Recently I had to troubleshoot a problem with our Sysprepped Windows XP SP3 clients getting the following error:    "The remote computer disconnected the session because of an error in the licensing protocol. Please try connecting to the remote computer again or contact your server administrator. "   On all the XP SP3 images, the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSLicensing\HardwareID\ClientHWID key was identical on all machines.  The Terminal server uses this key to dis... [More]

  Recently I had to create an external trust through a firewall to a domain in a DMZ.  I found an article from Microsoft titled: "How to configure a firewall for domains and trusts”.  After looking at the insane number of ports required, I figured there must be a better way.  So here are the steps I took to create a working trust.   Requirements:  Minimum amount of ports open in firewall.  IPSEC can't be used for various reasons. Pure DNS re... [More]

When a new user is created in AD, a container is created for that user.  The container for that user by default is based on the users first and last name (generally what shows up in the Full Name field when you create the user).  So if you look for a user in Active Directory Users and Computers you usually see the users listed by first name then last name.  See Figure 1.  This is also the default way users and display in the GAL via Outlook.   Se... [More]