Gpupdate: Windows Could Not Locate the Directory Object
KB ID 0001625 Problem Saw this on a Windows client on my test network; User Policy update has completed successfully. Computer policy could not be updated successfully. The following errors were encountered: The processing of Group Policy failed. Windows could not locate the directory object OU=Top-Level,OU=computers,DC=PeteNetLive,DC=com. Group Policy settings will not be enforced until this event is resolved. View the event details...
Adding Windows Server NFS Shares to VMware ESX
KB ID 0000319 Problem You have a Windows 2019/2016, 2012, or 2008 server with plenty of storage space, and you would like to present that to an ESX/ESXi server as a datastore. You can configure a folder (or drive) as an NFS share and present it to VMware vSphere, so that it can be used as a datastore. Note: For Server 2008 and vSphere 4/5 Scroll down. Create NFS Shares on Windows Server 2019, 2016, and 2012 Essentially you need to add...
Windows – Stop the Welcome to Internet Explorer from launching via GPO
KB ID 0000459 Problem If your’e logging on as a new user and Internet Explorer has not yet been ran, then it wants to run the “Setup Windows Internet Explorer Wizard”. On just one machine with one user that’s fine, but if you are logging in all over the place, with multiple credentials, this can get quite annoying. Also you might not want your domain users having to do this at all, for security reasons....
Moving Certificate Services To Another Server
KB ID 0001473 Problem If you are retiring a CA Server, or there’s a problem with the server and you want to move Microsoft Certificate Services to another server, the procedure is pretty straight forward. BE AWARE: We are moving the CA Server Name , NOT the Server Name (FQDN), the two things are NOT the same, (you might have called them the same thing!) But a Certificate Authority has a name of its own, and that’s what we...
Cant Copy a Group Policy Object
KB ID 0001543 Problem Was asked this this morning, why couldn’t someone ‘Copy’ a Group Policy Object (GPO)? Solution At first I was confused, (I made the same mistake they had), look at what I’m trying to copy? It’s not a Group Policy Object, its a ‘Link’ to a GPO. (Note: There’s a shortcut arrow!’) Locate the actual GPO and you can copy it! Related Articles, References, Credits,...
Windows Adding Firewall Rules With PowerShell
KB ID 0001538 Problem There was a question on Experts Exchange this morning, the asker wanted to be able to add a ‘Trusted’ network range to their Windows Server Firewall settings as a ‘allow all ports’ rule. Solution You can of course add this manually in the GUI, normally I’d simply Add a Firewall Rule with a Group Policy. but the problem with that is, that’s fine if you want to open a particular...
You Have Exceeded the Maximum Number of Computer Accounts
KB ID 0001536 Problem A few weeks ago, this was asked in a forum, and while I knew what the problem was, I’d never seen it myself. So I recreated the problem on the test network to look at why it happened, and how to fix / get around the problem. The following error occurred attempting to join the domain {domain-name} You computer could not be joined to the domain, You have exceeded the maximum number of computer accounts you...
Manually ‘Installing’ Microsoft Integration Services Drivers
KB ID 0001512 Problem If your OS is 2008R2 or newer then you wont need to do this as the drivers are already included. But what if you have a machine that you want to put the drivers in before you virtualise or migrate it. Well if you mount the ISO and run it this happens; Unsupported Guest Environment The Hyper-V integration services can only be installed inside of a virtual machine running Hyper-V Bah! You are not the boss of me! I...
Recovering Windows Activation Keys
KB ID 0001115 “Have you got one of those programs that gets the Windows key?”, My colleague asked me the other week. I said “Just download a key finder application?”, “Yeah I’ve tried that and is showing the code as all B’s”. You may also just see ‘Product key was not found’ on some software. I sent him some more links and got back to what I was doing. He was having no joy...
Domain Controller Wont Boot: Stop Code ‘0x00002e2’
KB ID 0001494 Problem I had this problem after a VMware host upgrade last night, this domain controller would not boot, I tried ‘Last Known Good Configuration’, I tried ‘Safe Mode’ it would not boot. More out of desperation than procedure, I tried to boot to ‘Directory Services Restore Mode’ and it booted up (hooray!) I tried all the client’s usual passwords, and could not log in, I messaged...