Brian Desmond's Blog

EDUCAUSE 2009

2009-10-28T17:32:00Z

I'll be at EDUCAUSE next week in Denver. Come say hello if you'll be there too - I'll be at Booth #565 Wednesday and Thursday all day. Read More......(read more)

Visiting Active Directory Users Group UK – October 29th

2009-10-11T02:30:00Z

So if you're somewhere around London, I'll be speaking at the UK Active Directory Users Group. I've promised Mark Parris a deck on Active Directory Design topics, plus we'll talk about whatever else comes up. Details available here - http Read More......(read more)

How to Sysprep in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7

2009-10-04T20:42:00Z

About eighteen months ago, I blogged about how to run Sysprep for Windows Server 2008 and this has turned out to be the most popular article on this site by a long shot, so I figured I'd update it for Windows Server 2008 R2 (and Windows 7). If you Read More......(read more)

BlackBerry Administration Service Error

2009-09-29T03:25:00Z

If you get a "The request could not be completed" each time you access the BlackBerry Administration Service component in the BES5 administration website, make sure your service account password is not greater than 32 characters in length. Mine Read More......(read more)

TEC EMEA 2009

2009-09-06T01:09:00Z

I'll be presenting at TEC again at their EMEA show in Berlin in about a week. Hope to see you there. Read More......(read more)

SimplePatch – My Patching Tool

2009-09-06T00:43:00Z

I've been working on this VBScript on and off for a few years now. The purpose of the script is very simple. It installs security patches and other hotfixes on a server. Over the years the tool has been updated and improved primarily by me as well Read More......(read more)

Looking for Rogue User Objects in Active Directory

2009-08-30T04:00:00Z

I had this problem I needed to solve earlier today which involved going through about 115,000 users and determining which ones existed in the source of record (some tables in an Oracle database). There's a bunch of ways to go about this, but, I settled Read More......(read more)

Baseline Registry Settings for new Domain Controllers

2009-08-01T16:15:00Z

I have a list of baseline registry settings which I put on any new domain controller. I thought I'd share the VB Script below which sets all these as well as enables some performance counters. Many of the settings are applicable outside of a Domain Read More......(read more)

McAfee EPO Agent Deployment Logs

2009-07-13T23:34:00Z

When McAfee EPO fails to push an agent out, the only information you get is that the task "Failed". This isn't really useful at all of course. Thus the trick is to go on your EPO server in %ProgramFiles%\McAfee\ePolicy Orchestrator\db\Logs Read More......(read more)

DPM June Rollup

2009-07-12T04:46:00Z

FYI if you use Data Protection Manager (DPM), the predictably regular rollup for June is up, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970867 . This gets you to 2.0.8844. The bits are available without a call to PSS if you haven't got Premier portal access Read More......(read more)

McAfee Troubleshooting Tip - CmdAgent

2009-07-11T21:09:00Z

If you're trying to troubleshoot McAfee EPO agents, there's a handy tool I recently discovered with the help of a friend. If you go in %ProgramFiles%\McAfee\Common Framework, launch cmdagent /s. You'll get the handy UI pictured below. With Read More......(read more)

McAfee and SMTP Traffic

2009-06-29T19:07:00Z

I've been chasing after an issue with a new Exchange deployment not sending any outbound mail. When you telnet to port 25 on any SMTP server it just fails straight away as if there's a firewall or something in between. I finally got a network Read More......(read more)

Windows 2008 Schema Update - INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS

2009-06-12T23:20:00Z

If you're trying to import an LDIF file with some schema changes on a Windows Server 2008 (or Vista) machine and it bails with an access denied error and an INSUFF_ACCESS_RIGHTS messag, first make sure your account is in the Schema Admins group. Second Read More......(read more)

Windows Firewall Rules for Data Protection Manager

2009-06-07T20:24:00Z

I've had the pleasure of trying to reverse engineer the firewall requirements DPM has since they've declined to document any of this in a useful fashion. My experience so far is that this product does something very slick with Exchange and brings Read More......(read more)

Editing Group Policies without ADUC or GPMC

2009-06-07T09:21:00Z

Under Windows Server 2003 (and 2000), Active Directory Users and Computers was always available by just launching dsa.msc. From there you could use the legacy Group Policy management interface if you didn't have the GPMC loaded. Windows Server 2008 Read More......(read more)

Upgrading Anti-Virus Rules for Windows Server 2008 Domain Controllers

2009-06-07T03:50:00Z

KB article 822158 does a good job covering all of the antivirus exclusions for Windows machines as well as for domain controllers in particular. If you're upgrading domain controllers to Windows Server 2008 or better, be sure to update your anti-virus Read More......(read more)

McAfee EPO Setup SQL Failure

2009-06-07T03:11:00Z

If you're trying to install McAfee EPO (ePolicy Orchestrator) 4.0 and setup is failing when it tries to connect to your SQL Server with a variety of worthless errors, be sure that the server name you specify matches the result of this SQL query exactly Read More......(read more)

Exchange Databases Fail to Mount with 0x97E

2009-06-07T03:01:00Z

If you run into a scenario where your Exchange databases are failing to mount with either of these errors, first reference this Technet article . Assuming that doesn't apply then manually start the System Attendant (MSExchangeSA) service on the machine Read More......(read more)

Resuming a Failed Exchange 2007 Setup

2009-06-06T21:04:00Z

If you've ever had Exchange 2007 setup fail partially, you've probably noticed that some of the components (maybe even the one it failed during) show up as installed, but, if you run the ExBPA (Best Practices Analyzer), it will probably complain Read More......(read more)

VMWare Workstation – Guest Window Sizing

2009-05-23T20:10:00Z

I recently discovered that VMWare Workstation has a couple of options on the View menu which will dynamically adjust the screen resolution of a guest to match the window on the host. If you've ever had a window looking like this and have tried to Read More......(read more)