250 Hello - Tips N Tricks

0

Quick Tip – Get Unique Instances In PowerShell

Posted on 7th April 2019 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

To remove duplicates using PowerShell is exceedingly straightfroward. However, I have a habit of forgetting the cmdlet so parking this here for future reference.

For example, we can use the Get-Unique cmdlet or Select-Object -Unique parameter.

Get-Unique

As a simple example:

The Get-Unique cmdlet compares each item in a sorted list to the next item, eliminates duplicates, and returns only… Read the rest “Quick Tip – Get Unique Instances In PowerShell”

1

Checking Exchange SMTP Logs To Determine Usage

Posted on 25th January 2019 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

This week I was fortunate to return to one of my favourite customers, to help with Exchange 2010 migration activities. As we all know, Exchange 2010 will exit out of extended support on the 14th of January 2020.

Fortunately they are progressing very well with moving all mailboxes off Exchange 2010, and one of the last remaining items was to review SMTP mail flow through the Exchange 2010 Hub trans… Read the rest “Checking Exchange SMTP Logs To Determine Usage”

15

Script to Clear Credman

Posted on 11th January 2019 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

With my customer facing role, there are lot of demonstrations to enterprise customers. Manually reverting machines back to the initial starting point for the next demo can be time consuming and error prone.

One example of this is clearing out the contents on Window's Credential Manager. There is no option to do a block select to delete multiple entries at once. Worse still is that Modern Authent… Read the rest “Script to Clear Credman”

0

QuickTip–Delay Functionality In Windows Snipping Tool

Posted on 27th July 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

In current versions of Windows the venerable snipping tool (snippingtool.exe) has been updated with improved functionality.

Windows 7 Snipping Tool

This is the Snipping Tool from a Windows 7 lab machine:

Clicking on Options we see:

Windows 10 Snipping Tool

The below were taken from my Windows 10 build 1803 machine. Note that there are now additional buttons present.

Specifically the Mode and Delay b… Read the rest “QuickTip–Delay Functionality In Windows Snipping Tool”

2

Get-AdfsProperties Error ADMIN0120

Posted on 20th July 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

The below is an issue which caused this week’s customer a little stress. They wanted to review the current AD FS configuration, but were not able to successfully run the Get-AdfsPropeties cmdlet.

The Get-AdfsProperties cmdlet would generate the error below.

For make most glorious benefit of search engines:
Get-AdfsProperties : ADMIN0120: The client is not authorized to access the endpoint net.tcp://… Read the rest “Get-AdfsProperties Error ADMIN0120”

0

QuickTip – Windows Emoji Keyboard Shortcut

Posted on 17th July 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

Since today is World Emoji Day, the below tip is rather relevant!

Did you know that Windows now has a keyboard shortcut built in to allow to access emojis?

Windows key and period / full stop *

or

Windows key and colon

This will function across multiple applications and is not limited to Skype for Business. Enjoy!!

Word 2016

Skype for Business

Cheers,

Rhoderick

* – choose whiche… Read the rest “QuickTip – Windows Emoji Keyboard Shortcut”

0

Connect to AD FS 2016 WID Using SQL Server Management Studio

Posted on 12th July 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

As part of troubleshooting a recent Windows Server 2016 AD FS issue, I wanted to take a look at the database using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). In order to successfully connect there are a couple of gotchas to note as the database used was the Windows Internal Database (WID). This is the default AD FS 2012 R2 and 2016 deployments. There is no SQL management interface and the correct con… Read the rest “Connect to AD FS 2016 WID Using SQL Server Management Studio”

7

Easy Way To Retrieve Certificate Thumbprint Using PowerShell

Posted on 14th May 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

Since many certificate operations involve knowing the certificate’s thumbprint, it is always useful to to have an easy way to get this information. In some of the online documentation it mentions you can copy the thumbprint out of the Certificate MMC snap-in and then manually delete the spaces between the data. No thanks.

However, if you *really* want to do that, or a quick and easy way to launch… Read the rest “Easy Way To Retrieve Certificate Thumbprint Using PowerShell”

0

Hyper-V VM Import–Know Before You Go

Posted on 27th March 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

Importing VMs from one host to another can run into issues due differences in the configuration of the hosts. A common issue is that a virtual switch does not exist on the new Hyper-V host. While it is possible to attempt the import, and then deal with the fallout afterwards, wouldn't it be great to know about such issues before actually starting the import?

That is where the Compare-VM cmdlet co… Read the rest “Hyper-V VM Import–Know Before You Go”

2

Quick Tip – Download .NET Framework 4.5 Offline Installer

Posted on 23rd March 2018 by Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

This post will attempt to resolve some download frustration if your are looking for an older version of the .NET Framework. This is an issue with Exchange 2010 as the initial .NET framework for that platform has not been updated, whereas .NET Framework support in Exchange 2013 and 2016 now leverage newer versions of .NET framework, at the time of writing 4.6.2 and 4.7.1 are supported for Exchang… Read the rest “Quick Tip – Download .NET Framework 4.5 Offline Installer”