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.

Comments

How to list all the AD LDS instances on a server

AD LDS allows you to provide directory services to applications that are free of the confines of Active Directory. To list all the AD LDS instances on a server, follow this procedure: Log into the server in question Open a command prompt. Type dsdbutil and press Enter Type List Instances and press Enter . You will receive a list of the instance name, both the LDAP and SSL port numbers, the location of the database, and its status.

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.

Error icon when creating a GPO Preference drive map

You may not have an error at all. Take a look at the drive mapping below. The red triangle is what threw us off. It is not an error. It is simply a color representation of the Replace option of the Action field in the properties of the drive mappings. Create action This give you a green triangle. The Create action creates a new mapped drive for users. Replace Action The Replace action gives you a red triangle. This action will delete and recreate mapped drives for users. The net result of the Replace action is to overwrite all existing settings associated with the mapped drive. If the drive mapping does not exist, then the Replace action creates a new drive mapping. Update Action The Update action will have a yellow triangle. Update will modify settings of an existing mapped drive for users. This action differs from Replace in that it only updates settings defined within the preference item. All other settings remain as configured on the mapped drive. If the

Jason Yoder, MCT

Search This Blog