Windows 7 compression bug fills up hard drive in Windows temp space

A couple times, I've seen a Windows 7 computer with no free hard drive space and tons of space used in c:\windows\temp.  The answer is in this article:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3112358/microsoft-windows/windows-7-log-file-compression-bug-can-fill-up-your-hard-drive.html

It's some sort of bug in Windows.  The fix is:

1) stop the Windows Module Installer service
2) move all the files out of c:\windows\logs\cbs (I typically move them to c:\windows\logs\cbs.old)
3) delete all the files in c:\windows\temp
4) reboot

Enabling modern authentication (ADAL) on Skype for Business

By default, Skype for Business requires users to use App Passwords for logging into Skype for Business.

I'm stealing the info from this post from this excellent tutorial:
https://www.ronnipedersen.com/2017/07/11/enable-modern-authentication-for-skype-for-business-online

I'm simplifying for my future use.  Important note - the DNS records as defined by Microsoft should be in place before going through this process.  Particularly, there should be a CNAME record pointing lyncsicover.domainname.com to webdir.online.lync.com.

First, download the Visual Basic C++ 2017 redistributable from here:
https://aka.ms/vs/15/release/VC_redist.x64.exe

This is needed for the Skype for Business Powershell installer.

Then download the Skype for Business Powershell installer itself:
https://download.microsoft.com/download/2/0/5/2050B39B-4DA5-48E0-B768-583533B42C3B/SkypeOnlinePowerShell.Exe


Then run PowerShell and run these commands:
$sfboSession = New-CsOnlineSession -UserName user@domain.com
Import-PSSession $sfboSession

Then run:
Get-CsOAuthConfiguration

You'll find a line for "ClientAdalAuthOverride" which will likely show "disabled" which is the behavior we want to change.

Run this command:
Set-CsOAuthConfiguration -ClientAdalAuthOverride Allowed

This process allows ADAL (aka modern authentication).  The tutorial I am replicating says this change can take up to 24 hours to take effect, but it often takes effect within one hour.

Office 2016 won't activate with valid volume license key

If Office 2016 (pre-installed or even a volume license that has been installed and then later been update) won't activate - here's the problem and the fix.

What it looks like is that you choose to enter a product key, but then Office still won't activate.  The problem is that the system still thinks there's a trial version on the system.

Here's the fix . . .

Run this from an elevated command prompt:

(on a 32 bit system):
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /dstatus

(on a 64 bit system)
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /dstatus

You'll often see something like this (note that there are two versions listed here and one of them is in a grace period):

We can see that the trial version (in grace period) is on there simultaneously with our activated version.  The fix is to remove the trial version's license.  Here's the command to remove the trial version:

(on a 32 bit system):
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /unpkey:KHGM9

(on a 64 bit system)
cscript.exe "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office16\OSPP.vbs" /unpkey:KHGM9


You might need to adjust the last 5 characters of the product key to match your specific situation.

Pre-installed Office 2016 won't activate (keeps trying to activate even after entering the correct key)

If you're working with a pre-installed Office 2016 (Microsoft Desktop Apps) and you want to activate that installation with a volume license key, you need to make some registry edits.  Very, very annoying.

This page goes over the process:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/office-repeatedly-prompts-you-to-activate-on-a-new-pc-a9a6b05f-f6ce-4d1f-8d49-eb5007b64ba1

In essence, you delete these two keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OEM


Delete the entire OEM key

Office 2016 installation fail - error 1935

I've had trouble with working with pre-installed Microsoft Office 2016 and then uninstalling that version and then installing my own Office 2016.

Per this page, the answer is to download and run the .net framework repair tool.  This will solve the issue and allow you to install your own Office 2016 volume license.

Windows unable to check for updates - says service not started (even though the service is started)

I've seen a few Windows 7 machines that have Windows Update problems where the machine says the service is not started even the service is started.  When this happens, the computer can no longer check for updates and it'll go indefinitely without checking for updates. The fix is to wipe out the update cache and then check for updates again.

The process as described here:

Stop the Windows Update process
Delete the content from c:\windows\softwaredistribution
Start the Windows Update process

Check for Updates.

I also recommend that you make sure the system is set to install updates for all Microsoft products as well.  To do that, open Internet Explorer and put microsoft.com in the Compatibility View sites.  Then go to http://update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate in IE.   

Fix for CredSSP terminal server errors

As of May 2018, I'm seeing several instances of errors connecting to terminal servers due to CredSSP errors.  Microsoft released a fix that needs to be applied to both the client and the server.  If one is patched, the other needs to be patched.  If one is patched and the other is not, the connection will fail.

The download will vary based on the OS of the unpatched system.  Here's the link

https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/security-guidance/advisory/CVE-2018-0886

Here's what the error looks like:

Storing Mac primary data storage folders within cloud storage folders

One of my favorite methods of backup is redirecting the primary data storage folders to a cloud service (like Dropbox or Google Drive).  On a Mac, the process is not intuitive.  Here's my process.

You need to perform the steps once for each folder you want to move.  So if you want to move three folders (desktop, documents, pictures), you'll need to perform the steps three times.  The steps involved two commends.

First, you move the data to the new location.  Then you create a symbolic link to the new location.  In the examples below are a series of commands for desktop, documents, pictures, music, and movies.  The commands with %username% and %Company% would be altered to match the real world situation.

iMac:~ username$ sudo mv ~/Documents "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Documents"
iMac:~ username$ sudo rm -rf ~/Documents/
iMac:~ username$ ln -s "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Documents" ~
iMac:~ username$ sudo mv ~/Desktop "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Desktop"
iMac:~ username$ sudo rm -rf ~/Desktop/
iMac:~ username$ ln -s "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Desktop" ~
iMac:~ username$ sudo mv ~/Movies "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Movies"
iMac:~ username$ sudo rm -rf ~/Movies/

iMac:~ username$ ln -s "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Movies" ~

iMac:~ username$ sudo mv ~/Pictures "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Pictures"
iMac:~ username$ sudo rm -rf ~/Pictures/

iMac:~ username$ ln -s "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Pictures" ~

iMac:~ username$ sudo mv ~/Music "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Music"
iMac:~ username$ sudo rm -rf ~/Music/

iMac:~ username$ ln -s "/Users/%username%/Dropbox (%Company%)/laptopdata/Music" ~

IPS error initiated by Fortigate firewall

In this case, we had a user who had no internet access and got this screen when web browsing.

We found that the Fortigate 60D we had was causing this.  The cause seems to have been multiple invalid DNS lookups.  We didn't find any error logs that suggested that problem, but this is what this IPS block is typically caused by.  In the end, we fixed this by changing the user's LAN IP address, but we also could have seen the blocked IP addresses via these commands from the CLI:

OS 5.0:
get user ban list

OS 5.2
diagnose firewall ip_host list

To delete an entry, you'd enter this command:
diagnose firewall ip_host delete src4/src6

Exmaple:
diagnose firewall ip_host delete src4 10.10.10.21

The information from this page came from here:
http://kb.fortinet.com/kb/documentLink.do?externalID=FD36211