VMware Package Tools

Sometimes when we install a virtual machine with applications and drivers that are not standard, we have difficulty installing VMware Tools. So, in this post I will provide you a link where you can find all the drivers from all VMware versions. With this you can install a single driver or you can troubleshoot a spcific issue.

The page looks like this:

How to Recreate Active Directory Default Domain Policy GPO

A few months ago, I had a problem in a costumer where the Default GPOs ("Default Domain Policy"or/and the "Default Domain Controller Policy") were corrupted. I think the error was 0xc00ce509 and this will usually show up in the Group Policy management console.
If you have this errors, then your GPOs are not being applied at all.

The solution is simple!

Publishing Exchange 2010 Services in ISA 2006 or TMG 2010 with Certificates

 

 

In this Post I will show you how to Publish all of the Exchange Services in Firewall Rules (with certificates) so you can access it through Webmail, ActiveSync and/or Outlook Anywhere.

This will work with Microsoft Exchange 2007/2010 and Microsoft ISA 2006 and TMG 2010. Other versions of Exchange will work, but you will need to change some of the paths in the Firewall.

The Steps are:

1. Create and Import the Certificates;
2. Configure the Exchange Server;
3. Create the Web Listener in the Firewall;
4. Configure of the Publishing Rules
1. WebMail (OWA)
2. Outlook Anywhere
3. ActiveSync
5. Troubleshooting

With this configuration you can access your Email from Outside/Internet using your favorite browser or any mobile application that use Exchange Services or ActiveSync. With Outlook Anywhere you can use your Outlook like you were in the Office.

So, let's begin!

Remotely Enable Remote Desktop in Windows

In this Post I will show you how to Remotely enable Remote Desktop in Windows. It will work in all versions of Windows from 7 to 10. By default Windows 7 doesn't allow Remote Desktop connections and this has to be enabled by the user (or set via group policy). What happens if you eed quick remote access to a desktop? If you're in a domain environment you may just be in luck. There are four steps needed to remotely enable RDP connections.

1. Open ports in the Windows firewall
2. Start the Remote Registry service
3. Change a registry setting to enable Remote Desktop
4. Start the Remote Desktop service

How to Get Rid of the Notification Upgrade to Windows 10

 

To get rid of the icon that is always appearing in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 permanently, you must follow this steps:
 

•   Uninstall KB3035583 which is responsible for these notifications:
• Control panel, windows update, installed updates, sort by name, "Update for Microsoft Windows KB3035583" (not a Security Update) and uninstall;
• Reboot.

An alternative method is to open a command promp and enter the following:

• wusa /uninstall /KB:3035583

When you're offered the same Update again via Windows Update remember to hide it. If you are using some kind of central patching like WSUS, remember to not Approve this Update.

SCCM 2012 Error 0x8007000F & 0x80070490

I have installed several SCCM (2007, 2012) and in all of them I have to troubleshoot something :) Yeah! In this case it was an error 0x8007000F \ 0x80070490 when I deployed an image to some Computers that already had an image deployed previously.

Step-by-Step - Disaster Recovery From Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Azure - PART2

Hello guys, in the last PART of this article I prepared all the Hyper -V infrastructure and Azure for Disaster Recovery. In this part we will see how we test it in different ways

1. Testing Failover On-Premises to Azure;
2. Failover Planned On-Premises to Azure;
3. Failover Planned Azure to On-Premises;
4. Failover UnPlanned On-Premises to Azure;
5. Failover UnPlanned Azure to On-Premises.

Step-by-Step - Disaster Recovery From Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Azure - PART1

In the following two articles I will show you how to make a copy of virtual machines from Hyper-V to Azure and thus set up a Disaster Recovery with VM replication. How cool is that? :)

 

Requirements:

• Only for VMs in Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher;
• For this scenario it will be necessary a Virtual Machine with Virtual Machine Manager 2012 R2 installed (VMM) and Hyper-V 2012 R2;
• Node(s) in the Hyper-V and VMM must have access to the Internet (ports 80 and 443), so we can replicate information;
• You can create a Site-to-Site VPN for Azure DR so that there is communication between On-Premises and DR VMs (Optional);
• Like previuos point, you can create a Point-to-site network so that users can access Azure DR VMs (Optional);
• Geo-Redundant storage for VMs replicas.

SCCM 2012 Troubleshooting Tools

I have installed and configured, for many years, one of the most useful tools of Microsoft, SCCM 2012 (Microsoft System Center Configurations Manager 2012) and the Troubleshooting is not so easy. So in this post I'll reference some of the best apps to do it. You can download the Trial Version of SCCM from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-system-center-2012-r2-configuration-manager-and-endpoint-protection

The Management Console has many options to control all the Servers, Clients and Mobile Phones, but there are some other tools that can help the Administrators to achive that objective, and most important is that they are free! I will name some of them.

Hotfix KB2830145 can't be installed - SID S-1-18-1 and SID S-1-18-2

If you have a Forest and Domain in Windows Server 2003 Level and Migrate to Windows Server 2012 (R2) Level, you may encounter some errors mapping users (Sharepoint or .NET errors).
The crux of the issue is that Windows Server 2012 (and above) introduce two new SIDs. The problem is that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 clients do not know about these SIDs (SID S-1-18-1 and SID S-1-18-2) because when they were written these particular SIDs didn’t exist.

The Solution from Microsoft is to install the Patch KB2830145 in all that Servers and Clients. It seems simple, but when you try to install, you might have some errors or the patch can take some days (yes, I said days) to install.

To check if you have this issue on one of the servers, try to use the psgetsid.exe tool (downloaded from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897417.aspx)

Exchange Server 2007 Lost - How to Recover Installation and Definitions on a New Server

To end the year smoothly (or not!), I recently had a costumer that lost the Physical Exchange server because a corruption of the disks after a power failure.
The worst fear of any Microsoft Exchange Server administrator is a complete crash of the Exchange server.
First thing to ask.. Backups! Ok, we have backups from the Exchange databases, but not from the Operational System and Exchange Installation.
In this post I'll show how to recover step by step a exchange server (in this case Exchange 2007 with Windows Server 2008. It applies to Exchange 2010 and Windows Server 2003 too) with the following roles: Mailbox, Client Access, Hub Transport, and Management Tools from scratch.