Windows Server 2008, 2012, 2016, 2019 & 2022 How To’s
If you are trying to clean up your hard drive storage you may notice the C:\$Windows.~WS folder and wonder what is in it and if it can be deleted. What is C:\$Windows.~WS The C:\$Windows.~WS folder is a hidden directory created by Windows during the upgrade process to a new version Read more…
We recently wrote a brief article on the C:\$Windows.~WS folder noting that, by default, Windows has this this folder hidden so you can’t see it. It is both a hidden and a system folder. If you need to view or delete this folder, you’ll need to enable the option to Read more…
Have you ever wondered why nearly every Active Directory you have seen has does not use the COMPUTERS and USERS Organizational Unit (folder) for day to day operations? We had a client that put all 200 of there computers in the COMPUTERS OU in their AD and their staff could Read more…
Yesterday we had client with many IP and DNS problems and the screenshot below was taken after we cleaned up about half of them. As you can see, 168.63.129.16 is used both as a DHCP server and as a DNS FORWARDER, and the name shows up as <UNABLE TO RESOLVE>. Read more…
This is an argument I am so very tired of having so I decided to prove it. In about 1998, I recall reading a paper co-written with United States Department of Defense and Microsoft, which explained why adding a single character length to a password was far superior to adding Read more…
I was working with a client earlier this week who had brought in a security company to tighten up their infrastructure because they were a victim of a major hack just before we were brought in. That security company did a number of things to user accounts we found… odd, Read more…
We often take on new clients who do not have Windows update configured with a group policy and while it’s quite simple to set up it’s always nice to have some instructions and screenshots so here they are: 1 – Configure Windows Update to Download but Not Install 2. Install Read more…
A week or so ago we had client of ours ask for an audit of their certificates. This is a small client so initially we provided them with screenshots of all the certificates in the Computer > Certificate > Personal folder. That is where we find 95% of these certificates Read more…
As Windows Server and desktop administrators on thousands of machines we regularly see computers that have their C:\ drive filled with junk, and we have many articles on how to fix that: However one of the fastest easiest ways is simply to delete everyone’s Recycle Bins. Can Recycle Bins Be Read more…
If you look at the properties of an Azure File Share you will see the FILE SYSTEM is showing as MAFS. Microsoft uses “Azure Files” for Azure File Shares. Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry-standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol Read more…
We had a client who wanted us to audit their dozen servers for the status of their certificates. We decided to export all of the core certificate information into a simple .CSV which lets us modify and make it pretty in Excel. Note that we EXCLUDED all certificates that are Read more…
We are always being asked to expand disk and add new disk to VM’s on Azure and there is some confusion around the process. Expanding a disk on an Azure virtual machine (WM) is easy: Here are the two catches: Adding a New Drive to An Azure VM Adding new Read more…
If you’ve ever looked at Task Manager on a Windows computer you will notice on the PERFORMANCE tab under CPU in the bottom right hand corner something labeled L1 cache, L2 cache and, L3 cache: To answer the question what is the difference between L1, L2, and L3 cache we Read more…
Even if you’re new to servers you will know that technology advances all the time. To make it easy to keep track of features in HyperV Microsoft decided to number them. If you look at your Hyper-V management console you will see a Configuration Version column which most Administrators just Read more…
You may notice when running SConfig to make changes to Windows update on Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server 2025 that you are unable to make changes. You may see the error: Failed to configure update settings. Registry access is not allowed. This is because SConfig is not being run Read more…
Installs and upgrades usually require more space than the install will need when it is done, and that can be a problem. We had a client that needed to upgrade a program installed on their servers C:\ and while the disk had enough free space to run the program, it Read more…