Several years ago, Microsoft bought Sysinternals and, well, “internalized” it. The good news is that many of the old tools are still available. The bad news is that you can’t even buy the old ERD Commander tools; they’ve morphed into part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack or MDOP, which is only available to Software Assurance customers.

One of Windows 2008 Active Directory’s most under-utilized features is the ability to precisely target computers with Group Policy Preferences. Group Policy Preferences are different than traditional policy settings because they can be reversed by a user and not reapplied when Group Policy is refreshed. Windows 2008, Vista, and Windows 7 all have special Client Side Extensions (CSEs) for preference settings. You can download KB943729 from the Microsoft Download Center to retrofit Windows XP.

FTP Servers are an extremely useful way to store and transfer large files efficiently over any network including the Internet. Microsoft has featured an FTP Server in Windows Server for over a decade. Finally Microsoft added an updated and vastly improved FTP Server with enhanced security and manageability to Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7.

Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is a very hot topic right now. A VDI can deliver a pre-configured Windows virtual machine with all of the necessary applications on demand. This benefits highly regulated environments like banking and healthcare because they can configure their virtual desktop with precise security settings to comply with current laws. Also, legacy applications that won’t run on Windows 7 can run on a virtual desktop using an older version of Windows.

Ever delete a user account accidentally from your domain? If you have, then you know how much trouble it can be to restore a deleted account. If an Active Directory forest has been upgraded to Windows Server 2008 R2 forest functional level (FFL), the Active Directory Recycle Bin can be enabled. The Recycle Bin uses […]

Windows Server 2008 R2, with PowerShell 2.0 and the GroupPolicy management module allows for powerful administration of Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) based Group Policy. A question came up during a recent session of the Group Policy course, and then again the following week during a session of a PowerShell course. The distilled-down question […]

The introduction of Windows Server 2008 includes powerful new features for terminal services. The Terminal Services Gateway allows RDP clients to connect to Terminal Servers on an organization’s network using SSL-based encryption from the Internet without first creating a VPN connection. A Terminal Services Remote Application (TS RemoteApp) is delivered to the client computer in […]

Group Policy preferences, introduced with Windows Vista and Server 2008, gave network administrators new ways to use group policy to manage Windows computers.  Preference settings can replace scripts for mapping drives, configuring printers, managing registry settings, files and local users and groups. Some items that are difficult to impossible to set using scripts such as […]

Windows NT 4.0 included an implementation of the Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) for both the NT4 Workstation and NT4 Server products, with a client for Windows 95 OSR2, and PPTP is still supported in Windows and other operating systems. Virtual Private Networking (VPN) technologies have evolved since then. In fact, could they have […]

In a recent post, I described a high-level overview of 802.1x authentication. Now, let’s dive a bit deeper into the use of 802.1x as a foundation for Network Access Protection (NAP) enforcement of health policies in a Windows Server 2008 network infrastructure. Recall that 802.1x can be used with Ethernet switches and Wireless Access Points […]