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One of my colleagues reported an issue at a customer this past weekend where every time he transferred FSMO roles, MOM would report that the MS DTC (distribution transaction coordinator) service had terminated unexpectedly on all the domain controllers in a domain at this customer. At this particular customer that bought us about 350 emails from MOM since the roles got transferred twice over the weekend in each domain. For reference, it’s a highly distributed Windows Server 2003 SP1 environment with a mix of x86 and x64 installations. A quick look at MOM & the event viewer on a suspect … Continue reading MSDTC Exits on PDCe Transfer

So I’m working on a project which involves some documentation around disaster recovery and I flagged a word in the text for the technical reviewers to suggest a better word (BCD40). The feedback I got really made me laugh: Share this post: email it! | digg it! | bookmark it! | live it!

I was complaining (more or less) several weeks ago about the amount of work it was going to take to upgrade my MCSE to the latest version. The good news is I went and did the Windows end of things and now I’m apparently an “MCITP: Enterprise Administrator”. Now compared to MCSE, no HR person is going to know what that means. Most folks are trained to look for MCSE and it’s going to be a long time before that mentality is changed I suspect. Personally if someone asks me if I have an MCSE or if I’m certified on … Continue reading Update on the MCSE Upgrade

I’ll be down in Orlando at TechEd IT Pro next week. I’m working a booth of some fashion in the Technical Learning Center most of the week I’m told, so feel free to drop in and say hello if you’re in town as well. Share this post: email it! | digg it! | bookmark it! | live it!

The Microsoft error code lookup tool (which no Windows admin should be without) got updated today: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=be596899-7bb8-4208-b7fc-09e02a13696c&displaylang=en&tm. While it says it’s for Exchange, it really covers Exchange, Windows and a number of other Microsoft products. You can plug an error code in and this tool will give you whatever definitions it finds in the headers compiled into it. If you’ve ever seen an event that says “the error code is in the data”, or you get a message that “unknown error 0x80045500” has occurred and you have no idea what to do, this is where to start. I keep the … Continue reading Updated Error Code Lookup Tool

I came across these shortcuts today for navigating the group policy editor and thought they’d be worth sharing. They’re holdovers from Windows Explorer that also work in the GPO editor. If you press * while targeting a folder in the console, the folder and all of its’ children will be expanded If you press + while targeting a folder in the console, the folder will be expanded one level If you press – while targeting a folder in the console, the folder will be collapsed When you double click on a policy setting, that dialog that comes up is non-modal. … Continue reading Group Policy Editor Shortcuts

Thought I’d post an informational post for folks who are moving an AD forest to Windows 2003 forest functional level (aka FFL2) as I realized today this piece of information might not be quite as well known as I might have thought. As an FYI, this change adds a number of attributes to the partial attribute set (aka the PAS or global catalog): Ms-DS-Trust-Forest-Trust-Info Trust-Direction Trust-Attributes Trust-Type Trust-Partner Security Identifier Ms-DS-Entry-Time-To-Die MSMQ-Secured-Source MSMQ-Multicast-Address Print-Memory Print-Rate Print-Rate-Unit MS-DRM-Identity-Certificate This is done when you upgrade the forest functional level because at this point there are no Windows 2000 domain controllers in the … Continue reading Windows 2003 Forest Functional Level

I’m heading downtown in a bit for DEC 2008 and will be around all week. Please do say stop by and say hello and join in the conversations if you’re there! If you’re looking for suggestions on local things I can try and help since I’m from Chicago too. Share this post: email it! | digg it! | bookmark it! | live it!

There are a few things that you really have to consider when you’re setting up your site links – the naming convention, cost relative to the underlying WAN transport, frequency of replication, and schedule (that is when replication can even occur). Naming your site links is something you’ve got to think about what they’re all going to look like in order to do properly. If you deal strictly with point to point links your options should be quite limited in how to name them. I generally go Hub – Spoke for the name, where Hub is either the hub site … Continue reading Active Directory Site Links – Naming & Costing

I thought I’d share the script attached at the end of this post as it’s something I’ve seen requests for below. The script will take all of the users in a given OU (or really any subtree), and create a home folder for them and stamp the path and drive letter on the user object in Active Directory. By default it only grants the users modify permissions on the account. If you want to change this modify the xcacls call around line 54. There are a few constants which need to be configured at the top of the script which … Continue reading Script to Create Home Folders for OU