Active Directory

I show you an easy way of wiping a disk using only built-in tools on a Windows computer ... [Read More]

Learn how to make the IPv4 address the preferred address on your Windows hosts ... [Read More]

Are you having troubles querying members of large AD groups? Here's a little trick how to get them ultra fast! ... [Read More]

An easy way to get the UserPrincipalName of the logged on user for scripts and automation tasks ... [Read More]

Find out which RBAC role you need to run a specific PowerShell cmdlet in Azure or on-prem ... [Read More]

A step-by-step guide to reanimate deleted Active Directory objects from their tombstone. This is the only method if Active Directory Recycle Bin is not activated in the domain ... [Read More]

Query deleted AD accounts or get a list of all removed AD users with PowerShell ... [Read More]

Do you have an older computer, with a traditional HDD on the slow side? Is that computer running the drive with 100% utilization, and the response time is super high, possibly 1000-5000ms? You might have tried to disable the Windows ... [Read More]

With certain network changes you might end up with nodes in your network having issues contacting other hosts outside of their subnet. A typical scenario is when the default gateway's IP is re-assigned to a new router and the old ... [Read More]

Ping sweeping is a basic technique to find active hosts on a network. You might be looking for a particular host in your infrastructure, like a network printer, or you simply want to assign a static IP to a new ... [Read More]

In a Windows domain it's very simple to check what users are currently logged in on a server or client computer, and remotely leg them out if their session is frozen or they simply need to be logged out ... [Read More]

This online converter calculates date and time from the Integer8 timestamp format that Microsoft Windows environments use. Also contains a PowerShell script, helping you to make the conversion yourself ... [Read More]

The following GetADGroup function will help to display all users who are a member of an AD or distribution group, no matter how deep they are located in nested structures ... [Read More]

A one-liner to generate passwords with PowerShell. Specify the length and the characters that builds up the passwords and off you go! ... [Read More]

If you read this article it's very likely you are having issues with a FSMO role master server. Let's jump right into the FSMO role seizing process ... [Read More]

You can transfer any FSMO roles with the Move-ADDirectoryServerOperationMasterRole command. See how ... [Read More]

In our earlier article we went through the history and the ins and outs of the FSMO roles. But how do we know if a FSMO server fails and cannot fulfil it's role? ... [Read More]

What is Active Directory? What is a Domain Controller? What are the FSMO roles and what are they exist and what happends when they fail? We seek answers to all these questions in this article ... [Read More]

This tool converts distinguised name values to canonical name format in a bulk. Add each DN-s in a new line to get the CN counterparts in the right column ... [Read More]

In this lab we take a look at triggering instant replication of both AD objects and their special subset: DNS zones ... [Read More]

Is Office365 still asking for 2FA for your global admin, even though MFA is disabled for all of your users?
This is because 'Security defaults' are enabled in your tenant. To disable it open the Azure portal: https://aad.portal.azure.com Under 'Azure Active ... [Read More]

After abandoning the 8.3 file name limitation (pre-Win95 all files had a max name length of 8 characters, and a 3-char long extension), the Windows Win32 API allowed whole file paths to be as long as 260 characters long. However, ... [Read More]

Have you ever bought a brand new SSD with 256GB on it's label, then when connecting it to a computer the storage space of only 240GB was showing? Were you taught in school that a 'kilobyte' is actually 1024 bytes, ... [Read More]

In this short guide we deploy a Windows-based SSTP server for clients. For details about the protocol and the way to deploy a linux-based implementation of the server that has auto-renewing SSL certificates, visit my guide HERE. Our test VM ... [Read More]

The quick way to get a user's SID or identify a SID if the username is unknown. First we use the command line to retrieve the reqested values, then a custom PowerShell function that can be used to get any ... [Read More]

Quick Cleanup List When disk is almost full there here is a quick list I usually go through to recover some free space:

1. Delete files from c:\windows\temp
2. Download and run TreeSize to see what uses up ... [Read More]

Our local diner, AlwaysHot Café hired us to build a mail server. They have a small network that consists of a switch and a firewall with a single static public IP. After discussing our options we decided to go with ... [Read More]

The task for today is to join a Microsoft Active Directory domain with our CentOS box. We use the sssd package to accomplish this, first we start with a basic CentOS installation, we go through the initial setup, then the ... [Read More]

If you desperately need an SSL certificate signed by a publicly trusted CA, and you want it for free, Let’s Encrypt is certainly an option. They are valid for 3 months, and even though linux boxes are equipped to request ... [Read More]

I'm sure you have faced a situation at some point when you needed to RDP in to a client machine but without any luck. That is because the computer must have not had the RDP connections enabled. Even though the ... [Read More]