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We have a temporary role in CSS where support folks will help out in supporting prerelease (also known as beta) software.   I’ve worked a couple of Windows betas, and it’s a great experience.   I mention this since I remember a few...(read more)

New KB articles related to Directory Services for the week of 11/30-12/07. 958876 When you try to update a file that has a newer version on a Windows Server 2003 R2-based DFSR server, the operation fails, the original file is deleted from the replication...(read more)

Hi, Warren here. I recently worked on a case where I got to do a bit of sleuthing. I found the results interesting and thought other Windows Server admins might notice the same thing this particular administrator had and wonder why. My customer has an...(read more)

HI, Ned here again. We have put up a new(ish) KB article that will allow you to always see the latest recommended hotfixes for DFSR and DFSN. I also updated the ever popular 'Top 10 Common Causes of Slow Replication with DFSR ' blog post to reflect this,...(read more)

New KB articles related to Directory Services for the week of 11/23-11/30. Number Title 957553 How to free up client access licenses for Windows Server 2003 Terminal Licensing Server 953419 A Windows Server 2003-based DNS server does not forward a request...(read more)

Hi, Rob here. First I want to thank you guys for reading and participating in our blogging efforts. I had one of you e-mail us and ask about the web site I used in the Kerberos Authentication Troubleshooting blogs and if they could get a copy of it. The...(read more)

From time to time we are asked how to backup and restore NTFS file system permissions as well as network share permissions. KB article 125996 talks about the network share piece of it, but it does not talk about NTFS permissions. One thing that has made...(read more)

New KB articles related to Directory Services for the week of 11/16-11/23. 957556 Repair options that you can use to recover if you accidentally make an incorrect Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) member authoritative in a Windows Server 2003...(read more)

I learn more about AD and other things every day, which is part of the fun of this job we do-learning about how things work. This story does a good job of lending some understanding to something that can be tough to understand-trust secure channels. This...(read more)

Hi all. This is Sean again and it’s ADFS blog time! Today I’m going to touch on Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) tokens, and an issue we’ve run into when federating with Tivoli Federated Identity Manager (TFIM) . I’ll discuss what a SAML token...(read more)

We’ve been at this for over a year (since August 2007), with more than 100 posts (127 to be exact), so maybe we can indulge in a little metablogging to look back on what we’ve done. First let’s look at the posts that sparked the most conversation – because...(read more)

Ned here again. I recently spent a week with Microsoft Support Engineers from all over the world, and bumped into a colleague that works in MS Spain, out of Madrid. She mentioned that they had a Spanish-language blog focused on Directory Services, networking,...(read more)

New KB articles related to Directory Services for the week of 11/9-11/16. 958802 List of currently available hotfixes for Distributed File System (DFS) technologies in Windows Server 2003 R2 960050 EFS may not be enabled expectedly after you disable a...(read more)

Ned here again. We recently had a very lively discussion about 'Lag Sites' as a disaster recovery option. If you've been digging around the MS Download Center, you may have already come across Introduction to Windows Server 2008 R2 . After some digging,...(read more)

This is Randy again with an interesting case that I had recently. We were having problems trying to join certain workstations to the domain. We would see that every workstation in one site would join successfully and all the workstations in another site...(read more)

Ned here again. Today's post is short and sweet, but when you need this one you will need it fast and we don't have this publically documented anywhere on TechNet (yet - it's coming). Since Windows 2000 SP4, it has been possible to forcibly demote Domain...(read more)

Hello everyone, Brian Singleton here. Here’s a question I often get from customer regarding Windows Time: “Is there a way I can configure the Windows Time settings via Group Policy and have it only apply to the domain controller that holds the PDC FSMO...(read more)

The five or six people who have read my little bio snippet on Technet read that I like to play video games-specifically Xbox 360 games. I was doing just that the other night-playing Fallout 3-when my wife walked into the study to ask for help with all...(read more)

Although we have a team of engineers who are dedicated to troubleshooting general server performance related problems Microsoft Directory Services specialists are expected to be the “go to” people for Active Directory and domain controller related performance...(read more)

A while back I wrote a blog post regarding PAC (Privilege Attribute Certificate) validation in Microsoft Kerberos. We’ve had enough interest in this lately, particularly around the idea of disabling it, that it seemed like a good idea to post about this...(read more)