iPhone 3.0 .. downloading!!

after watching blogs etc for the day about when 3.0 would be released, i have just managed to kick off the download from itunes.

 hopefully everything will work ok !!!

Windows 2008 R2 Docs

Link

AD Recovery Docs

Taken from Jorge’s blog

Best Practices: Active Directory Forest Recovery (W2K)

• http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3eda5a79-c99b-4df9-823c-933feba08cfe&displaylang=en

Planning for Active Directory Forest Recovery (W2K3)

• http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=afe436fa-8e8a-443a-9027-c522dee35d85&displaylang=en

Planning for Active Directory Forest Recovery (W2K8)

• http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=326C8A7A-DCAD-4333-9050-A6303FF3155C&displaylang=en

RODC Branch Office Guide

just spotted this

Download link

Technet Link

Server Core – Time and Regional Settings

So I have been having a few problems in my new W2k8 Forest. Seems that my server core Dc has the wrong time. 

This made me thnk about how you can change regional settings and date time on server core. Turns out its pretty easy using the control panel applets

Regional settings – c:\windows\system32\intl.cpl

which brings up a familar looking interface

 

and for date and time – c:\windows\system32\timedate.cpl

which brings up this:

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS09-018 – Critical

This looks like a major one

Vulnerabilities in Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution (971055)

Link

DRM Errors .. still

so today I have the same issue with DRM… so no Live TV on either Extender. Channel 15 worked for a while and has stopped again. I have uninstalled McAfee but still no joy. I havent installed any updates .. it just stopped working.

Proving to be a real pain , perhaps its time to move to media portal.

Windows Media Center Extender encountered a DRM failure. Error code: 1, hr: 0x8004b822

Aghhh no Live TV on MCE !!!

For some reason  I started getting the above error today on my meda centre box… after some investigation I killed a mcafee process in the taskmgr. The clue was spotting this error:

An unauthorized window was detected while running the Windows Media Center Experience, ‘McAfee Notification Window’, with file name ‘C:\Program Files\McAfee.com\Agent\mcagent.exe’.
I killed this exe that was running under the MCX2 profile (ensure you have ticked show processes for all users) and suddenly live tv started again,

 

UPDATE – so the above only worked for a short period  , however today I manged to fix this properly

 I unplugged both (2) TV cards and added one back in , rescanned all the channels and its working again on the extender. I am guessing that one of the TV cards was having issues and this was the one I was connecting to .. hence why it worked briefly as I must have for a short period connected to the working TV Card

Operations Master Role Functionality Risk Assessment

Always good to have close at hand .. just in case you lose a FSMO role and are unsure of the impact.

Taken from Link:

Active Directory – Remove a Domain Using NTDSUTIL

Active Directory – Remove a Domain Using NTDSUTIL
So say for some reason you want to remove a Domain from Active Directory that no longer exists… how do you do it?

As always with Metadata Cleanups NTDSUTIL is your friend.

To remove the domain you need to remove the following using NTDSUTIL:
1. All Domain Controllers for the domain you want to remove.
2. All Naming Contexts for the Domain you want to remove.

You can then remove the actual Domain itself. Its important to remember when removing the naming contexts that there will be more than one. So for example:
DC=domain,DC=net
DC=DomainDnsZones,DC=domain,DC=net Its the DNS Zone that people tend to forget !!

If you get an error about Leaf Objects you havent removed all the Naming Contexts. You also need to ensure you are connected to the Domain Naming Master to perform the actual Domain Removal.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Please ensure you are 100% certain you want to do the below, and dont do in a production environment without testing first
Below are some screenshots and bullet points on the end to end process:
With NTDSUTIL all of the commands can be abbreviated as long as they are unique, I have put some in brackets next to the full command.
First of all Connect to the Domain Naming Master

Connect using NTDSUTIL
1. Start up NTDSUTIL from a command prompt
Go into the Metadata Cleanup (M C for short)
2. Metadata Cleanup
Go into connections
3. Connections
Connect to the Domain Naming FSMO holder for your forest
4. Connect to <Server>

First of all remove any Domain Controllers from the Domain you wish to remove.
Quit Connections (Q)
1. Quit
Select the object you want to remove by using Select Operations Target ( S O T for short)
2. Select Operations Target
List the Domains in your Forest
3. List Domains
Connect to Domain you wish to remove
4. Select Domain <number>
List the Sites in your Forest and Select the Site which contains the first (or only) domain controller you wish to remove
5. Select Site <number>

List Domain Controllers in the site you connected to above
1. List Servers in Site
Select Domain Controller you want to remove
2. Select Server <number>

You are ready to remove the Domain Controllers
1. Quit
Remove the Domain Controller
2. Remove Selected Server
3. Select Yes on the pop up window

4. Select Yes on the pop up windows

5. You will get back a message saying the Domain Controller has been removed.

Then you need to remove the naming contexts for the Domain you wish to remove.

Move back to the objects you can select to select the Naming Context you want to remove
1. S O T
List the naming contexts for your Forest
2. List Naming Contexts
Select the Naming Context you wish to remove
3. Select Naming Context <number>

Then quit back to remove the Naming Context
1. Quit
2. Remove Selected Naming Context
3. Select yes to remove the naming Context

4. You will get back a message saying the Naming Context has been removed.

Repeat the above steps for all Domain Controllers and Naming Contexts for the Domain you wish to remove.
Next you need to remove the Domain itself !!PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF THE MESSAGE !!!

1. Remove Selected Domain

 

And thats it .. should be all gone..