Do not install a third-party packet capture driver on a production Windows server just to learn which hop is dropping your packets. The driver you add for one afternoon of troubleshooting can outlive the ticket, survive a reboot, and reappear in your next change-control review. Windows has shipped its own packet capture and drop-detection tool for years, and it does real diagnostic work without a third-party binary. The risk you carry into a capture is the capture itself. A full-packet trace on the wrong interface records credentials and customer payloads to disk, and an unbounded file can fill the system drive of the server you are trying to rescue, which is why the filter, file-size, and log-mode choices below decide whether the trace is an asset or an incident.



adamtheautomator.
Read More
Windows 11 now includes System Monitor (Sysmon), a tool that logs process creation, network connections, and file creation time changes to the Windows event log. Previously, it was a separate download from Sysinternals. The built-in version is an optional feature that is disabled by default, so you must enable it with PowerShell and install it with the sysmon command. This article explains the prerequisites, the commands, how to apply your own XML configuration, and how to verify that Sysmon writes events.


Source : 4sysops
Read More
Starting October 10, Microsoft will require Exchange Online apps to appear in `EWSAllowedAppIDs` to keep using EWS, following the earlier warning that the allow list would be required. For qualifying Worldwide tenants, Microsoft plans to add IDs on October 8 and 9 based on the previous 60 days of activity—but apps used less often may need to be added manually.
Source : Exchange Online enforces EWSAllowedAppIDs on October 10 – 4sysops
Read More
WSL is central to our commitment to making Windows the best place to build, run and manage Linux workloads. As AI, cloud-native development, containers, and open-source ecosystems continue to converge on Linux, more developers are choosing to perform these workloads directly on Windows devices. We’re continuing our journey towards this goal with a new feature in WSL: WSL containers, which is generally available today.

Source : Windows Developer Blog
Read More
Don’t let the tool you already know decide PowerShell vs. Power Automate for you. That instinct feels efficient: you got fluent in PowerShell during your first sysadmin job, or you built your first approval chain in Power Automate, and now every automation request gets routed through whichever skill is already in your hands. It’s also how you end up with a PowerShell script handling SharePoint approval routing, or a Power Automate flow looping through a 40,000-row CSV one API call at a time.

Before you route the next ticket (new-hire provisioning, a stale batch of Active Directory accounts, a Teams alert that has to reach an invoicing system with no API), score it against how PowerShell and Power Automate are built.


Read More
Microsoft plans to deprecate the Windows Deployment Services (WDS) server role, including its Preboot Execution Environment (PXE) boot functionality, starting with the next Windows Server release. WDS continues to work on Windows Server 2025 and earlier, but you should begin planning a migration now. This article explains what the deprecation covers and evaluates the alternatives Microsoft names: the Configuration Manager PXE responder without WDS, non-Microsoft PXE solutions, and UEFI HTTP(S) Boot. It also covers Windows Autopilot for new devices and the planning steps Microsoft recommends.


Source : 4sysops
Read More
Microsoft is warning IT administrators not to wait for VBScript removal to disrupt Windows activation automation. Organizations that still rely on `slmgr.vbs` should begin moving critical workflows to PowerShell, using Microsoft’s newer activation module where it is supported.

Source : Microsoft tells IT admins to replace slmgr.vbs with PowerShell now – 4sysops
Read More
It’s been a busy week, and sometimes you just need something like a dad joke while almost hitting project deadlines, etc.  In this short blog post, I will show you how to use the FreeDadJokes module and add it to your profile to get one every time you start a Terminal.
Read More
Previous PostOlder Posts Home