Today I got a call from a customer that was working on a Office 365 Project. As part of the Project they wanted to change the Exchange Email Address Policies to filter on the Company Name for each user. Only problem was that some of the users had a blank or misspelled Company name…Luckily, someone invented PowerShell so we started by pulling a list of all Company Names by running this command:Get-ADUser -Filter * -Properties Company | Group Company | Select Name,CountThe result was as expected… Too many company names. Misspelled Company Names and users with no company name specified…
Browsing: Active Directory
With the release of Windows 10, more and more customers are starting to move from the traditional KMS based activation model to Active Directory-based activation (ADBA). In a single domain environment, the setup process is really simple, and a complete step-by-step guide can be found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn613828.aspx. But if you’re using a multi domain setup, you might see this errors when you try to Activate online. In this specific scenario, we had the KMS server installed the child domain, and new servers in the forest root domain was activated using a MAK key. This is not supported if you want…
As a consultant and instructor I use my virtual labs every day for developing, testing and doing demos. My virtual lab has 2 Domain Controllers and and a member server for each role or version of a product that I need in my lab. Most of my member servers has a lot of snapshots, so I can “travel” back and forward in time if I need to test stuff over and over again. Or if I’m testing a beta product where I get get new builds, so I don’t need to configure all the pre-requirements over and over again. If…
From time to time I spend time on troubleshooting Active Directory and SYSVOL replication at my customers. The built in replication schedule are great, but some time it’s nice to force replication on all Domain Controllers to minimize the waiting time… This script will force an instant replication on all domain controllers. ReplicateAD.vbs Option Explicit Dim objDSE, strDN, objContainer, objChild, sCommand, WshShell Set objDSE = GetObject(“LDAP://rootDSE”) strDN = “OU=Domain Controllers,” & objDSE.Get(“defaultNamingContext”) Set objContainer = GetObject(“LDAP://” & strDN) sCommand = “%COMSPEC% /C ” Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject(“WScript.Shell”) objContainer.Filter = Array(“Computer”) For Each objChild In objContainer WshShell.Run(sCommand & “repadmin /syncall “…
The list of Active Directory Schema versions: Windows 2000 RTM = Schema version 13 Windows Server 2003 = Schema version 30 Windows Server 2003 R2 = Schema version 31 Windows Server 2008 = Schema version 44 Windows Server 2008 R2 = Schema version 47 Windows Server 2012 = Schema version 56 Windows Server 2012 R2 = Schema version 69 Windows Server 2016 = Schema version 87 Check the schema version in the Registry: HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesNTDSParameters<Schema Version>
Multiple Group Policy Preferences have been added to the Windows Server 2008 Group Policy Management Console (which are also available through the Remote Server Administration Toolset (RSAT) for Windows Vista SP1). Group Policy Preferences enable information technology professionals to configure, deploy, and manage operating system and application settings they previously were not able to manage using Group Policy. A few days ago Microsoft released a new version of the Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions. Microsoft Windows XP (x86): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e60b5c8f-d7dc-4b27-a261-247ce3f6c4f8&DisplayLang=en Microsoft Windows XP (x64): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=249c1aed-c1f1-4a0b-872e-ef0a32170625&DisplayLang=en Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (x86): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bfe775f9-5c34-44d0-8a94-44e47db35add&DisplayLang=en Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (x64): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=29e83503-7686-49f3-b42d-8e5ed23d5d79&DisplayLang=en For more information…
Here we are – Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions are now available for download. This is a cool thing bringing lot’s of Group Policy Power to admins around the world! The GPP CSEs are included in Windows Server 2008 RTM, but can now be downloaded for: Windows XP SP2+ (32/64 bit) Windows Server 2003 SP1+ (32/64 bit) Windows Vista RTM+ (32/64 bit) These are the links: GPP CSEs for Windows Vista (KB943729) GPP CSEs for Windows Vista x64 Edition (KB943729) GPP CSEs for Windows Server 2003 (KB943729) GPP CSEs for Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition (KB943729) GPP CSEs for…