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Send SMTP email with authentication from PowerShell
Email is a good way to send notifications from your PowerShell scripts, and it’s super easy. You just need an SMTP server, and use Send-MailMessage: Send-MailMessage -From "testscript@rcmtech.co.uk"...
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AppLocker Executable policy breaks Windows 10 Jump Lists
Jump lists, very handy. You’ve pinned a piece of software to the taskbar, and then you can right-click the icon and get a list of pinned and/or recently used files or connections. I recently enabled...
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PowerShell Script to download latest SysInternals tools
The SysInternals tools are pretty much a must-have for any IT Pro, but they get updated randomly and I always like to have the latest versions. You can run them from the live site, but I like to have...
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PowerShell: Active Directory User to SID and SID to User
I was recently asked to find the username associated with a particular Active Directory SID (technically I was given the RID). This is actually pretty easy in PowerShell, and quite intuitive using...
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Standard user launching a command with elevated credentials
I needed standard users to be able to run certain executables with administrator credentials, but ideally without wanting to give them an administrator account and password, and certainly without...
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SCCM 2012 PXE-E55: ProxyDHCP service did not reply to request on port 4011
Had this today, didn’t have any of #60, #66 or #67 DHCP options set that might have been conflicting (per Microsoft guidelines). I was able to build Hyper-V VMs at the site where the problem...
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Send notification email from SCCM 2012 Task Sequence
I wanted to be able to send an email from a step in a SCCM 2012 OS Deployment (OSD) task sequence. This was so that I could be notified when the task sequence had completed successfully. The account...
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PowerShell: Change Hyper-V VM VLAN after Live Migration
One of my old Hyper-V hosts has its virtual switch uplink NICs connected to access ports rather than trunk ports. My other hosts all have trunked uplinks, which means that the VMs need to have a VLAN...
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SMTP email diagnostics and info – troubleshoot email not received
Every now and then somebody will contact you via a method that they wouldn’t normally use and say something like “did you get the email I sent to you a few days ago”. If the answer to this is “no, I...
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VeeamZip Hyper-V Backup
Veeam Backup & Replication drops down into VeeamZip mode if you don’t have a licence key. But it’ll still provide some handy functionality – I’m using it to take a basic backup of all the VMs on a...
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Connection State Announcer
I’ve been having some very annoying problems with my home broadband where the connection keeps dropping every few minutes. I wrote this quick script to monitor a site on the internet and tell me when...
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Send email via Yahoo with PowerShell
Quick reference for sending email via a Yahoo! mail account and their SMTP servers from within a PowerShell script. You’ll need the Yahoo SMTP server details, which require you to use a specific port...
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Create a PFX file from separate private and public key certificate files
Whilst installing ADFS I needed to import my wildcard certificate. This proved fiddly as Microsoft need it to be in pfx format, and I only had separate private .key and public .crt files. PFX is a...
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Windows Server 2016
Lots of good stuff. This video about Storage Replica from the guy who heads the Storage team up, Ned Pyle, is definitely worth watching. Informative and funny. There’s also a free eBook: Introducing...
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Extract private key from Microsoft CA-issued certificate
I wanted to use my internal Active Directory Certificate Services server to create a certificate for a Synology NAS. The Synology needs the private key and the certificate to be in separate files. I...
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Fix PowerShell WinRM remote connection errors
I’ve had two annoying PowerShell errors today, both for the same server: Enter-PSSession : Connecting to remote server server-a.rcmtech.co.uk failed with the following error message : The client cannot...
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Storage Replica in Windows Server 2016
What is Storage Replica? Block level synchronous or asynchronous, volume based data replication. What does it do? Replicates storage data from a disk attached to one instance of Windows Server to...
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PowerShell: BitLocker Encryption Progress Bar
I am enabling Bitlocker in my SCCM PC build task sequence and want to know how far through the process of encrypting the drive it has got. You can make the task sequence wait for the encryption to...
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Don’t display last username if C drive encrypted with BitLocker
I’m moving from encrypting laptops with a third party disk encryption product to BitLocker. The third party product uses a pre-boot username & password prompt, and only boots into Windows if the...
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Group Policy Preference Drive Maps closing
I’ve been dealing with an issue where users that leave Windows File Explorer windows open for extended periods find that they close now and then. This seems to be a common problem with later versions...
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