Active Directory

How can I add an “unlock user account” option to the Active Directory Users and Computers context menu? One of the daily tasks of a network administrator is to monitor user accounts, logon activities, password changes and account options, such as disabling and enabling user accounts. When an administrator wants to disable a user account…

The process of installing an Active Directory domain is quite simple, but if you don’t know your basics you might stumble across a few pitfalls. For additional information about any of the information in this article, refer to the Windows 2000 online Help and the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Deployment Planning Guide Chapter 9 of…

Creating a trust relationship between two Small Business Server 2000/2003 domains Legal note MS KB 295765 clearly says: “The server is a single-domain solution, which is not intended to be integrated with other Windows domains. You are not permitted to establish explicit trusts to other Microsoft Windows NT nor to Active Directory domains. Also, Small…

How can I create a large number of users for testing purposes? If you want to create a large amount of test user accounts in your domain or local accounts on your workstation, you can do so in more than one way. On this page I’ll try to list a few of these methods. By…

How can I configure a Windows 2000/2003 Server as a Global Catalog? The Global Catalog (GC) contains an entry for every object in an enterprise forest but only a few properties for each object. An entire forest shares a GC, with multiple servers holding copies. You can perform an enterprise wide forest search only on…

ADSI is a set of COM objects that are used to programmatically manipulate a namespace. A namespace could be anything from the Active Directory to an application such as MS Exchange Server. Since ADSI is based on COM, it may be scripted using any language with COM bindings (any language that supports accessing the COM…

Backing up Active Directory is essential to maintain the proper health of the Active Directory database. You can backup Active Directory by using the NTBACKUP tool that comes built-in with Windows Server 2003, or use any 3rd-party tool that supports this feature. Backing up the Active Directory is done on one or more of your…

How can I administer Windows 2000/2003-based computers using Windows XP Professional-based clients? This article describes how to use the Windows Server 2003 Administration Tools package on Windows XP Professional or how to use the Windows Server 2003 family to remotely administer Microsoft Windows 2000 Server family-based and Windows Server 2003 family-based computers. The following topics…

A review of Train Signal’s Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory Video Lab Training – Product Details. See more details at Train Signal’s website. Comprehensive Instructional Video. Perfect for the novice who needs a crash course in installing and setting up Active Directory in Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and/or Windows 2003 Server or for the more experienced administrator…

One of the issues that sometimes made managing group policies difficult in Windows XP and in Windows Server 2003 was the non centralized nature of the group policy template files. For example, Microsoft offers downloadable templates that allow you to manage Microsoft Office via group policy. Even so, these templates are not automatically available from…