windows 2003, 2008, R2 how tos
Put simply that DCOM is AutoPlay, but to answer this question you need to understand DCOM. What is DCOM in Windows? DCOM is the acronym for Distributed Component Object Model and it is the . DCOM is Microsoft proprietary software component that allows COM objects to communicate with each other Read more…
There comes a day when you need to find out who logged on to a server or PC. Fortunately Windows tracks log-ons and log-offs but the log may contain hundreds or thousands of entries you do not want. So the question is how to filter the log to just a Read more…
The short answer for nearly everyone is 180 days but to answer the question, how long can a Domain Controller be offline, properly you need to understand what a Tombstone is and you also should consider your Flexible Service Master Roles (FSMO’s). What is an Active Directory Tombstone? In 1999 Read more…
Subject Alternative Names (SAN) certificates can save time and money because they allow you to use a single certificate for upto 5 domain names. They are quite common on servers that run Microsoft Exchange. Cloud providers of Exchange Online, like Office 365, usually take care of their own certificates and Read more…
I recently worked on a client system which was reporting this alert: MessagesInQueue: The MSMQ queue depth on APX-P01 for queue apx-p01\private$ \apxjobrequest is now 5205.0. and the tech assigned to it was not familiar with MSMQ. What is MSMQ? I explained that MSMQ is the acronym for Microsoft Messaging Read more…
Put simply Windows Volume Mount Points let you mount a drive as a folder. Mount Point are a disk (storage) feature that became available with Windows 2000 and are used today to assign one disk to a folder on another disk. The feature allows you to add physical storage (i.e. Read more…
Most larger companies will want to keep track of the what the IT staff are doing to Active Directory. In particular it is important to know who created, disabled and deleted accounts or made changes to email or security groups. On a Domain Controller (or something with RSAT tools installed), Read more…
When researching the error message below I found several websites making references to GUpdate as a virus. It is not. Eventsource: Windows System Event Log Windows Event ID: 10005 Message: DCOM got error “1053” attempting to start the service gupdate with arguments “/comsvc” in order to run the server: GUpdate Read more…
If you are a Windows IT Administrator there will come a day when you find a computer is locked up in some way and you need to at least try and fix it, before you give up and power cycle it. Fortunately there are few easy commands and methods to Read more…
If you have a computer that cannot connect to the domain you might see the following error logged in the Windows System Event Log: Windows Event ID: 5722 Message: The session setup from the computer <NAME>. failed to authenticate. The name(s) of the account(s) referenced in the security database is Read more…
You might see either or both of these errors in your Event Viewer: Log Name: System Source: Microsoft-Windows-WinRM Event ID: 10149 Level: Warning Keywords: Classic Description: The WinRM service is not listening for WS-Management requests. User Action If you did not intentionally stop the service, use the following command Read more…
A few years ago we wrote a very popular article on how to solve the BLACK SCREEN OF DEATH when RDP’ing to a PC or Server. The nut of it is to try CTL+ALT+END to send a remotes CTL+ALT+DEL among other tricks. In this article we explain how to restart Read more…
This is a very tricky error to understand: Windows Event ID: 16979 Message: The domain is incorrectly configured with a MinimumPasswordLength setting that is greater than 14. NOTE: until this is corrected, the domain will enforce a smaller MinimumPasswordLength setting of 14. Currently configured MinimumPasswordLength value: 15 For more information Read more…
About a decade ago we wrote an article explaining the differences between in an IP printer port and it WSD port monitor. However we have received lots of requests from people asking how to get the IP address of a WSD port. So we’ll answer the question directly in just Read more…
In the old-days, there were backups and while people were confused about the differences between a full backup and an incremental backup, they understood the general concept. A backup is a copy of your files or an entire server. Then in the mid-2000’s we started hearing about this crazy thing Read more…
If you are an IT administrator there will come a time when you find RDP problems and the first step to resolving them is to kill all the session. But how? Microsoft released a new utility named QUSER in Windows 7 and it applies to their operating systems made since Read more…