A thousand little things

A thousand little things Blog

January 9, 2018

How to check system patch status against speculative execution side-channel vulnerabilities (Meltdown, Spectre, CVE-2017-5715, CVE-2017-5753, CVE-2017-5754)

Very short post; lots more coming soon 🙂

PS> # Save the current execution policy so you can restore it (we leave no traces, do we?)

PS> $SaveExecutionPolicy = Get-ExecutionPolicy

PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Currentuser

PS> Import-Module SpeculationControl

PS> Get-SpeculationControlSettings

PS> # Restore the execution policy back to the original state

PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy $SaveExecutionPolicy -Scope Currentuser

PS> # Save the current execution policy so you can restore it (we leave no traces, do we?)

PS> $SaveExecutionPolicy = Get-ExecutionPolicy

PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope Currentuser

PS> Import-Module SpeculationControl

PS> Get-SpeculationControlSettings

PS> # Restore the execution policy back to the original state

PS> Set-ExecutionPolicy $SaveExecutionPolicy -Scope Currentuser

SCCM / XenApp

July 18, 2016

DISM failing with error 0x800f0906 (“The source files could not be downloaded”)

Usually deploying a Citrix XenApp 7.x VDA is a no-brainer today. Install server OS, launch VDA setup, wait 15 minutes and you are good to go. But sometimes things go wrong. Citrix.MetaInstaller.MetaInstallerException ‘dism’ component...

SCOM

March 15, 2016

System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2013 fails to deploy

Looks like the System Center Management Pack for SharePoint Server 2013 for SCOM 2012 R2 that is (currently) available on the Microsoft Catalog (15.0.4420.1017) is buggy and does not deploy correctly. Post deployment you’ll...

XenApp

March 11, 2016

“Error %1 received while obtaining a license for a Citrix XenApp client connection. A grace license has been granted.”

Citrix Licensing has always been … let’s be polite and say “interesting”. Reviewing the application logs on some XenApp 7.5 servers I ran into plenty of those: “Error %1 received while obtaining a license...

MSSQL

February 29, 2016

Allow SQL Service Accounts to create/modify SPNs (Service Principal Name)

A Service Principal Name (SPN) must be registered for the SQL Server service account to allow clients to identify and authenticate the SQL service using Kerberos authentication. The SetSPN utility can be used to...

PowerShell

February 10, 2016

List all domain users and their last logon time and UserAccountControl flags

The following PowerShell one-liner lists all users by lastlogon (human readable date) and their UserAccountControl flags.

get-aduser -filter * -property useraccountcontrol,lastlogon | select-object samaccountname,surname,givenname,useraccountcontrol,@{n='LastLogon';e={[DateTime]::FromFileTime($_.LastLogon)}}

1	get-aduser -filter * -property useraccountcontrol,lastlogon \| select-object samaccountname,surname,givenname,useraccountcontrol,@{n='LastLogon';e={[DateTime]::FromFileTime($_.LastLogon)}}

Most common UserAccountControl flags are: 512 NORMAL_ACCOUNT 514 NORMAL_ACCOUNT, ACCOUNTDISABLE 66048 NORMAL_ACCOUNT, DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWORD 66050 ACCOUNTDISABLE, NORMAL_ACCOUNT, DONT_EXPIRE_PASSWORD...

App-V

February 1, 2016

App-V Publishing server doesn’t work – no application visible to clients

Microsoft’s App-V. It’s well know for being a very powerful software distribution method but also for not being the easiest to configure and maintain. Having done a few projects utilizing it I usually get...

Windows 10

January 27, 2016

“Unspecified Error” when trying to pin folder to quick access in file explorer

Tried to pin a folder to my quick access in Windows 10 and got this: Fix del /F /Q %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations\*

Office

January 25, 2016

Outlook 2013 (IMAP): “The operation cannot be performed because the object has been deleted”

Looks like the last patch day broke IMAP in Outlook 2013. Tried to delete some older mails but all I got was this: Here is how to fix this. It’s caused by the IMAP...

SCOM

January 5, 2016

“An object of type MonitoringAlert with id xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx was not found”

Tried to close alerts in SCOM 2012 R2 and ran into this lovely error message : This was quite common in SCOM 2007 but it’s the first time I saw it in SCOM 2012...