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MSDTC Exits on PDCe Transfer

One of my colleagues reported an issue at a customer this past weekend where every time he transferred FSMO roles, MOM would report that the MS DTC (distribution transaction coordinator) service had terminated unexpectedly on all the domain controllers Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 05, 2008 10:44 PM by Brian Desmond | 1 Comments
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Authoritative Restores

So I'm working on a project which involves some documentation around disaster recovery and I flagged a word in the text for the technical reviewers to suggest a better word (BCD40). The feedback I got really made me laugh: Share this post: email it! | Read More...
Posted Saturday, July 12, 2008 5:02 PM by Brian Desmond | 0 Comments
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Update on the MCSE Upgrade

I was complaining (more or less) several weeks ago about the amount of work it was going to take to upgrade my MCSE to the latest version. The good news is I went and did the Windows end of things and now I'm apparently an "MCITP: Enterprise Administrator". Read More...
Posted Friday, July 11, 2008 2:32 AM by Brian Desmond | 1 Comments

At TechEd Next Week

I'll be down in Orlando at TechEd IT Pro next week. I'm working a booth of some fashion in the Technical Learning Center most of the week I'm told, so feel free to drop in and say hello if you're in town as well. Share this post: email it! | digg it! Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 04, 2008 10:28 PM by Brian Desmond | 1 Comments

Updated Error Code Lookup Tool

The Microsoft error code lookup tool (which no Windows admin should be without) got updated today: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=be596899-7bb8-4208-b7fc-09e02a13696c&displaylang=en&tm . While it says it's for Exchange, Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008 11:19 PM by Brian Desmond | 2 Comments

Group Policy Editor Shortcuts

I came across these shortcuts today for navigating the group policy editor and thought they'd be worth sharing. They're holdovers from Windows Explorer that also work in the GPO editor. If you press * while targeting a folder in the console, the folder Read More...
Posted Saturday, May 17, 2008 1:50 PM by Brian Desmond | 1 Comments
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Windows 2003 Forest Functional Level

Thought I'd post an informational post for folks who are moving an AD forest to Windows 2003 forest functional level (aka FFL2) as I realized today this piece of information might not be quite as well known as I might have thought. As an FYI, this change Read More...
Posted Friday, April 11, 2008 12:34 AM by Brian Desmond | 1 Comments
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At DEC This Week

I'm heading downtown in a bit for DEC 2008 and will be around all week. Please do say stop by and say hello and join in the conversations if you're there! If you're looking for suggestions on local things I can try and help since I'm from Chicago too. Read More...
Posted Sunday, March 02, 2008 1:50 PM by Brian Desmond | 0 Comments
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Active Directory Site Links – Naming & Costing

There are a few things that you really have to consider when you're setting up your site links – the naming convention, cost relative to the underlying WAN transport, frequency of replication, and schedule (that is when replication can even occur). Naming Read More...
Posted Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:04 PM by Brian Desmond | 2 Comments
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Attachment(s): Link Costs.xlsx

Script to Create Home Folders for OU

I thought I'd share the script attached at the end of this post as it's something I've seen requests for below. The script will take all of the users in a given OU (or really any subtree), and create a home folder for them and stamp the path and drive Read More...
Posted Thursday, April 26, 2007 8:14 AM by Brian Desmond | 2 Comments
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Attachment(s): CreateHomeFolders.zip

Dedicated Exchange Sites in Active Directory

A comment I received on a previous post on sites and subnets in Active Directory was "what benefit(s) does a dedicated Exchange site provide?". There's a couple things to consider here with the advent of Exchange 2007. The first is the great degree of Read More...
Posted Saturday, February 03, 2007 4:07 PM by Brian Desmond | 2 Comments

Subnet Definitions in Active Directory

One of the common misunderstandings I see working with organizations and their Active Directory deployments is with regard to subnet definitions in Active Directory. This discussion came up recently on the ActiveDir.org mailing list so I thought I would Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 30, 2007 11:00 AM by Brian Desmond | 6 Comments
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How to get the Windows 2003 Admin Tools Working on Vista

Out of the box, the Windows 2003 Adminpak tools do not run on Windows Vista. When they are loaded, MMC claims that "MMC could not create the snap-in.". This is due to some DLLs not being registered properly. To fix this, paste the following Read More...
Posted Tuesday, November 21, 2006 5:11 PM by Brian Desmond | 18 Comments
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How to Authenticate against Active Directory from a Cisco PIX

A few months ago I posted an article with steps to configure Windows IAS and Cisco IOS for authentication to Active Directory via RADIUS. I wanted to follow up on that with a quick overview of how to setup a PIX for management access authentication via Read More...
Posted Friday, October 27, 2006 5:24 PM by Brian Desmond | 5 Comments
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Manually Removing a Domain Controller from Active Directory

Another one from the questions I answer all the time on the newsgroups – what do I do when a domain controller is permanently failed and needs to be removed from Active Directory? The first thing to do is to make sure the DC is really gone – wipe it. Read More...
Posted Monday, October 09, 2006 10:33 AM by Brian Desmond | 2 Comments
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