Following the announcement that Apple has deprecated QuickTime rather than patch the disclosed vulnerabilities, I needed to get the plugin removed from across my organization. I wrote up a quick PowerShell script to search the Registry for the uninstall string and remove QuickTime while logging the process to my server. I then took this script and assigned it through Group … [Read more...]
Protect your organization from ransomware by blocking macros in Office 2016 through Group Policy
Microsoft has updated the available Office 2016 Administrative Templates for Group Policy configuration. The updated admx files include new settings to block macros from running in Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint presentations that originated from the Internet. Microsoft has provided this updated mitigation to provide control to a popular vector that malware, … [Read more...]
Read the Event Logs on Windows Server Core
So, you installed Windows Server Core without the Desktop Experience. Everything has been going fine with Server 2016 without the GUI until suddenly you start encountering an error. Now, how do read the Event Log for more troubleshooting information? Event Viewer, where are you? If you have a Windows desktop computer nearby and remote management enabled on the server, you … [Read more...]
Command line to take ownership and change permissions
Taking ownership of files can be a very tedious task. If you select more than one file, the Security tab is not available. This means that you have to right-click on each individual file, go to Properties, select Security, select Advanced, and take ownership of the file. If you're working with any significant number of files, that is far too time consuming. Once you take … [Read more...]
Change the WDS PXE timeout from the default 30 seconds
I am using Windows Deployment Services on Windows Server 2012 R2 for PXE boot and wanted to change the timeout from the default 30 seconds when choosing which boot image to use. I actually wanted to disable the timeout count down but that does not appear to be an option. You can use bcdedit to modify the timeout of the PXE boot responses. Valid options are 0-9999 seconds, … [Read more...]