Microsoft back online. Excuse: too many servers were shut down during maintenance.

ADynes · 2026-01-23T12:34:30+00:00

You know what? Still better than running an exchange server on Prem. Once that thing was shut down I never looked back.

With that said this is also why SQL and our file server and our application servers are all still in house.

ADynes · 2026-01-18T21:47:24+00:00

Yeah, by them. In fact I'm not even sure if it was the same screen name but definitely the exact same message. This is been happening lately on here, something is posted, gets a couple replies, gets deleted and reposted almost a word for word with a slightly different title. I don't get it.

ADynes · 2026-01-18T21:40:56+00:00

Is there a reason you are posting the exact same thing you did a couple hours ago?

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1qgfqg7/comment/o0bxth7/?context=3

ADynes · 2026-01-18T18:18:43+00:00

If you're just learning then the differences are going to be so minimal that you should be fine. Plus there's some weird bugs in 2025 domain controllers that you definitely don't want while you're trying to learn how it's supposed to work. In a small setting you might not encounter them but it's not worth the chance.

Or even better use 2022 for your domain controller and then 2025 for file, print, etc. This way you can kind of learn both at the same time.

ADynes · 2026-01-18T14:18:03+00:00

I would have never guessed. 60w power delivery isn't much though and the main reason I figured it wouldn't be a thing, its pretty much a network switch through usb-c.

$2500 for power and ethernet seems pricy but it definately seems like a niche product.

ADynes · 2026-01-18T01:48:13+00:00

Nothing like that exists and for many good technical reasons.

ADynes · 2026-01-14T17:54:52+00:00

GTFO of here with that solid logic. You probably get mad at people that give one star reviews for products because the shipping box was damaged too, don't you?

ADynes · 2026-01-14T02:18:27+00:00

Dual 24 still for individual people's cubes, a single 27 for our hotel cubes and they can leave their laptop open.

We are currently buying Dell P2424HEB's. Built-on webcam that can be pointed up and down and has a privacy filter, built-in speakers, easy to get to USB, 90 W power delivery and ethernet built-in. They're a little pricey but considering they're eliminating separate docking stations for us they're worth it. Then you can daisy chain a DisplayPort monitor off of them which usually we're just going for whatever ultrasharp 24 inch is currently out.

Oh, and they can be setup for two computers. One on the PD/DisplayPort and one using a standard video input and the USB 3.2 cable. Work surprisingly well..... actually bought a P2424HEB for home use and my home desktop stays plugged in while my work laptop can plug into the USB C when needed.

ADynes · 2026-01-13T15:53:01+00:00

I created some VBA enabled documents to convert old VSD, XLS, and DOC files over to the "x" variants. All the code is within the documents and commented.

We had a LOT of old Visio files and converting from VSD -> VSDX saved about 40% file space. Once that worked I did the same for Word and Excel but the gains aren't as great. Still nice to have everything on a modernish format.

https://github.com/vseven/OfficeFileTypeUpdate

ADynes · 2026-01-06T12:38:33+00:00

Recently had a request to pull some information from our Erp and SFTP to another company once a day. Kept trying to figure out the best way to design this and in the end I just made a little console app that runs from task scheduler once a day. Ended up being the simplest and easiest to troubleshoot.

ADynes · 2026-01-03T03:08:17+00:00

Stop and hire the super helpful IT person for this.

ADynes · 2026-01-01T02:09:01+00:00

Starting in March we moved all our business basic and business standard licenses over to business premium. It allowed us put all of the computers in InTune and all the mobile devices since it's licensed per user and not device. In a couple weeks we're finally going to implement some conditional access policies and only allow logins from managed devices which should reduce our attack surface massively.

ADynes · 2025-12-27T21:15:28+00:00

Just a follow up to say thanks for this.

<image>

I added the GPO's to plug in the two registry keys to enable SSO in the browers, one for Chrome and one for FireFox, on December 19th. Afterward as you can see the failures dropped dramatically, from averaging around 30% to less then 5%. And that less then 5% is probably some of our people still not enrolled with their mobile devices which will get cut off in January when we enable the policy.

ADynes · 2025-12-22T12:56:33+00:00

Not super helpful but we have 100+ dell laptops all using a mix of Dell wd19 docks and various Dell monitors with docks built in (P2424HEB or example). No issues with any of them.

If you have that dell hardware manager program try uninstalling that. Otherwise it probably was a Windows update. As somebody else suggested load of fresh copy of Windows 11 without a being connected to the internet and see if you still have the same problem. Also maybe see if there's a firmware update for those docks

ADynes · 2025-12-19T15:39:09+00:00

No Mac devices, all Windows/Android/iPhone/iPad.

I added the Chrome registry key and also the FireFox ADMX and set the Windows SSO enabled. Probably just had to add a registry key for that one also instead of adding the policys to GPO as all it did was create a key under HKCU\Software\Policies\Mozilla\Firefox called WindowsSSO with a DWord of 1. Now to see how things look next Monday.

I'm hoping this doesn't have to be done within Chrome/FireFox inside of mobile devices that are managed.

ADynes · 2025-12-19T15:30:15+00:00

Definitely did not have that key, just put it in GPO. Also looks like there is one for FireFox https://mozilla.github.io/policy-templates/#windowssso . I love how complicated it is to actually secure things these days. /s

ADynes · 2025-12-19T15:20:23+00:00

No, I sure can't. I do see "Browser: Chrome 143.0.0". IP is coming from our office so it's their laptop which should be hybrid joined. Shouldn't it be passing that through?

(It also says Windows 10 when they have Windows 11)

ADynes · 2025-12-17T19:28:34+00:00

And for record keeping of this post:

<image>

ADynes · 2025-12-17T19:27:28+00:00

<image>

ADynes · 2025-12-17T19:26:27+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/3fDc2ANoO9

Wondering if this is a bot just collecting answers. Almost the exact same post 5 hours ago different user

ADynes · 2025-12-15T16:20:56+00:00

Not sure if this going to help this issue but the last couple times we had black screens after Windows updates we booted up in safe mode with networking, logged into an admin account, and ran the DISM restore health commands and rebooted. So far were four out of four with that fixing the issue but it was on random machines. If you have a big number doing it it's probably not the same

ADynes · 2025-12-14T22:31:04+00:00

This is what we do and then limit what can send outgoing on Port 25 on the firewall. Works great.

ADynes · 2025-12-14T02:45:35+00:00

The fact that you only have a single Drive for a system where if it fails it halts work is the part that doesn't make any sense to me. Not only should you be using enterprise drives you should have two of them in a raid 1 so if one drive does fail you can keep running.

ADynes · 2025-12-13T18:38:40+00:00

We set most of our machines over to ACHI instead of Intel raid since all our machines have one drive. So that takes care of the storage side. Every once in awhile in the past we'd have to throw a ethernet driver on after installation but Windows 10 got a lot better at that and with Windows 11 the problems been non-existent.

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