Server 2012 and Up – Sync DHCP Filter List on Hot Spare Failover Server

Once again, we find out how worthless and pathetic Microsoft is when it comes to thoroughness. Starting with Server 2012, they added the ability to have a failover DHCP server using load balancing or by acting as a hot spare and have it replicate the server configuration, which is great, except they left out the MAC filtering lists, forcing us to use scripts yet again to accomplish something that should have been built in.
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Server 2012 – Force a Network Type with PowerShell

Here’s an annoying one that I run into quite frequently. On Windows Server 2012, it appears there’s not a quick and easy way to change the network type for a network connection other than to use PowerShell. The problem that I typically run into, is that firewall rules for a specific program are only set for the “domain” profile, so here’s how to force the network type on some interface. This is just for my own personal reference, but I took this info directly from here. Continue reading “Server 2012 – Force a Network Type with PowerShell”

Cannot Log onto Windows – Trust Relationship Failed

There’s several different things that can cause the trust relationship issue and there are hundreds of post or more online about the subject. Sometimes simply resetting the computer account in Active Directory can fix the problem. Other times, unjoining/rejoining the computer from the domain will fix the problem. If either of those isn’t the case, usually that is a good indication that there is some sort of corruption in the Active Directory database that can only be fixed by manual intervention.
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Server 2012 – Enable/Disable Spellcheck Highlighting and Auto-Correct with Group Policy

Courtesy of this fancy post where they use big words and pictographs here, you can use this info to enable or disable the built-in global spell checking/highlighting and auto-correct features of Windows 8/Server 2012 to deploy these settings as a group policy preference.

One can only hope that this feature is any better than the auto-correct on Android phones which makes me want to smash my spy phone into tiny little pieces with a claw hammer or test it’s aerial durability/impact resistance with the closest nearby wall at times, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. Continue reading “Server 2012 – Enable/Disable Spellcheck Highlighting and Auto-Correct with Group Policy”

WinSCP – Import/Export Your Saved Sessions List and Settings from a Computer that is Offline

If you want to backup your saved sessions from WinSCP, that is easy enough, as long as the computer is still in a working state, you can use the backup and restore feature from within the software. But what if the computer doesn’t boot or you swapped the drive into a different machine? So long as you can still access the drive and have access to that user’s registry file, you can easily extract the data you need. Continue reading “WinSCP – Import/Export Your Saved Sessions List and Settings from a Computer that is Offline”

Windows – Play a WAV file with PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class

At work, they wanted to ability to play a soundbyte on a schedule as a reminder to our sales employees. I think I may have found this on stackexchange but I can’t quite remember at this point to give the full creds. A lot of the solutions I found tried to use Windows Media Player to play sound files or MP3’s, but unfortunately, there was no way to close the program after the file had played. This way uses Windows PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class to play the file. Continue reading “Windows – Play a WAV file with PowerShell and the .NET SoundPlayer Class”

Windows – How to Run Elevated Scripts as a Regular User with Task Scheduler -OR- How to Restart Services as a Standard User

Here is a neat workaround you can use in Windows to run a batch script or any other command that would regularly require elevated administrator credentials. Using this method, you can essentially bypass UAC and allow a script to be ran as a standard user without them having to enter in an admin password. In theory, you could probably even use this same approach to install software as a regular user if you wanted to. For my example below, I was able to allow a standard user to kill processes and then restart the services.

The problem that I had to overcome was that one of my VPN users who used Shrewsoft VPN client would occasionally get disconnected and then never be able to fully connect again. Oddly enough, the client would show connected on the user’s end and immediately disconnect but it never made a connection on the server side. The problem was that the “iked” process would get hung up and then the VPN client would subsequently never fully connect all the way. Continue reading “Windows – How to Run Elevated Scripts as a Regular User with Task Scheduler -OR- How to Restart Services as a Standard User”

CryptoWall 3.0 Ransomware – Ouch, It Hurts So Good…Get Out the Backup Tapes. You’ve Got Those Right?

Being the badass network admin that you are, you try to keep your servers up to date with all the latest Windows updates, you run antivirus on all your machines on your network and scan daily, you have made sure that none of your users have local admin rights to their machines so they can’t install any software, and so you think you are fairly well covered when it comes to viruses and spyware, well think again.

My company just got hit pretty hard with this new CryptoWall 3.0 virus. If you are unfamiliar with it, basically it encrypts any user accessible data on local and network shares that it has permissions to and holds it ransom for BitCoin payments. Continue reading “CryptoWall 3.0 Ransomware – Ouch, It Hurts So Good…Get Out the Backup Tapes. You’ve Got Those Right?”

Batch Script – Ribbon UI Customization: Take Ownership and Change Permissions of the CommandStore Subkeys in the Registry

This is just a follow up to my experiences customizing the Ribbon UI icons in Server 2012 and where the path has taken me thus far. After many hours of research and development and a lot of head scratching, I’ve written several posts on how to disable the different icons in the Ribbon UI which requires the adding or editing of keys in the CommandStore section of the registry for Windows Explorer. For more information on how to disable the icons, see this post.

My whole goal as of late was to be able to add these registry items to the RDS server’s GPO to be able to deploy these settings to all 7 of my RDS servers but then I found out you can’t take ownership of the CommandStore subkeys with the local “SYSTEM” account. Yet another deliberate Microsoft setback meant to discourage people from editing the Ribbon UI, oh well, fuck ’em. I’ve encountered so many problems with this RDS server project it is unreal and this was just icing on the proverbial cake. Continue reading “Batch Script – Ribbon UI Customization: Take Ownership and Change Permissions of the CommandStore Subkeys in the Registry”