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Logon Scripts in Group Policy not running

Problem  Was having difficulty with a logon script I had created and was deploying to users via Group Policy. The script was to customise printer settings for certain users. But it just wasn't running when the users would logon to their PCs. The GPO was applying properly, and I could run the script manually without issue. Cause It turns out that it was happening because, by default, logon scripts don't run for 5 mins after logon occurs on a Windows client PC. Solution This can be adjusted by setting the "Configure Logon Script Delay policy" to "Enabled" and then configuring a better delay. Note: if this policy is set to disabled or not configured, the default delay of 5 mins will apply. I initially set this delay to "0" but found that wasn't successful.  Perhaps the script needed a small delay. So I set it to "1" (1 minute) and it worked nicely. I must also note that during the troubleshooting process, I read many recommendations to e
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Unable to Extend Volume because the Windows Recovery Partition is in the way

I had to increase the space allocated to a customer's WSUS server VM that had run out of capacity and was keeling over. So I powered off the VM, added the extra capacity to the virtual hard disk, powered it back on, and went into Disk Management to extend the C: drive partition.  However, I discovered that because the Windows Recovery Partition was in between the C: partition and the new unallocated space (similar to the image below which I've copied from Woshub.com ), I was unable to do an "Extend Volume" job. The solution was to move the recovery partition.  This involves disabling it, deleting it, extending your partition as required, and then re-creating the recovery partition and enabling it. Here are the steps involved: Disable existing recovery partition: You will need to disable the existing Windows recovery partition. To do this, run this command from an admin command line/PowerShell:  reagentc /disable If you get the error message "REAGENTC.EXE: Operati

SNMP on HPE Aruba Switches

After installing a number of HPE/Aruba CX switches I was finding that they were completely unresponsive to SNMP requests. Went through the config and couldn't see anything... Eventually found that you need to configure this line in order for the SNMP service to run: snmp-server vrf default Don't forget to do a "wr mem" afterwards!

WSUS Issues

Was configuring WSUS on a Server 2016 VM for a customer recently and found the performance to be very sluggish and most of the time the client PCs would time-out and throw an error message when trying to check for updates. After much digging on different forums I came across a fix that worked nicely: Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and click on Application Pools Then Right-Click on your WsusPool instance and choose Advanced Settings Scroll down to Private Memory Limit (KB) and change it from the default of 1843200 to 0 which means unlimited. Then right-click and stop the WsusPool and then start it again. Hope this works for you.

APC PowerChute Network Shutdown - Authentication Phrase

​Was installing  APC PowerChute Network Shutdown (PCNS) on a customer’s server and couldn’t find a record of the Authentication Passphrase that I set ages back on their Smart UPSes Network Management 2 Card. So I went to reset it on the card and start anew… it took a lot of digging to find it on their particular release of firmware: Go into the UPS tab, then into “shutdown” inside the “Configuration” category: You may then need to change the passphrase being used on other servers. To do this, open up PCNS in your browser and click into the area shown below:

WSUS Client Logs

Windows 10 no longer creates a "WindowsUpdate.log" file in %WINDIR% like it used to. It creates ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) traces which aren't viewable in a text editor. The solution is to run the Get-WindowsUpdateLog command from PowerShell. This creates a WindowsUpdate.log and, by default, places it on the Desktop. This can then be opened in Notepad.

HTTPS login issue on SonicWALL

Issue: I recently noticed that I was unable to login to a customer's SonicWALL TZ-210 over HTTPS using Google Chrome.  HTTP was fine but attempting login with HTTPS gave the following error message: ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH Clicking on "Details" revealed the following additional information: A secure connection cannot be established because this site uses an unsupported protocol or cipher suite. This is likely to be caused when the server needs RC4, which is no longer considered secure. Cause: This was due to two issues: Google Chrome no longer supporting RC4 encryption for HTTPS which the customer's SonicWALL was obviously using. The customer's SonicWALL using RC4 encryption for its HTTPS sessions rather than a more secure protocol. Fix: There's already an excellent fix for this issue on Spiceworks: https://community.spiceworks.com/posts/6260617