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Showing posts from January, 2014

Locking workstations through GPO

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Using GPO to lock workstations after a period of inactivity should be standard behaviour in any organisation, but unfortunately the internet is littered with old information about how to do this. So, ignoring anything to do with screensavers, g o to: Computer Configuration\Policies\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options Set Interactive logon: Machine inactivity limit to whatever timeout period you require Amazing how long it took to find this. H/T:  MS Forum  and the guy who answered it  Deploy Happiness
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Windows SMTP Service Mailroot Folders

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It may be deprecated in Server 2012, but the built in SMTP service is still extremely useful and is likely to be around for some time yet. When used for bulk emails it's handy to be able to process the non-delivery receipts, but the mailroot folders often cause confusion,  particularly badmail. If the from address accepts mails, the SMTP service will send the NDR to that address and won't keep a copy of the NDR. If the from address is not valid or rejects inbound mail (e.g. no-reply@contoso.com) then a copy is stored in badmail along with two other files (possibly not relevant to your post-processing). To keep all NDRs, change the settings in the SMTP service to send the them to an email address. I use undelivered@machine.domainname where machine.domainname is the name showing under domains in the SMTP service's GUI. Doing this stores all the NDRs in the local  drop folder for later processing. Another thing to watch out for is the FQDN field in the Deli
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SCCM 2012 R2 Console and Performance counters

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Just had a issue where the SCCM 2012 R2 Console on Win 8.1 (x64) would no longer connect to the site server after installing MDT 2013 on my local machine. AdminUI.log complained about performance counters. Fix: c:\windows>cd syswow64 c:\windows\syswow64>lodctr /R c:\windows\syswow64>winmgmt.exe /RESYNCPERF Uninstall SCCM Console Reinstall SCCM Console All working again H/T  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2554336?wa=wsignin1.0
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Popular posts from this blog

Avoid Microsoft Intune if you use G-Suite and Android

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Like me, you might have considered Intune to be your one stop MDM solution if you're an Office/Microsoft 365 user. On the whole it is pretty good, but it's got one massive failing: It doesn't support Google accounts on Android Work Profiles. You might think that if you're a Microsoft shop it's not a big deal, but there two major reasons why you might want to use Google alongside Azure Active Directory: SSO. Many companies charge extra for SSO with Azure but include it for free with Google, e.g. Slack and Atlassian. Chrome. Let's face it, everyone uses Chrome rather than Edge so signing in with a Google account to sync your favourites is pretty handy. Managing this setup in an organisation is pretty easy. Sign up for G-Suite account, sync all your users from Azure AD, configure G-Suite to use AAD for authentication and you're done. Enterprise managed Google accounts for everyone at zero cost if you don't actually need G-Suite. Given the abo
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DFS "Waiting for Initial Replication"

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Taken directly from  Technet Forum  post by  scorprio_milo . Pop along and give them an up vote! You may encounter the error message "waiting for initial replication" when no primary member is currently specified on the DFS Replication. This DFS member is waiting for initial replication for replicated share folder Public and is not currently participating in replication. This delay can occur because the member is waiting for the DFS Replication service to retrieve replication settings from Active Directory. After the member detects that it is part of replication group, the member will begin initial replication.  Besides, there is also possiblity that DFS servers cannot contact domain controller which could result in the issue. 1. Please first verify that all the target folder of Public folder is enabled.   2. Please use Dfsradmin to set the primary member in the situation where there is an existing replication group that is waiting for initial replication and no primary
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Setting Wallpaper for a Remote Desktop Session

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Ah, the fun I had trawling around trying to find out how to set the wallpaper on a remote desktop session! The (seemingly) most obvious answer was changing the Wallpaper setting under Desktop in a GPO, but no. That setting explicitly states that it doesn't apply to RDP sessions, so back to the registry we go... I'm presuming here that we want these settings to apply to all the computers within a specific OU rather than to individual users. Create a new GPO "Wallpaper" Navigate to Computer Config/Policies/Admin Templates/System/Group Policy Set "Configure user Group Policy loopback processing mode" to Enabled with Mode as "Merge" Navigate to Computer Config/Policies/Admin Templates/Windows Components/Remote Desktop Services/Remote Desktop Session Host/Remote Session Environment Set "Always show desktop on connection" to Enabled Set "Enforce Removal of Remote Desktop Wallpaper" to Disabled Navigate to Computer Con
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