monstrosity . This week we talk about: To customize AD schema or not DC and root hints USMT and the case of the missing apps DFSR and %SYSTEMROOT% More fun with DC Same As Parent domain zone records Speeding up DFSN...

Hiya folks, Ned here again. This week we talk: DC DNS A Records and Web Servers Forwarding Security event log subscriptions Domain password filters Auditing NTLM vs NTLMv2 on Win2003 Programmatically determining if UNC is DFS namespace DFSR and Excel Shared Workbooks DFS, DC,...

Hiya folks, Ned here again. I finally have an editor that allows anchors on all the questions, so I am adding a quasi “table of contents” for these posts that allow easier navigation and linking. I’ll retrofit all the old mail sack articles too… eventually. This week we discuss...

Hi folks, Ned here again. This week I talk about Vista’s hidden AD schema, SYSVOL migration mission control, kick-starting cached logon performance, USMT c'est la vie, foul-mouthed NetBIOS, DFSR do-over, and the usual random goo. What to do with a Version 39 (Vista Beta) AD Schema When...

Warren here again. This is a quick reference guide on how to calculate the minimum staging area needed for DFSR to function properly. Values lower than these may cause replication to go slowly or stop altogether. Keep in mind these are minimums only . When considering staging area size, remember this...

Hi folks, Ned here again. Today we discuss trusts rules around domain names, attribute uniqueness, the fattest domains we’ve ever seen, USMT data-only migrations, kicking FRS while it’s down, and a few amusing side topics. Scottie, don’t be that way. Go Mavs. Creating trusts...

Hi folks, Ned here again. I’m trying to get back into the swing of having a mail sack every week but they can be pretty time consuming to write (hey, all this wit comes at a price!) so I am experimenting with making them a little shorter. This week we talk AD PowerShell secrets, USMT and Profile scalability...