SOLVED: Everything You Need To Know About Expanding a Disk on an Azure VM
We are always being asked to expand disk and add new disk to VM’s on Azure and there is some confusion around the process. Expanding a disk on an Azure virtual machine (WM) is easy: Here are the two...
View ArticleSOLVED: Easy Command To List Certificates
We had a client who wanted us to audit their dozen servers for the status of their certificates. We decided to export all of the core certificate information into a simple .CSV which lets us modify and...
View ArticleSOLVED: What is MAFS File System?
If you look at the properties of an Azure File Share you will see the FILE SYSTEM is showing as MAFS. Microsoft uses “Azure Files” for Azure File Shares. Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in...
View ArticleSOLVED: Easy Command To Delete All Users Recycle Bins
As Windows Server and desktop administrators on thousands of machines we regularly see computers that have their C:\ drive filled with junk, and we have many articles on how to fix that: However one of...
View ArticleSOLVED: Easy GPO To Configure Windows Updates
We often take on new clients who do not have Windows update configured with a group policy and while it’s quite simple to set up it’s always nice to have some instructions and screenshots so here they...
View ArticleSOLVED: Azure Entra Connect Sync Error “Insufficient access rights to perform...
I was working with a client earlier this week who had brought in a security company to tighten up their infrastructure because they were a victim of a major hack just before we were brought in. That...
View ArticleSOLVED: Password Complexity vs Password Length, Which Is Tougher To Crack?
This is an argument I am so very tired of having so I decided to prove it. In about 1998, I recall reading a paper co-written with United States Department of Defense and Microsoft, which explained why...
View ArticleSOLVED: What is 168.63.129.16? Azure WireServer IP Explained
Yesterday we had client with many IP and DNS problems and the screenshot below was taken after we cleaned up about half of them. As you can see, 168.63.129.16 is used both as a DHCP server and as a DNS...
View ArticleSOLVED: Why COMPUTER OU Does Not Appear in GROUP POLICY MANAGEMENT
Have you ever wondered why nearly every Active Directory you have seen has does not use the COMPUTERS and USERS Organizational Unit (folder) for day to day operations? Well, now you know why! We had a...
View ArticleSOLVED: How To See HIDDEN and/or SYSTEM Folders
We recently wrote a brief article on the C:\$Windows.~WS folder noting that, by default, Windows has this this folder hidden so you can’t see it. It is both a hidden and a system folder. If you need to...
View ArticleSOLVED: What is in C:\$Windows.~WS & Is It Safe to Delete
If you are trying to clean up your hard drive storage you may notice the C:\$Windows.~WS folder and wonder what is in it and if it can be deleted. What is C:\$Windows.~WS The C:\$Windows.~WS folder is...
View ArticleSOVLED: Why Snapshot Differencing Disks Grow In Size Much Faster Than Normal...
If you’ve ever taken a snapshot in Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix, or VMware, you will probably notice that the differencing disk it creates grows in size much faster than a normal disk would. One of our...
View ArticleSOLVED: 3 Surprisingly Easy Ways To Clean Up WSUS & Get Disk Space Back
We have many complex ways to clean up the WSUS database to make the WSUS MMC stop crashing and to free up space on the disk holding the database. However, there are three very simple methods that our...
View ArticleSOLVED: How To List All The (Old) Computers in Your AD
About a week ago we brought on a new client and immediately noticed, as part of our pre-onboarding due diligence, that they had hundreds of old desktops laptops and servers still in their Active...
View ArticleSOLVED: How to Delegate Rights to Help Desk Staff to Fully Manage Users...
It’s very common to want to allow a small group of people or even a help desk possibly from a third party company manage service provider to manage user accounts in Active Directory. As you can see in...
View ArticleSOLVED: Where Are NT SERVICE Profiles Stored
If you’ve ever needed to make space on a hard drive you should have looked at Advanced System Settings > User Profiles to see if they’re any accounts listed as unknown for people that you know are...
View ArticleSOLVED: Azure Synchronization Service Manager – Export completed with errors...
If you see an EXPORT – COMPLETED WITH ERRORS message in your Azure Synchronization Service Manager, double click on it and see if tells you: This error indicates that a deleted object was recovered...
View ArticleSOLVED: How To Export a List of DHCP Reservations To An Excel File
Below is a very simple PowerShell command to export a list of IP address reservations in a DHCP server
View ArticleSOLVED: System Event Log – The Removal of the Assignment of Application Failed
If you are seeing the following error in your Windows System Event log, we likely have the fix: Source: Application Management Group PolicyEvent ID: 103Level: ErrorUser: SYSTEMDescription: The removal...
View ArticleSOLVED: IP Reservations Beyond DHCP Scope
We recently produced a report of how many unused / free IP addresses were available is each of our customers DHCP scopes. (HERE is the simple script to create that list). As you can see in the...
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