Browse by Tags

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 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 all, Ned here again with a public service announcement: On April 8 th 2014, Windows XP support ends For the temporally challenged, that’s exactly two years from today. Hopefully, some of you don’t care because you’ve already gotten off XP. After all, Windows 7 has a 41...

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 again. We introduced the AD Administrative Center in Windows Server 2008 R2 to much fanfare. Wait, I mean we told no one and for good measure, we left the old AD Users and Computers tool in-place. Then we continued referencing it in all our documentation. And people say we're a marketing...

Hi folks, Ned here again. Customers periodically ask us for a rumored replacement for the Windows 2000 acctinfo.dll that works on 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 . That old DLL added an extra tab to the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in to centralize some user account info: ...

Ned here. The Remote Server Administration Toolkit update to support Windows 7 Service Pack 1 has released. Come and get it: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d - Ned “ all complaints go here ” Pyle

Ned here again folks. We introduced granular auditing in Windows Vista and a few years later we released Advanced Audit Policy Configuration . Legacy Windows audit policy didn’t go away, of course. To make things interesting, all of this can be configured through domain policy, local policy, multiple...

Hi folks, Ned here again. I mentioned this once in a Friday Mail Sack but today I circle around and explain a well-hidden security feature added in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: Global Object Access Auditing Oh boy, auditing! I bet you are excited! What is it and how to enable it ...

Hi all, Ned here. Update 4/7/11: The Remote Server Administration Toolkit update to support Windows 7 Service Pack 1 has released. Come and get it: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=7d2f6ad7-656b-4313-a005-4e344e43997d   Yesterday we announced Windows 7 SP1 availability...

Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 SP1 has shipped. Here’s the bottom line: Volume Licensed, MSDN and TechNet subscribers get access February 16 . All customers get access February 22 through Windows Update and direct download. More info and high-fiving here at the Windows Server...

Hi, David here. Some of you may have noticed that if you tried to migrate Office 2010 settings using USMT 4.0, the results were often less than ideal. Without going into a very long and ultimately meaningless explanation, this happened because USMT 4.0 didn’t have any of the information needed to know...

Updated to include SP1 being RTM and some last minute fixes that were included post RC Hi all, Ned here again. Back in October I joined the Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 beta support team. Our job is to support customers in a special early adopters program. As SP1 has now released, I’m...

Hiya folks, Ned here again. In today’s Mail Sack I discuss SP1, DFSR, GPP passwords, USMT, backups, AD disk configurations, and the importance of costumed pets. Boo. Win7/R2 SP1 RC in production USMT ramp up Daily DFSR health reports Recommendations for separating AD folders and...

People of Earth! It is I, Ned - your benevolent alien dictator - back again to talk to you about USMT. A few customers have asked me how to prevent XP Classic Start Menu desktop icons from migrating to Windows 7. Since these aren’t true shortcuts, you have to do some gyrations to block these...

Hello folks, Ned here again. By now many businesses have begun deploying Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Since Active Directory has become ubiquitous, Kerberos is now commonplace. What you may not know is that we made a significant change to default cryptographic support in Kerberos starting in...

Ned here again. The MS Product Quality and Online team has released three new RSS feeds for Windows Server, Windows 7 Client, and Windows 7 IT Pro to get you to the "high impact issues" happening right now that have solutions. Great for proactive work, finding emerging issues, or seeing common problems...

Ned here. Today I talk about the importance of the included USMT component manifests and how things can get gross when they are not available to Scanstate and Loadstate. Here’s you You are using USMT 4.0 to migrate from XP to Windows 7. You run scanstate on XP and it appears to work...

Hi folks, Ned here again. We’ve released another wave of Best Practices Analyzer rules for Windows Server 2008 / R2, and if you care about Directory Services you care about these: AD DS rules update Info: Update for the AD DS Best Practices Analyzer rules in Windows Server 2008 R2 Download...

Ned here again. You may have missed this on Monday, but the Beta version of Service Pack 1 for Win7/2008R2 was publically released. Besides offering the usual bevy of hotfixes and security update rollups, SP1 also offers servers two big new features: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX . Download...

Ned here again with another ADMT post – this one’s a quickie. V2 profiles were introduced with Windows Vista to allow isolation between XP and newer operating systems. If you haven’t done so already, make sure to review Managing Roaming User Data Deployment Guide ; it was written by...

Hey everyone, Mike here again to discuss an interesting feature I learned about in Windows 7. Many Microsoft customers deploy Roaming User Profiles. In fact, many combine Roaming User profiles and Folder Redirection to get the best experience possible. However, one of the drawbacks with Roaming User...

Hi all, Ned here again. I’ve seen an emerging issue with USMT that I need to address while our TechNet documentation is updated. If you are using USMT 4.0 for migrations from XP, this is required reading to avoid some very gnarly problems when using the /SF switch in loadstate. Onward. Background...

Ned here again. Because Windows XP cannot be in-place upgraded to Windows 7 and because XP has ruled supreme for longer than most IT staffers’ careers, everyone who managed to avoid USMT are now coming out of the woodwork. Perhaps the most asked question is “I am trying to block X from being...