Author: John

Reset the Default Domain and Domain Controller Group Policy Objects to their out of box state

So, I recently inherited a small client with SBS 2011 and their previous IT admin only ever used the Default Domain Policy to apply computer and users settings (such as mapped drives and printers). Microsoft has quite a strong recommendation of best practice for the two policies which goes along the lines of; Default Domain … Continue reading "Reset the Default Domain and Domain Controller Group Policy Objects to their out of box state"

How to easily Check your SPN and Delegation settings for SQL Server in an Active Directory environment

I was recently setting up some Linked SQL Servers for a customer to perform queries against a database on one server through another. One of the things you need to get right when setting up linked servers when using Service accounts in Active Directory is SPNs (or Service Principal Names) and Authority to Delegate (for … Continue reading "How to easily Check your SPN and Delegation settings for SQL Server in an Active Directory environment"

Fixing the randomly stopping WsusPool IIS Application pool and Windows Updates failed 0x80244022 error

I was recently assisting a client with an upgrade of their Configuration Manager (SCCM) environment up to the latest release of 1702 and as part of that we’re also going over it’s currently deployed functionality and making sure it all works. They recently noted that clients were no longer receiving updates and ran the Software … Continue reading "Fixing the randomly stopping WsusPool IIS Application pool and Windows Updates failed 0x80244022 error"

An error has occurred when trying to access IdpInitiatedSignOn.aspx to test SAML authentication on AD FS 4.0 (Windows Server 2016)

So usually one of the first things I do after initially setting up an AD FS environment (among others) is to test the Metadata (navigate to https://your.adfs.server/ federationmetadata/2007-06/federationmetadata.xml which should return valid XML) and sign-in functionality using the IdpInitiatedSignOn.aspx method. For Server 2012/2012 R2 this page enabled by default but if we navigate to this … Continue reading "An error has occurred when trying to access IdpInitiatedSignOn.aspx to test SAML authentication on AD FS 4.0 (Windows Server 2016)"

Get a list of users in Active Directory who have not logged in for specified number of days using PowerShell

A client is currently in the planning stages of doing a migration to Azure AD and Office 365 and one of the things we needed was a list of users who have not logged on in the last few months but are still active in our AD. Well it’s PowerShell to the rescue again (with … Continue reading "Get a list of users in Active Directory who have not logged in for specified number of days using PowerShell"

Extracting Reporting data from your DirectAccess Server to CSV using PowerShell

I recently had to extract some data from our DirectAccess server to get information about a particular user and their number of connections during a time period along with data transferred. The Remote Access Management Console allows you to view these details but not extract or save them. So I turned to PowerShell and used … Continue reading "Extracting Reporting data from your DirectAccess Server to CSV using PowerShell"

Remote Desktop is Blocked in Windows Firewall even though Group Policy Setting is set to allow

So I’m going through and trying to automate a lot of things in our environment (one thing you should always try and do as a SysAdmin is to automate repetitive tasks) and to help me achieve this I’m using Group Policy, step one is enable Remote Desktop to all of our Servers automatically. Created the Group … Continue reading "Remote Desktop is Blocked in Windows Firewall even though Group Policy Setting is set to allow"

How to allow an Active Directory Certificate Authority to generate Certificates with a Subject Alternative Name attribute

Starting with Google Chrome 58 no longer trusts certificates without the Subject Alternative Name attribute, so this makes it a little troublesome for those with internal CAs where you rely on them for Software Development. We noticed last week that some end users couldn’t hit an internal application over HTTPS, but was fine in Firefox … Continue reading "How to allow an Active Directory Certificate Authority to generate Certificates with a Subject Alternative Name attribute"

Fixing SQL Reporting Services The URL has already been reserved error during Configuration

I was recently helping out a colleague with an SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) installation. When it came time to configuring that instance of SSRS and making it listen on port 80 for that particular site we got The URL has already been reserved warning message, navigating to the Reporting Services URLs gives us a HTTP … Continue reading "Fixing SQL Reporting Services The URL has already been reserved error during Configuration"