When installing System Center Configuration Manager 2012, there are a number of prerequisites. Below are my install steps, step by step with notes. Schema Extensions Configuration Manager Active Directory schema extensions are not required for site server installation, but are recommended to fully support the use of all Configuration Manager features. For more information about the advantages of extending the schema extensions, see the Configuration Manager product documentation. Simply map a drive to the \SMSSETUP\BIN\X64 folder of the installation DVD, and run extadsch.exe from the command prompt. The screenshot below shows I mapped the drive as T:\ drive. WSUS SDK…

Configuring the Paging File on Windows Server Core or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 can be difficult, as this needs to be done via the command prompt. To check the current paging file configuration, check the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management or run the following: wmic pagefile list /format:list Turn off automatic paging files wmic computersystem where name="%computername%" set AutomaticManagedPagefile=False Create a new paging file on a separate drive wmic.exe pagefileset create name="S:\pagefile.sys" Manually configure the new paging file wmic.exe pagefileset where name="S:\\pagefile.sys" set InitialSize=64509,MaximumSize=65000 Delete the default C:\ drive paging file wmic.exe pagefileset where name="C:\\pagefile.sys" delete

Creating Managed Service Accounts is fairly strait forward – no passwords are required. These steps are for Windows Server 2008 R2. There is one catch, while it will allow you to create a Managed Service Account more than 15 characters, it won’t let you install a Managed Service Account more than 15 characters on servers. Best to keep under 15 characters as a rule of thumb. This is the error that you would get if you tried to install a Managed Service Account on a server – Cannot install service account. Error Message: ‘Unknown error (0xc0000017)’ Also, you cannot use…

I was getting an error message on a single physical Windows 7 machine, which was a brand new install of Windows 7 with Office 2010 SP1. Outlook is connecting to Exchange 2010 SP2 which hosts all mailboxes for the company. I was getting this error on the first Outlook setup screen where I enter, name, email address and password: (An encrypted connection to your mail server is not available. Click next to attempt using an unencrypted connection) This error was happening the first time I configured Outlook 2010, right after installation. The Windows 7 machine is not on the domain….

If you have Hyper-V running on Windows Server 2008 R2 in a cluster, there are times when you will need to live migrate all virtual machine guests to another host for scheduled planned maintenance on a specific host. You can live migrate all virtual machines one by one, one after the other from one host to another host by automatically running the following PowerShell script: Import-Module failoverclusters get-cluster "$CL" | Get-Clusternode "$SH" | Get-ClusterGroup | Move-ClusterVirtualMachineRole -node "$DH" As an example: get-cluster "dc-au-hvc-03" | Get-Clusternode "dc-au-hv-12" | Get-ClusterGroup | Move-ClusterVirtualMachineRole -node dc-au-hv-13 If you want to live migrate one specific…

If you take many photos and normally use Photoshop to Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color as a manual task, this can be fairly time consuming. This guide will show you how to automate this on a folder basis. All photos in a folder can be automatically processed by Photoshop for Auto Tone, Auto Contrast and Auto Color, saving you lots of time by using pre-recorded Actions in a batch job! Create an output directory on your computer where all Edited photos will output and saved to, e.g. C:\Users\<user>\Pictures\Edited Open Photoshop and open any image as preparation. You will…

This comskip.ini file works well for me using MCE Buddy with Windows Media Center. detect_method=255            ;1=black frame, 2=logo, 4=scene change, 8=fuzzy logic, 16=closed captions, 32=aspect ration, 64=silence, 128=cutscenes, 255=all validate_silence=1            ; Default, set to 0 to force using this clues if selected above. validate_uniform=1            ; Default, set to 0 to force using this clues (like pure white frames) if blackframe is selected above. validate_scenechange=1        ; Default, set to 0 to force using this clues if selected above. verbose=1                ;show a lot of extra info, level 5 is also OK, set to 0 to disable max_brightness=60                  ;frame not black if any…

If you are using Windows Server 2008 R2 as a print server and have all the correct drivers installed, x86 and x64 versions, printers might not install correctly from Group Policy and you might see event ID 4098 in the event log: Group Policy object did not apply because it failed with error code ‘0x80070bcb The specified printer driver was not found on the system and needs to be downloaded.’ This error was suppressed. In this scenario, printers might install correctly on Windows XP x86, but not on Windows 7 x86. Also, if you try to manually connect to the…

You might have two Active Directory sites and one Domain Controller/Global Catalog in each site. In one of the sites, you might have Exchange 2010. In the event log for Exchange 2010, event ID 2080 might say: Process MSEXCHANGEADTOPOLOGYSERVICE.EXE (PID=1296). Exchange Active Directory Provider has discovered the following servers with the following characteristics: (Server name | Roles | Enabled | Reachability | Synchronized | GC capable | PDC | SACL right | Critical Data | Netlogon | OS Version) In-site: DC-01.dc.local    CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1 1 7 1 Out-of-site: DC-02.dc.local    CDG 1 7 7 1 0 1…