James Rankin wrote a new post 6 months, 1 week ago
Can't uninstall app: Delete or change Windows apps that have been flagged as non-removable
AWS Secrets Manager enables you to safely store secrets, such as passwords or access keys. This way, you don’t have to store these secrets as plaintext in your applications. With the help of IAM AssumeRole, you can then access the secrets in Secrets Manager without exposing your AWS keys in cleartext.
James Rankin wrote a new post 9 months, 3 weeks ago
FSLogix VHDX compaction: Resize virtual disks
If you to want to upload an on-premises Hyper-V VM to the cloud to create a custom Azure image containing all your business applications in a preconfigured state, this post will help you.
James Rankin wrote a new post 11 months ago
Sysinternals Process Monitor: Real-time file system, registry, and process monitoring
User Account Control helps to implement proper permission levels for users accessing systems. Instead of needing administrator privileges, UAC allows admins to set up standard user permissions for users and escalate privileges in a granular way. In corporate networks, admins can use Group Policy to configure various UAC settings, including disabling UAC. Thanks to Windows Hello, you can now use a PIN for UAC.
James Rankin wrote a new post 12 months ago
Custom error message for access denied
One of the most popular Voice Over IP systems is the Cisco Unified Communication Manager System. Cisco uses several abbreviations for its VOIP system: Cisco Unified (CM), CallManager, and CUCM. This intro will focus on the CUCM architecture; that is, I will explain the most important components and concepts you need to understand if you plan to deploy CallManager in your organization.
James Rankin wrote a new post 2 years, 1 month ago
Consolidating Group Policy, part 3: Loopback policy processing and folder redirection
Azure policies are becoming increasingly popular, as they provide a wide range of management capabilities over Azure resources. Not only do they allow us to enforce policy rules to control Azure resources, but they can also enable us to automatically evaluate compliance and remediate noncompliant resources. In this post, we will look at how to manage Azure Policy using PowerShell for common tasks, including creating policy definitions, managing policy assignments, and reporting compliance status.
James Rankin wrote a new post 2 years, 1 month ago
Consolidating Group Policy, part 2: GPOZaurr
Creating custom ESXi images is useful when you need to add custom drivers to your installation ESXi ISO. Previously, there were third-party tools that are no longer maintained. However, since vSphere 6.x, VMware has offered its own utility, which is built into vSphere, called ESXi Image Builder.
James Rankin wrote a new post 2 years, 1 month ago
Consolidating Group Policy, part 1: Get-GpoReport and Advanced Group Policy Management (AGMC)
GPOZaurr from Evotec IT is a PowerShell module that is very useful for consolidating and managing Group Policy. In this post, I will demonstrate how you can use GPOZaurr to create Group Policy reports and deal with broken, disabled, invalid, or inapplicable GPOs. This is the second post in my series about Group Policy consolidation.
James Rankin wrote a new post 2 years, 2 months ago
Privileged access workstation (PAW) and lateral movement
Since Windows 10 1909, Microsoft has displayed a widget in the taskbar that shows content from MSN, such as weather or stock quotes. These “news and interests” are probably not required or desired in most professional environments. They can be deactivated via Group Policy.
James Rankin wrote a new post 3 years ago
Securing timeouts in Remote Desktop Session Host (RDSH) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments
If you want to issue certificates for internal web servers, RD Web Access, or WSUS via a Windows CA, you can automate this process with the help of Group Policy. This will also prevent services from failing due to expired certificates. Customized templates and a GPO are required for this.
James Rankin's profile was updated 3 years, 2 months ago
James Rankin wrote a new post 3 years, 2 months ago
Manage OneDrive caches with Windows Storage Sense
With an increase in remote working, the security of workers and data is becoming even more important. Part of this is making sure only the right people can access your virtual meetings. Microsoft Teams provides both the Teams administrator and the meeting organizer several capabilities for securing meetings. This post will cover both aspects to make sure you can have the best meetings possible.
James Rankin wrote a new post 3 years, 4 months ago
Known Folder Move: Part 2 – Group Policy settings
One side effect of authentication via username and password is the users forgetting their passwords. To relieve the help desk, we can delegate password resets to the users. Specops uReset allows such a self-service while protecting against identity theft.
James Rankin wrote a new post 3 years, 4 months ago
Assisting OneDrive migration with Known Folder Move: Part 1 – Preparations
Finding weak and potentially compromised passwords in your Active Directory environment is extremely important since passwords are arguably a weak link in overall security. Let’s look at Enzoic for Active Directory Lite, which is a great free tool for visibility into weak, compromised and reused passwords in Active Directory.
James Rankin changed their profile picture 3 years, 5 months ago
James Rankin wrote a new post 3 years, 5 months ago
Managing OneDrive cache in Citrix Virtual Apps and RDSH environments using FSLogix Profile Containers
Most Group Policy Objects (GPOs) comprise multiple settings for a Windows feature or an application. If you want to remove a particular setting, it will very often still leave some residue behind. Therefore, in this case, a manual rework is necessary.
FSLogix would definitely help you get around this issue, but obviously it has a dollar value attached to it 🙂 Feel free to hit me up if you want more info
James Rankin wrote a new post 6 years, 3 months ago
Roaming profiles and Start Tiles (TileDataLayer) in the Windows 10 1703 Creators Update
One drawback of the User State Migration Tool (USMT) is that it needs to run locally on the source and destination machines to migrate user state data. Luckily, with PowerShell we can easily create a function to migrate data between two remote machines.
James Rankin wrote a new post 6 years, 6 months ago
Include and exclude folders in roaming user profiles
Implicit remoting is one of PowerShell’s “best-kept secrets.” Learn how you can load modules from remote servers into your local system runspace to use the commands natively.
When you see the temp profile, is there a file lock for the VHD file showing on the file server?
It sounds like the server with the file share might not be fully patched. We had that issue very early on in testing but a patch remedied it.
Are you using a Windows file server and is it fully patched? If not, it might be worth doing the patching or testing a Windows SMB file share for this…
- Load More