Windows: what an account is locked by?
One of the most frustrating activities a Windows admin has to perform is understanding why an Active Directory account keeps locking: here’s a quick way to find out.
Windows 2008 CA: Error 401 – Access is denied
Windows Server’s Certification Authority offers a web interface to request certificates, available at the following URL: https://nomeserver/CertSrv. When I tried to connect to an Enterprise CA installed on a Windows 2008 server, I got this error message: 401 – Unauthorized: Access is denied: Open the IIS management console, select CertSrv virtual directory and click Authentication: Choose Windows Authentication and, on the right,…
Exchange 2003: how to log IMAP sessions
Today, I needed to record IMAP sessions on my Microsoft Exchange 2003 server to debug a client. You can enable session logging with the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\IMAP4Svc\Parameters Two values control logging behavior: IMAP4 Protocol Log Level ->logging level (0 = disabled, 5 = maximum); IMAP4 Protocol Log Path -> folder logs will be saved in. You…
Windows 7: how to clear “pinned list”
A useful feature added in Windows 7 is the jump list you can get with a right click on Windows Explorer icon located in the taskbar. You can also “pin” some resources in the top pinned list: Because of a bug, if you previously added to pinned list a resource (for example a network share) not available anymore, you can’t remove that resource.…
Windows 2008 – Tasks on a cluster node
Working with a Windows cluster, I needed a way to run scheduled tasks only on the cluster node that is owner of a given cluster group. In Windows 2003 it was possible to configure Task Scheduler as a cluster resource; I wasn’t able to find a way to do the same in Windows 2008. I created a simple PowerShell script that checks…
Windows 2008 – Error 0x8007010B on task execution
On Windows 2008, a scheduled task execution could fail with error code 0x8007010B: That error code means invalid “Start in” path: open task properties, click Actions tab and check if the path specified is valid and does not contains quotes. That field, unlike the Program/Script one, does not require quotes even if the path you enter includes blanks:
Powershell, how to get parameters from a file
I wrote the following snippet when a friend asked me some help: he needed to execute a command several times, getting its parameters from a CSV (comma-separated values) file. the parameters.csv file contains the following informations: IP address username password Here’s the script: $file = Get-Content "C:\parameters.csv" foreach($row in $file) { $parameters = $row.Split(","); $ipaddress = $parameters[0]; $username…
Windows 2008 – Error 2147943712 during task creation
In a Windows 2008 server, when you confirm the creation of a new task, you may obtain the following error: An error has occurred for task <TaskName>. Error message: The following error was reported: 2147943712. This error message occurs when Windows was unable to store credentials (expecially the password) of the user who run the task; normally a security…