Windows Hello appearing for users when using Azure AD - Say "Goodbye" to Windows Hello

 Given the current state of the world, we have been migrating many clients to a Cloud based solution - predominately 365 with Azure AD; situationally dependant.

A bug bear is Windows Hello - if you're using Azure AD without intune or endpoint then this annoying feature will try and enable itself on your workstations and it's a total pain.

So here's a quick registry fix to get rid of it - no need to edit the local policy (this is the same). Just apply the reg and say Goodbye to Windows Hello

-- copy the below contents into a text file and save as a .reg --

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

; Created by: Des

; Created on: 21/04/2021

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\PassportForWork]

"Enabled"=dword:0

"DisablePostLogonProvisioning"=dword:0

NET::ERR_SSL_OBSOLETE_VERSION when browsing an SSL site in Apache

It would appear that today is the day Chrome has stopped supporting older versions of TLS and if you're running any legacy sites you may receive this error when browsing them:

NET::ERR_SSL_OBSOLETE_VERSION

To resolve you need to enable TLS 1.2 in your Apache SSL conf file

Find the httpd-ssl.conf file in your Apache folder and look for the following line:

SSLProtocol -all +TLSv1 +SSLv3

Add +TLSv1.2 at the end so it reads as follows:

SSLProtocol -all +TLSv1 +SSLv3 +TLSv1.2

Restart the Apache server 

Whether you want the other protocols still present is up to you of course!

Web pages not loading correctly on Vigor 2862 Ln LTE when using ADSL (ping spikes too!)

It's been a strange week; we've had 2 broadband migrations with problems. The first was a circuit moving from a VDSL to VDSL; for whatever reason it got regraded to ADSL. When migration was complete a new 2862 Ln was installed and from there the trouble began.

The second was ADSL to ADSL - when migration completed a new router was also installed, another 2862Ln for LTE backup

Web pages weren't loading properly, connections intermittent and strange ping spikes on the local network. 

It would apper that the 2862Ln routers come with ADSL settings set to PPPoE and an encapsulation type of LLC/SNAP unlike their 2862 counterparts which are PPPoA and VC-MUX

The fix, change them to the correct settings! It's very easy to miss though when you're so used to the normal kit being right :(

Creality Ender (Ender3 Ender-3) bootloader showing up in device manager as usb2.0-serial

I recently tried to install a bootloader on my Creality Ender 3 1.1.4 board. I followed an all in one raspberry pi method and after flashing plugged it into my PC to update the firmware.

However, the system couldn't find any device drivers to talk to the printer - it just kept showing up as a USB2.0-serial device

Thankfully someone on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/93zah2/so_i_just_bricked_by_ender_3_through_a_firmware/ TrueShoba) had a link to the below package, which once installed allowed me to flash the new firmware to the system

https://www.th3dstudio.com/knowledge-base/creality-printer-drivers-all-models/

thank goodness! I now have a Marlin 2.0 Ender 3 to play with :)

System Center 2019 DPM Data Protection Manager Bare Metal and System State constantly inconsistent

Deployed a new DPM agent to a Server 2019 machine however it would not keep the system state or bare metal recovery consistent. 

Turns out, I forgot to install the Windows Backup feature! Installed, and everything started working immediately. A quick fix, but hopefully this helps you. Nice and short this time, to the point.

Outlook 2016 Office 365 O365 showing recipients name in the to field

Had a weird little problem where one of our clients name was appearing in the To field in all her folders in Outlook 2016/Office 365

Reset the views, didn't fix it - all very strange

Eventually found under "Change View" that a new 4th View had been created called "Show To". Changing it back from this to "company" immediately fixed the problem and the "Show To" view totally disappeared from the list

Client couldnt tell me how it happened, but that seemed to fix it!

Adding L2TP VPN access to SBS 2011 as well as PPTP

Out of the box, Server SBS 2011 isn't enabled for L2TP VPN access, but it does support it. All you need to make are a few changes to Routing and Remote Access:

1. Open Routing and Remote Access under Administrative Tools
2. Go to "Ports", right click it and go to "Properties"
3. In this window, find "WAN Miniport (L2TP)" - it will say 0 in the number of ports column
4. Select it and click "configure" - tick the "Remote Access connections (inbound only)" box and increase the maximum number of ports (to the number of connections you need)
5. Now right click on the server name (local) and select "Properties"

6. Go to the "Security" and tick "Allow custom IPsec policy for L2TP Connection"
7. Int he box below, enter a preshared key. You will need to give users connecting to the network this key
8. Click OK and restart RAS
9. You now need to forward port 1701 from your router to the server (you can leave 1723 in place for PPTP, as both will work)

And thats it - you should now have working remote VPN access to your server using L2TP

Client reconnecting to Exchange 2010 after migrating to Office 365

After our first 365 migration we left the mail-server online to export more folders but had an annoying problem where after using Outlook for a while they would start trying to use the old server again as the mail server. It worked, but wasn't quite right - and eventually stopped working altogether.

The reason for this is that Outlook still looks on your local network for an auto-discover virtual directory - so if you need to keep the mail-server on be sure to remove the auto-discovery folder!

• View your current autodicover information (I tend to take a screen grab)
• Get-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory | fl Name, Server, InternalUrl, Identity
• Remove your autodiscover info (be sure to replace SERVER with your server name)
• Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity “SERVER\Autodiscover (SBS Web Applications)”
• Alternatively, read what the folder is called, as you may need to run
• Remove-AutodiscoverVirtualDirectory -Identity "SERVER\Autodiscover (Default Web Site)"

And that should fix it!

Migrating from On Premise Exchange to Office 365 - upload PCs from the server

We're doing a lot of migrations at the moment; everyone seems to want to dump their on-premise exchange server and head to the cloud. I've read a lot about 365, but something managed to pass me by and this week (3rd migration) I've finally found out about it.

Importing PSTs to the 365 servers from their side; how I missed this I just don't know.

This new process has shaved a lot of time from the migrations, so here goes the new work routine:

1. End of play for the weekend; change MX records to point to 365 and turn off port 25 and 443 on networks firewall
2. Use Exchange Powershell to export all of the PST files from the server into a folder
3. Use AzCopy to upload the PSTs to Office 365
4. Create a mapping file and upload it to Office 365
5. Run the mapping file and import the PST files into the mailboxes
6. Add the accounts to all PCs and off we go

To do step 3 you need to get your SAS URL which is generated from the Office 365 portal and then enter it into the AzCopy cool (its basically the destination on an Azure cloud server).

Read the full Microsoft Documentation here

Here are a few useful commands that you may need following the above steps:

• Having trouble exporting emails from the server because of bad items in a mailbox? use the below switches:
• New-MailboxExportRequest -mailbox jsmith -filepath "\\server\PST\jsmith.pst" -baditemlimit 50000 -acceptlargedataloss
• Need to view the progress?
• Get-MailboxExportRequest
• Want to clear the finished exports from the report?
• Get-MailboxExportRequest -Status Completed | Remove-MailboxExportRequest
• Here's an example from the mapping file:
• Workload,FilePath,Name,Mailbox,IsArchive,TargetRootFolder,ContentCodePage,SPFileContainer,SPManifestContainer,SPSiteUrl
• Exchange,,jsmith.pst,jsmith@contoso.co.uk,FALSE,/,,,,
• Still having people connecting to the old server after migration? did you remember to turn auto-discovery off on the server? read me!

WordPress redirecting to Random Websites such as tomorrowwillbehotmaybe

A client recently had a problem with their WordPress site where it kept redirecting to a random URL - investigation showed that it went to tomorrowwillbehotmaybe in this instance.

The site hasn't been updated in a while (they are self client managed), and the issue appeared to be with a plugin called 301 simple redirect.

Disabling the plugin by renaming the plugin folder resolved the issue and the client could get back into the site as needed. Seems as though this particular plugin has a security hole in the older versions which got plugged - fine as long as the sites getting updated!

Exchange 2010 - OWA Outlook web App couldn't connect to Exchange Web Service due to a configuration error. Response code = "null, webexception.status = RecieveFailure" Can't delete emails OWA

Having moved a few Exchange 2010 servers over to TLS 1.1 and 1.2 one of the more recent ones we did kept coming up with the following error when trying to delete emails from OWA

Outlook web App couldn't connect to Exchange Web Service due to a configuration error. Response code = "null, webexception.status = RecieveFailure"

The error message in OWA when trying to delete email is as below:

This is a by-product of using TLS 1.1 and 1.2 - the internal schannels seem to struggle communicating with it if things aren't just quite right.

We managed to fix it by checking all of the following:

- Ensure you're running Exchange Rollup 28 for SP3 (lower versions may work, but we got it sorted after 28)

- We disabled TLS 1.0 and enabled 1.1/1.2 using IISCrypto but upon checking the registry keys, they were all set to ffffffffff instead of 1

Therefore, double check the following if using IIS Crypto

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Client]“DisabledByDefault”=dword:00000000“Enabled”=dword:00000001
“DisabledByDefault”=dword:00000000
“Enabled”=dword:00000001
“SystemDefaultTlsVersions”=dword:00000001
“SystemDefaultTlsVersions”=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL\Protocols\TLS 1.2\Server]

Thanks to Jaap Wesselius for this (https://jaapwesselius.com/2018/10/05/exchange-2010-and-tls-1-2/)

And then also check that .net 3.5.1 has TLS 1.2 enabled:

The next step is to enable TLS 1.2 for .NET Framework 3.5.1. To do this, make the following registry changes:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v2.0.50727]

After doing all of the above we rebooted and the issue seemed to be resolved.

Exchange 2010 Rollup 27 - Installation ended prematurely because of an error. Your system has not been modified. To install this program at a later time, please run the installation again.

We've been upgrading exchange servers to Rollup 27 and this old chestnut has reared its head again:

Installation ended prematurely - rolling back changes

The solution? run the installation from an elevated command prompt

Windows May Update 1903 enabling Sandbox mode and turning on Virtualisation on ASUS ROG AMD system SVM/Virtualisation

With the latest Windows update (May 1903) we get a new feature called Windows Sandbox. This allows us to run a sand-boxed (protected, isolated, quarantined) version of windows for opening dodgy files/testing etc. when you've finished with the sand-box and closed it the settings are gone and whatever damage/changes were made are gone for good.

This comes with Windows 10 Pro and above!

To enable sand-boxing, you firstly need to check if you have virtualisation enabled on your system, and that is supports it.

1. Open command prompt
2. Type "systeminfo" and press enter
3. Look for the Hyper-V line that says "Virtualisation Enabled in Firmware"

If its "Yes" then you're good to go. However, if like mine it says "No" then I had to reboot my system and enable it in the BIOS.

Typically, I couldn't find a Virtualisation Option anywhere. I have an AMD machine with an ASUS motherboard, and to enable it you need to find an option called SVM. On my system this was under the advanced view (as opposed to the EZ view), and then the advanced section, CPU Settings and then SVM

Once done, you can now add this feature to Windows by searching the start menu for "Turn windows feature on or off"

When this window is open, tick the "Windows Sandbox" option and let Windows install the new feature. After its finished you will be prompted to reboot.

And that's it! the Sandbox should be on your start menu under "Windows Sandbox"; running it opens up a virtual Windows 10 ready for you to destroy

Enable Google Face Recoginition in Google Photos - UK

It recently came to my attention that folks in the US and other parts of the world get access to a great feature called "Google Face Recognition" - something that's been blocked in the UK due to GDPR issues amongst other things.

I wanted this feature, and with a little bit of effort you can enable it in your own account

1. You'll need a VPN to use so that your browser thinks you're in the US
2. I used "tunnelbear" (i have no affiliation with them). URL below:
https://www.tunnelbear.com/download

3. If you're using chrome, download the chrome browser extension
4. Sign up to tunellbear for their free 500MB account, its more than enough
5. Once you're signed up, click the VPN button and connect to the US. Icon looks like the below in the task bar:

6. Once connected, you can then sign into Google Photos
7. And thats it! Face Recognition should be enabled - you can check it under Settings > Group Similar Faces

One thing to bear in mind is that it takes a few days for Google to crawl all of your photos, and then eventually you should get a new album called "People and Pets" where you can then name each face and group them together

Love it!

Getting Access to Xiaomi themes, store and other apps when you recieve "Themes not supported in your region" message - Miui10

I recently purchased a Xiaomi Mi 9 SE (such a good phone for the money!) and tried to install some third party themes on it.

However, being set to the UK I received the error "Themes not supported in your region"

To get around this, I simply searched the settings page for "Region" and then changed myself to India

I could then download and install all the themes I wanted and then reverted my region back to UK after I had finished

Easy!

Upgrading to May 2019 Windows 10 update early (1903)

Want to get the May 2019 (1903) update before its fully available to everyone on Windows Update? It's pretty simple! Just go to the below address and click "Update Now"

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

And you can download the installer to upgrade your PC/laptop

Enjoy!

Exchange 2010 OWA Out of Office - "Sorry! We're having trouble processing your request at the moment. Please try again in a few minutes."

Had an issue where whenever a user attempted to access their Out of Office section in OWA 2010 they received an the following error when saving it:

"Sorry! We're having trouble processing your request at the moment. Please try again in a few minutes."

In this particular instance, Exchange 2010 is running on a 2012 server

Eventually tracked the issue down to certain applications pools in IIS being assigned to .net v4 instead of v2

To check this out yourself, open IIS and go to "application pools"

Look in the list to see what version .NET Framework is set to - in particular look at the highlighted ones below.

"DefaultAppPool", "MSExchangeECPAppPool" and "MSExchangeOWACalendarAppPool"

When I initially looked at IIS, these were set to v4.0. I double clicked on the them and changed them back to v2.0 as below

This instantly resolved my issue!

Windows 10 appearing to briefly lose connection when using a mapped drive

A clients office has recently started to upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7

They've been running a couple of machines with 10 to check all works OK with their software. The machines which were upgraded started to develop a strange fault; Windows would report that the connection to the mapped drives had dropped

At face value it looked like the problem was that the network had a fault, potentially a failing switch, NIC or cable but the problem persisted after changing ports and switches.

Fast forward through more investigation and the problem was eventually tracked down to how the mapped drive was being made using Group Policy

For some reason, if the drive is mapped using the CREATE option then Windows 10 appears to drop the mapped drive connection (for only a brief moment) to re-create it again. The Windows 7 PCs don't seem to mind this and it doesn't cause any problems

The resolution was simply to change the mapping from CREATE to UPDATE and the problem was solved

Installing Sage Accounts 2010 on Windows 10

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to install Sage Accounts 2010 then you'll probably see that installing it isn't as easy as you may think. When you run the installation, Windows 10 will stop it and not let you install.

Right click on the installer and select "Run as Administrator" I hear you cry! Alas, that won't work either.

Disable UAC? Nope

To get around it, run a command prompt as an administrator and then launch the installation from here - problem solved

You may also find that updates won't automatically download - in which case you'll need to log into the Sage website and download them manually. Use the above process again to run the updates

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) The namespace \root\microsoft\bits doesn't exist on the server RTS.

Recently we've been converting a number of physical machines to virtual ones - and to help the process we've been using the MVMC wizard.

One of the error messages that we often see is:

The namespace \root\Microsoft\bits doesn't exist on the server RTS.

Why? Because I always forget to install the BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) feature before I start! 

So to fix this error, simply install this as a feature making sure to select the compact server as an option and it should resolve it for you