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05 August 2008
MSDTC Exits on PDCe Transfer
One of my colleagues reported an issue at a customer this past weekend where every time he transferred FSMO roles, MOM would report that the MS DTC (distribution transaction coordinator) service had terminated unexpectedly on all the domain controllers... Read More...
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12 July 2008
Authoritative Restores
So I'm working on a project which involves some documentation around disaster recovery and I flagged a word in the text for the technical reviewers to suggest a better word (BCD40). The feedback I got really made me laugh: Share this post: email it... Read More...
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11 July 2008
Update on the MCSE Upgrade
I was complaining (more or less) several weeks ago about the amount of work it was going to take to upgrade my MCSE to the latest version. The good news is I went and did the Windows end of things and now I'm apparently an "MCITP: Enterprise... Read More...
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04 June 2008
At TechEd Next Week
I'll be down in Orlando at TechEd IT Pro next week. I'm working a booth of some fashion in the Technical Learning Center most of the week I'm told, so feel free to drop in and say hello if you're in town as well. Share this post: email... Read More...
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29 May 2008
Updated Error Code Lookup Tool
The Microsoft error code lookup tool (which no Windows admin should be without) got updated today: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=be596899-7bb8-4208-b7fc-09e02a13696c&displaylang=en&tm . While it says it's for Exchange... Read More...
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17 May 2008
Group Policy Editor Shortcuts
I came across these shortcuts today for navigating the group policy editor and thought they'd be worth sharing. They're holdovers from Windows Explorer that also work in the GPO editor. If you press * while targeting a folder in the console, the... Read More...
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11 April 2008
Windows 2003 Forest Functional Level
Thought I'd post an informational post for folks who are moving an AD forest to Windows 2003 forest functional level (aka FFL2) as I realized today this piece of information might not be quite as well known as I might have thought. As an FYI, this... Read More...
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02 March 2008
At DEC This Week
I'm heading downtown in a bit for DEC 2008 and will be around all week. Please do say stop by and say hello and join in the conversations if you're there! If you're looking for suggestions on local things I can try and help since I'm from... Read More...
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29 November 2007
Active Directory Site Links – Naming & Costing
There are a few things that you really have to consider when you're setting up your site links – the naming convention, cost relative to the underlying WAN transport, frequency of replication, and schedule (that is when replication can even occur... Read More...
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26 April 2007
Script to Create Home Folders for OU
I thought I'd share the script attached at the end of this post as it's something I've seen requests for below. The script will take all of the users in a given OU (or really any subtree), and create a home folder for them and stamp the path... Read More...
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03 February 2007
Dedicated Exchange Sites in Active Directory
A comment I received on a previous post on sites and subnets in Active Directory was "what benefit(s) does a dedicated Exchange site provide?". There's a couple things to consider here with the advent of Exchange 2007. The first is the great degree of... Read More...
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30 January 2007
Subnet Definitions in Active Directory
One of the common misunderstandings I see working with organizations and their Active Directory deployments is with regard to subnet definitions in Active Directory. This discussion came up recently on the ActiveDir.org mailing list so I thought I would... Read More...
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21 November 2006
How to get the Windows 2003 Admin Tools Working on Vista
Out of the box, the Windows 2003 Adminpak tools do not run on Windows Vista. When they are loaded, MMC claims that "MMC could not create the snap-in.". This is due to some DLLs not being registered properly. To fix this, paste the following commands into... Read More...
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27 October 2006
How to Authenticate against Active Directory from a Cisco PIX
A few months ago I posted an article with steps to configure Windows IAS and Cisco IOS for authentication to Active Directory via RADIUS. I wanted to follow up on that with a quick overview of how to setup a PIX for management access authentication via... Read More...
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09 October 2006
Manually Removing a Domain Controller from Active Directory
Another one from the questions I answer all the time on the newsgroups – what do I do when a domain controller is permanently failed and needs to be removed from Active Directory? The first thing to do is to make sure the DC is really gone – wipe it.... Read More...
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22 September 2006
How to Determine What Domain Controller Authenticated the User
A frequent question on the newsgroups is how do I know what domain controller logged me in? To find this out, open a command prompt and type "set logonserver". echo %logonserver% has the same functionality. This is an environment variable so... Read More...
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18 September 2006
Delegating Enable/Disable Account Rights in Active Directory
I answer this question a lot on the newsgroups - "How do I delegate enabling and disabling Active Directory accounts?". The long and short of it is you can't. More precisely you can't without delegating access to set a whole bunch of... Read More...
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17 September 2006
Active Directory GUI Tools on a Member Server
A useful tip I've found people tend not to know about is that the Active Directory GUI tools (AD Users and Computers, Sites and Services, etc) are installed on every Windows 2000 and 2003 server regardless of whether or not the server is a domain... Read More...
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15 September 2006
New Look for the Site
After a couple hours of customization, I activated a new theme for the BrianDesmond.com site. The old look was the same theme I had when I started a blog on weblogs.asp.net in 2003. I felt like it was kind of depressing to look at the old colors - there... Read More...
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22 August 2006
How to implement Windows Forms Based Authentication in ASP.Net
This is an updated version of an article I wrote in March 2003 for ASPAlliance. I corrected some minor errors and updated the code samples a bit. C# and VB.Net samples are both attached at the bottom of the page. Introduction The Windows authentication... Read More...
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