Here is the location of the mail control panel just in case you cannot see it in the list of control panels that are available:

C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice14MLCFG32.CPL
OR
C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice14MLCFG32.CPL

You can simply copy and paste the lines above into a run box to display the mail setup control panel:

Cheers

Paul

Here is a quick command that can be used so that you can run the ipconfig/all command from the run box without it closing down on you:

cmd /k ipconfig /all

This should bring up the cmd box but pause and wait for input before closing down:

Pressing the key should close the box down.

The command ipconfig can obviously be changed for any other command that will output to the cmd screen.

This should also work in places where cmd has been locked down. You may just receive a message like this in the output:

Cheers

Paul

When attempting to access the reporting part in the SCOM console we found that we were getting an error message similar to the one below:

This is caused by IIS using a 32bit worked process on a 64bit system.

To resolve this we had to run the following:

1. Open a command prompt and CD to C:InetpubAdminscripts

2. Type in the following and press enter:

cscript adsutil.vbs find Enable32BitAppOnWin64

3. Type in following and press enter:

cscript %SYSTEMDRIVE%inetpubadminscriptsadsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 0

4. Type in following and press enter:

%SYSTEMROOT%Microsoft.NETFramework64v2.0.50727aspnet_regiis.exe –i

If you then go back into SCOM and open the Reporting part you should no longer get an error:

Cheers

Paul

We have set up DAG monitoring scripts for one of our customers which tell us the status of all the mailbox copies and we noticed that one of the database copies had been stuck in a status of “Crawling” for over a day.

To rectify this problem we did the following:

1. Log onto the affected server and open up services.

2. Restart the “Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer” service:

3. Run the following PowerShell command in EMC:

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy –Identity DATABASESERVER –CatalogOnly

This will update the search index of the database and then you can run the following command to ensure that the database index is now healthy:

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Identity DATABASESERVER

Cheers

Paul

There is a registry key that can be set to allow administrators who are remote controlling a Windows 7 system to view and interact with a UAC prompt without pausing the session:

All you need to do is set the EnableUIADesktopToggle registry key to 1:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem

Cheers

Paul

Here is a simple command line that can be saved as a scheduled task that can be used to backup all of your printer settings in Windows Server 2008 R2:

CD %WINDIR%System32SpoolTools Printbrm.exe -s \<sourcecomputername> -b -f <filename>.printerExport

To restore the settings to another server run the following command:

Printbrm -s \<destinationcomputername> -r -f <filename>.printerExport

Cheers

Paul

If you want to run any of the Exchange PowerShell commands from a standard PowerShell environment then you simply need to add in the following line in order to run it as if it is an Exchange Management Console:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010

For example, the script below will output the size of the Exchange Databases to a file and can be run as a scheduled task:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.E2010

Get-MailboxDatabase –Status | fl name, databasesize | out-file C:dbsize.txt

What we can do then is save the above script to a .ps1 file and then edit the action to start PowerShell.exe and put the arguments as the script that you want to run:

This can be set up with the usual Scheduled Task settings and with the PowerShell snap-in for Exchange added in should be able to use the Exchange PowerShell commands.

Cheers

Paul

This error will stop you from connecting to RDP:

This is a client based issue with logging onto the server and the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftMSLicensing

Once you have deleted this try the RDP connection again, if it continues to fail then you may need to run the RDP connection as administrator for the first time.

Cheers

Paul

We had a request from on of our clients where they wanted to create new user accounts for around 50 new employees. In order to do this we created a simple PowerShell script that used a populated CSV file to create the users in a certain OU and with a default password.

The CSV file had the following headings:

After saving it to a location we ran the following PowerShell script that created the users:

import-module activedirectory
$inputFile = Import-CSV  C:usersToBeCreated.csv

foreach($line in $inputFile)
{
new-aduser -SamAccountName $line.UserName -Name $line.FullName -AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText "Password" -Force) -Enabled $true -Path "OU=Domain Users,DC=TEST,dc=LOCAL" -DisplayName $line.FullName -GivenName $line.FirstName -Surname $line.SurName -UserPrincipalName $line.UserPrincipalName -ChangePasswordAtLogon $True
}

You can copy and paste the script above where you will only need to change the bold text which is the CSV location, the temporary password for the new users and the OU that you want to put the users into.

As long as you use the same headings in your CSV file then this should work ok. You can, of course add in more details that are accepted by the new-aduser command which are outlined in the URL below:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee617253.aspx

Cheers

Paul

We had a request come through which asked us to get all the users that were created after a certain date.

A good tool for this is the ADFind.exe which can be obtained from here:

http://www.joeware.net/freetools/tools/adfind/index.htm

Download and extract it to a folder, open a administrative command prompt, browse to the location that you extracted the file to and type in adfind.exe and press enter for basic help with the command.

After downloading and extracting the file I started to build my query by getting the first name and surname all of the users in a certain OU:

adfind -b ou="OU Name",DC=domain,DC=local -f "&(objectclass=user)" givenName sn

I then put in the date object that would only fetch out the users that were created after the 1st of March 2011:

adfind -b ou="OU Name",DC=domain,DC=local -f "&(objectclass=user)(whenCreated>=20110301000000.0Z)" givenName sn

You can simply change the date to what ever you need or change the greater than operand to less than. All we need do then is put it into a more readable format by exporting it to a csv which can be done running the following command:

adfind -csv -b ou="OU Name",DC=domain,DC=local -f "&(objectclass=user)(whenCreated>=20110301000000.0Z)" givenName sn >> file.csv

You can use any of the AD attributes to export, below is a quick run down of some of the ones that I have used, they are case sensitive:

mail = Primary Email Address

msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress = Instant Messaging address (OCS or Lync)

ProxyAddresses = Any additional email addresses

In order to add an attribute to export for a user just add them to the end of the line before the >> with a space. For example an export of a users first name, surname and email address would look like this:

adfind -csv -b ou="OU Name",DC=domain,DC=local -f "&(objectclass=user)(whenCreated>=20110301000000.0Z)" givenName sn mail >> file.csv

Cheers

Paul