Brian Desmond's Blog : Active Directory

MSDTC Exits on PDCe Transfer

Brian Desmond's Blog — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 03:44:00 GMT

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)

Authoritative Restores

Brian Desmond's Blog — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:02:00 GMT

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)

Update on the MCSE Upgrade

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:32:15 GMT

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)

At TechEd Next Week

Brian Desmond's Blog — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:28:31 GMT

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)

Updated Error Code Lookup Tool

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 30 May 2008 04:19:00 GMT

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)

Group Policy Editor Shortcuts

Brian Desmond's Blog — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:50:22 GMT

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)

Windows 2003 Forest Functional Level

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:34:00 GMT

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)

At DEC This Week

Brian Desmond's Blog — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:50:00 GMT

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)

Active Directory Site Links – Naming & Costing

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 03:04:00 GMT

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)

Script to Create Home Folders for OU

Brian Desmond's Blog — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:14:00 GMT

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)

Dedicated Exchange Sites in Active Directory

Brian Desmond's Blog — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:07:27 GMT

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)

Subnet Definitions in Active Directory

Brian Desmond's Blog — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:00:23 GMT

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)

How to get the Windows 2003 Admin Tools Working on Vista

Brian Desmond's Blog — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 23:11:07 GMT

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)

How to Authenticate against Active Directory from a Cisco PIX

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:24:39 GMT

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)

Manually Removing a Domain Controller from Active Directory

Brian Desmond's Blog — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 10:33:53 GMT

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)

How to Determine What Domain Controller Authenticated the User

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:50:00 GMT

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)

Delegating Enable/Disable Account Rights in Active Directory

Brian Desmond's Blog — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 21:56:00 GMT

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)

Active Directory GUI Tools on a Member Server

Brian Desmond's Blog — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 11:40:00 GMT

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)

New Look for the Site

Brian Desmond's Blog — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 16:32:00 GMT

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)

How to implement Windows Forms Based Authentication in ASP.Net

Brian Desmond's Blog — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:53:00 GMT

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)