Why my Domain Password Policy Not Applying?

Back in 2009 I published a very popular article "The Low-Down on Password Policies" which has been viewed by thousands of IT Profe...

Read More

Exchange 2013 - Could not find any available Global Catalog in forest

I was contracted to redesign a companies AD Sites and Services Topology - it was never setup correctly and despite being a 500 user organisa...

Read More

Common DCDIAG Error with NCSecDesc

When running a DCDiag on 2008 or 2008 R2 domain controllers, it is very common to see the following error when running a dcdiag.exe. Startin...

Read More

Active Directory Topology Diagrammer Error

I'm running Windows 10 with Visio 2016 (both x64 builds).  I needed to draw out the topology from a customers Active Directory domain ho...

Read More

Active Directory Issues - Network Drives Not Mapping

A customer of mine raised an issue in regards network drives not being mapped for users.  This includes drives mapped via Group Policy and H...

Read More

Howto Decrypting an Active Directory Password

In this post I will show a tool which makes decrypting Active Directory passwords easy.  It is important to note decrypting highly secure pa...

Read More

How to Remove SID History from Active Directory Object

In this blog post I'm going to show you how to remove the SIDHistory from an object in Active Directory after a domain migration.  If yo...

Read More

Test Application for Group Policy Software Installation Troubleshooting

Sometimes when diagnosing problems with Group Policy software deployment, it is good to try a different application to rule out issues with ...

Read More

Problems When Upgrading your domain and forest functional level from 2003 to 2008 R2

A customer of mine upgraded their Domain Functional Level (DFL) and Forest Functional Level (FFL) to Windows Server 2008 R2 yesterday.  Toda...

Read More

Powershell Find and Replace the Remote Desktop Services Profile

A customer of mine has configured all roaming user profiles on a Remote Desktop Services environment through the user account in Active Dire...

Read More

Force SYSVOL Replication with File Replication Service (FRS)

As an administrator you may make a group policy change on the domain controller running the PDC emulator and you want this change to be repl...

Read More

What is DNS Devolution?

I came across this new buzz word when studying to upgrade my MCITP: EA to MCSE: Server Infrastructure.  This is a terminology I have never c...

Read More

Making DNS GlobalNames Zone Available to Other Forests

In large complex forests with multiple domains, the DNS Suffix search list can be extensive and can result in DNS name resolution failing.  ...

Read More

What is the krbtgt account in Active Directory?

The KRBTGT account is a user account which resides inside the domain users container in every Active Directory domain.  This service account...

Read More

"Try Next Closest Site" Group Policy Setting

In a previous post I wrote about how the DC Locator component of Windows locates a domain controller.  This post can be found on the followi...

Read More

How to Enable Group Policy Debugging on Windows 7 / 8 Clients

In Windows XP / 2003 there was a very useful log file called "Userenv.log" which was located under %Systemroot%\Debug\UserMode\Use...

Read More

ODBC SQL Server Driver - Cannot Generate SSPI context

On the weekend I responded to an emergency callout regarding a custom Microsoft Access front end application not being able to talk to the b...

Read More

Naming Information cannot be located because: The directory or file cannot be created.

I just added the first Windows Server 2012 R2 domain controller to a 2008 Active Directory domain at a customer.  As soon as I added the fir...

Read More

Enterprise Certificate Authority Pushing Old Certificates through Active Directory

A new public key infrastructure was deployed on Windows Server 2012 R2 consisting of two certificate authorities.  For security reasons and ...

Read More

Cannot manage Active Directory Certificate Services

On a new Windows Server 2012 R2 server after installing the Active Directory Certificate Authority role, you may experience the following er...

Read More