If you ever need to install a local printer on a Windows 7/8 machine without giving the user admin, or logging the user out, you can runas this command to modify printers;

RUNDLL32 PRINTUI.DLL,PrintUIEntry

Here is how I add a new printer as another user;

Run add printer wizard locally:

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /il

When your a Cisco guy, and you need to save the running config on a Aerohive AP121, run this command…

save config running current

 This is a Powershell script to change the title bar on a SharePoint 2013 webpage (the upper left side).

$url = "http://websiteURL"
$text = "Text Goes here!"

$wa = Get-SPWebApplication $url
$wa.SuiteBarBrandingElementHtml = "
$text
"
$wa.Update()

If you have a computer connected to a domain and you would like to store alternate credentials to servers, you would normally go into your control panel, and edit your account. This isn’t available to you when you’re on a domain. This command will give you access to the “Windows Store Credentials”. This will let you store server passwords on your computer if you want to access servers in other domains, and don’t want to get prompted for credentials every time.

rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr

Here are the commands to verify that Lync 2013 is replicating the Management store correctly;

Get-CsManagementStoreReplicationStatus

Make sure that both say true;

UpToDate           : True
ReplicaFqdn        : frontend.MyDomain.local
LastStatusReport   : 2/10/2014 3:00:27 PM
LastUpdateCreation : 2/10/2014 3:00:24 PM
ProductVersion     : 5.0.8308.0

UpToDate           : True
ReplicaFqdn        : edge.MyDomain.local
LastStatusReport   : 2/10/2014 3:00:27 PM
LastUpdateCreation : 2/10/2014 3:00:24 PM
ProductVersion     : 5.0.8308.556

You can always start replication with;

Invoke-CsManagementStoreReplication

You can run these commands in the Lync Server Management Shell on the FrontEnd Server.

I used to use Replmon to manually replicate my active directory (specifically cross site). Now with Windows 2008, or even 2012 (I didn’t test 2012, I assume it works the same) the replmon application is gone.

Now, most of the time Microsoft replaces nice tools with complicated ones. This time, it’s the opposite. repadmin is a very easy to use tool. I use it to schedule/issue an immediate replication of Active Directory.

repadmin /syncall /A /P /e /d

Repadmin is an awesome replacement for Replmon. Dig into the help documents for the more in-depth options it provides.

We recently had an issue while testing MBAM (Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring). We were using VMware Mirage to upgrade the Windows XP clients to Windows 7. We configured MBAM on a Windows 2012 server with all the default, out-of-box settings. We used a very simple GPO to enable encryption (TPM Only). The VMware mirage upgraded the client without any errors. In the MBAM log (Event Viewer -> Applications and Services log -> Microsoft -> MBAM) I noticed an error;

SystemVolume is needed to encrypt the operating system drive.

This seemed logical. Windows XP doesn’t have a System Volume. Mirage only updates the “Current Partition” and doesn’t repartition the drive. So you get a Windows 7 hard drive, with a Windows XP partition style (single partition). Running this command creates a system partition;

%windir%\system32\bdeHdCfg.exe -target default -size 300

It appends the partition at the end of the drive (\Device\HarddiskVolume2). Now, after a reboot, I was getting another error in the event log;

The path specified in the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) for a 
BitLocker Drive Encryption integrity-protected application is 
incorrect. Please verify and correct your BCD settings and try again.

This was a bit more easier to solve with Microsoft Support article 929834. Basiclly you run the following command;

bcdedit -enum all

This will enumerate the boot configuration data store. Look for the following entries and the associated device;

Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier              {bootmgr}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1

Windows Memory Tester
---------------------
identifier              {memdiag}
device                  partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume1

Resume from Hibernate
---------------------
identifier              {xxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx}
device                  partition=C:

Your system obviously will either have an incorrect devices, or the device is blank for the entry. First you will need to identify the system partition. Since this drive isn’t assigned a drive letter, you need to find its device name. There is a handy trick using DD on this website, or if you are feeling lucky, you can guess like I did!

I guessed that my new system partition that I just created was \Device\HarddiskVolume2, so to set the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) for BitLocker, I ran the following commands;

bcdedit -set {bootmgr} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
bcdedit -set {memdiag} device partition=\Device\HarddiskVolume2
bcdedit -set {xxxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx} device partition=C:

As you notice, the long GUID for the identifier on the last line. That should be the identifier from the Resume from Hibernate section that is within the output of “bcdedit -enum all”.

The targets should be;

bootmgr = System Volume
memdiag = System Volume
Memory Tester = Boot Volume

In this case, my Boot Volume was C: and my System Volume was \Device\HarddiskVolume2. Your millage may very…

Cris.