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Goodbye Windows 2000
On April 9, 1999 the first Windows 2000 Active Directory domain went online in Redmond Washington. Microsoft’s first truly enterprise operating system had been born. After 11 years and countless...
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No Friday mail sack
This week has been hecklacious and I did not find time for the Sack. Actually I’m still in the office at 8:15PM on a Friday with no end in sight. I might be able to pull off a “Sunday Mail Sack”. Or...
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Service Pack 1 Beta out for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
Ned here again. You may have missed this on Monday, but the Beta version of Service Pack 1 for Win7/2008R2 was publically released. Besides offering the usual bevy of hotfixes and security update...
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Friday Mail Sack: Saturday Edition
Ned here. As you may have noticed, it is not Friday. You may also have noticed that this post is awesome and packed with many weeks of delayed content goodness. This notice may extend to the fact that...
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New Directory Services Content 7/18-7/24
Sorry we weren’t able to get you this content reporting for a bit. We changed over to a new publishing system internally and it took some time to get the reporting updated. KB Number Title 2266373 ADMT...
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Post-Graduate AD Studies
Hello world. I was out of the office late last week so there was no mail sack; Jonathan pretended like he was going to do one but he lied. He’ll try to claim that things got “busy” and there were...
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Friday Mail Sack: Newfie from the Grave Edition
Heya, Ned here again. Since this another of those catch up mail sacks, there’s plenty of interesting stuff to discuss. Today we talk NSPI, DFSR, USMT, NT 4.0 (!!!), Win2008/R2 AD upgrades, Black Hat...
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New DNS and AD DS BPA’s released (or: the most accurate list of DNS...
Hi folks, Ned here again. We’ve released another wave of Best Practices Analyzer rules for Windows Server 2008 / R2, and if you care about Directory Services you care about these: AD DS rules update...
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New Directory Services Content 7/25-7/31
KB Articles Number Title 2253680 Crypt32 8 events continuously reported on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, or Windows XP Blogs Post-Graduate AD Studies - Ned Pyle Friday Mail Sack: Newfie...
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Friday Mail Sack: Delicious Ranch Dressing Edition
Hello Earthlings, Ned here again with this week’s interesting conversations within Microsoft DS support. Today we talk DFSR, ILM, DFSN + VPNs, DNS, group expansion, Applocker, and friggin’ huge files....
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AskDS is 0.03 Centuries Old Today
Three years ago today the AskDS site published its first post and had its first commenter. In the meantime we’ve created 455 articles and we’re now ranked 6th in all of TechNet’s blogs, behind AskPerf,...
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Using AD Recycle Bin to restore deleted DNS zones and their contents in...
Ned here again. Beginning in Windows Server 2008 R2, Active Directory supports an optional AD Recycle Bin that can be enabled forest-wide. This means that instead of requiring a System State backup and...
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Friday Mail Sack: Mostly Edge Case Edition
Hello all, Ned here again with this week’s conversations between AskDS and the rest of the world. Today we talk Security, ADWS, FSMO upgrades, USMT, and why “Web 2.0 Internet” is still a poisonous...
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New Directory Services Content 8/8-8/14
KB Articles We have quite a few KB articles this week, so I would like to point out that some of these articles may be updates to existing content and not new. We are working to get the reporting...
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Fine-Grained Password Policy and “Urgent Replication”
Hi folks, Ned here again. Today I discuss the so-called “urgent replication” of AD, specifically around Fine-Grained Password Policies. Some background If you’ve read the excellent guide on how AD...
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Friday Mail Sack: Scooter Edition
Hi folks, Ned here again. It’s that time where we look back on the more interesting questions and comments the DS team got this week. Today we talk about FRS, AD Users and Computers, Load-Balancers,...
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Moving Your Organization from a Single Microsoft CA to a Microsoft...
Hi, folks! Jonathan here again, and today I want to talk about what appears to be an increasingly common topic: migrating from a single Windows Certification Authority (CA) to a multi-tier hierarchy....
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New Directory Services Content 8/15-8/21
KB Articles Only one new KB article of interest this week: Number Title 2385108 Accessing a folder under a mapped network drive to a Distributed File System Namespace (DFSN) folder target may fail on...
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Forcing Afterhours User Logoffs
Mike here and today I want to answer a common customer request—how to force users to logoff at the end of the day. The scenario requires a bit of an explanation, so let’s get started. Let’s recognize...
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Don’t mess about with USMT’s included manifests!
Ned here. Today I talk about the importance of the included USMT component manifests and how things can get gross when they are not available to Scanstate and Loadstate. Here’s you You are using USMT...
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