IT Blog

I've tried to virtualize one of my physical servers. I have no problems doing this via Disk2vhd or Acronis Backup&Restore on many machines till now. For one of IBM servers I couldn't do this. After trying many methods of making copy of the C:\ drive, nothing worked. I've always get the BSOD saying: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. I knew that it was caused by the driver problem, but I thought that it's a rather IDE driver ( server has had SCSI disks) which was not included in my system. After adding registry entries, this didn't help too. After some more research taken, I find out that the real problem was with OSA IPMI Driver. After uninstalling it on the physical server, restarting it and making new image by disk2vhd, virtual machine started correctly!

How to export users from selected OU and it's subtree using powershell? Get-ADUser -filter * -SearchScope Subtree -SearchBase "OU=Users,OU=Company,DC=Contoso,DC=com"|select-object givenname,surname,samaccountname |export-csv c:\temp\Company_Users.csv

Presented applications was tested using Microsoft Windows 2012 Hyper-V, Windows Hyper-V 2012R2 and Windows 8.1. For the most part they act identically on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012. Microsoft wanting to remain a major player in the virtualization market, provides a free version of its operating system, Windows Server - Hyper-V Server 2012 and 2012 R2. Hyper-V Server is a Core system version, without graphical interface (GUI). This makes it faster and run happily with fewer resources, leaving the computing power and storage space for virtual machines. On the hypervisor (the control unit of Hyper-V) we could run virtual machines which we can secure by creating backup copies. Ways to achieve this objective are few. With a free operating system, we can also use the free applications, though they do not have very powerful capabilities, they does meet the basic tasks to secure a copy of machine in the event of failure or the need to restor

If you don't want to wait for dirsync to operate within its interval, you could force it to make instant synchronization. To do this, follow the procedure: 1.Run Powershell 2.Go to the directory where you have installed dirsync tool. In my case it was: Program Files\Windows Azure Active Directory Sync 3.Run the script: .\DirSyncConfigShell.psc1 4.In new window which will appear, run  Start-OnlineCoexistenceSync The directory has been synchronized.

After fresh installation of Windows Server domain controller you could see that you have no winlogon.log file which is useful to debugging AD gpo's. For example when you need to troubleshot SceCli events. Event ID 1202 tells you to use : FIND /I "Cannot find"  %SYSTEMROOT%\Security\Logs\winlogon.log But, hey! There are no winlogon.log file! This is by design :). To create it, go to regedit and track following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\GPExtensions\{827D319E-6EAC-11D2-A4EA-00C04F79F83A} Click the key  ExtensionDebugLevel and enter 2 as a Data. After refreshing AD policies with gpupdate you should see your winlogon.log file

Sometimes, when you're trying to stop Windows service, it shows stopping and actually don't stop. You need to force it to stop. First query for service PID: sc queryex SERVICENAME Then kill the process using tskill taskkill /f /pid PID

After enabling Active Directory Recycle Bin in Server 2008R2 you can recover deleted AD object. But you need to track it fiirst. When you don't remember where you deleted object resided, use this powershell command to recover AD object. (replace objectlastnamehere with the name of your object) Get-ADObject -SearchBase "CN=Deleted Objects,DC=domain,DC=domain" -ldapFilter:"(msDs-lastKnownRDN= objectlastnamehere )" –IncludeDeletedObjects –Properties lastKnownParent |Restore-ADObject

When you delete user account from AD and not delete mailbox itself, it is possible to reconnect this mailbox to the other user. First find in which database this mailbox exists. If you remember only name of the user, you can use -match operator: Get-MailboxDatabase|Get-MailboxStatistics|where {$_.displayname -match "Kowalski"}|fl displayname,mailboxguid Then you should get MailboxGuid you need. Next, select or create mail disabled user and point it with connect-mailbox command Connect-Mailbox MailboxGuidhere -database databasename -user newuser

When I've tried to use Connect-MSolService to manage users in Office365 from powershell it turned out that I can't use this cmd-let. I thought that I didn't install some of components probably, but this was not the case. I'm in the middle of migration from on-premises to the cloud. I have not finished configuring main domain and I've tried to connect to Office365 with the main domain which MX record still points to on-premises server. If you need to manage user accounts in Office365 and you didn't moved your domain the cloud, use the WWW panel(EAC). After migration I still cannot use MSolService module. I've found the right reason: the module was in System32 path folder, which is used by 32bit systems. After moving it to the same place in SysWow64 path, module has been loaded correctly. So, the really fix is: Copy folders MSOnline and MSOnlineExtended from C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowershell\v1.0\Modules to C:\Windows\SysWow64\WindowsPowershell\v1.0\Modu

Set Proxy settings using GPO We have many computers with Windows8 now but 2008R2 server which doesn't like anything newer than Internet Explorer 9. Setting proxy for IE8 and IE9 was simple with Interet Explorer .adm files. You can use Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) for deploying customized Internet Explorer and it works, but for me works only if you deploy full installation with only changed proxy settings. It was very weird to me, so I searched another way. Finally, my thoughts were directed to Windows registry. Everyone nows that if something is hidden from your eyes you can set it through the registry. And this is it, keys that set your path for proxy .pac file! For adding proxy address: reg add "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings" /v AutoConfigURL /t REG_SZ /d "http://yourproxyaddress.here/proxy.pac" /f For removing proxy address: reg del "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings" /

SP1 for Exchange 2013 has been released. You can download it   h e r e Some known issues are now fixed: 2860242  HTML format is lost after saving as an MSG file in Exchange 2013 2900076  Mailbox quota warning message uses an incorrect language in Exchange Server 2013 2910199  "Reply all by IM" chat window displays seven recipients in Outlook Web App 2913999  Meeting request body and instructions are lost in delegate's auto-forwarded meeting request 2918655  Microsoft.Exchange.Servicehost.exe crashes after you enable FIPS 2918951  Users cannot access public folders after you upgrade to Exchange Server 2013 Cumulative Update 3 2925281  Outlook connectivity issue if SSLOffloading is "True" in Exchange 2013 2925544  Empty ExternalURL value for ActiveSync virtual directory after build-to-build upgrade of Exchange Server 2013 2927708  Resource mailboxes that are created by EAC will not be updated by policies in Exchange Server 2013 2928748  Default from delegate'