Jason Yoder, MCT

This is one that I picked up off of PowerShell.com.  The problem is that that the answer is a bit long so I’m posting it here.  The IT Pro in question wants to change the Computers Description in Active Directory to match the login name of the currently logged in user.  A few issues come to mind. 1 – Does all of the clients have RSAT installed?  I’m going to assume no.  That means that we cannot use the Active Directory Modules cmdlets. 2 - Does all of the users have the rights to modify the description field of a client in Active Directory.  By default, they do not.  We will set this up at the attribute specific level. 3 – How will this script run?  We will implement it as a login script. Modifying User Rights First off, let’s tackle the user rights issue.  All users in your domain are able to read the contents of Active Directory.  Only a hand full should be allowed to modify it.  We are going to modify AD to allow for our us...

I know that I answered this one once before, but the question popped up again.  I’m in North Carolina working with IT Pros with the states public school system.  We did a full installation and configuration of Windows Server 2012 R2 Core yesterday.  I showed them how not to fear the core.  I did get one question about using the PowerShell ISE on the core.  I’m sorry to say, it is not possible.  Take a look at the image below. That is the magical feature that adds the GUI back in.  That kind of ruins the reason why you deployed a core in the first place.  Here is an alternative. Take a look at this icon on the PowerShell ISE. Let the ISE know which computer you want to remote into. Provide credentials for PowerShell remoting. You will get a new tab for that remote server. Now you are using the ISE on the core, but you do not need to install the GUI on the core to do it.  Have fun!

Yesterday on Day 1 of a 20411 Administering Windows Server 2012 class we had a question pop up on the DNS chapter.  Right off the bat I knew this question came for a brain dump web site.  Let’s just get my position out in public right off the bat.  I expect those who are going to take the exam to take the time to learn the technology.  If you do use a practice exam to prep, use it as a learning tool.  Do not just memorize the exam.  It will not do you or anybody else any good.  From the perspective of others in the class, it was like watching the Big Bang Theory unfold in front of them.  We dove into this problem to try and find the correct answer the proper way using research. Let’s first take a look at the question and then we will learn from it by finding the answers to all of the questions that do not have the answers for. You work as an Administrator at iCompany.com. The iComapny.com network consists of a single domain named iComapny.com. Al...

Today on PowerShell.com, I helped out a new user to PowerShell extract information from his remote clients.  Two things that struck me.  1. He needed to use the legacy Get-WMIObject cmdlet.  That means no PowerShell remoting, which is what I prefer. 2. He needed to be able to write the information to a CSV file.  Normally there is nothing wrong with that except that one piece of information had the potential to return multiple MAC addresses.  A CSV could not handle that on its own so I had to write up some simple code to address this data and put it in a form that Export-CSV could utilize. First off, the code. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 9...