The Life of Brian : Scripting

Recycling Active Directory Trash with the AD Recycle Bin

BrianM — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:20:00 GMT

Hopefully some of you have been playing with Server 2008 R2 while it has been in Beta . One of the features I’m looking forward to most is the AD Recycle Bin. Yes you heard me correct. We now have an easy method for restoring accidently deleted...(read more)

Active Directory Recycle Bin PowerShell Scripts

BrianM — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:47:00 GMT

I just found out that there is an Active Directory PowerShell Blog run by Microsoft’s AD PowerShell team. I gathered that info from reading up on Jason’s post . Its amazing how much info you can get from reading other people’s blogs…now on...(read more)

New PowerShell Blog

BrianM — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:08:00 GMT

Just saw that a good friend and former co-worker FINALLY has a blog up. Jason’s blog is geared toward PowerShell and it already has some nice posts as well as some videos on PowerShell. I’m so far behind on the PowerShell curve but i’m sure...(read more)

How to Remove a Failed or Offline DC

BrianM — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:13:00 GMT

I’ve seen this issue come up time and time again. Some administrator decided to remove an old DC from the network but forgot to remove it from Active Directory or the DC has entered a failed state and cannot be recovered from. In a perfect...(read more)

Script That Displays Group Membership and Active Directory Location

BrianM — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:53:00 GMT

The following code can be run to display the group membership of an Active Directory group and also let you know each member’s LDAP Distinguished Name. The output will name the text file the group name and will include all the members and their...(read more)

How to Search for an Email Address in Active Directory

BrianM — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 21:44:00 GMT

From time to time I’ve had to figure out which user account has a specific email address. Actually its more like finding who has the “reallycoolemailaccount@company.com ” so another “more senior” person can get it. Well if you work in a smaller...(read more)

Admin's Guide to Server Core Commands

BrianM — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 16:50:00 GMT

Repost from AdminPrep.com…I will be moving several of the articles over to this blog. Before all this starts, credit must go where credit is due. I did not come up with all of the info within this article. A lot of people have felt my pain and...(read more)

Export Email Addresses from a Distribution Group

BrianM — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:11:00 GMT

One thing that really bugs me is there is no easy way to grab some email addresses from a distribution group. Usually I end up expanded the group to list all the users and then I have to go to the Outlook properties of each user to view the email...(read more)

Administrator's Guide to Server Core Commands

BrianM — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:25:00 GMT

Server Core has been a popular topic for me over the last year as it is something completly different from what i'm used to working on. I love the GUI but I know there are times when I have to do things via the command line. Well if you are going...(read more)

Active Directory Health Checks for Domain Controllers

BrianM — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:35:00 GMT

I've just written a small article on the common steps that I perform when doing health checks on domain controllers. AdminPrep is not up right now so I'll post the health check stuff here. I would love for you to come back here and let me know...(read more)

DNSCMD Reference

BrianM — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 18:09:00 GMT

Fellow Directory Services MVP Mark Minasi has a great table that shows a ton DNS commands using dnscmd. For those of you getting ready to use Server Core here is yet another list of commands that will come in handy. All I can say is WOW!!! Function DNSCMD...(read more)

Windows Server 2008 Sysprep.xml help

BrianM — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:41:00 GMT

My friend Norm asked if I could post this sample Sysprep.xml file as he couldn't find anything online yet to really help him with Server 2008 and Sysprep. If you have any questions or feedback just leave it in the comments and I'll be sure to...(read more)

Script to Determine Members of a Group

BrianM — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:29:21 GMT

Back in February I needed a script to display the groups a user belonged too. Today I was asked about the opposite. I needed to find a way to list the members of a group. Thankfully I blogged about the first issue in February because that led me to the...(read more)

How to Display the Groups a User is a Member of

BrianM — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 21:49:17 GMT

I've been trying to work more and more with scripts and today I'm sharing a simple but useful one. How to display the groups a user account is a member of. To display a user's groups via the command prompt you need to use the dsget command with the -memberof...(read more)

Viewing Hidden Mailboxes from ADUC

BrianM — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:34:00 GMT

It has been almost a year since I’ve worked with Exchange…and the old adage is if you don’t use it, you lose it. My first experience with that was when I lost all my UNIX knowledge after years of not using it. Looks to me as if Exchange...(read more)

Stoping and Disabling Services

BrianM — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 23:11:00 GMT

Another day another task… Today I needed to stop and disable the Print Spooler and Telephony services on about 40 servers. Sure if I got paid by the hour I could just log on to each individual server and do it manually but I don’t get paid...(read more)