How to determine the effective Fine Grain Password Policy on a user account.

When your domain is at least at Windows Server 2008 R1 level, you have the option of using Fine Grain Passwords. In previous implementations of a Windows domain. You were given only only password policy for every users. This was the policy stored in the Default Domain Policy GPO. Now you can have users of different security groups have different password policies that are more fitting to the security of their positions and the data they have access to. One problem that comes up is when a user is a member of multiple security groups, all of which have different PSOs (Password Settings Object – aka Fine grain password policy) assigned to them. The Precedence value assigned to each PSO determines the one in effect. Of all the PSOs the user recieves from their respective PSOs, the User Object only uses the PSO with the lowest precedence value. Here is how to determine which one a user account is using.

On your Domain Controller, open Active Directory Users and Computers.

Click View and make sure there is a check mark beside Advanced Features.

Next browse to the users account object. Right click it and select Properties.

Click the Attribute Editor tab,

Click the Filter button and make sure there are checks by Show Attributes: Optional and Show read-only attributes: Constructed.

Look for the attribute msDS-ResultantPSO. The name of the PSO being applied to this user is the value of this attribute.

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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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