When importing a VM into Windows Server 2012 that was exported from Windows 2012 R2 you will be unable to import the VM. If you import the VM using PowerShell’s Import-VM cmdlet the error message is not very descriptive – “The operation cannot be performed because the object is not in a valid state”. You…
Tag: Tips N Tricks
PowerShell Input Output Escapades
After using various types, architectures and generations of computers over the years there is always the habit of “you go to what you know!” In other words once you figure out a solution to an issue, you then use that repeatedly in the future as you know the process/steps involved. This adroitly describes me when…
Quick Tip – Event Viewer Filtering
I was recently reminded of a simple yet effective Event Viewer filtering tip. If you have thousands of event entries that are pollution/flooding the log it becomes very difficult to see the actual real issues. For example this tip has proved very useful when the application event log is full of these types of noise:…
Retrieving Packets Received Discarded Perfmon Counter From Multiple Servers
Whilst working on a customer’s Exchange 2010 DAG issue, I wrote a quick script to quickly grab some performance monitor counters from all of their Exchange servers. The issue that we were investigating was related to discarded packets when the VM was running on a certain hypervisor host. The customer had moved their Exchange VMs…
Outlook 2013 Distorted Display Issues
After a recent video driver update, my corporate Outlook client started to do some strange things. Within Office 2013, the screen output would be distorted. Menu bars were not painted properly until I mouse-over them again, or moved Office programs around. Other times the display would look corrupted and the navigation tree would not be…
Exchange and AntiVirus Exclusions – Still A Critical Conversation
In a previous post we saw the Microsoft requirements for the exclusions that must be added to file system AV on Exchange servers. In a recent CritSit, basically an uber urgent support request where the customer is down or as good as down, I also got to examine some of the other causes for file…
PowerShell Pipeline Perversion
Every so often I see folks run into issues with scripts/one-liners that they obtained from a blog or crafted themselves. One common issue is when they think the command is perfect and then when they go to dump the output to a file, the content is mince. ** Imagine your surprise when you open up…
Exchange Scripting Agent – The Power Of Script
Exchange 2010 introduced a very interesting feature – the Scripting Agent. The intent for this component is to provide extensibility to the base management tools and ensure consistency for the execution of cmdlets in the environment. The feature is not enabled by default and you must manually enable it if you want to leverage the…
How To Request Certificate Without Using IIS or Exchange
The blog post on how to integrate Office 365 with Windows 2012 R2 AD FS raised an interesting question from a reader (Hi Eric!) on how should he request a certificate for the AD FS instance since there is no longer an IIS dependency. This means that there is no longer an IIS console to…
How To Disable Remote Desktop Printer Mapping
After doing Exchange Risk Assessment (ExRAP) and Exchange Risk Assessment As A Service for almost four years, one thing continues to irritate my OCD personality! When I look at the event logs on an Exchange server, the logs should be a sea of blue. That is there should be no errors as that indicates something…