Category: Windows Server

A disk “partition” is just a logical slice of a hard drive.  Logical means that you still only have a single drive but it is virtually cut into pieces so that if one partition has a problem, the whole disk will not fail. Let’s look at each of the different partitions you are likely to see on a hard drive running Windows 10 or Windows Server: 1- What is the RECOVERY Partition? The Recovery Partition…

If you are a system administrator or even a desktop support person, finding out information on a remote users computer is something you need to know how to do.  Fortunately, Microsoft has made quite a number of commands easy to use. Here are some of the remote commands we use frequently.  Just right click on the START button and select POWERSHELL as an Administrator that has permission to the remote computer and try these short…

WHAT IS KERBEROS AUTHENTICATION IN WINDOWS? Microsoft Windows Active Directory has a few fundamental core components that everything else is built upon.  One of those is the main Kerberos key.  The KRBTGT (Kerberos Ticket Generating Ticket Account) user account (take a look in ADUC > USERS… it is there), is used to encrypt and digitally sign all Kerberos tickets… which is ALL of the users and ALL of the devices. “…Kerberos is an authentication protocol…

WHAT IS DEFENDER APPLICATION GUARD: Application Guard is a fantastic option to run programs in a very secure space that is separated from the host operating system, thereby eliminating many potential hacks.  For instance if you ran the WannaCry cryptolocker program from a website running with Application Guard, it would fail to encrypt your hard drive. HISTORY: Microsoft introduced Windows Defender Application Guard (WDAG) in September 2016 and renamed it Microsoft Defender Application Guard (MDAG)…

Microsoft Windows Defender Application Guard was developed because so many tools were “sandboxing” that hackers were spending more and more time going under the security by attacking the operating system Kernel. Application Guard operates as JUST less than a full virtual machine in something called a HyperV Container.  These containers do NOT require Hyper-V to be installed but do require virtualization to be enabled in your computers BIOS. The slides below explain much of the…

If you are connecting to a computer to a PC configured with the language set to ENGLISH (UNITED KINGDOM), but you have ENGLISH (UNITED STATES) keyboard you will have some problems typing typical admin commands incluing the backslash. Fortunately there are four easy ways to generate a \ with a US keyboard on a UK language PC: Hold down the ALT key to the RIGHT of the spacebar and press the backslash key (i.e right…

If you are trying to get rid of Internet Explorer inside your organization, you likely will want to use the new Microsoft Edge (aka. Chromium Edge and CrEdge).  The problem is that there are some features inside IE that most companies still can’t live without due to incompatibility.  The solution is to set Edge to run Internet Explorer in the background for just those sites.  This is called compatibility mode and it is not near…

If you work remotely like most of us these days, you will likely need to change your password on your office PC.   If you press CNTL ALT DEL while connected to Remote Desktop session, your home computer’s security window will appear (SIGN OUT, LOCK, CHANGE PASSWORD) which does you no good. 4 Ways to Change Your Password In a Remote Desktop 1: CNTL ALT END CNTL ALT DELETE by passes all programs and goes directly…

If you have been an administrator for any length of time you have found yourself being unable to script an installation or change software because you don’t know what the switches are for that software.  We recently had the same problem and found a very cool solution. We needed to run the new Microsoft Windows Update tool through command line but it is officially unsupported and therefore undocumented… very annoying.  The tool is called USOClient.exe…