Author: John

How to spoof or mimic a hardware or MAC Address of another device on an interface on a FortiGate

I was recently out at a client and they were in the process of getting another link installed, which happened to be Cable internet which they were using for redundancy.  We put their cable modem in Bridge mode but the connection wasn’t coming up after connecting everything up.  Most cable providers authenticate with certificates and … Continue reading "How to spoof or mimic a hardware or MAC Address of another device on an interface on a FortiGate"

How to reset the Remote Desktop Server Licensing Grace Period on Windows Server 2012 with Remote Desktop Services

So we recently started looking into Terminal Services and RemoteFX to power some of our admin users and move them off to thin clients instead of full blown desktops.  As a trial I begun setting up RDS on one of our Dev machines.  After going through the motions of enabling the Remote Desktop Features and … Continue reading "How to reset the Remote Desktop Server Licensing Grace Period on Windows Server 2012 with Remote Desktop Services"

The Network Policy Server Service (NPS or IAS) Fails to Start on Windows SBS Server 2008 with an unspecified error (0x80004005)

So I was recently helping out a client clean up their Small Business Server environment, one thing they weren’t using was SharePoint, so we decided to remove it from their SBS 2008 server. The removal went smoothly, simply uninstalling SharePoint Services via Add/Remove control panel did the trick. But after a restart we found that … Continue reading "The Network Policy Server Service (NPS or IAS) Fails to Start on Windows SBS Server 2008 with an unspecified error (0x80004005)"

How to log into ASDM for a Cisco ASA when you get the Unable to launch device manager error

I like to keep my client’s devices up to date to prevent any issues from arising and have access to the devices latest features. Unfortunately not everyone is happy to pay that little extra to have an on-going support / maintenance agreement.  I was recently out at a customer who had an ASA 5505 which … Continue reading "How to log into ASDM for a Cisco ASA when you get the Unable to launch device manager error"

Backing up your EVA SAN (4400 or P63x0) Configuration with HP StorageWorks Storage System Scripting Utility (SSSU)

Just a short one today.  I was assisting in the change from a stand-alone Hyper-V environment to a clustered environment, the customer had an HP EVA P6300 SAN which was going to be used for the Clustered Shared Volumes.  As a precaution before beginning work on the EVA, I loaded up SSSU which was installed on … Continue reading "Backing up your EVA SAN (4400 or P63x0) Configuration with HP StorageWorks Storage System Scripting Utility (SSSU)"

Random password prompts with users running Windows Phone / Mobile Active Sync for Exchange through ISA 2006 or TMG Reverse Proxy

So I recently came across an issue where some end users were getting prompted for their password when running a Windows Phone device (Android and Apple devices seem immune).  The client had recently had an Office 365 hybrid configuration completed and where using ISA / TMG as a reverse proxy to authenticate to their local … Continue reading "Random password prompts with users running Windows Phone / Mobile Active Sync for Exchange through ISA 2006 or TMG Reverse Proxy"

Hyper-V Virtual Machine stops responding to network traffic if VMQ (Virtual Machine Queues) are enabled on a 1GB physical NIC

I recently took on a new customer who’s IT infrastructure was a mess.  They have good hardware but the setup they had was just awful (it was an internal guy who had great ideas but little skill).  They had Hyper-V running on a nice new Gen9 HP Server on Windows Server 2012 R2, which is … Continue reading "Hyper-V Virtual Machine stops responding to network traffic if VMQ (Virtual Machine Queues) are enabled on a 1GB physical NIC"

Specify ClickView Server IP settings via the Registry using Group Policy with an ADMX Template

So I was recently going through our Group Policy and found that we were applying a reg file to specify the Server IP for our ClickView Players.  I don’t really like this approach anymore and tend to try and have everything nice and neat so I set about creating a ADM file to store the … Continue reading "Specify ClickView Server IP settings via the Registry using Group Policy with an ADMX Template"

Use Microsoft Excel to split words into cells for easier data manipulation

A client was recently part of an expo and used the opportunity to collect subscribers for their mailing list. Unfortunately the data input method wasn’t designed with their back end database in mind which has a potential customer’s first name and last name separated into different fields.  Luckily the data was clean enough that we … Continue reading "Use Microsoft Excel to split words into cells for easier data manipulation"