Andy M

If you log into a Server 2012+ RDS from a Windows 7 machine you will find that you cannot change the scaling (Text Size, DPI, etc.) of the desktop. This is due to the fact that by default, Server 2012 RDS will use the scaling settings of your Windows 8+ machine. If you are on Windows 7 you will only have the option for the default resolution. Thankfully, there are some reg keys that allow us to work around this. For all users on a machine (this will break auto scaling for Win 8 machines): Create the following reg key on the RDS server HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations\IgnoreClientDesktopScaleFactor DWORD Value: 1 For select users (if you only have a few Win 7 machines to deal with): HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\LogPixels DWORD Value: 78 (hex) for 120 DPI (you can find other values in the links below) References https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/dpi-related-apis-and-registry-set...

This guide will show you how to streamline your sign in experience so that users do not get any security prompts. By default you might see the warning below every time you try to connect to a collection: The Final Result Users enter their password into RD Web We will not be passing Windows credentials to the website automatically since it will not work from external computers, and it might cause some confusion. Users select their collection Users are now on their remote desktop (no other prompts) You will also get a lock on your RDP bar confirming that the identity of the server was verified. Requirements Server 2016 (Most of this should work on 2012) SSL certificate for one domain (Wildcard not required) Remote Desktop Gateway Role Deployed Windows workstations using Internet Explorer My Test Environment Server 2016 Single server handling RD Web, RD Gateway, RD Connection broker 3 RD Session Host servers Internal AD Domain name of example.LOCAL Ext...

Had an issue this morning where a user could not modify another user's calendar. The user had PublishingAuthor permission to the calendar, both users were on Office 365, I had waited 24 hours after reapplying the permissions. The user could see the full details of the calendar, but she could not modify it. Right clicking on the calendar would only show the greyed out items below. Right clicking on the calendar permissions would return the error below: Cannot display the folder properties. The folder may have been deleted or the server where the folder is stored may be unavailable. Cannot display folder properties. You don't have appropriate permissions to perform this action. I created a whole new profile on a different computer to test. I waited for the cache to finish building but I still had the issue. Ultimately, the solution was to add the calendar from the Online Global Address List, and not the Offline Global Address List. Clear all of the Office/Outlook r...

I had a user reporting that Outlook was giving them an error saying "Mailbox Full" even though they only had 30GB of mail. I checked the Exchange admin center and it said that the user had a 100GB limit and was only using 30GB. I connected to EOL powershell and set the size limit on the mailbox manually using the command below. Get-Mailbox User1 | Set-Mailbox -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 100GB -ProhibitSendQuota 99GB Oddly enough the command returned: "WARNING: The command completed successfully but no settings of 'User' have been modified.". However, after a minute the Outlook error went away and the mailbox started working again. From what I can gather it looks like mailbox size limits transfer over when you migrate a mailbox using Hybrid. If you are migrating multiple mailboxes it might be a good idea to run the command below to send the max limit for all mailboxes: get-mailbox | Set-Mailbox -ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 100GB -ProhibitSendQu...

I ran into a strange issue today where Word and Excel would not open files on a user's desktop. Accessing them through regular share paths (\\server\share) would work, but DFS paths would not (\\company.com\share). The fix was adding the domain to the IE intranet sites. Create a new GPO Enable User Configuration/Policies/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Internet Explorer/Internet Control Panel/Security Page/ Site to Zone Assignment List On the table enter Value name: \\company.com\* Value: 1

Dynamic access control can be used to simplify security permission management. I mainly use role based access control to control file share access and auditing. However, that could lead to a lot of management overhead and thousands of groups in complex file share structures.  Dynamic Access Control has a bit of a learning curve, but once you understand the basic concepts it can be fairly easy to configure and deploy.  I have only tested and configured the following in a lab environment. This purpose of this article to get a better understanding of dynamic access control concepts. I will start out with some basic conditional expressions and work up to central access policies. Our environment will look similar to the diagram below. Users' access to files will be based on their attributes and the properties of the files. Pre-requisites File server that is Server 2012+  2012+ schema The File Server Resource Manager role must be installed on your file server ...

If you have ever been on the Technet forums you have probably been confused by the order of the responses. They all appear to be in a random order. This is because by default they are not in threaded list view. To fix it: Go to any thread and click Quick Access>My settings Under Thread Display select "Threaded list view" Now when you view Technet threads they will not be in a random order.