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Completely Disable UAC

December 8, 2016 June 28, 2018Server 2012 R2

To completely disable User Account Control on a Windows machine set the following registry key. Key: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System Value: “EnableLUA” Type: REG_DWORD Value: 0x00000000 The following powershell command does the trick nicely: Set-ItemProperty -Path registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System -Name EnableLUA -Value 0 https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc232765.aspx?tduid=(8b33f2bee35cf8af0da845c7fe4d2393)(256380)(2459594)(TnL5HPStwNw-rp6Qh8nm5xnZwnOhPE.33Q)()

Add drivers to Windows Installation Media

March 4, 2016 March 4, 2016Windows 7

When installing Windows 7 onto newer, or special, hardware, you may need to add drivers to the Windows installation ISO. You may also need to add USB3 drivers to an installation ISO if you’re planning to install the OS from a bootable USB stick. In the example below, I’m working…

WatchGuard SSLVPN Certificate Issue

March 4, 2016 June 15, 2016Firewall

I have just recently replaced an old WatchGuard XTM300 with a new WatchGuard M200 firewall at one of our facilities. Immediately after the switch we noticed that the SSLVPN connections were failing. In the client log files we found the error “Failed to get domain name.” After a bit of…

Driver Backup

March 3, 2016 March 3, 2016Server 2012 R2, Uncategorized, Windows 10, Windows 7

A quick tip to manually backup installed drivers on a Windows computer. Copy the following directories to a secondary drive (USB, etc.): – %systemroot%\System32\DriverStore\ – %systemroot%\System32\Drivers\ – %systemroot%\System32\DrvStore\ *not all installations will have this directory* – %systemroot%\inf\

WSUS Certificate Server

February 22, 2016 February 22, 2016SCCM

During an install of the WSUS role on a Server 2012 R2 machine, the WSUS Certficate Server service was somehow set to start automatically. The WSUS Certificate Server is called by the API when a certificate-based operation is required. So, when the Operating System tried to start this service automatically,…

Config Manager Software Update Point Issues

February 16, 2016 February 16, 2016SCCM

For the last few weeks we’ve been suffering from numerous error messages on our SCCM 2012 R2 Software Update Point. I knew they were all somehow related but it took quite a while to figure out how they were all linked together. I first noticed that the SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER component was…

Get Embeded Windows Key From UEFI BIOS

December 30, 2015 December 30, 2015Uncategorized, Windows 10

Run the following command from the Windows command prompt. wmic path softwarelicensingservice get oa3xoriginalproductkey

VMware Auto update of VM Tools

November 25, 2015 May 8, 2017VMware

/S /v”/qn REBOOT=R”

How to fix the trust relationship between workstations and the Active Directory Domain

October 16, 2015 November 25, 2015Active Directory, Windows, Windows 7

Occasionally a workstation, or sometimes even a member server, will give the error “The trust relationship between this workstation and the primary domain failed” when logging on to the computer. There are a few reasons why this error may occur, but in any case, there is a password mismatch between…

Scheduled Computer Restart

October 14, 2015 November 25, 2015Server 2012 R2, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 7

This is a very simple process to setup a scheduled task to restart your system. This process will work with Windows Server 2012R2/2012/2008R2/2008/2003. In the procedure we will use the Task Scheduler to run the shutdown.exe command. For a list of possible arguments for this command, visit the Microsoft TechNet…