Tag Archives: Article 0000589

Adding a Domain Group to the Local Administrators Group

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KB ID 0000589 

Problem

This weekend I’ve been doing a school migration, (go live is tomorrow). Just as we were finishing up today, we found out a client application needed a certain user group to have LOCAL administrator rights on the client machines.

I remembered that it could be done and it had something to do with “Restricted Groups”. So when I got home I fired up the test network and ran though it for tomorrow.

Solution

1. Launch “Active Directory Users and Computers” (Start > Run > dsa.msc {enter}). Ensure you have a domain security group, (Not a distribution group) with the domain members you wish to grant access to.

2. On a domain Controller, Start > Administrative Tools > Group Policy Management > Locate the OU that contains the computers that you wish to grant administrative rights to > Right Click >Create a GPO in this domain, and Link it here.

Warning: Do not create a GPO on an OU that contains servers or anything you would NOT want you users to have administrative access to.

3. Give the policy a sensible name.

4. Edit the policy that you have just created.

5. Navigate to:

[box]Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security Settings > Restricted Groups[/box]

Right click > Add Group.

6. Browse and locate your domain security group > OK.

7. Under “This group is a member of” > Add > Add in Administrators >OK.

8. Apply > OK

9. Now on your clients, the domain group will be added to the local administrators group.

Note: this may require a reboot or a “gpupdate /force” command.

 

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

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Running Windows Server 8 in VMware ESXi

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KB ID 0000590 

Problem

The very fist time I tried this was on ESXi 4.1, if you try and install Windows 8 Server on that platform, you will see the following.

Your computer ran into a problem and needs to restart. If you’d like to know more, you can search online later for this code: HAL_INITIALIZATION_FAILED It’s collecting error info and will restart in: x seconds

Note: You will also see this in VMware player, and VMware workstation 7.

Solution

Some internet searching told me that as far as VMware was concerned, I needed to be running VMware Workstation version 8, so I installed Workstation 8 and, accepting the fact I got the same install error that the windows 8 consumer preview gives you, (the fix is the same). It works flawlessly (unless you install the VMware tools).

Running Windows “8” Server in ESXi

I knew that the developer preview worked on ESXi 5, And VMware Workstation 8 uses VMware hardware version 8. So I guessed that it would run under ESXi 5. I set the machine type to “Windows 7 x64”, and it installed it, to my surprise it ran straight away.

And Installing VMware tools went smoothly as well.

Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

Windows 8 (Server and Client) Black Screen (Post VMware Tools Install)

Windows 8 -“Windows cannot read the <ProductKey> setting from the unattend answer file.