Category Archives: Windows Server 2003

Active Directory: Reset Expiry Date of an expired Password

Many companies have a policy that require their users to change their passwords regularly (e.g. every 90 days). In Active Directory, this is normally enforced via Group Policy. This works well, but can be problematic if the user is out of the office while the password expires. An example: If he or she is using a mobile phone to access company emails via ActiveSync, the access will be blocked once the password has expired. ActiveSync does not support password changes, so the user has no way to Read more [...]

Windows: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Setup Support Files cannot be uninstalled

I recently wanted to uninstall SQL Server 2008 R2 completely after I have upgraded to SQL Server 2014. The uninstall of the "SQL Server 2008 R2 Setup Support Files" did not work and produced the error: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Setup Support Files cannot be uninstalled because the following products are installed: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RsFx Driver Strangely, the "Add/Remove Programs" section did not list the "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 RsFx Driver". To uninstall this "hidden" Read more [...]

Windows Server 2003: How to restart the Terminal Services service

How do you restart the terminal services service? In MMC (services.msc), it is greyed out. It would be handy to be able to do it if you don’t want to restart the whole server. The official word from Microsoft is: “The Terminal Services service is an integrated part of the core OS in Windows, that’s why it can’t be stopped or restarted as most other services (it is grayed out).” The following procedure does the trick: Open a command prompt Type in: tasklist /svc /fi “imagename Read more [...]

Windows: Run commands to start Control Panel items

Sometimes it is faster to access Control Panel items via command line than clicking and searching in the UI. To use a command, just press <Windows-Key>-R, which will open the Run window. Then just type the command and press <Enter>. For the .cpl files, the "control" command can even be left out, so that is even less to type. Control Panel Applet Command OS Accessibility Options control access.cpl XP Action Center control /name Microsoft.ActionCenter 8, 7 control Read more [...]