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Showing posts from October, 2014

Preparing for the End of Windows Server 2003

It’s a little embarrassing, or maybe I should say lucky, that somehow I hadn’t the need to review the changes to the dynamic port range assignments. I say it that way because the range wasn’t something that recently changed. By recent, let’s call it 2012. No, in fact, it goes back to 2008. Microsoft changed the dynamic port range to comply with IANA recommendations effectively moving the range:   From To Old 1025 5000 New 49152 65535   SYMPTOMS The troubles you’ll find with this kind of change usually won’t present itself until you try to restrict it somehow. This issue was noticed when domain controllers were upgraded to 2012. The version previous was 2003. :-| The kinds of issues witnessed appeared all over the place, compounded with confusion since the issues weren’t well captured or documented during troubleshooting. Here’s what was seen along with the corresponding error messages: Failure to connect to a share Windows cannot access <share> The

boosting the powershell ise with ise steroids

Ever since the PowerShell ISE was released, I slowly moved away from using some of the other things I was pretty fond of like PowerShellPlus and PrimalScript. It’s mostly because it’s super convenient. Along came ISE Steroids. I can’t really speak to 1.0 since I just started on 2.0 and just started very recently, actually. So far, I’m pretty impressed. The best part of using it, is it doesn’t force the convenience factor to change at all. Installing it is as simple as unzipping the files to your module path ($env:PSModulePath -split ';'). After that, you launch it with Start-Steroids. That gives me the convenience of using the plain ol’ ISE or switching into a hyper-capable ISE. I’ve only begun scratching the surface of its capabilities though here are some things I’ve been using so far: VERTICAL ADD-ON TOOLS PANE Help. I love this feature. Anything I click on in a script, the help add-on will attempt to look up and present relevant information. Variables. This is anothe

Using NETSH to Capture Packets

Outages . Aside from the massive pressure of having to restore service, they can be pretty useful to learn new things. One recent discovery that was news to me is that you can use netsh to capture network traces. It appears on modern-ish operating systems (Windows 7/Windows 2008 R2 and above) you no longer need to install your favorite packet tracing application to capture packets. Who doesn’t like to cuddle up with a nice packet trace, eh? Obviously if you’re on a desktop OS, you should just load packet capturing utility of choice (and it had better be Network Monitor if you intend to open the .ETL trace ) -- unless you like to read it in some other way. That would mean your skillz are simply amazing and are wasting your time here! RUNNING A TRACE The most basic way to start and stop a trace is by performing the following commands: As you can see, netsh displays the trace configuration as well. It’s not the full configuration of defaults though. netsh trace start capture=ye

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) 2015

Hello everyone. I received the news today that my MVP award has been renewed. I feel privileged to receive such a distinguished honor in company with some of the brightest minds in technology. Congratulations to all of my fellow MVPs who were also renewed today. It is with great pride we announce that Marcus Oh has been awarded as a Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for 10/1/2014 - 10/1/2015. The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. All of us at Microsoft recognize and appreciate Marcus’s extraordinary contributions and want to take this opportunity to share our appreciation with you. With fewer than 4,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. They represent the diversity of today’s technical communities.