Using the Reliability Monitor as a Lie Detector

There are some days that we feel like parents. Our kids come back with something expensive that we gave them and it is broke. They have no idea what happened to it. All they know is that they want you to either fix it or get them a new one. Being the superior support personnel we all are, we ask our usual round of questions only to get vague answers in return. What if I could tell you that you could eliminate the “What did you install/uninstall” question? How about even getting rid of the “Did anything crash” question? With the Reliability Monitor, you can.

Your start the reliability monitor by opening it as an MMC Snap-in. You can also click Start and type rel. At the top of the search results, right mouse click Reliability and Performance Monitor and select Run as Administrator. If you right mouse click Reliability and Performance, you can connect to that other user’s computer. Using the Reliability monitor, you can see when things went south on that client. You can see what crashed, what was removed and what was installed.

In this image of the System Stability chart, you can click on each day to see what went on. We had a pseudo way of doing this in XP with the System Restore Points. What you click through the System Restore calendar you got a little detail about what was changed that caused the restore point to be created. My personal record for dealing with a user who was not truthful is 2.5 days. Once I uncovered the truth, the problem was resolved in 20 minutes. Image the time, money and frustrations that we could have saved with this tool.

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Sticky Key problem between Windows Server 2012 and LogMeIn

This week I instructed my first class using Windows Server 2012 accessed via LogMeIn and discovered a Sticky Key problem every time you press the Shift key. Here is my solution to resolve this. First off, in the Preferences of LogMeIn for the connection to the Windows Server, click General . Change the Keyboard and mouse priority to Host side user and click Apply at the bottom. On the Windows 2012 server, open the Control Panel – Ease of Access – Change how your keyboard works . Uncheck Turn on Sticky Keys . Click Set up Sticky Keys . Uncheck Turn on Sticky Keys when SHIFT is pressed five times . Click OK twice. If you are using Windows Server 2012 as a Hyper-V host, you will need to redo the Easy of Use settings on each guest operating system in order to avoid the Sticky Key Problem. Updated Information: March 20, 2013 If you continue to have problems, Uncheck Turn on Filter Keys .

Where did a User’s Account Get Locked Out?

Updated: May 15, 2015 When this article was originally published, two extra carriage returns were add causing the code to malfunction. The code below is correct. My client for this week’s PowerShell class had a really interesting question. They needed to know where an account is being locked out at. OK, interesting. Apparently users hop around clients and forget to log off, leading to eventual lock out of their accounts. The accounts can be unlocked, but are then relocked after Active Directory replication. This problem is solved in two parts. The first one is to modify the event auditing on the network. The second part is resolved with PowerShell. The first part involves creating a group policy that will encompass your Domain Controllers. In this GPO, make these changes. Expand Computer Configuration \ Policies \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Advanced Audit Policy Configuration \ Audit Policies \ Account Management Double click User Account Management C...

How to run GPResult on a remote client with PowerShell

In the past, to run the GPResult command, you would need to either physically visit this client, have the user do it, or use and RDP connection. In all cases, this will disrupt the user. First, you need PowerShell remoting enabled on the target machine. You can do this via Group Policy . Open PowerShell and type this command. Invoke-Command –ScriptBlock {GPResult /r} –ComputerName <ComputerName> Replace <ComputerName> with the name of the target. Remember, the target needs to be online and accessible to you.

Jason Yoder, MCT

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