Steven Datt

Category: Windows

  • Sync WSUS with Windows Update via Powershell

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    This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while, and here I’ll explain some of the basic methods and commands to manage WSUS solely through Powershell. No one really wants to be logging onto machines unecessarily with RDP, and these have been personally useful to me when customers have had insane hoops…

  • Installing Inspec for RubyGems on Windows

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    I came across this as I was trying to install inspec to run against some Packer builds. The Github documentation only covers how to install inspec, and not the pre-requisites. You likely experienced an error such as “[…] requires installed build tools” and you may try to run gem install buildtools However, What you need to do…

  • Disable the Windows 10 notification sound

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    Something that’s been driving me crazy recently is the excessive amount of notifications that pop up (and play a sound repeatedly) when I log in to my home PC. Somehow, turning down the system volume does nothing to stop the obnoxiousness of the alert. Luckily, there’s an easy, no fuss way to disable this! Right click…

  • Windows 10 – Settings can’t be opened using the Built-in Administrator account

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    The Windows 10 rollouts from Microsoft has finally picked up traction. My opinion of Windows 10 has greatly improved due to the cross-platform availability of XBOX One games. However, due to the adoption of an app-like structure, this has posed it’s own problems. You may find that you’re not able to open built-in programs that…

  • Exporting AD group members using Powershell

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    We had a client who was experiencing high usage on one of their TS servers last week, and I was asked to compile and export a list of users on each TS to send to the client so we could move people around. I found a handy Powershell cmdlet that let me do this really…

  • Disabling Windows Defender

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    I had an issue recently where Windows updates installed Windows Defender automatically, on top of Microsoft Security Essentials on my TS3 server. This caused MSE to disable itself, and Windows Defender didn’t enable itself, causing my TS3 server to be exposed for longer than I would have liked. Obviously this was a huge problem, and…

  • Domain controller migration

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    This weekend I was running through a migration from Server 2008 Hyper-V host to ESXi and Server 2012 as the primary DC in a test environment. All the VMs were backed up and converted to VMDKs beforehand, and the install went off without a hitch. What I had done with the server, was to install…

  • Media center software – XBMC

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    A couple of months ago I purchased some new parts from Scan to build myself a Media PC. I went through a lot of different options, weighing up the pros and cons of each and eventually settled on a stripped down version of the Budget PC found in Custom PC Magazine. I have media across…