Certain situations can arise where you no longer know a Windows user account password and need to reset it or make a new one. Third-party tools can assist, but in my experience, many of them have been hit-and-miss. In this post, I will show you step-by-step how to reset a Windows password using Windows install…
Microsoft Windows Server 2025 has just reached general availability. I decided to install it and see what’s changed compared to Windows Server 2022. Right off the bat, the installer loading screen is slightly different. With Windows Server 2025, there are two setups the new setup UI, which is the default, and the previous setup UI,…
There are many ways to activate Windows, and a really cool way to activate Windows is with Active Directory-Based Activation. Active Directory-Based Activation (ADBA) was first introduced in Windows Server 2012 and is only usable if your Microsoft Volume licensing has a KMS host key. If you don’t have a KMS key, you may need…
If you accidentally delete something in Active Directory, it can be difficult to undo. Fortunately, you can enable a recycle bin for Active Directory, making life much easier if you need to restore something. The Active Directory Recycle Bin (sometimes called ADRB) was first introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2. You need to enable it…
Usually, when you want to control the Windows Update settings, you create a GPO to manage the settings or tweak some registry entries. Both methods alter the registry values in the registry key To reset any custom Windows Update settings, I nuke out that registry key or reverse the GPO or both, and restart the…
Active Directory is very much a database. It even has a schema to define what can and can’t be created and how everything is related and linked. An oversimplification is that the Active Directory schema is the rules about the types of items you can make in Active Directory, and this also includes the available…
I’m a fan of using Microsoft Windows Server Core for as many things as possible when it makes sense. In this post, I’ll cover step-by-step how to install VMware Tools on Windows Server Core via the GUI and PowerShell. The GUI Way Sometimes the VMware tools install screen hides behind the command line window.
I’ve been a fan of LAPS for a while and in 2023 Microsoft made LAPS even better by introducing a new version called Windows LAPS. Windows LAPS (Local Administrator Password Solution) is a great tool for managing your local admin passwords. You might be thinking it’s ok I use one complicated password for my local…
Recently I needed to expand a disk on a Windows 10 VM and a Windows Server 2022 VM, but I couldn’t because the Recovery Partition was in the way. When searching for a way to do this I discovered that the internet is full of posts about simply deleting the Windows Recovery Partition. I am…
