Active Directory, RDS, Hyper-V, IIS and PowerShell guides for Windows Server admins.
16 posts
Lock down RDP on Windows Server — enforce NLA, restrict the firewall to specific IPs, audit failed logons, kill the bot brute-force traffic. The settings I run on every internet-exposed server.
Three legacy protocols still enabled by default on Windows Server that no modern network needs. PowerShell one-liners to disable each, the rare exceptions, and how to verify.
Enable BitLocker on a Windows Server OS volume via PowerShell — TPM unlock, recovery key handling, the boot quirks specific to Server, and how to unlock from WinPE.
Alternative to the Utilman trick — replace sethc.exe to get SYSTEM-level cmd at the Windows lockscreen. When to use it, how to harden against it.
The GPOs every domain should have — password policy, account lockout, audit, RDP restrictions, SMBv1 / LLMNR / NTLMv1 kill, BitLocker enforcement. The defaults are not enough.
Build a sane AD structure — OU layout, user and group provisioning via PowerShell, first GPO. The patterns that scale from 10 users to 1000.
Stand up a new Active Directory forest from scratch. Install AD DS, promote the first DC, DNS integration, the post-promo checks. PowerShell-driven, no GUI.
The PowerShell snippets I actually use every day on Windows Server — pipeline filters, remoting, services, event logs, scheduled tasks, error handling.
Forget Googling Stack Overflow for 20 minutes. One well-structured prompt and you have working PowerShell in under a minute — here's the exact workflow.
Copy-paste AI prompt templates for the tasks sysadmins do every week — disk checks, service monitoring, user exports, log analysis, game server units and more.
Free FTP server on Windows in under ten minutes. Covers the installer, passive mode, firewall rules, FTPS, and the gotchas that bite first-timers.
The classic utilman.exe method for resetting a forgotten local administrator password on Windows Server and Windows 10/11 — plus the BitLocker caveat that stops it, and the modern alternatives.