Category: 1186

Microsoft has posted the 80-minute video of PCIT-B341 Upgrading Active Directory the Safe Way: Using Virtualization Technologies, the session Mike Resseler and I presented on Friday May 15, 2014 at Microsoft TechEd North America 2014. You can watch this session free of charge over on Channel 9, regardless of whether you’ve attended TechEd North America … Continue reading "The video of my presentation at TechEd North America 2014 is now available"

Microsoft has released a KnowledgeBase article, in which they describe an issue you might encounter in a multi-domain environment, resulting in a loss of the secure channel between the domains and a long time for the secure channel to become reestablished.

As Gartner advices to upgrade to Windows 8.1 when you’ve deployed Windows 8 throughout your organization, it’s useful to look at the way Windows 8.1 impacts your current networking infrastructure, your deployment methods and your management philosophies. Although, I’ve already covered a big Group Policy change earlier in this series. (Part 10: Group Policy Caching), … Continue reading "Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 14, Logon Script Delay"

On December 18, 2013, I will be hosting two webinars on backing up and restoring virtualized Active Directory Domain Controllers with Veeam’s Backup & Replication (B&R) v7. The session at 10 AM CET will be delivered in Dutch. The session at   1 PM CET will be delivered in English.

Microsoft has made big strides on making Windows 8.1 an efficient platform to use, both for people migrating from Windows 7 (and previous versions of Windows) to Windows 8.1 and for those migrating from the original version of Windows 8. As a frequent presenter, I really like one of the new Windows 8.1 features, that … Continue reading "Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 13, Quiet hours"

Since Windows 8, Microsoft is moving its developer ecosystem to write apps for The New Interface, formerly known as Metro. With their immersive, scaled appearances and touch optimization, these apps can be used for a wide variety of experiences. Alas, the kiosk experience for apps in The New Interface was not one of these experiences … Continue reading "Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 12, Assigned Access"

When Microsoft builds an Operating System (OS), it has to build it to last. Windows XP endured a continuing blast of malware for the last 13 years. In particular, Internet Explorer 6 has seen a lot of vulnerabilities and saw the start of people moving away from Internet Explorer to the likes of Google’s Chrome … Continue reading "Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 11, Internet Explorer Enhanced Protected Mode"

As you would probably know, as a regular reader of this blog, Active Directory Domain Services performs a storage trick to prevent corruption in the Active Directory database. It does this by disabling write-back caching on the physical spindle where the Active Directory database resides. This way, the Domain Controller asks the storage device to … Continue reading "Active Directory in Hyper-V environments, Part 10"

As an admin, you’ll want to centrally manage the devices of your organizations. This reduces urgent helpdesk incidents and gains trust from your colleagues. On the other hand, much of the security you put in, slows down their devices. Anti-malware has been accepted as a necessary evil by most of your colleagues, but long logon … Continue reading "Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 10, Group Policy Caching"

My time with Windows 8 was fun. I found numerous hacks to make the most of my experience. The most fun I had was with pressing Alt + F4 during Windows 8‘s psychedelic color-flipping welcome screen to skip it altogether. Now, In Windows 8.1, pressing Alt + F4 during the initial setup won’t do you … Continue reading "Is your organization ready for Windows 8.1? Part 9, Disable Help Tips in The New Interface"