Helpful Keyboard Shortcuts in Server 2012

October 2, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 236 Comments

I am currently evaluating Server 2012, looking at all the new improvements it has to offer and have been playing with it in a test environment over the past week and am slowly gaining my bearings with regards to navigation and getting around in the new OS. This newest Microsoft release has definitely been an overhaul and it takes a certain amount of adjustment in getting used to. I would like to highlight a few useful commands that will tremendously decrease the burden and learning curve when you look at this new OS and adjust to its differences.

I should mention that if you are managing these servers through RDP you will need to change the default keyboard behavior to “On the Remote Computer” on the keyboard resource screen.

Windows key

This is the first and most obvious shortcut I would like to mention. It is probably the most important though as well and is also much easier in my opinion to access then placing your cursor in the bottom left corner. This will pull up the new and improved Start menu (though some would disagree). From here you can browse basic tasks or start typing to pull up the built in Search menu, which is actually pretty slick. The search feature along with the new Server Manager will quickly become your best friend in Server 2012.

Windows key + c

Opens the new Windows “Charm” bar, for those of you that are still new to 2012 like I am, this is the sidebar in the right if you drag your mouse the top right corner. It is so much easier to just use the keyboard shortcut here for the same reason that the Win key is for opening the Start menu. It is just annoying not to use the keyboard shortcut.

Windows key + x

This one is very handy once you get used to using keyboard shortcuts for everything. It essentially pulls up a list of some of the most common menus in the bottom left corner. It becomes very useful when you are doing a lot of maintenance on numerous 2012 servers.

Windows key + d

This is another great time saver. It has been around for awhile but it has become so much more useful in 2012 because of the change in the GUI. So if you’re like me and put a lot of stuff on the desktop then this is super helpful, especially if you have a bunch of windows open and your desktop is seemingly buried. To put things back to where they were then just punch in the key combo to restore your work space.

Windows key + q

This will pull open the search bar immediately which will skip the initial Start Menu screen, which isn’t always super useful in the first place.

Even with just these few shortcuts you will vastly improve your user experience in Server 2012, at least I did. Getting familiar with the newest version of Windows quickly will be an important step for administrators because the latest version offers so many improvements and useful features. It would be a foolish mistake not to invest in learning this GUI just because it is different and isn’t what people are used to.

Resource(s):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831491.aspx#BKMK_keys

Use Windows Backup to Truncate Logs in Exchange 2010 with DAG Configuration

July 14, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 3 Comments

I ran into a few minor glitches that weren’t mentioned in other posts when using this method in my own environment. So first I will mention what was different for me, then I will be going over the full set of instructions to use this method. My goal for this post is to be as thorough and unambiguous as possible so there are no questions after reading these instructions.

First, it wasn’t readily apparent what specifically needed to be backed up in the pieces I read. Though, it is quite possible I managed to misread the sections that described them. After some experimentation in our test network I learned that all volumes containing databases and log files need to be backed up. This means that if you have separate drives for logs and databases, both of them need to get backed up, I would have saved a lot of time had I known this beforehand. And, as far as I can tell, both the mailbxes and logs have to be backed up for this method to work, not just one or the other. So just to reiterate this with an example, you have to back both the (L:) and (M:) volumes up.

The other thing that was mentioned in other posts but wasn’t clear cut was the need to change the registry key to disable VSS trasnport replication. It is necessary for Exchange environments using a DAG configuration with both active and passive databases, if this change isn’t the case the backup may work but your logs won’t get truncated. Finally, ensure that you have the Microsof Exchange Server Extension for Windows Backup service started.

Log on to the server by using an account that has local administrator access, and open regedit
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\v14\Replay\Parameters.
Add a new DWORD value named EnableVSSWriter, and set its value to 0.
Exit Registry Editor and then restart the Microsoft Exchange Replication service.

Okay, now we need to enable the Windows Backup feature (I will leave that to the reader), just make sure not to enable the backup command line tools (they are outdated).

So now you just create your backup job and after everything is all said and done your logs should get truncated, it seems like a lot more work than should be necessary but if your logs don’t get truncated then really bad things happen, so it is a small price to pay I guess to make sure things are working the right way.

That’s pretty much it. Once the backup has completed your log volume should have more room. There are other ways to clear the transaction logs, maybe I will go over them in another post but this method is (for the most part once you figure out what you’re doing) easy and built into Windows. Just make sure you have enough free space somewhere on your network to house the backups, especially if there there is a lot to move.

Disable the Customize Ribbon Option in Office 2010

June 29, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 78 Comments

So I recently had a specific request at work from a user, which, unless I note somewhere I am sure I will forget. Basically, the requester does not want to grant the ability for users to be able to change the default UI ribbon settings within Outlook 2010 or any other Office 2010 program. The easiest way to explain it is, the user wants to disable the “Customize Ribbon” option as pictured below.

While I don’t know of an exact way to accomplish to “grey out” this option I did find a way to wipe the ability out to adjust these settings within Group Policy. The setting is located in the following location within Group Policy Manager. The setting we are looking for is labeled Turn off user customization via UI.

User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Microsoft Office 2010 -> Global Options -> Customize -> Turn off user customization via UI

NOTE that you need to have the Office 2010 Group Policy templates installed on the machine you are attempting to set the policy from (if you have questions just let me know and I can follow up with instructions on how to do this). Here is what the setting looks like:

And here is what the updated Outlook “Customize Ribbon” option looks like:

Disable Windows Firewall and IE ESC

June 13, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 6 Comments

I just wanted to make a post for disabling the Windows firewall from the command line on new server builds because I always manage to forget and this is pretty much the quickest, easiest way. From the command prompt just type:

netsh advfirewall set allprofiles state off

and voila, no more wasted time trying to figure out weird network issues, super simple.

To disable each firewall individually adjust your command as follows:

netsh advfirewall set domainprofile state off
netsh advfirewall set privateprofile state off
netsh advfirewall set publicprofile state off

I also like to disable IE ESC from blocking websites by default because it is such a pain if I need to troubleshoot. Unfortunately there isn’t a very graceful way to disable this function from the command line so I usually will just go through the Server Manager GUI to take care of this. Server Manager -> Server Summary -> Security Information -> Configure IE ESC

On new server builds I manage to overlook these so taking the time to go through and disable these 2 items is a great time saver.

Protip: May

May 21, 2012August 31, 2015 Josh Reichardt 1 Comment

This post will describe how to dig into a Windows system and check to see USB devices that have been connected to a computer locally. This can be interesting, for example, if you are interested in monitoring what kind of devices are being connected and identifying potentially dangerous devices that are being attached to a system.

The manual way of checking to see these devices is to navigate through the registry keys and check the devices through RegEdit. The path to the USB device key is:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR

Just expand the tab to see which devices are listed here.

Then drill down into a particular device in this subtree to get information about the USB device. There should be a field named FriendlyName that you can check.