WatchGuard SSLVPN Certificate Issue
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
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
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
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
Run the following command from the Windows command prompt. wmic path softwarelicensingservice get oa3xoriginalproductkey
VMware Auto update of VM Tools
/s /v “/qn REBOOT=ReallySuppress” /S /v”/qn REBOOT=R”
How to fix the trust relationship between workstations and the Active Directory Domain
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
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…
How to restart an Exchange DAG member
Here is a short instruction on how to reboot an Exchange DAG member Server: Check that all DB’s are healthy and check which servers is currently the active server. Run the following command from Exchange Management Shell: Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus * Perform “server Switchover” to change the active databases away from the server…
Manually restart VSS Writer Services
Snapshots may fail if a VSS writer is in a failed state. To determine which VSS writer(s) is the culprit, run the following command from an elevated command prompt: vssadmin list writers Find the failed VSS writer(s) using the command’s output, then restart the corresponding Windows Service. Run the VSSAdmin command…