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Showing posts from May, 2019

Fixing Office 365 Azure AD Sync issues

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Symptoms: You have synced the AD users, but you have duplicates or two of a similar user (reception@ and receptionist@). You try to edit the UPN of either user and you receive an error saying that the attribute must be unique. On the sync service you get an error saying the attribute(usually the UPN) must be unique. Background: UPN = username (and usually email address) ImmutableID (anchor) = used to link an AD user to an Office 365 user (after UPN matching) In AD there exists an account with a UPN: mailbox1@example.com In Office 365 there exists an account with a UPN: mail1@example.com These two accounts are the same user, but their O365 email address does not match up with their UPN (not usually a problem, but during the initial sync it is) The problem: The AD sync service is started and AD users are synced with Office 365 users. You log into Office 365 and see two users now: mailbox1@example.com(unlicensed) and mail1@example.com(licensed) You try to un-sync mai

Fixing Group Policy Replication issues

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I ran into an issue where GPUpdate kept returning the error below: "Computer policy could not be updated successfully.  The following errors were encountered: The processing of Group Policy failed.  Windows attempted to read the file \\COMPANY.LOCAL\sysvol\<FQDN>\Policies\{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}\gpt.ini from a domain controller and was not successful.  Group Policy settings may not be applied until this event is resolved. This issue may be transient and could be caused by one or more of the following: a) Name Resolution/Network Connectivity to the current domain controller. b) File Replication Service Latency (a file created on another domain controller has not replicated to the current domain controller). c) The Distributed File System (DFS) client has been disabled. To diagnose the failure, review the event log or invoke gpmc.msc to access information about Group Policy results." In my case the DCs got out of sync and the fix was to complet

Duplicate Printers Showing Up in Windows

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Have an issue you can't solve? I offer consulting engagements and can be reached here: consulting[а 𝐭 ]amorales[․]org The Issue: You delete a printer, but it keeps coming back (and it probably doesn't work properly) There are multiple print queues for the same printer You can't delete a printer This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator . Cause I don't have a solid root cause for this issue, but here are some theories  Printers were deployed through GPO at one point and the policy didn't get removed properly. Printer spooler was restarted at the wrong time If you clear  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Print\Providers\Client Side Rendering Print Provider  and restart the spooler before restarting the computer there is a chance that printers will be duplicated. General printer corruption Solution These steps will likely resul

Enabling Webcam on RDS

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This will show you what you need to do in order to enable webcam access on an RDS server. NOTE: Using a webcam on RDS will result in significant CPU usage (30%+ in my case). You should recommend that users instead use their webcams from their local computers. The setup is actually easy but I ran into some issues that you'll see below. My configuration: Server 2016 RD gateway Server 2016 RD Session host Windows 10 1809 workstation VMware 5.5 hosting both VMs Built in laptop webcam and Logitech C270 webcam Enabling: If you are using an RD Gateway, make sure that redirection is enabled for the collection (not 100% sure this is required). No further gateway config is required. On the workstations, or on a GPO applied to workstations, enable the setting below: Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Remote Desktop Services/Remote Desktop Connection Client/RemoteFX USB Device Redirection/Allow RDP redirection of other supported RemoteFX