Windows Server and Desktop

Windows Server 2003: Restore and Reanimation of Tombstoned Group Membership Links

by Liju Varghese

The Issue Performing an authoritative restore on a Windows Server 2003 domain controller of a group results in the reanimation of tombstoned group membership links. The Impact If an Organizational Unit containing Users and Groups was deleted, the authoritative restore of the OU will result in users being re-added to groups they were removed from. [...]

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Windows System State Recovery: What’s up with that Authoritative Restore checkbox?

by Liju Varghese

On a domain controller running Windows Server 2008 R2, when performing a system state restore in Directory Services Restore Mode using Windows Server Backup, at the Select Location for System State Recovery step you have to decide whether or not to select the following option: Perform an authoritative restore of Active Directory files. This recovery [...]

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How To Effectively Capture Windows Memory Dumps (Pt 1: Using DebugDiag)

by Richard Case

This is the first article in a series of blog posts on collecting Microsoft Windows memory dumps for specific scenarios. Each part will detail some of the tools and techniques that can be used to capture a memory dump for that scenario. These scenarios are based on real issues experienced by our customers that have [...]

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A Must Have Hotfix for Exchange DAGs running on Windows Server 2008 R2

by PFE EMEA Messaging Engineers

In early August 2011, the Microsoft Windows Sustained Engineering team released the following Knowledge Base (KB) article and accompanying software hotfix regarding an issue in Windows Server 2008 R2 failover clusters:  KB2550886 – A transient communication failure causes a Windows Server 2008 R2 failover cluster to stop working The Microsoft Exchange Server team has since [...]

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Setting Up Security Event Log Subscriptions with Windows Server 2003/2008

by Liju Varghese

This article aims at making it easier to set up a Source-Initiated Subscription with Windows Server 2003/2008 so that events of interest from the Security event log of several domain controllers can be forwarded to an administrative workstation. For the purpose of this article, we’ve selected the event IDs 5136, 5137 and 566.  These security [...]

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Simplify BitLocker Administration and Monitoring with MBAM (beta)

by Mark Farrugia

Please note that the following post is all based on beta software, and all features are subject to possible change upon official release. I have done a number of posts around BitLocker, and today I would like to add one more.  Some of my previous articles include: BitLocker – Windows 7’s Best Feature Managing the [...]

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Managing Microsoft BitLocker in the Enterprise

by Mark Farrugia

In my previous posts I introduced the concept of BitLocker and talked about managing the Trusted Platform Module, now let’s talk about how we can enforce policy to ensure clients are indeed encrypting their system and data volumes.  In this post I will discuss some of the major group policies that an enterprise should keep [...]

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Managing the Trusted Platform Module with Windows

by Mark Farrugia

There are many volume encryption technologies out there, and some of these are now taking advantage of technology that Microsoft BitLocker has been using from its inception.  The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip is a micro-computer built onto all new motherboards that contains its own CPU and Flash Memory and is capable of creating, storing [...]

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BitLocker – Windows 7′s Best Feature

by Mark Farrugia

Mobile computers (Laptops, Netbooks, Tablets, etc.) have been outselling desktop computers for years now, and why shouldn’t they?  Some modern day laptops offer better 3D Gaming frame rates than desktop computer counterparts.  With the proliferation of the internet, email, electronic record keeping, digital photos/videos and electronic documents, a lot of personal information is being kept [...]

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How To Talk To SAN Administrators About Disk Performance Issues

by Clint Huffman

Editor’s note: Care of our friends over at http://mcpmag.com, Clint Huffman provides his take on how you can talk intelligently to SAN administrators and vendors when disk performance issues surface. Here’s a teaser. Please make sure you check out the full article. Traditionally, disk queue related performance counters such as “Avg. Disk Queue Length”, “% [...]

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Windows Server Backup: How-To Set It and Forget It! [VIDEO]

by Tyler Johnson

Anyone that has used Microsoft Windows Server Backup (WSB) in Windows Server 2008 might immediately experience feelings of nostalgia for days gone by, of a simple and fast backup with NTBACKUP.  Granted there have been some changes that may appear to be negative at first glance.  The backups are larger, they take a longer time [...]

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4 Must-Have Windows High-CPU Troubleshooting Tools

by Cheng Pei Koay

Here’s my quick list of 4 tools that should be in the arsenal of anyone who’s troubleshooting high-CPU usage situations on Windows systems. 1) User Mode Process Dumper The User Mode Process Dumper dumps any running Win32 processes memory image which includes system process. This tool will dump without attaching a debugger or terminating target [...]

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Windows Server Failover Clustering Quorum Configuration Models Explained

by Cheng Pei Koay

A Windows Server 2008 failover cluster is known to provide high availability for various types of back-end applications and services (note that failover clustering is designed for stateful applications). A common perception is to having 2 nodes clustered will accomplish the required level of high availability; however, Windows Server 2008 / Windows Server 2008 R2 [...]

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