Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019 & 2022 How To’s
The Virtual Disk Service (VDS) is a dead communications API (application program interface) that was replaced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 with the new Storage Management API. VDS was a COM service which is a loose way to allow programs communicate. You can think of COM as in Read more…
It is not clear to even most experienced administrators why they might see the error message: even when they are administrators on the local machine or domain administrators which have FULL CONTROL specified in the NTFS security tab. The reason is because the folder in question is missing a critical Read more…
We like and use CCleaner even at our large corporate clients but over the years it has had some serious problems and today we particularly don’t like that it almost surreptitiously wants to run in the background, monitor our staff and chew up resources. CCleaner for Windows Hacked to Spread Read more…
Group Policy can get very messy very fast especially in large organizations where there are hundreds of IT administrators and contractors that have created group policy objects over the years. So if you’re looking at a group policy and not understanding how it came into effect you wouldn’t be alone. Read more…
UPDATED: Aug 17 2023 We had a client with a server that did not have updated information in Azure Sentinel side, but passed all of the validation and communication tests on the Azure Arc client side (i.e. on the clients file server). NOTE: If you want to know how to Read more…
You may receive, “Your Account Was Not Setup On This Device Because Device Management Could Not Be Enabled” After trying to setup a Microsoft Office 365 service (like OneDrive or Outlook) or in our case the user was trying to ADD ACCOUNT to her existing accounts. You might be surprised Read more…
Virtual machines built in azure will be defaulted to having updates automatically downloaded and installed when they are released on patch Tuesday. When you look at windows update you will see it says Some settings are managed by your organization which inplies that there is a group policy object being Read more…
This is a simple error we have seen on Windows Server 2016, 2019 and 2022. Fortunately, it is easy to explain and easier to fix. The NTFS access control list (ACL) on the SYSVOL part of the Group Policy Object is set to inherit permissions from the parent folder which Read more…
UPDATED Nov 2023 – Minor correction in the scriptAug 2024 – Add reference to snapshot Azure VM’s from multiple subscriptions NOTE: If you have multiple subscriptions that want to snapshot all of the virtual machines in all of the subscriptions, take a look at THIS article we just published. Over Read more…
When you remove a Group Policy (or in the case of some GPO’s set it NOT CONFIGURED), you might think that the setting in question is returned to the factory default but that is not the case. Take for an example a client I worked with today who had two Read more…
If you are seeing this error message it’s probably related to the network card being overloaded: Event Source: Windows System Event LogEvent ID: 50The RDP protocol component X.224 detected an error in the protocol stream and has disconnected the client or Event ID: 56 The Terminal Server security layer detected Read more…
In the last 6 months we have seen an ever increasing number of successful ransomware attacks and you NEED to think about it before your company is attacked. Ransomware attacks are becoming more common and sophisticated than ever before. A ransomware attack can occur at any time, and it can Read more…
A client of ours has a Lenevo Thinkbook 14 Gen 2 which she wants to wipe and load a fresh Windows 10 or Windows 11. She followed our video instructions on how to do a bare metal Windows 11 (same as Windows 10) install but got stuck on the WHERE Read more…
In today’s world of Virtual Machines it’s easy to think that network speeds don’t make that much of a difference but the fact is that many small and medium sized companies still operate with on-premise servers that host their virtual machines. Also there is more than one reason to use Read more…
Azure Code Signing is a service provided by Microsoft that enables software developers to securely “sign” their code using digital certificates. When code is signed with a digital certificate, it provides an assurance that the code (any code – Windows executables, PowerShell scripts, and Java code…) has not been tampered Read more…
If you need to get your expired Microsoft SQL evaluation demo version to run for a few more days or a few more weeks, this is the video for you. You may see an error that says: Evaluation Period Has Expired. or Windows could not start the sql server on Read more…