Windows Archives - Stephan Wibier

Microsoft Certificate Authority (CA) won’t start

Jun

21

2017

Tweet Sometimes strange things can happen in an IT environment. For example, you want to (re)start your CA and you get the message: Or maybe you get: Active Directory Certificate Services did not start: Could not load or verify the current CA certificate: LAB-CA Object was not found. 0x80090011 (-2146893807) Well, what’s next? New CA? ...

Microsoft Failover Cluster – Requested resource is in use – Disk Manager

Feb

26

2016

Tweet So I made the ‘mistake’ of destroying a Microsoft Failover Cluster and thinking Windows would release my disks. Well I was wrong! I went to Disk Manager and saw my disks as ‘Online’, ‘Primary’ and ‘RAW‘. And off course I could not access the disks from the Explorer, giving me a nice Error. OK ...

Sysprep was not able to validate your Windows installation 1

Feb

11

2016

Tweet On a machine running Windows 8, 8.1, 10 or even Windows Server 2012, 2012R2 or 2016 you can get a strange error when sysprepping the machine. Sysprep was not able to validate your Windows installation. (Error 0x8007139f) Normally this is true because you can’t sysprep an upgraded machine. But I had this in a ...

Reset Trust Relationship for Domain Computer 1

Feb

11

2016

Tweet When a computer somehow loses the trust relationship with the domain (for instance when longer than 30 days not connecting to the domain, or in a virtual environment returning to a snapshot) the usual steps you have to take are: Get the computer out of the domain to a workgroup (remember the local admin ...

Windows Installer Error Codes

Feb

11

2016

Tweet When working with Windows msi installers you sometimes run into some kind of error or message. Here is an overview of the most common errors or messages. They are most commonly found at the end of your installer log (always install with logging ;-)) usually prefaced by “MainEngineThread is returning”. This is the place ...

UEFI, Generation 2 VM, Windows 7 SP1 and Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 (or Windows 8.1) 6

Mar

8

2014

Tweet With the new features of Hyper-V in Server 2012 R2 one of those is the Generation 2 VM. There is a lot to be said on this topic but here is a caveat when using Gen2 VM’s for systems older then Windows 8 or Server 2012. Let’s start with a spoiler: It doesn’t work ...

Windows Server 2012 R2 / Windows 8.1 KMS Service Activation

Mar

8

2014

Tweet This is an update from another post I did https://wibier.me/windows-server-2012-kms-service-activation/ In that post I describe how to add support for Server 2012 and Windows 8. Now we are at the point where we want to add support for Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1! And that is possible. So when you activate a Server ...

Can’t connect to C$, ADMIN$ or any administrative share on workstations 20

Jan

24

2014

Tweet If you are attempting to access a Windows 7, Windows 8, Vista or Server 2008 (R2), Server 2012 (R2) computer you may get the” Access Denied – Failed to connect to ADMIN$ share” error , even when supplying the appropriate local user credentials that have Administrator access. If the target computer is not a member of a ...

Set default OU for new AD computers

Sep

5

2013

Tweet As we all know the standard Default Container for newly created computer objects is ‘Computers’ But I want my newly created computer objects in another Organizational Unit (OU), Always! This can be easily achieved by an old friend: REDIRCMP You have to use the Container-CN (which can be easily found with ADSIEdit!) Always handy ...

User Certificates

Aug

1

2013

Tweet Note to self: When you choose to redirect the Application Data folder the certificate store folders are NOT redirected. They will reside in the default folder. Personal Certificates are stored under following locations: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SystemCertificates%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Protect%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Credentials%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Crypto%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\CLR Security Config%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\CryptNetUrlCache HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\CryptographyHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Protected Storage System ProviderHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\SystemCertificates