Windows Power Essentials Tips & Tricks
May 31, 2013 22 Comments
Skipping over the usual boring intro on the whys and wherefores of a subject i write about i thought id just crack on and tell you how to get this done.
First on your Essentials Server you will need to install this hotfix. After you install this hotfix the WSUS Role is available.
That is correct, WSUS is a ROLE not something you need to download as it was previously.
May 21, 2013 4 Comments
A client popped into our office on Friday with a query, they had worked on a document saved it, but now when they went back to open it, there was no trace of it anywhere. After the usual suggestions of ‘are you sure you saved it?’ ‘have you searched for it?’ ‘are you sure you saved it?’ i asked him to bring his laptop over. Luckily he was based in the office next door so it was not a long trip.
May 3, 2013 2 Comments
I recently got myself a Nokia Lumia 820, and one of the benefits of having this Windows phone, (apart from looking like the coolest kid in school) is that i get to use the very funky My Server App. This App is nothing new of course, and SBS Essentials (and lest we forget, Home Server) also had similar Apps, very useful they are too, if like me, you are completely unable to function unless you have access to your server, from everywhere. The 2012 Era App has some differences over the 2011 version, but my post today is not really about the App itself. I was just using the App as a nice way to show off about my new phone.
So, to business. I was reading a forum question about Media Streaming, and how to go about troubleshooting.
May 2, 2013 5 Comments
Back in November, a chap in the Forum had dipped his toe into the world of Transmogging, and encountered an error that was being thrown up in the logs after the process had completed.
The SILSVC should be started automatically but it is stopped.
November 23, 2012 6 Comments
A client of ours who is running a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials on their SBS 2011 Standard network (for client PC Backup) 
likes their machines to shutdown each night after a backup.
This could apply to any of the Essentials Server SKUs including SBS 2011 E, WHS 2011 or Essentials 2012.
We schedule the backups to run between 7pm and 11pm so all the machines will have time to backup. It is really simple to set this shutdown task up, of course some people prefer their machines to go to sleep or hibernate but in this case we actually want to turn off those machines.
November 2, 2012 1 Comment
I recently did a post about adding a Printer to an Essentials server, i thought i had covered all the bases, however i have seen several questions pop up on the forum regarding HP Printers appearing as unspecified devices when connected via USB. This presented me with a unique challenge as all my lab kit is on HyperV. However i do have a USB HP printer in the office, so i hooked it up with a long USB lead to a MicroServer, and set about trying to repro the problem.
October 29, 2012 10 Comments
$users = ((Get-ADUser -filter * | where-object { $_.GivenName -ne $null }) | foreach{ $_.Name})
foreach ($user in $users)
{
$FirstName = (Get-ADUser -filter {Name -eq $User} | foreach {$_.GivenName}).ToString()
$SurName = (Get-ADUser -filter {Name -eq $User} | foreach {$_.SurName}).ToString()
$DisplayName = ("$Firstname" + " " + "$Surname")
$DisplayName
Set-ADUser $User -DisplayName $DisplayName
Set-ADUser $User -Description "User Created by Windows Server 2012 Essentials Dashboard"
}
You might be wondering what the hell that means?
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