Windows Failed to Connect to Group Policy Client

On every boot on a freshly built Windows 7 x64 machine, I encountered a pop up telling me that the connection to the group policy client had failed. On checked the event log, it appeared that the service was timing out.

To fix this I followed the steps below;

1. Open regedit and take a backup of your registry!

2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services. This path should contain gpsvc key. I found that the key contained all the appropriate information so left it alone.

3.  Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\SVCHOST. Make sure the keys/values below are included;

• There must be Multi-String value called GPSvcGroup. My PC was missing it. Create a multi-string value named GPSvcGroup and assign it value GPSvc.
• Create a key in SVCHOST and name it GPSvcGroup
• Open the newly-created GPSvcGroup folder and create 2 DWORD values- AuthenticationCapabilities with a value of 0x00003020 (or 12320 in decimal)- CoInitializeSecurityParam with a value of 1

4. Reboot and log back in. The problem should now be resolved.

Microsoft Exam 74-409 Study Resources

Useful resource for studying for the new Microsoft 74-409 Server Virtualization with Windows Server Hyper-V and System Center

https://msandbu.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/study-resources-74-409-server-virtualization-with-windows-server-hyper-v-and-system-center/

vSphere 5.5 / Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V Comparison Chart

A nice comparison chart providing a quick look at VMware vs Hyper-V.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2013/10/03/vmware-or-microsoft-comparing-vsphere-5-5-and-windows-server-2012-r2-at-a-glance.aspx

Note - Microsoft site!

Display Public Folders In Outlook 2013

By default, Outlook 2013 does not display the public folders. Getting them to display quickly is simple - with Outlook 2013 as the active window, press CTRL and 6.

Alternatively, click the 3 dots following Tasks at the bottom of the Outlook window and choose Navigation Options. Change the number of visible items and the order in which they are displayed to suit your purposes.

Exchange 2010 Server Running Out Of Disk Space

We encountered an issue with Exchange 2010 where we were constantly running out of disk space. After investigation we found this was due to the log files rapidly filling as we had more people connecting in via mobile devices.

In order to fix this, you can either enable circular logging via the method below or, preferably, by using an Exchange aware backup tool. Veeam Backup and Replication includes Exchange awareness in the standard licence and is quick to set up. This method is also detailed below;

Enable Circular Logging

Circular logging only allows the transactional log database to grow to 1MB in size. After that limit is reached, earlier logs are deleted in order to make room for new ones. As such this can cause issues when trying to troubleshoot. Microsoft do not recommend using this method.

If you want to go ahead anyway as a stop-gap whilst sourcing an Exchange aware backup tool follow the steps below;

1. Open Exchange Management Console and browse to Organization Configuration > Mailbox
2. Under the Database Management tab, right click your mailbox store and choose Properties
3. Under the Maintenance tab select the check box for Enable Circular Logging
4. You will need to dismount and remount the database for this change to take effect.

To disable circular logging, simply remove the tick from the check box and dismount and remount the database.

Using Veeam Backup and Replication to clear Exchange logs

1. If you do not currently use Veeam to backup your Exchange server, create a new backup job. In order for the logs to be truncated you do not need to backup the entire machine, just the drive containing the mailbox database.
2. When you reach the Guest Processing options, click the Advanced button. Add your Exchange server if it does not appear in the Advanced Options, select the server and click Edit.
3. Under the Transaction Logs section, choose to Truncate logs on successful backup only

Windows 7 - User Logging In With Temporary Profile

A user was trying to log in to their computer but was getting a message saying that they were being logged in with a temporary profile. Deleting the users profile did not make any difference.

In order to fix the problem, a change had to be made to the registry.

1. Login as admin and backup the users profile in C:\Users\Username
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > Software > Microsoft > Windows NT > Current Version > Profile List
3. Find the SID.bak for the user's profile (click on the "folder" and the path to the profile should be listed)
4. Delete the SID.bak
5. Login as the user to recreate the profile. Log off and back in as admin and copy their backed up files across

Veeam B&R - Hot Add Is Not Supported For This Disk

When backing up a VM using Veeam Backup and Replication, I kept seeing the message;

Hot add is not supported for this disk, failing over to network mode...

This was occurring because the LUN that my Veeam proxy server was running on was formatted in VMFS-3, whilst the server I was trying to back up was on a LUN running VMFS-5 and had a different block size.

After upgrading the proxy LUN to VMFS-5, disks began hot-adding successfully.