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How to reset the root password on SCO Openserver 5

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Should you need to reset the root password on a SCO Openserver 5 system, the procedure is quite simple, do the following:

  1. Boot from your Emergency Boot Disk.
  2. Type the following commands: 
    mount /dev/hd0root /mnt
/mnt/bin/chroot /mnt /bin/su root
passwd
  3. You should then get the change password prompt:
    Image showing how to reset the root password using an Emergency Boot floppy
  4. Then reboot the system with:
    sync;sync;sync;reboot
  5. Login with your new root password.

Here is a video of the procedure:

This example was done with SCO Openserver 5.0.7 – I used a virtual 2.88Mb floppy with both boot and root file-system support.

If you need help or support with your SCO system click here.

Disable Simplified Account Creation in Outlook 2016 or 2019

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Recent builds of Outlook have a simplified account creation wizard. Here is how to disable it:

  1. Close Outlook if it is already open.
  2. Next, Open registry editor (Windows Key +R, Type in regedit and click OK.
  3. In registry editor navigate to and select:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\Setup
  4. From the Edit menu, click new, then DWORD (32-bit) Value:
    Image showing creation of new registry entry to disable simplified account creation in Outlook 2016 or 2019
  5. Name the new DWORD:
    DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation
  6. Double click on the new DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation entry.
  7. In the Value Data box type 1, then click OK:
    Image showing the DisableOffice365SimplifiedAccountCreation registry entry being set to 1, which will disabled the simplified account creation wizard.
  8. Close registry editor and restart Outlook.

If you prefer, simply download DisableSimplifiedAccountCreation.reg here and the correct registry entry will be imported.

Image of Windows Registry Icon
To download, right click and then choose save as.

 

How to clear RDP Connection History

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For every successful connection, the RDP client stores the connection details for the machine that you have connected to. This is often convenient, but if you are on a public machine, it can expose sensitive security details. The RDP client does not give any way to clear the cached connection history.

Image of Remote Desktop Client showing connection history

You can clear the RDP Cache history in a couple of ways:

Clear the RDP Cache from the registry using regedit

  1. Open regedit.exe and navigate to:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client
  2. There are two registry keys here that need to be cleared:
    • Default – Has the history of the last 10 RDP Connections.
    • Servers – Contains a list of all the Remote Desktop connections that have ever been established from this machine.
  3. Expand the Default Key which will contain the most recently used connections. You can delete every entry or select which ones you want to remove:
  4. Select the entries that you want to remove, right click and click delete:

    Image showing history of RDP connections in the Windows Registry
    Hold shift to select a range, or CTRL to select multiple entries at once.
  5. Now expand the Servers key, this contains the details of all the RDP connections that have ever been made from this machine, including the username used to connect:
    Image showing connection history of RDP client in Windows Registry
  6. There may be many entries, it is easier to delete the entire servers key, then recreate it.
  7. Finally, delete the default.rdp file found in your homepath. This is a hidden file and will not show or delete by default. You have to supply an extra switch to the delete command:

    Image showing correct command line to delete default.rdp from users home directory
    Use command: del /ah %homepath%\documents\default.rdp

Clear the RDP Cache using a batch file or command line

A far quicker way to clear the RDP cache is to use the following commands:

reg delete "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Default" /va /f
reg delete "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Servers" /f
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Terminal Server Client\Servers"
del /ah %homepath%\documents\default.rdp

 

How to use Group Policy to defer Windows Quality and Feature updates

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Sometimes feature updates can cause issues with the base operating system or third party applications. This post explains how to defer either Quality updates or Feature updates to Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016 in a domain environment.

Defer Updates with Group Policy

  1. Open Group Policy Editor.
  2. Create and link a new policy or edit an existing one if appropriate.
  3. Navigate to:
    • Computer Configuration
    • Polices
    • Administrative Templates
    • Windows Components
    • Windows Updates
    • Defer Windows Updates
      Image showing group policy settings to defer Windows Quality and Feature updates

Defer Feature Updates

Feature updates tend to cause more issues than quality updates. Microsoft have an update branch called “Current Branch for Business”. This branch is not deployed until Microsoft considers the feature update safe for enterprise deployment. You can choose this option only, or introduce a further delay if required.

Defer Feature updates as follows:

  1. Double click on “Select when Feature Updates are received”.
  2. Click on “Enabled”.
  3. In the Branch readiness drop down, select “Current Branch for Business”.
  4. Enter the period for which you want to delay the deployment of this update:Image showing how to defer Windows Feature updates
Feature updates can be deferred for up to 365 days.

Defer Quality Updates

Quality updates can be deferred for a maximum of 30 days.

Defer Quality updates as follows:

  1. Then double click “Select when Quality Updates are received”.
  2. Click on “Enabled”.
  3. Enter the amount of days that you want to defer for.

It might seem risky to defer quality updates, but there have been many occasions when these have also caused severe problems. I recommend that you have a subset of computers that receive updates first (which do not have these policy settings defined).

A customer using Cyberark EPM on Windows 10 had to defer update 1809, which at the time of writing has compatibility issues.

How to connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

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Many of the posts on this blog and others will require you to connect to Office 365 with PowerShell. The web admin interface for Office 365 is very good, but there are just some things that cannot be done via the web interface. So this post shows you how it is done and the problems you might come up against. I will go through each step in detail and then post complete code.

Connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

  1. Open a PowerShell session
  2. Store your Credentials in a variable: 
    $Cred = Get-Credential
  3. Enter your Office 365 Credentials when prompted:
    Image showing dialog of Office 365 Credentials used to connect to Office 365
  4. Create a new PowerShell session from the Office 365 Server: 
    $Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection

    Image showing import of PowerShell session from Office 365

  5. Import the session: 
    Import-PSSession $Session

    If you do not receive any errors on this step, continue to step 6. You may receive the error:

    Import-PSSession : Files cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system.

    If you do get this error, you need to change your PowerShell Execution Policy.

  6. Now you can run any commands you need.
  7. When you have finished, remove the session you created in step 2: 
    Remove-PSSession $Session

Complete code to connect to Office 365 with PowerShell

$Cred = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $Cred -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
# Run any commands you want here
Remove-PSSession $Session

Change PowerShell Execution Policy

If you received this error when you tried to execute step 5:

Import-PSSession : Files cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system.

Then you need to change your PowerShell execution policy. To connect to Office 365 with Powershell your execution policy to at least Remote signed:

  1. Open PowerShell as an administrator:
    Image showing how to run PowerShell as an administrator to change execution policy
  2. In your PowerShell window run the command: 
    Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned
  3. Choose “Y” when prompted to change the execution policy.

You will now be able to connect to Office 365 with Powershell.