Windows – Firewall Group Policy
Firewall Group Policy 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 firewall 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...
Disable Lock Screen
KB ID 0000965 Problem Note: This is for older versions of Windows Server, you may want to go to the following article. Windows – Disable the ‘Lock Screen’ Firstly, the lock screen is there for a valid security reason, so I would not advocate doing this on a production network. But on my test network when I’m jumping between multiple servers all the time, it’s annoying to have to press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and tap the password...
Windows Server – Enable Flash
Enable Flash KB ID 0000978 Problem Note: For Server 2016, the process if different, see; Windows Server 2016: Enable Flash I upgraded my VMware vCenter server to 5.5 last week, and as soon as I tried to open the vSphere Web Client, I got a polite message asking me to install flash. I headed over to Adobe to download and install it, and was told that from IE10 it had already installed simply ‘enable the add-on’. Well...
In Place Upgrade of Window Server
In Place Upgrade KB ID 0001895 Problem An in-place upgrade of a Windows Server, where you update an existing server installation to a newer version without reinstalling from scratch, can be a powerful way to bring older infrastructure up to date without the lengthy process of rebuilding a system and restoring data. The allure of this method lies in its simplicity and time efficiency; theoretically, you can go from, say, Windows...
Windows Server 2025 Domain Join
Server 2025 Domain Join KB ID 0001883 Problem To perform a Windows Server 2025 Domain Join (Local Domain). The end process is the same as it’s always been, they’ve just made the job of getting to there a little more convoluted, (this is the same with Windows 11). Solution: Windows Server 2025 Domain Join Before attempting to join the domain, let’s make sure we can ‘resolve’ the domain name, (because most...