Mark Empson's Blogalot

ADPREP Challenges

mempson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:07:00 GMT

I had an interesting challenge last month and figured that this is a great one for my blog. Being based in England, I had never come across this issue before so it was very interesting. I arrived on a customer site to help perform a Windows Server 2008...(read more)

Registry.pol fun

mempson — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 12:04:00 GMT

Hi all, This month, I ran into an interesting challenge to do with group policies. Specifically, I was trying to figure out why a client was not getting a specific setting. While it is was the Group Policy Object (GPO) and it the version of the GPT.ini...(read more)

GPMC Error

mempson — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:57:00 GMT

Hi All, I have been working on some servers recently with my good friend Mohnish and we came across an interesting error with the Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) Service Pack 1 (specifically). It seems that every time the administrator tries to...(read more)

Playing with NAP

mempson — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:07:33 GMT

Hi all, I have been playing with Network Access Protection (NAP) recently and have a few pointers that may help you all out :) Event ID 204 on the NAP server is raised when clients do not meet policy requirements Event ID...(read more)

Advanced Group Policy Management V3

mempson — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:08:00 GMT

I was looking into AGPM v3 recently and thought that it would be good to put a reference to it on my Blog. The challenging thing is, this is a great tool but you have to know about it first to then realise it!. If you like Group Policies, then you will...(read more)

Fine Grain Password Policies (FGPP)

mempson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:38:00 GMT

Hi, Having played with FGPP's recently at Teched, I figured that it would be good to publish the attributes that are required to create one and their value types. The attributes required for creating a fine grain password policy. msDS-PasswordSettingsPrecendence...(read more)

Installing WSUS nightmares!

mempson — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:25:00 GMT

Hi, I was installing WSUS v3.1.6001.65 and the installation kept failing just as it was copying files, the error I was getting was quite a strange one in the installation logs: An exception occurred during the Install phase. System.FormatException: Input...(read more)

RDP Ports

mempson — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:59:01 GMT

Hi all, I know this is an old tip but I needed it last week and figured that I should keep it on my blog. I was trying to change the default port of my terminal services so that I could make it a little harder for my users if they try and bypass my web...(read more)

Sponsor Jane Lewis

mempson — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:53:00 GMT

Hi all, My good friend and colleague Jane is off to Madagascar for a charity cycle ride, please support here by clicking on the following link: https://secure.justgiving.com/rss/GetFundraisingBadge.asp?eventgivinggroupid=1336885&from=UKSponsorExit...(read more)

2008 interesting links

mempson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:22:00 GMT

If you are feeling a little limited in information about Windows 2008, check out the following featured components: · AD DS: Restartable Active Directory Domain Services Windows 2008 introduced new capabilities to start or stop directory services running...(read more)

Virtualising servers

mempson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:20:00 GMT

Hi All, I have started collecting a list of whitepapers based upon virtualisation of domain controllers and services, I just figured that you may find these of use! KB897615 Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization...(read more)

Exchange 2007 IS failure Oddity

mempson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:09:00 GMT

Hi all, I manage a local schools infrastructure in my spare time and they had this strange little issue: After a power outage, the information store on my Exchange 07 SP1 server (running Windows 2008) would not start. All other services were running ok...(read more)

Manual Connection objects in Active Directory

mempson — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 18:40:00 GMT

Hi All, I had a question today that I wanted to get to the bottom of, it is an old question but as I obviously forgot the answer in detail, I had to find it. :) The queston was "How can I tell if a connection object is manual or not?" The first obvious...(read more)

RDP to Windows 2008

mempson — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:05:00 GMT

Hi all, I have installed a Windows 2008 server into my Windows 2003 domain, I then enabled RDP on my Windows 2008 server verified that I could connect from my Vista client on the network. While working from home, I quickly found out that I could not RDP...(read more)

Windows Server 2008 Core Quick Reference

mempson — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 03:38:00 GMT

This month I have been setting up my first Windows 2008 core server to go into a production environment. It has been a very interesting experience as I was expecting a straight forward process but ran into a few challenges. What with some vendor specific...(read more)