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Configure failover failed. Error: 20114: The DHCP Failover relationship...
This post relates to the new Windows Server 2012 Failover technology. I was diagnosing DHCP Issues at a customer when I was required to remove my DHCP scopes from failover configuration then re-add...
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Naming Information cannot be located because: The directory or file cannot be...
I just added the first Windows Server 2012 R2 domain controller to a 2008 Active Directory domain at a customer. As soon as I added the first 2012 R2 domain controller to the new domain, when opening...
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Windows Server 2012 DHCP Failover Not Adhering to Scope Times
When setting up Windows Server 2012 DHCP Failover you may notice the lease duration provided to clients may not adhere to the lease duration configured on the DHCP scope. This is by design and a...
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Windows 8.1 Internet Explorer 11 - This page can't be displayed for Google
A customer of mine flagged an interesting issue on Windows 8.1 running IE11. Whenever they attempted to access "google.com" or any Google related page such as Google Maps they would receive an error...
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Licensing Windows Server 2012 or Windows 8 with KMS
In previous releases of Windows such as 2008 and Windows 7 you can install Windows without entering a product key. After the installation is complete, the computer would automatically find the KMS...
View ArticleWhat is Name Resolution Policy Table (NRPT)
The NRPT is a new feature which was first introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 that allows a client to assign a DNS server address to particular namespaces rather than to particular interfaces. The...
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ODBC SQL Server Driver - Cannot Generate SSPI context
On the weekend I responded to an emergency callout regarding a custom Microsoft Access front end application not being able to talk to the backend SQL database. The error which was being received was...
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Direct Access Client Connectivity Issue
I have implemented Microsoft Direct Access for a customer running Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 8 Enterprise workstations. Direct Access was tested in a working order however the customer has a...
View ArticleHow to Enable Group Policy Debugging on Windows 7 / 8 Clients
In Windows XP / 2003 there was a very useful log file called "Userenv.log" which was located under %Systemroot%\Debug\UserMode\Userenv.log. This log file was extremely happy when diagnosing issues...
View ArticleWhat are Scoped Send Connectors?
A topic which frequently confuses Exchange Administrators is the concept of "Scoped Send Connectors". So what are they?When you mark a send connector as scoped, this means it can only be used by...
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Distribution Groups - The properties on this object have invalid data.
I am in the process of carrying out another Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 migration for a customer with 800 users. On the Exchange 2010 server, when attempting to open the properties of a...
View Article"Try Next Closest Site" Group Policy Setting
In a previous post I wrote about how the DC Locator component of Windows locates a domain controller. This post can be found on the following...
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Moving Mailbox - Active Directory operation failed
When attempting to move a users mailbox from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, the following error was experienced.Summary: 1 item(s). 0 succeeded, 1 failed.Elapsed time:...
View ArticleWhat is the krbtgt account in Active Directory?
The KRBTGT account is a user account which resides inside the domain users container in every Active Directory domain. This service account is critical and is required by the Kerberos Key Distribution...
View ArticleMaking DNS GlobalNames Zone Available to Other Forests
In large complex forests with multiple domains, the DNS Suffix search list can be extensive and can result in DNS name resolution failing. Companies with a large number of domains often used WINS to...
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Weird Exchange Performance Issues
This post is interesting as it is one of the weirdest Exchange 2010/2013 performance problems I have seen in my career for a while. In writing this blog post, hopefully other organisations with the...
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Error: 0xC004F050 The Software Licensing Service reported that the product...
Today when attempting to install a Microsoft Office 2010 KMS Key to a new KMS server, the following error was experienced.Error: 0xC004F050 The Software Licensing Service reported that the product key...
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VMware to HyperV Migration
Microsoft has released a small but powerful tool for converting VMware Virtual Machines to HyperV virtual machines called Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC). This tool is able to convert the...
View ArticleExchange 2013 Ready for Production!
Exchange 2013 after a long wait is finally ready for production. Exchange 2013 was released by Microsoft back October 2012 with a number of limitations and problems. The removal of EMC and major...
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Windows Server 2012 Remote Access - Settings for server cannot be retrieved.
A customer of mine had a newly setup Windows Server 2012 R2 remote access server configured to use a static address pool. When opening up Remote Access Management Console they received the following...
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