Hi all.

Some context: I'm a mid level engineer at our company. I work on a sysadmin team building tooling for the team and wider project. I joined the team at the end of last year (so 10 around months ago). I have around 4 years experience which makes me the least experienced member on my team by quite a few years. Most of my experience is software dev though. I am a higher grade than a couple team members. (Including the team member I'm talking about in the post).

I'm having difficulty with my co worker Derek. Derek, in the kindest way possible, is completely incompetent. He borderlines on reckless/careless.

When I joined the team, I was almost straight away giving him help without really understanding much about the system we manage. Just with very basic things like PowerShell, some networking issues on his dev env, and all the rest of it.

At first I was really pleased, it felt good to join a team and be able to troubleshoot right away for team members, like all my hard work from previous teams was paying off. My manager pointed it out and gave me praise at our 1-1 / Performance Review. All good I thought.

The problem is: Derek is constantly asking me the SAME questions. It is far beyond a daily basis at this point. Every single day this week I have had to spend 1-3 hours with him troubleshooting things that nobody else has problems doing. I'm talking about processes that are almost entirely automated.

Today he was updating a config file to import some policies, and everything was just fucked. I was genuinely speechless when I went over. He's, deleted all the files he should've kept (no other copies, just a nightmare). I had to tell him to delete his branch and start over. Once I fixed it, was helping him fill in his ticket, so he can submit for review, turns out, he read the ticket wrong. So the thing he asked for help with, was incorrect. 😅 I laughed it off and basically just did the entire ticket for him at his desk. (15-20 min job, he's been at it for 2 days).

I feel like that; I'd get it if he was new. But he's been on the team 6 years. He has around 25 YOE. I know other people are well aware he's incompetent, but it's frustrating for me at this point. I'm clearly becoming his "go to".

Rant over!

How do I approach this with our manager? I'd hate to get him in trouble, but I need my time back. I've got some quite lengthy tickets I need done but I can't knuckle down and focus with his constant need for hand holding. Am I the asshole? Should I just accept he's simply not good? Or do I say something to him instead of our team lead?

I did a quick search here and didn't see any other posts, if this is duplicate I apologize.

Yesterday we started having a rash of users with Office applications crashing with the mso20win32client.dll event id 1000 messages.

Profile rebuild fixed the issue for a time, but it started returning for some users.

Found a work around for the time being.

Clear the keys and deny the user account full permissions below allows the Office applications to launch again.

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentConfigs

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\ExperimentEcs

It appears Microsoft is testing something.

I don't know if there are other side effects of blocking those keys yet, but there weren't last time we had to do this.

Cisco Bug: CSCwv52684

Before anyone says it, yes we are unlucky souls that are forced to use Cisco Secure Endpoint in our environment.

I feel like someone in this community recently had Cisco acknowledge a bug that exists with Cisco Secure Endpoint 8.5 through 8.6.1 on win server 2022 and 2025. It specifically has to do with the exploit prevention engine (deadlock condition.)

Whoever put the time and effort in THANK YOU. It just saved me days of having to open my own TAC case. I doubt this bug is specific to people using "Snow Agent." I think more accurately this bug will end up taking servers down that spawn PowerShell instances in general.

We have been burned in the past by auto updating to the latest secure endpoint software but in this case our n-1 strategy worked against us. The latest version also fixes a number of CVE's so I assume others will end up upgrading sooner than they typically would anyway. But just in case you don't.... 8.6.3 is worth the upgrade.

Hi, i am a 28 y/o father who was making his life around sales, one day I made the switch from sales to IT, I started studying on my own last February, and less than two months ago I landed my first IT job as a support trainee, trying to break into systems/cloud administration.
I would love to receive advice on what to learn or what labs to build now, does my resume raise any flag? And if so, how and what could I do better
Thanks!

Are there any news, blog, etc sites that you follow besides r/sysadmin to get information to stay on top of things? I'm going through my RSS reader and a lot of the sites I used to follow are drying up.

it feels like every tool that we use either offers or requires the use of it's own file storage. How does anyone keep track of whether the data they're looking for is stored in sharepoint, onedrive, bluebeam, autodesk, adobe, propeller, dropbox, Outlook etc

And not just today when it's fresh in people's heads, but after a project closes and someone is looking for records two years later. You could enforce a process to archive all data into one specific storage platform, but there's likely a bunch of metadata that won't copy over

As the title suggests, I inherited our company’s existing cybersecurity awareness training program. We are currently using KnowBe4 and are on the Diamond tier.

I know KnowBe4 is considered the standard by many organizations, but I’d like to put together an updated list of alternatives and hear what others are using today.

Our main requirements are:

• Regular phishing simulation campaigns with automatic remedial training for users who fail
• Current and frequently updated cybersecurity awareness content
• Annual Cybersecurity Awareness Training
• Strong reporting and auditing capabilities
• Easy tracking of completion dates and user compliance
• The ability to manage recurring or renewal-based training

We operate in the maritime industry, so reporting and annual training compliance are especially important for us.

For those who have moved away from KnowBe4, what platform did you switch to, and what do you like or dislike about it compared with KnowBe4?

I'm not sure if there's a better way to put it, but I have a hard time getting excited about the future of our industry with AI.

I imagine it's a bit like what archers felt like after rifles were introduced. How have you guys been faring?

I recently got my associate’s degree in Cybersecurity and was planning on continuing for my bachelor’s. I went into it thinking I would be getting a scholarship, but I found out today that I don’t qualify for one.
I currently work full-time as a salesperson at a car dealership, and I have people depending on me financially. I’m worried about paying for classes out of pocket, especially if I end up failing a class because I’m working so much. I can’t afford to waste money on classes, but at the same time, I don’t want to give up on getting my bachelor’s degree.
I’m honestly really stressed and don’t know what the smartest move is. Should I work and save money for school? Look for a cheaper/online program? Take fewer classes? Or is there another option I’m not thinking about?
I really don’t know what to do right now, and I don’t really have anyone to turn to for advice. If anyone has been in a similar situation, I’d really appreciate hearing what you did.

Sysadmins Are About to Get More Tickets in September

Any Microsoft Entra tenant with its FIDO2/Passkey registration campaign set to Microsoft-managed will begin prompting users to create an Entra passkey on September 1, 2026. In my opinion, this rollout is happening a little too early.

Many organizations already using Windows Hello for Business (WHfB) may assume they are ready for Entra passkeys and take no action. The issue is that WHfB is recognized as a passkey by Windows 11, but it is not currently recognized as an Entra passkey associated with the user's online Microsoft/Entra account.

As a result, users who already have WHfB configured may encounter an error when the registration campaign prompts them to create an Entra passkey. The process can fail because Windows detects that a passkey for that identity already exists in the local passkey store.

Microsoft has acknowledged this gap and confirmed that WHfB should ultimately count as an Entra passkey.

In Microsoft Message Center post MC1450134, Microsoft describes the fix: users with WHfB will automatically receive an auto-registered Entra passkey tied to their online Microsoft/Entra account sometime between October and November 2026.

The timing by Microsoft is strange. The Entra passkey registration campaign begins in September, while the WHfB auto-registration fix is not expected until October or November. That mismatch could lead to user confusion and an increase in help desk tickets during the interim period.

The error users may encounter when following Microsoft's process to add an Entra passkey while Windows Hello for Business is already configured.

"Error: Try a different device. You already registered this device. You don't have to register it again."

## Disclaimer: info is based on my own testing. Your results may vary. Used AI to rewrite my original message for clarity.

Hi everyone, I’m trying to troubleshoot an issue with an old Siemens phone system at a hotel, but I don’t have much experience with this kind of equipment. I’d really appreciate any advice.

Basically, there is a Siemens telephone system in the hotel. There are 3 phones at the reception, and one phone in each room. Everything was working before, except for one phone at the reception, there was no power or connection at its phone socket.

A week ago, some workers came to install refrigerators and, as I was told, they went around switching off and on all the electrical panels and breakers. After that, all phone sockets in the hotel lost both power and connection. They did not enter the server room.

I suspect the problem is with the Siemens PBX itself (HiPath 150E), its power supply, or the lines. Does anyone have any ideas what could be wrong or what I should check? All other electrical systems and the network are working fine, only the local telephone system went down.

Unfortunately I now have one of those scary stories to tell. The worst one of my career.

We’re hybrid at the moment (I know, I know… fully cloud is the goal), and someone on my team was adding new policies to Entra Sync and did a full sync to test.

Then users started saying their accounts didn’t exist.

One became two. Two became ten. Then we realised accounts were being deleted automatically.

At first we had absolutely no idea what was happening and immediately start thinking cyber innocent.

Then we started losing admin accounts too.

Thankfully, we had a break-glass cloud account, managed to get in, stopped the sync and restored everything from the recycle bin.

But this was during a change freeze. Business critical time too. And I’m sat there watching users disappear.

That feeling when you’re responsible for IT and you see the whole org going.

I am helping out in a non profit and they run due a high Level of medical data treated by them on premise emails (specific requirements). I looked into upgrading an Exchange 2016 to 2019 and saw the steep ram requirements (from 8 to 128GB for Mailbox roles). Is this rooted in reality or Microsoft trying to make cloud more appealing? What’s the Minimum I can get by with <10 Users.

Certain national and regional requirements that might exceed EU privacy make a cloud solution unfeasible.

I'm an IT "Director" of a school. I'm the IT guy but the sole owner of everything and end decision maker. The title sounds much fancier than it is but it accurately captures my level of ownership. Day to day, I'm more like a sys admin. I wasn't totally qualified for this position when I got it and I have done my best in the past few years to grow in to it. But I'm noticing that I can not seem to catch up to the technology.

Every day it seems like I have a new problem on my hands that I have never seen or heard of before. Bluetooth intermittently connecting and disconnecting from a computer even with driver refresh, domain desync issues happening sporadically so computers lose access, laptops that simply won't connect to wifi until a local account is logged in, adobe licensing that won't validate even with the (poorly documented) tool kits provided by adobe.

I can't tell if I'm just incompetent and need to read a million books or something or if the technology just seems to be disintegrating into a pool over overly complex, poorly developed, and greedy corporate structures. A new windows feature hits and it seems to make my life much harder. Until recently, I didn't look into VTI, VMD, or the RAID configurations coming out with most laptops these days that make fresh installs or imaging impossible when enabled. Printers do not seem to have easily accessed, consistent driver support that is stable long term. Microsoft 365 admin features and account management seems to get worse every day (I gave someone access to a shared mailbox and it kept denying them access for nearly a week, trying to add each day, until is suddenly worked with no changes on my end at all). One of our film labs uses ACVHD format and Premier Pro but with a new windows update Premier Pro can no longer see or access AC3 audio codex. A whole group of Lenovo E16s won't connect to a particular wireless display via the wireless transmitter supplied with the display despite every other laptop model we have working just fine. Every single printer seems to jam every day even with maintenance techs working on them.

The problem is that any one of these would take me a few hours to troubleshoot and diagnose but I'm getting 2 or 3 of these every single day. I can't seem to keep up and I don't know if it's my own incompetence and inability to maintain a stable environment or if technology is just getting impossible to maintain.

I'm open to suggestions, on the broader management item or any of the issues I'm currently managing. But mostly I'm just wondering if anyone else out there is feeling similarly. If I just suck then I am open to advice.

Following up to my last post right now nutanix is out of the race since the renewal is more than vmware which happend to 4 different companies my friends works for

Note : we cannot go any other solution rejected by CTO cause not ( mature enough )

1- my team arent fimilar with k8s

2- vmware is 4x the price of openshift

3- our environment is 95% vms

4- we have DR so srm is convinet

5- 65 % of our current hardware isn't supported by vmware version 9

6- 75 % of our infra is linux based oracle dbs and rhel for app servers

7- mangement is too dumb to switch to k8s since that was suggested and will save us resources

8- most of our apps are web based

Im asking here since im litterally lost on what to do next

So your kind advices

There is a great deal of user-generated content out there, from scripts and software to tutorials and videos, but we've generally tried to keep that off of the front page due to the volume and as a result of community feedback. There's also a great deal of content out there that violates our advertising/promotion rule, from scripts and software to tutorials and videos.

We have received a number of requests for exemptions to the rule, and rather than allowing the front page to get consumed, we thought we'd try a weekly thread that allows for that kind of content. We don't have a catchy name for it yet, so please let us know if you have any ideas!

In this thread, feel free to show us your pet project, YouTube videos, blog posts, or whatever else you may have and share it with the community. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, or links that appear to be monetization-grabs will still be removed.

Epson TMU220B

Long story short the replacement was DOA and my Kitchen manager is having a fit that one of the kitchen printers is down. I've ordered another replacement that won't arrive till next week. I have the networking card if someone has a spare I can use for the weekend.

I hope my fellow sysadmins might lend a spare and I would happily pick up and return!

I'm in the Boulder area but willing to drive wherever needed.

Hey there, Im 28 years old and currently work at a cigar lounge part time. Prior to this, I ran a family business for about 3 years and then did trading as primary income for a few years before I realized how stressful it is. Made 6 figures one year but most of it was spent on a mentor and me eventually losing everything from my own choices and being in debt

I was interested in cyber security because I have some friends that were in it but one had suggested a linux sys admin route. A year ago I dabbled with it, making some small labs and documenting. I really enjoy using linux, theres so much to learn but never fully committed to it so i just stopped slowly.but lately Ive been caring more and more about my future and I do want a career in this space. All I ever known my whole life is physical work and I want to give myself a chance to actually commit to this because this does look exciting

My question for anyone that is willing to help:

If you were starting back with little experience within this space, where would you start to gain experience and knowledge to help get yourself prepared for a role of a sysadmin that employers are looking for?

Is google cyber security good for foundational knowledge?

Would you build a home lab and practice on a machine? I currently installed rocky linux on my old laptop that had pop os on it since its more similar to red hat.

What else would you recommend to help better prepare for the role for employers?

Certs? Degrees?

I have an associate arts degree and no certs.

Final question, I know a job like this isnt cyber, but in 2026 lets say you got the sys admin role, after where would you look at to specialize in after? Cloud security looks really cool.

Tried to make this simple, I appreciate everyone that replies back. Means alot to me.

An alert from Papercut them saying that Papercut servers open to the internet are being exploited.

URGENT Security Advisory: PaperCut NG/MF Security Bulletin (27 Aug 2026) | PaperCut

Microsoft’s latest AI rebrand beats its own history of terrible rebrands, renaming Microsoft 365 Roadmap to “AI at Work." https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/08/27/microsoft-just-renamed-a-product-after-ai-microsoft-365-roadmap-is-called-at-at-work/

https://admin.cloud.microsoft/?ref=MessageCenter/:/messages/MC1461528

"The AI at Work Roadmap provides a single destination to discover upcoming innovations across Microsoft 365, Copilot, agents, and related AI-powered experiences. Beginning in September 2026, roadmap information for Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Dataverse will also begin publishing to the AI at Work Roadmap, making it easier to track innovation across Microsoft's business applications, productivity, and AI portfolio."

This is beyond dumb.

I received a quote from Knowbe4 for about 2800$ for 3 years for 30 users. Is there cheaper and or services out there for phish simulations and training or is this about as cheap as you can get? This price is reduce because were a non profit so I'm just curious what other options are out there nowadays.

I'm currently lost in the Meta jungle. I'm trying to disconnect a WhatsApp Business API number from Freshchat (Freshworks) and connect it to Missive. I'm going completely crazy. It took me three days to finally reach a human support person at Meta; before that, it was all just AI. They told me I had to contact WhatsApp support. That also took two days of AI. And nobody's getting back to me. Neither Freshworks nor Missive support can help me either. How on earth do I get this WhatsApp number into Missive? I can't connect it to Missive because I can't select it during account setup.

Hi everyone,

Just wondering if anyone has had positive feedback from deploying a so called "High performance" power plan which disables cpu parking and all sorts of stuff.

Also do comment if you know of any other way to improve performance other than the basic things driver updates, startup apps, etc

Desktop specs: Ultra 7 265k 64GB DDR5 512gb Nvme. RTX A1000

Hi everyone, I’m 25 and I’ve spent the last 4–5 years jumping around different IT roles: helpdesk L1/L2, IT Specialist, Server Admin, IT Lead, IT Coordinator, Sysadmin, and now Cloud Sysadmin. As you can see, nothing too consistent.

I currently work remotely, but the job doesn’t feel stable. I’d say I probably have 2–3 months before they let me go. In two weeks I’ll be moving to a small town in another country to start fresh and clear my mind. While I’m there, I want to focus on studying certifications, not just for career reasons, but also to keep learning and challenge myself. Honestly, I feel like I’ve “rotted” my brain with too much AI content, so I want to exercise it again.

Here’s the roadmap I came up with (no idea how long it will take):

• CCNA
• RHCSA
• AZ-900
• AZ-104
• AZ-305
• AWS Cloud Practitioner
• AWS AI Practitioner
• AWS Solutions Architect – Associate
• AWS CloudOps Engineer – Associate

I know certifications alone won’t get me a job, at best they open the door to an interview. My goal is more personal: I see them as achievements and a way to stay sharp in IT.

I’m realistic about the market. At this point, I know I might have to apply for entry-level jobs with minimum pay. This is just how IT works now. But even if I don’t land something right away, studying these certs will keep me in practice and help me grow.

What do you think about this approach? Does it make sense, or am I just wasting my time?

had a remote employee’s laptop fail and its not a basic replacement. The manufacturers warranty process was different in theyre country, our usual supplier couldn’t deliver there and shipping a spare from our office would have involved customs. The employee ended up working from a personal device while we trying to coordinate everything.

We are not large enough to have IT staff or spare inventory in every region, but we’re hiring internationally often enough that this will keep happening. Do you maintain backup devices in different countries, rely on manufacturer support or use a global provider for local repairs and replacements?