Windows Group Policy – Disable The Local Windows Firewall
Nov06

Windows Group Policy – Disable The Local Windows Firewall

KB ID 0001090 Problem I’ve got nothing against the Windows firewall, it’s certainly a lot easier to manage now than it was back in the XP SP2 days. But I find a lot of clients still just ‘want it gone’ and, providing they have a decent corporate firewall in front of them that’s fair enough. Solution 1. On a domain controller or a client running the remote administration tools > Windows Key+R >...

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Network Profile Switches from ‘Private’ to ‘Public’
Nov05

Network Profile Switches from ‘Private’ to ‘Public’

KB ID 0001613 Problem This popped up in the forums last night, if you have a Workgroup*, (non domain joined) machine, the profile of the network card keeps switching from Private to Public. *Note: A domain joined machine, automatically will set it’s network profile to ‘Domain’. Option 1: Set the Network Profile using Local Group Policy Hit Windows Ker + R to open Run prompt, and type gpedit.msc Navigate to Computer...

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PowerShell: Find Computers Last Logon Date
Oct23

PowerShell: Find Computers Last Logon Date

KB ID 0001612 Problem I had to find the last time a particular server had logged on for a client the other week, so we knew for sure it was dead! Solution The two commands you may need are; Locate Servers Last Login Time Get-ADComputer -Filter {OperatingSystem -Like ‘*SERVER’} -Properties lastlogondate,operatingsystem | Select name,laslogondate,operatingsystem Locate Clients Last Login Time Get-ADComputer -Filter...

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Windows – Stop the Welcome to Internet Explorer from launching via GPO
Oct14

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....

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Windows Server: Stop Programs Auto Starting / Auto Running
Sep30

Windows Server: Stop Programs Auto Starting / Auto Running

KB ID 0001600 Problem I like to learn the keyboard shortcuts for these sort of things, (because developers will change the way things are done in the GUI). So in the good old days I simply ran msconfig, and located the offending software on the startup list and disabled it. Then that got removed and put in ‘Task Manager’, then that got removed. So I’m pulling a frowny face at Microsoft Developers for their lack of...

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Moving Certificate Services To Another Server
Sep20

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...

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