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NTLMv2 or not NTLMv2, that is the question.
Enabling NTLMv2 is a project always fraught with challenges, mostly due to the lack of visibility into exactly which authentication protocol is being used by a client machine. Management often is not...
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Performance Optimization Philosophy
Optimizing performance is not just about making things run faster, it is about making them run appropriately fast based on perception and cost.Several questions may be posed at this junction:Why does...
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Identifying Stale User and Computer Accounts
Using AD to determine whether or not people are still working for the company and are allowed to logon to the systems is not the ideal, and account management should happen based on knowing what...
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Trials and Tribulations of Learning the Vista Automated Installation...
I've pretty much come to the end of my initial learning curve on how to automate Vista installations using the AIK. There is some great documentation out there on how to execute the specific tasks...
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Idiosyncratic Windows Deployment Server Vista Setup Options
I found getting both of the below topics to work the way I wanted in Windows Deployment Server (WDS) to be surprisingly tricky and fraught with unexpected results that took me quite a while to figure...
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Little Shop of Drivers
I take all my drivers and put them in %DRIVERS_ROOT_PATH% (see batch code below) and the install images I want to mess with in %FILES_ROOT_PATH%. One folder per driver, the script iterates through...
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Managing netbootGuid
The attribute on AD computer objects netbootGuid is very important to allowing some deployment options (RIS and WDS) to locate the computer object the hardware belongs to. Unfortunately certain...
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Getting the most out of the redundancy native to AD when making applications...
Many customers ask how they can best configure applications so that the applications can take full advantage of the fault tolerance built into Active Directory (AD). While there is no one right...
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Return of the Little Shop of Drivers
It's been a while since I've posted. Just over a year actually... I have this long list of half started posts, but just somehow can never seem to find the time to finish them up. However, with the...
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Cost Efficiency of LED (or CFL) Light Bulbs
This week I worked on a project with one of my Microsoft peers and I helped him install some energy usage monitoring equipment in his house. Without being specific about the solution, I must say...
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More robust options for locating DCs
While this is a blog on Technet and reasonably should be targeted towards infrastructure topics, I am including a little bit of development context in relation to Active Directory (AD). I share this...
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LED By Excitement
Until yesterday, I haven’t needed to replace a light bulb in my house since I wrote the post with my analysis the cost efficiencies of LED vs. Incandescent bulbs. Historically though I’ve tended to...
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Making the World Greener One Monitor at a Time - Reset SCOM Monitors Enmasse
Updated 10/19/2014 – Put the script on TechNet Gallery. Link: ResetAllMonitorsOfASpecificType.ps1Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of tuning a new SCOM implementation. Like all new implementations of...
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My Latencies Are Too High!
Yes it has been a VERY long while since I posted. The list of what I want to post keeps getting longer and longer, as does the queue of pending requests waiting for access to me. As a result of the...
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Troubleshooting SCCM Software Update Deployment Package distribution due to...
I have SCCM running in my lab and ran into an issue on several occasions where the Deployment Package I created for the Software Updates started to error out on when updating the Distribution Points....
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MOMCertImport – Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
ContextCore Reference: Authentication and Data Encryption for Windows Computers in Operations Manager 2007Link to the script: http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/MOMCertImport-c3e7093bNote: While...
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Simple way to temporarily bypass PowerShell execution policy
One of the PowerShell challenges challenges I am constantly confronted with is dealing with running scripts on systems is blocked due to the security policy. This is particularly cumbersome while...
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WSUS Installation Script
For a number of reasons I have to stand up WSUS servers relatively frequently, including that I keep breaking my Web Server. Since I couldn’t find anything handy that did a good job of automating the...
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Managing Windows Server Role Settings via System Center Configuration Manager
ContextEven though I exclusively work on the infrastructure side, I operate under the theory that if I do something more than once, I need to automate it. As can be seen from the blog, I am spending...
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One-liner PowerShell to set IP Address, DNS Servers, and Default Gateway
A fun part about configuring servers is that many servers still have static IP addresses. The challenge is losing connectivity to the server when the configuration change is made. Even with remote...
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