In this article I am restoring from windows system image backup to a VMWare virtual machine. This is being done to test the validity of the backups for a customer. The backups were performed to a USB disk connected to the original server running Windows 2008 (not R2). Pre-Requisites You will need the windows 2008 [...]

In this article I am setting up folder redirection to redirect a users “my documents”, “desktop” and “favourites” folders. In this example I am doing this for a terminal server. Step 1 – Create Shared Folder. Create a folder on the server. E.g. e:\redirected. Set the share Permissions as shown below. Everyone – full control [...]

  Pre-requisites Run and dcdiag and netdiag on the existing Windows 2003 domain controller to check its health You will need the Windows 2008 r2 DVD Any Windows 2000 DC must be at SP4 You must have a domain administrator level account with schema admin rights – confirm this in active directory The domain functional [...]

This article explains how to setup a shared printer on windows 2008 r2 using a 32 bit driver. You would do this if you wanted to make a shared printer available to 32bit clients such as Windows XP. This will work in most cases but not all. If you try to add the 32 bit [...]

This article explains to setup Windows Firewall exceptions to apply to PCs via Group Policy. In this example I am using SBS but you can apply the same logic to other windows verions. You will need to either edit the existing, or create a new Firewall GPO. Specifiy a program Exclusion Right click and choose [...]

In the below example I am creating a “lockdown” GPO to restrict user access to the Terminal or Citrix server. This uses the loopback feature of group policy to apply user restrictions to an individual computer. Step 1 – Create GPO If you haven’t already I recommend creating a dedicated OU for your Citrix or [...]

  Below is a list of control panel applets names and shortcuts I have found. These are for Windows Vista, 7, 2008 and 2008 R2.   Add or Remove Programs – appwiz.cpl Administrative Tools – control admintools Add Hardware – hdwwiz.cpl Appearance Settings – control color Audio Devices and Sound Themes – mmsys.cpl Bluetooth Devices [...]

  When trying to activate a Windows server 2008 or Windows 7 machine you may get the error below: Key management services (KMS) could not be located in domain name system (DNS), please have your system administrator verify that a KMS is published correctly in DNS. This error occurs when windows tries to activate a [...]

A feature of Windows 2008, a global name zone can be used to allow for single-label hostnames to be used throughout a forest. It is particularly useful when phasing out WINS or when there are name resolution issues.   To setup a global name zone on the DNS server open an elevated cmd prompt and [...]

The Windows 2008 feature – Password Settings Object (PSO) allows password settings to be applied to Users or Groups – as opposed to OUs. Note – the domain functional level must be windows 2008   Step 1 – Create Password Settings Object   A PSO is created via adsiedit.msc. Go to start – run – [...]