Author Archive for KW

Preview PowerShell Scripts in File Explorer

The ability to preview PowerShell (.ps1) scripts from Window’s File Explorer is not enabled by default, or so it seems. A quick one line PowerShell command fixes that in a jiffy!

  • Right click on PowerShell and select to “run as administrator”
  • Then copy and paste the following:
    Set-ItemProperty Registry::HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ps1 -Name PerceivedType -Value text

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That’s it! Open up File Explorer and you’ll now be able to preview PowerShell scripts!

P.S. This was tested on Windows 10

Download Microsoft Office 2013 from Office 365

imageMicrosoft Office 365 makes available the most recent version of the Office software for licensed users to download. In this case that would be Office 2016.

But for any number of reasons, there are still cases where someone may need Office 2013. Up until March 1, 2017, Office 2013 was easily available through O365.

Now that we are pass that deadline, the question is: Can we still download Office 2013 for our O365 account users. And the answer is: YES!!!!

My good MVP buddy, Boon Tee, recently posted directions (click here) on where one can still download Office 2013 from Office 365.

How to Spot Phone Scams

I wrote a post back in January 2016 on Fake Phone Calls. I’ve recently come across another helpful website with more information on recognizing phone scams. I hope you find it helpful.

How to Spot Phone Scams Guide

SQL Express Backup Utility

The “Express” version of Microsoft’s SQL Server comes with limits, such as 10GB max database. But since it is free, for many small businesses and small database requirements, it fits the bill.

One thing lacking is the ability to do scheduled full and incremental backups of the database.

I’ve used a tool that one of my MVP buddies recommended to me several years ago called Sql Backup And Ftp.

It is one of the easiest utilities to install and setup that I’ve encountered. It comes in both a free and paid version – with the free version limited to backing up a maximum of two SQL databases. The utility allows you to direct backups to a network folder, or to a remote server via FTP, or to a cloud service location, such as OneDrive, DropBox and others.

Give it a try!

Here’s a screen shot of the log of a backup using this utility:

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Using Office 365 instead of Exchange with SBS 2008

Yes, SBS 2008 is no longer supported. But I still have one remaining customer using it. This weekend I moved their email over to Office 365. I figured if I still have one site, there may be others in the same boat.

For this customer, after making a backup PST file for each user, I went into Services from the SBS 2008 server and disabled of the Exchange services from running.

The other thing that needs to be done is to prevent Outlook from looking to the SBS server for its AutoDiscover information. The process is very easy using two Exchange Powershell commands. Mark Berry’s excellent blog post from August 2011 provides the detail steps, including doing a quick backup of IIS, before removing the AutoDiscover Virtual Directory.

Here are the basic steps involved, all done from the SBS 2008 console:

  • Open up an elevated Exchange Management Shell
  • Display the current AutoDiscover virtual directory settings using this command
    Get-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory | fl Name, Server, InternalUrl, ExternalUrl, Identity
  • Make note of the value of the Identity field.
    In my case it was: SERVER01\Autodiscover (SBS Web Applications)
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  • Remove the AutoDiscover virtual directory with this command:
    Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory –Identity "<identity value retrieved above>"

    In my case I entered:
    Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory –Identity “SERVER01\Autodiscover (SBS Web Applications)”
    You will be prompted to respond with “Y” to proceed
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  • Then verify that the AutoDiscover virtual directory is no longer there
    Get-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory | fl Name, Server, InternalUrl, Identity

Note: no rebooting of the server is required. At this point after installing Office 2016, click to start up Outlook. My understanding is that these steps will also work with SBS 2011.

2012 R2–We Couldn’t Complete the Updates

I’m setting up two brand new Windows 2012 R2 guests servers on a Hyper-V system. When running Windows Updates, I ran into the following frustrating error:

We couldn’t complete the updates
Undoing changes
Don’t turn off the computer

Well, after waiting an hour for this to reset, I went hunting for a solution. Thanks to my MVP friends, Boon Tee and Susan Bradley, I found out the cause and the fix! You can read Boon’s blog post here.

The issue is a conflict with some updates when your guest VM is configured as Gen2 virtual machine in Hyper-V and you have Secure Boot enabled for that VM. The fix is relatively easy:

  • First, you need to force a power off of your hung VM
  • Once it is stopped, go to the Hyper-V Settings for that VM, and disable (uncheck) the option “Enable Secure Boot”
  • Restart your VM and rerun your Windows Updates.

Please note, I generally do updates in batches – 10at a time, doing security updates firsts, then other other updates, then rollups, then .Net updates.

Black Screen after Windows 10 15042 Insider Build

It was recently posted by OnMSFT that a small percentage of PCs may fail to update to the 15042 Insider Build. When that happens, your computer will hang on a black screen after reboot. I know … I just encountered it.

Fortunately, I was aware of the bug before I proceeded, and knew where to go to get the fix. thanks to this post from Microsoft Answers!

Here’s what you need to do:

  • If you computer already is hung, you will need to do a hard reboot (or two) which should force the computer to revert back to the previous version.
  • Then log in, open up an administrative level command prompt, and then type (or copy and paste) enter each of these instructions – one at a time – into the command window:

    reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\setup\upgrade\nsimigrationroot /f

    netsh int ipv6 set locality state=disabled

    reg delete HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nsi\{eb004a01-9b1a-11d4-9123-0050047759bc}\28 /f

  • After this, close the command prompt window, reboot, and re-scan for updates.

As always, if you are in the insider ring, it pays to stay up-to-date on insider releases and issues.Insider releases are NOT meant to be run on production machines.

Renew SSL Certificate for 2012 R2 Essentials

These are the steps I recently followed to renew a third party (GoDaddy) SSL certificate on a 2012 R2 Essentials server. Although these steps have been documented many, many times over the years, it doesn’t hurt to review the process and make sure it works properly.

The overall process has three major parts to it:

  • Generate SSL request on the server
  • Request and rekey the certificate on GoDaddy’s site and download new certificate
  • Install the intermediate cert and your domain SSL cert on the server

Part One – Server

  • Open up the Essentials dashboard, click on Quick Status from the left column of the screen, then click Anywhere Access from the middle column, and finally click “Click to configure Anywhere Access” from the right column of the screen.
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  • In the next window ( Settings – Anywhere Access) click on the Configure… button. Please note, there’s a red X in my screen shot. That’s because my SSL certificate is about to expire. However, DO NOT click on the “Repair…” button. Just click on the “Configure…” button
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  • In the next windows (Set up Anywhere Access) make sure that you UNcheck the option labeled “Skip Domain name setup. I have already set up my domain”
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  • In the next window, select “Import a new trusted SSL certificate”
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  • In the next window, first verify your domain name to be registered, which should already be correct as we are renewing an existing SSL certificate. Then click to enable the option “I want to purchase a trusted SSL certificate for this domain”
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  • The next screen is the important one. It should display for you automatically the certificate request that you will need. If you need to , open up Notepad and then copy everything inside the box, starting with “—-BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE” all the way to the very end.

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If you wish, leave this window open while you go to Part Two and request the new certificate from GoDaddy

Part Two – GoDaddy

  • Open up a browser, go to GoDaddy’s web site, login, and go to your registered SSL for your domain and select to purchase/renew it. I’m not including screen shots of this process. Go Daddy will generate an email to verify you are the owner of this certificate.
  • Once that is done and approved you can proceed on the GoDaddy site to rekey your certificate. It will ask you to copy/paste in the certificate request info we just generate (that starts with “—-BEGIN NEW CERTIFICATE REQUEST…”
  • After you paste and submit this information, GoDaddy will generate another email to you with the link to download the certificate and instructions for installing it.
  • When you are at the screen to download your certificate, you must select what Server type you will be using this on. From the drop down, select IIS. Then download the generated zip file. If you are not doing this step from the server, then you will need to copy the zip file over to the server.
  • Unzip the zip file on the server. You will have two files, one with a  .p7b suffix and the other with a .crt suffix
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Part Three – Server

Before we go back to the Essentials  dashboard that we left open, we first need to go to MMC and insert the new p7b intermediate file from GoDaddy.

  • The steps to do this is provided by GoDaddy (click here). In short:
    • Run C, add the Certificates add-in, select Computer Account, select Local Computer.
    • Once Certificates is added, drill down to Certificates > Intermediate Certification Authorities, right click and select All Tasks > Import.
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    • Click to browse, change the file extension in the browse window to “all files”, then locate the .p7b file that came from the zip file, and load it. Once done, you can close MMC.
  • Now we return to the Essentials dashboard that we left open. If it’s still sitting on the “Generate a certificate request’ window, go ahead and click Next.
  • On the next window (“A trusted SSL certificate is in progress…”), click on the first option: “I have the trusted SSL certificate…” and click Next
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  • On the next screen (Import the trusted certificate), click to Browse, change the file extension again to “all files” then locate the file ending with .crt that you unzipped, and click Next.
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  • Wait while the new certificate is installed. You will get a green check window indicating that the domain is set up. You have one final step – to add this to Anywhere Access
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  • On the next screen, you can select to enable VPN access and/or Remote Web Access. I only select Remote Web Access, as I use my network firewall/router box for VPN connectivity.
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  • Go ahead and select what you need, and you will be all done. You will also see that the red X we saw earlier should now have disappeared, since the SSL certificate is now up to date.
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Windows 10 Workstation Shows Offline Status and No Backups from 2012 R2 Essentials Dashboard

It’s been well documented that updates for Windows 10 (such as the 1607 Anniversary update) will cause issues with interfacing to the 2012 R2 Essentials Server. Two things in particular:

  • Workstations will have a status of Offline on the Essentials Dashboard
  • More importantly, client workstation backups are not up to date

Until now, the process that I had taken to resolve this on each workstation was as follows:

  • Drop workstation to Workgroup
  • Login as local administrator (not domain)
  • Run http://{servername}/connect
  • Use domain admin login and password to proceed, when prompted
  • Approve (acknowledge) you want to use the domain admin login
  • Complete rejoining to the server
  • Reboot workstation and login as domain user

Well, now, it comes to pass that we can make this process a bit faster, as we can eliminate the first two steps (dropping workstation to a workgroup, and logging in with the local admin account).

So here’s how the steps now look, while remaining logged in as the current domain user account:

  • Run http://{servername}/connect
  • Use domain admin login and password to proceed, when prompted
  • Approve (acknowledge) you want to use the domain admin login
  • Complete rejoining to the server
  • It’s possible to just logoff and log back in as the current domain user. However, I still like to reboot the workstation just to make sure all is fine.

Change your Yahoo Password Now!

You may have seen reports the last two days that over 500 million Yahoo accounts were stolen from the company. The theft actually took place nearly two years ago, but it is only now being reported. You can read details of the situation here:

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/account/SLN27925.html?impressions=true

What does this mean to you?

HOW DO I CHANGE MY YAHOO PASSWORD!

If you have a Yahoo email account, you should change your password immediately. Here are the instructions for doing this: (please note, I’ve included some screen shots at the end of this post)

  1. Click on the following link, which will take you to the Yahoo signon page: https://edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_profile
  2. Enter your Yahoo email address, and press Enter
  3. Enter your current password, and press Enter
  4. Enter the Verification code (case sensitive) and press Enter
  5. You will then be prompted to enter a new password for your email account
  6. Finally you will be shown a list of alternate ways of contacting you (other email addresses or cell phone numbers). These would  be things you entered when you created your Yahoo account originally. Make sure they are all up to date.

CAN I STILL USE THE YAHOO WEB PAGE?

Yes. The Yahoo web site is still available for use. My daughter uses it for her “home” page!

SCREEN SHOTS OF THE LOGIN PROCESS:

Step 1: Enter your Yahoo email address

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Step 2: Enter your password

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Step 3: Enter your NEW password twice

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Step 4: Enter the verification code

Step 5: Confirm alternate contact information

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