Those of you running Domain Controllers with full installations of Windows Server 2008 R2 or are managing Windows Server 2008 R2-based Domain Controllers using the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT) on Windows 7, might have seen the following configuration warning in the Active Directory Best Practice Analyzer (AD BPA): About the Protect ...

Since Windows Server 2008, Microsoft no longer offers the ability to restart a Domain Controller in Directory Services Restore Mode (DSRM) from the default F8 boot menu. About Directory Services Restore Mode For Windows Server-based Domain Controllers, a special startup mode exists, where the Active Directory database isn’t loaded. This startup ...

Solid State Disks (SSDs) offer great performance enhancements, especially when you follow the guidelines in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. From an information security point of view, however, these devices are nightmare in terms of data confidentiality. Recent studies from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) show securely wiping ...

Change is upon us. Where many Active Directory administrators have stuck with Windows XP, because no valid alternatives (Windows Vista, *nix) were available, now the business wants to upgrade to Windows 7. Whatever the business reasons behind Windows 7, as an Active Directory administrator a couple of key elements should stand out. We’ve already ...

In the past three parts of this series (part 1, 2 and 3), I already gave you some tips and tricks to tackle the problems you might encounter when introducing Windows 7 in your existing environment. We’ve already covered a schema update, when we looked at storing BitLocker and TPM recovery information in Active Directory. This post features ...

Deploying Windows XP is as easy as sysprep’ing a sample installation, throw in an answer file in the mix with a Volume License Key (VLK) and rolling out the newly created image with your preferred distribution method. A volume Windows XP product key is easily attained by buying a 5 PC equivalent Volume License and using it to roll out all your ...

Windows 7 is actively being deployed by companies, big and small. Some features in Windows 7 (especially features in Windows 7 Enterprise) require changes in the back ends of these environments. While some upgrades are evident, some may not. This series of posts details the changes wise to make to your Active Directory environment to smoothen ...

Change is upon us. Where many Active Directory administrators have stuck with Windows XP, because no valid alternatives (Windows Vista, *nix) were available, now the business wants to upgrade to Windows 7. Whatever the business reasons behind Windows 7, as an Active Directory administrator a couple of key elements should stand out: Windows ...

Since Windows Vista, Microsoft has bundled and enabled IPv6 by default. This means Windows Vista, Windows 7 Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 (and all their derivate SKUs like Small Business Server) out of the box talk IPv6. Note: Server Core installations do not have IPv6 enabled by default and are the one notable exception. The ...

Microsoft has included numerous features in Active Directory the last couple of years. Also, more and more technologies in products like Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and the Windows client (Windows Vista, Windows 7) have an Active Directory opt-in to store information in Active Directory. All this bountiful integration, however, comes with ...