A lot of people have an opinion on the Offline Domain Join (ODJ) functionality in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012 Active Directory, Windows 7 and Windows 8. Of course, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but sometimes fact checking is useful for a discussion. To this point, I have captured the top 5 myths on ODJ from discussions ...

Microsoft introduced the VM-GenerationID in Windows Server 2012, to enable Virtual Machines (VMs) to notice when they’re snapshotted, restored and/or cloned. Active Directory is the first technology to put the VM-GenerationID to good use. The following Hypervisors support VM-GenerationID: Windows Server 2012 Standard Edition (Hyper-V) ...

Many Active Directory admins consider it unsafe to display the last users logon name on the Logon Screen, since it provides information on naming conventions, etc. to possible malicious people. Others change the default Logon Screen to accommodate for presentation PCs, flexworker desktops and other commonly shared IT equipment. Do Not Display ...

I’ve been a production Windows 8 user since the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Like you, I’ve been through the stages of Kübler-Ross with the new Windows 8 Interface (formerly known as ‘Metro’). At first I started cluttering my Start Screen with the built-in applications and tended to focus on the ones that featured a Live Tile to show me ...

System Center 2012 was released in April 2012, well before Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 were released. As a consequence, these Operating Systems weren't supported. This functionality was slated for System Center 2012 with ServicePack 1, among other new exciting new functionality. This makes ServicePack 1 for System Center 2012 not just an ...

Windows 8 offers many new  features, compared to Windows XP, Windows Vista and even Windows 7. Some of these features are fantastic, but come with a top of the bill hardware price tag. In this blogpost I’ll explain why you’ll need to scour the specifications of your hardware components for these five acronyms: Note: Of course, ...

As announced in an earlier blogpost, I hosted a Microsoft Netherlands Datacenter Virtualization IT Camp with Tony Krijnen on December 11, 2012. We had a lot of fun and in this blogpost I’ll try and share some of the fun. During the Datacenter Virtualization IT Camps, IT Pro attendees, work their way through a series of exercises to explore a ...

Although this blog typically contains Windows Server-related tips, tricks, howtos and reviews, I am also pretty known with the Windows client. After I technically reviewed ‘Windows 8: Out of the Box’, as published by O’Reilly Media, I was contacted about five months ago to be one of the two technical reviewers of ‘Windows 8 Hacks’, a ...

I’ve written before on Active Directory-based Activation. This new activation method allows domain-joined Windows 8 clients and Windows Server 2012-based member servers to be activated and deactivated automatically based on their domain membership. I’m very fond of this feature. However, for many enterprise organizations, Active Directory-based ...

Since Windows 8 is now available, some of our jobs at work is to make plans to replace our Windows client infrastructure. At my employer we’ve already migrated to Windows 8 and this has provided us with a wealth of information, experience and feedback. Some of this information, luckily, I’m able to share with you today in the form of this ...