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...
Sysprep Was Unable to Validate
KB ID 0001535 Problem While building a new Windows 10 machine to be used as a template, I ran Sysprep to generalise the installation, and got this; Sysprep was not able to validate your Windows Installation. Review the log file at %WINDIR%\System32\Sysprep\Panther\setupact.log for details. After resolving the issue, use Sysprep to validate yout Installation again. Solution What I did was Google the error, instead of looking at the log...
Windows – Open a Firewall Port with Group Policy
Define Inbound Port Exceptions KB ID 0000979 Problem For everyone who simply does not disable the Windows firewall, then you need to be able to manage what ports are open on your machines. The simplest way to do this is via group policy. This week I had to open TCP port 9503 on the local firewall of my McAfee Move Offload Servers. Below I will open that port on all my machines, but in production I will only apply the GPO to the OU...
KMS Error 0xC004F056
KB ID 0001502 Problem While checking the KMS licence status of a newly deployed 2016 Datacenter server. I got this; Licence Status: Notification Notification Reason:0xC004F056 Solution While I’m not a fan of any errors, this ones harmless, in fact it’s telling us to perform an activation (slmgr /ato). So let’s do that. Then re-check. Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links...
Getting a Servers Serial Number (Remotely)
KB ID 0001493 Problem If you have an iLO/iDRAC/EMM, then logging into these will give you the servers serial number, but what if they are not setup/connected, or you don’t know username or password? Then you can use WMI to discover the serial number. Solution From PowerShell; Get-Ciminstance -classname win32_bios -computername {Server-Name} | format-list serialnumber Or if you have RDP/Console access , then from an...
Windows Administrator “Lost Password” / “Password Reset”
KB ID 0000159 Problem You have forgotten your password, or the administrators password fo your Windows machine. Also See: Windows 8 – Lost / Forgotten Password? Note: You can also ‘Blank’ or reset the DSRM (Directory Services Restore Mode) password on a Domain Controller (Tested on 2012 R2, by blanking the password). Using this method. Solution Software Download Links Password Reset CD Image (3.5Mb) Note: This is a...