From time to time admins have to run an inventory of what is running in the AD environment. This is a good practice for audits, inventory, removing decommissioned servers, or any other good reason. The details that are required are like when was computer/ server created, when was it last logged into, what is the…
Category: Windows
Adding a security group to the Local Administrator Group in AD
Having a local administrator of your workstations can come in handy. Sometimes you might need to logon locally to troubleshoot or rejoin a computer to your domain. You can create a group policy that creates a local admin users and sets the local password. Admins make a common mistake when they want to add a…
Lists all users last logon time
As administrators we often want to check which users have not logged in for quite a while, or what accounts recently accessed a system, etc. The following script list all users and their last logon time. With the lastloggeduser.csv we can get fancy with excel to find differences based on age and more.
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$([ADSI]"WinNT://$env:COMPUTERNAME").Children | where {$_.SchemaClassName -eq 'user'} | select @{l='name';e={$_.name}},@{l='LastLogin';e={$_.lastlogin}} | export-csv C:\scripts\lastloggedusers.csv |
Connecting to a remote domain controller using PowerShell
Covering one of the basic day to day task if you are a Windows Administrator; connecting to the domain controller. Â I try to minimize logging onto servers as much as possible. Â Your thought should be around connecting to the server remotely and doing the work as needed instead of natively logging on to it. I…
A Beginner’s Guide to Checksum
Are you wondering what a checksum is? You may have noticed that when you download files from certain websites, they have a very long string of numbers and letters called a checksum or MD5 checksum or SHA-1, etc. These really long strings basically act as fingerprints for that particular file, whether it be an EXE,…
Reset Windows Server 2012 R2 RDS 120 Day Grace Period
The RD Licensing grace period has expired and the service has not registered with a license server with installed licenses. A RD Licensing server is required for continuous operation. A Remote Desktop Session Host server can operate without a license server for 120 days after initial start up. The official solution is to Activate the…
No remote Desktop License Server available on RD Session Host server 2012 R2
A fully functional and activated 2012 R2 Remote Desktop Session Host server displayed the following message: This was a simple setup on one server with the: connection broker, Session Host and Licensing server with 2012 R2 CAL’s installed. Even though the licensing seems to be configured correctly, in server manager: and PowerShell: Licensing diagnostics: everywhere…
How To Get Rid Of Dell KACE Agent?
What is Dell KACE Agent? Unifies and automates non-computer and computer asset management processes from deployment to retirement, to facilitate such tasks as software and regulatory compliance. Uninstalling KACE can be a pain. Luckily there is a way thanks to wmic. This works for 32 & 64 bit machines From Command Prompt/ Powershell in Admin…
Hack: Microsoft Outlook AutoComplete
Outlook maintains the AutoComplete list. The list is used by both the automatic name-checking feature and the automatic completion feature. The AutoComplete list, also known as the nickname cache, is generated automatically when you send email messages from Outlook. The list contains SMTP addresses, LegacyExchangeDN entries, and display names for people to whom you have…
Create A Dedicated Account To Join Computers To A Domain
Admins often need to automate things, like creating a dedicated account for joining machines to an Active Directory (AD) domain. Â This is useful for things like System Center Configuration Manger task sequences and System Center Virtual Machine Manager templates or similar needs. First create a standard Windows user account. Â Next, right-click on the Computers Organization…