As you may have seen, there has been an update to the extended support lifecycle for WSUS 3.0 SP2 (WSUS 3.2). We received feedback that ending this product’s life in July 2017 would cause a significant disruption for those Windows Server 2008/R2 deployments that planned to rely upon it until January 2020. As such, the end of life for this product is now January 2020.
ADREPLSTATUS has a nice Office-like GUI with a ribbon and can replace RepMon or RepAdmin of the Windows 2000 support tools.
Source : 4sysops.com
Download : www.microsoft.com
This breakdown of Kerberos settings and how they correspond to AD provides much-needed clarity
This ongoing need to clarify how Kerberos works and how it fails is a result of the fact that—although Kerberos remains the same—the services that use it and the ways they use it are often unique. The aspects that remain the same in each scenario, however, are what the settings in Active Directory (AD) are intended to address, and the difficult-to-interpret messages you’ll see when things fail.
Source : www.windowsitpro.com
Today I tried to do a sysprep of a Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 computer before capturing an image of it via imagex.
sysprep.exe /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:unattend.xml
Everything went fine and the computer shutdown.
Then I rebooted the server and had a blue screen (BSOD) :
STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}
The session manager initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x00000000).
The system has been shut down.
I found out that SYSPREP had made some changes to my Boot Configuration Data (BCD). Here’s an extract of my setupact.log file :
LaunchDll:Found 'C:\Windows\System32\spbcd.dll,Sysprep_Generalize_Bcd'; executing it
Sysprep_Generalize_Bcd: Located BCD store on system drive. Generalizing it...
GeneralizeBcdStore: Found the memory tester object.
GeneralizeBcdStore: Found the Windows OS Loader object {bb3f7e5d-3afe-11e1-908d-0010184c4562} for the currently running OS.
GeneralizeBcdStore: Found the resume object {bb3f7e5c-3afe-11e1-908d-0010184c4562} for the OS loader.
GeneralizeBcdStore: System drive backed by VHD = 0
GeneralizeBcdStore: Generalizing object {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
GeneralizeBcdStore: Successfully generalized application device. Status = [0x0]
GeneralizeBcdStore: Generalizing object {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
GeneralizeBcdStore: Successfully generalized application device. Status = [0x0]
GeneralizeBcdStore: Generalizing object {bb3f7e5d-3afe-11e1-908d-0010184c4562}
GeneralizeBcdStore: Successfully generalized application device. Status = [0x0]
GeneralizeBcdStore: Successfully generalized OS device. Status = [0x0]
GeneralizeBcdStore: Generalizing object {bb3f7e5c-3afe-11e1-908d-0010184c4562}
GeneralizeBcdStore: Successfully generalized application device. Status = [0x0]
GeneralizeBcdStore: Successfully generalized hiberfile device. Status = [0x0]
Sysprep_Generalize_Bcd: Successfully generalized the bcd store. Status=[0x0]
LaunchDll:Successfully executed 'C:\Windows\System32\spbcd.dll,Sysprep_Generalize_Bcd' without error
So, after running sysprep /generalize my BCD looked like this :
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {default}
device locate=\windows\system32\winload.efi
path \windows\system32\winload.efi
description Windows Server 2008 R2
locale en-us
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice locate=\windows
systemroot \windows
resumeobject {bb3f7e5c-3afe-11e1-908d-0010184c4562}
nx OptOut
detecthal Yes
Did you noticed the locate=… value for the device and osdevice entries ? Well it seems that those new values were causing my blue screen.
I restored the previous values (before Sysprep) with the following commands :
bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set [default} osdevice partition=C:
After that, my computer was able to boot again.
I’m not sure, but i suspect that this little mixed up with the BCD Store maybe related to how I partitioned my disk :
| WinPE
Size 900Mb, boot WinPE to capture or apply an image from imagex |
| ESP
Size 100Mb, EFI System Partition, Active Partition |
| Microsoft Reserved
Size 128Mb |
| Windows
Size 120Gb, C: drive |
| Data
Size 400Gb, E: drive |
My disk is initialize as a GPT disk and this is an EFI Computer.
Always make a backup of the BCD store before running SYSPREP :
bcdedit /export backupbcd.bcd
This article introduces Group Policy Preferences, explains how they differ from Group Policy settings, compares Preferences to logon scripts, and covers a few Group Policy Preferences gotchas.
The introduction of Group Policy Preferences into Group Policy seems to have quite a few people confused. I think that confusion has been compounded by all of the people who skipped Windows Vista, stayed with Windows XP, and are just now starting to implement Windows 7 on the desktop.
Source : 4sysops
Here’s the situation: You are called into consult for a client, and in examining their IT infrastructure you observe no organization as to how service accounts are deployed. For instance, some line-of-business (LOB) applications are using the domain Administrator as their service account identity, while others use the Local Service or Network Service identity.
Recently, the client began associating application services with dedicated domain user service accounts. However, because domain password policy forces password changes every 60 days, the manual reassignment of service account passwords created organizational headaches for the IT support staff.
How can you resolve this mess of a real-world situation?
Source : 4sysops.com
Don't waste your time trying to understand what this blog is about or why is there so many unrelated news in it (from Formula 1 to computer programming). It's simply my own personal blog where I can put any information I like.
