Change multiple user password using command line

Quest QAD shell provides a very useful interface to do this often required task. The beautiful part is that you do not need to provide the password as a Secure string.

Set-QADUser –Identity –UserPassword -UserMustChangePassword $True

The above command will set the password for User to the one specified in this command.

Import-Csv UserList.csv | foreach {Set-QADUser -Identity $_.UserName -Password $_.UserPassword -UserMustChangePassword $True}

The above command will read the UserName and UserPassword from and excel sheet UserList.csv and will set them accordingly. You need to keep the row headers as UserName and UserPassword in the CSV. The most important feature here is that you can have a different password for each individual user in the sheet.

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Tags: Active Directory, PowerShell,
Published Date: 20091118

Convert lastlogon or laslogontimestamp to date

It is always difficult to convert the large integer value on the account's property. The date is stored as a large integer. To convert it you can use the built in w32tm command:


w32tm /ntte 128787219065874052
[Output] 149059 06:45:06.5874052 - 2/10/2009 12:45:06 AM (local time)

w32tm /ntte 128805109570324972
[Output] 149079 23:42:37.0324972 - 3/2/2009 5:42:37 PM (local time)

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Tags: Active Directory, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008
Published Date: 20090305

Edit Environment Variables without Admin Rights

As a System Admin in an organization one always comes across a situation when users want Admin Rights because they cannot modify System Environment Variables(generally required by developers to change JAVA_HOME and CLASSPATH). However there is no need to give users Admin Rights for such small task.

Instead, they can create User Variables that override System Variables when they log on. The only exception to this rule is the PATH variable whose contents is composed of the system and user variables, separated by a semicolon.

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Tags: Windows XP

Published Date: 20081002

Remaining Part

To check the previous par of this post click here.

 

i8042 is a system service that controls ps2 mouse and keyboard ports. Some of the features of this driver are:

• Hardware-dependent, simultaneous operation of a PS/2-style keyboard and mouse device
• Management of I/O Port and IRQ settings and routines
• Plug and Play and power management
• Operation of legacy devices
• Other interface and interaction components between the operating system and these types of devices

However if your server does not have a ps2 device attached or your BIOS disables ps2 ports to save IRQ, i8042 would still search for hardware and if it deos not find any ps2 device OR gets a weird data from BIOS, it would error out.

There are two ways to fix this:

A. Create a parameter in i8042 service properties to identify it as a headless node.

• Go to Start > Run and put "regedit.exe" and click "Ok"
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt\Parameters in Registry Editor
• Add a new REG_DWORD "Headless" and set the value to 1
• Reboot the server.

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B. Disable the i8042 service from registry.

(**Be careful you may not be able to use PS2 Mouse and keyboard if you do so**)

• Go to Start > Run and put "regedit.exe" and click "Ok"
• Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\i8042prt in Registry Editor
• Change the REG_DWORD value "Start" from  "1" to "4". This sets the i8042 service from SERVICE_BOOT_START to SERVICE_DISABLED
• Reboot the server

The reason why it only happens in some cases only is because some BIOSes have a setting to enable/disable ps2 ports. You can set this to enable, disable or auto.

In auto mode, if it does not detect a ps2 device it might disable the ps2 port to save an irq. However, some BIOSes have no setting at all and behave as "auto" mode by default. If i8042 search for hardware and finds no ps2 or gets a weird data from BIOS pnp, might error out.

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Tags: Windows Server 2003

Published Date: 20090101

How to rename an Exchange Server running on a Windows Cluster

Though I would agree that is not a good idea to rename your Exchange server that is running on a Windows Server Cluster, however you may need to it for various reasons. I did test this in my test environment.

I had two tasks at hand:

1. Rename the cluster name itself
2. Rename the Exchange Virtual Server name

How to rename the cluster:

• To Rename the Cluster right click on the cluster name and choose rename.

• Type the new name of the cluster and you are done.
• Check the properties of 'cluster name' resource to confirm the change of name.

• Take the 'cluster name' resource offline and bring it back online.
• DTC resource would also have gone offline. Bring it online as well.

How to rename the Exchange Virtual Server:

• Bring all the Exchange resources off line including the network name (Exchange Virtual Server network name).
• Rename the Exchange Virtual Server network name resource by choosing properties and editing the parameter of the resource.

• Bring the Exchange Virtual Servername and Exchange Virtual Server IP address resources online.

• Delete the Exchange Virtual Server System Attendant resource. It is necessary because a Windows Cluster server can only run a single instance of Exchange Virtual Server.

• All other dependant resources should also be deleted. choose Yes to do so.

• Move all the databases and log files to an alternate location. If you do not do so Windows will not let you create the System Attendant resource and will complain that the exchange data directory is not empty.

• Create a new System Attendant resource and all other dependant resources would be created automatically.
• Bring all the resources online once and check everything is fine in the cluster administrator.

• Now open Exchange System Manager and you should see both the new and the old Exchange Servers listed.

• If you try removing the old server, Exchange would complain that some users still exist on the server and you cannot remove the Exchange Server.

• Use the following article to find all the users whose AD attributes for current mailbox server has not yet been update to the new server and rip off the Exchange attributes from all these users.

• Put a check mark against the box "This database can be overwritten by a restore" found under Mailstore -> Properties -> Database tab. Do this for all the information stores in the new Exchange Virtual Server.

• Take the System Attendant resource offline from the cluster.
• Copy back all the exchange database and log files that you had copied earlier to an alternate location.
• Bring back the System Attendant and all other resources online.
• Check the Mailstore of the new Exchange Virtual Server and it should now list all the users who had their mailbox on this server.

• Run the MailBox cleanup Agent Exchange System Manager.

• Once you run the mailbox cleanup agent all the mailboxes would appear as disconnected.

• Right click on each mailbox and reconnect them to the correct username in the AD.

Tempuser01 connected to old mailbox:

Tempuser01 with exchange attributes ripped off:

Tempuser01 connected to new mailbox

• Purge all other mailboxes such as SMTP and System Attendant from the new Exchange Server.

• Now remove the old server from Exchange System Manager

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Tags: Clustering, Exchange Server, Windows Server 2003

Published Date: 20080609