A few months ago, I rebuilt my home test network with Windows Server 2003 R2 and SMS 2003 SP2 with R2 components. While doing this, I didn't create additional backup domain administrator accounts and the default administrator account was setup to adhere to password complexity criteria. It's been a while since I used the network and had forgotten my domain administrator password.
What to do...
I found an article (Forgot the Administrator's Password? - Reset Domain Admin Password in Windows Server 2003 AD) that outlines a process for resetting the password for my domain administrator, but the process required me to know the password for my local administrator account on the server...I had forgotten this as well. So I found another method (How can I gain access to a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 computer if I forgot the administrator's password?) for resetting the password for my local administrator so I could then follow the suggested process for resetting the password for my domain administrator. To reset the local administrator password, I used the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor method (please note though, I didn't see it mentioned in the article or help file, but you need to clear the file attributes from the SAM before the reset process will work or you'll get a read only file system error).The process worked great. It's good that these accounts didn't use EFS or else that encrypted data would be gone.
I hope this helps you if you find yourself in a similar situation.
Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2007 8:04 PM by dthomson | with no comments
Why does this happen?
Posted Tuesday, April 17, 2007 12:47 PM by dthomson | 1 comment(s)
Posted Monday, April 16, 2007 12:42 AM by dthomson | 4 comment(s)
As previously shared by Cliff Hobbs, Rodney Jackson shared some nice tools during his SY20 SMS 2003/SCCM 2007 911 Case Studies session at MMS 2007. Of particular interest to me is the CCMWindow tool. This tool is pretty nice, but it stores the service window settings locally on each client. This adds an extra level of client management requirements to a sometimes already difficult situation.
Also, after my initial install, I can see some feature additions that may be useful
I have put in a query to see if I can get the source. If so, I might try to make the changes mentioned above and sent it back to Rodney for their approval.
If you are wondering where you can get the tool, it is included with Rodney's session downloads at the MMS site. I also understand that you might be able to acquire it through your TAM.
I am curious if there is anything you'd like to see modified.
Posted Sunday, April 15, 2007 11:52 PM by dthomson | 1 comment(s)
I used to really enjoy Outlook. However, since moving to Office 2007, I am ready to find an alternate mail reader or revert back to Outlook 2003. I find that Outlook routinely spikes in memory usage, brings my system to a halt while performing a Send and Receive, takes forever when I attempt to organize my mail folders, ... I am not along as others have reported similar problems with Outlook 2007. We all have tried to hone our usage of the product (keep the pst size to a minimum by moving all achievable items to separate psts, make efficient use of Rules, ...), but those steps are only a loosely fashioned band aid and only have a minimal impact on the overall product performance. I believe that Microsoft is aware of the issues, but I have yet to see anything from them on how they are going to fix the problems.
I was very excited to get the added functionality from IE 7 (mainly tabbed browsing), but became very remiss once I realized what impact it has on system resources. If more than a few tabs are open, and God forbid you have multiple instances of IE open as well, then it starts to consume a fair amount of memory and becomes sluggish.
It's been a while since I have done a refresh on my workstation, so I will soon embark on a small project to restructure my hard disk configuration and install everything again from a clean slate. This new configuration will be something like: C: Just the operating system (SCSI, no RAID), D: Just Program Files (SCSI, no RAID), E: Pagefile (SCSI, no RAID), F: User data (SCSI, hardware RAID w/Parity).
I am hoping this will clear things up a bit, but if not, I'll revert back to Outlook 2003 (or another email client) and might switch to another browser that is not just an overlay on top of IE.
Posted Saturday, April 07, 2007 9:42 PM by dthomson | with no comments
As brought out in myITforum FAQ #229 and most recently during the Ask The Experts MMS session when someone commented about the old smswish@microsoft.com email alias, we should now be using the Microsoft Connect web-site to submit product feedback regarding SMS 2003 & SCCM 2007. I do not recall exactly when the transition took place (the details page lists 1/1/2006 as the program start date), but Microsoft terminated the smswish alias in favor of using the Connect site. From what I've heard, doing this allows feedback to be tracked, rated and prioritized.
If you are not already partcipating via this new mechanism...
To provide feedback after you've signed up...
I hope this helps.
Posted Wednesday, April 04, 2007 1:38 AM by dthomson | 1 comment(s)
For those in the Washington D.C. area, would you be interested in MAWMUG hosting a PowerShell presentation to be given by June Blender (Senior Programming Writer, Windows PowerShell)?
I shared a breakfist table with June at MMS and asked her if she would be available to give a presentation when she is going to be in the area sometime in May.
This is very tentative, but I want to see what interest there is in the community before starting to make arrangements with June. I believe we are open to a presentation later in the week during the day, in the evening, or possibly over the weekend on a Saturday.
Send me an email and let me know if you are interested or not and what your preferred timeslot would be.
It's been a long time since we have had any activity with MAWMUG and this might be a good way to get things moving.
Posted Tuesday, April 03, 2007 9:25 PM by dthomson | with no comments
I hated how I performed during my presentation at this years MMS. I am a nervous speaker and found that the stage lights really threw me off. I ended up spending too much time trying to read my notes and not engaging the audience. I also missed sharing a number of key items. It's my fault because I should have gone into the room earlier and done an assessment.
Anyway, I'm going to redo the presentation as a series of blogcasts that delve into all aspects of patch management from project creation to client troubleshooting. It will continue to have primary focus on using SMS 2003 to patch Microsoft operating systems and software, so there will only be a slight touch on WSUS and GPO.
I won't be able to get moving on it for a couple weeks, so please let me know if there is anything that you'd like to see covered.
Here's my initial agenda:
Dan
Posted Monday, April 02, 2007 1:34 AM by dthomson | 1 comment(s)