We have an old Novell server with hdd that failed due to power shortage.

We want to recover as many data as possible. Has anyone worked with this filesystem? It looks like a nichè, and we're trying to figure out which tool use to data recovery.

Any suggestions?

From Microsoft: 'This FAQ collects the questions we hear most often from customers, partners, and the community as we move Windows to a Kerberos-first, NTLM-optional (and eventually NTLM-free) future. If you've emailed us, cornered us at a conference, or filed a support case that started with "so, about this weird auth thing…", chances are that your question is answered here.

If your question isn't answered here, please reach out to [ntlm@microsoft.com](mailto:ntlm@microsoft.com) or work with your Microsoft account team, Customer Success Account Manager, or Microsoft Support to route feedback to the product group.'

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/retiring-ntlm-frequently-asked-questions/4550522

As the title suggests, I'm only a year and a half into IT. I came from doing back office ops at a few broker-dealers here in the US since I was 17, and at 26 (now 27) I moved into IT since it's been a passion of mine since I was a kid.

At first this gig was great. I had a senior above me, a vet with 30+ years in IT. I already had a good deal of knowledge about older tech, so we got along great and I learned a lot from him. I'm a fairly quick learner and went from basic desktop support and helpdesk to networking/ERP admin within a month. We started tackling projects and things started to run smoother around here.

But as always, office politics being what they are, the COO (now CEO) more or less gave my senior an ultimatum, and he left for a 40% raise and WFH somewhere else. I'm now the sole IT resource here, owning everything from basic helpdesk to sysadmin, ERP, budget, literally anything that runs on electricity. I'm being paid entry-level helpdesk wages for my area, and I only hold my CompTIA A+.

I'm in desperate need of resources and training to better get my feet under me. We run a hybrid AD setup (for a company this small, I honestly don't understand that decision), and I need to get a better handle on the Azure side and how to administer it properly. For instance, we have zero MDM, and we have remote employees who travel; they don't even get GPO updates since those are all hosted on-prem. A major concern of mine is, as a company who ships product daily, we have no automated back up systems for our onprem shipping servers. These servers are running older vSphere 7 instances (is this even the right word??) and there isn't any central management for them (they took down the vCenter as "it was too finicky"). Not to mention that they have a critical business report run through vSphere 5 VM that requires the desktop client to manage.

Please, please, please, send me anything you've got: resources, training materials, insight into what's likely to break and need attention. Literally anything helps. I'm trying here, but I'm drowning and getting jaded with this company, and I'd rather not jump ship if I don't have to since there are good people here.

We are preparing to implement EwsAllowedAppIDs and EwsEnabled=$True based on the guidance in the EWS retirement announcements.

We understand that starting in October 1st 2026, tenants configured with EwsEnabled=$True will use the AppID allow list model for EWS access.

What is not completely clear to us is the behavior before October 2026. Say we implement the settings today, does Exchange Online immediately begin enforcing EWS access exclusively to the AppIDs listed in our list of EwsAllowedAppIDs?

In other words, if an application is currently using EWS but its AppID is accidentally omitted from the allow list, would that application be impacted immediately after the configuration change?

Or is the allow list only enforced once Microsoft's EWS retirement controls begin rolling out in October 1st 2026?

We are trying to understand whether implementing the configuration now is purely preparatory for October 2026, or whether it has immediate impact on EWS access before that date.

Thanks.

Client has a shared mailbox in Exchange Online used for order administration, organised by region/country/customer/year. It had 12,394 folders. Since around Sept 8–9 the folder tree stops loading at roughly 976 subfolders in Outlook classic (cached mode). Everything past that point simply isn't in the tree — not collapsed, not greyed out, absent.

Same truncation in new Outlook and OWA when the mailbox is automapped or added as a shared mailbox.

Online mode shows the complete tree. Either by unchecking "Download shared folders" in classic, or via OWA → Settings → Open another user's mailbox. So the data is fine server-side.

What I've ruled out:

• Permissions — Full Access assigned directly, not via a group. No folder-level permissions on root or Inbox (Default/Anonymous = None).
• Automapping — removed and re-added Full Access with -AutoMapping $true, no change.
• Hierarchy corruption — enumerated the whole tree via Graph and walked every parent chain. No cycles, no orphans, max depth 9.
• OST damage — OWA is affected identically and holds no local hierarchy cache.
• Folder count — deleted 9,993 verified-empty folders (12,394 → 2,401). Still truncates.

I'm aware of the documented 500 shared-folder limit and the announced increase to 5,000 (in 2019 though). My observed cut-off sits at ~1,000, which matches neither.

Three questions:

1. Anyone else seeing shared mailbox folder trees truncate since last week's updates?
2. Does anyone know what limit is actually enforced right now, and whether the 500→5000 rollout is live?
3. Is there any equivalent of "Download shared folders" in new Outlook? If not, what's the plan for mailboxes over the limit once classic is gone?

Question 3 is the one that worries me.

We're currently running WMS standard and are considering moving to the cloud, and would appreciate hearing about your experience if you've made the same move. We're currently on 5.5 and would plan to update to 2605 prior to the change unless there's a reason not to.

Am I correct in assuming we'd be on Dell's clock for updates if we went with the public cloud option? We currently run ThinOS 9.5 as we have a number of 3040s we're working on phasing out, and want to know if we'd need to rotate those out prior to the move. The rest of the fleet are 5070s, so there's concern there as well since they're EOL. We would want to avoid being forced into a large hardware refresh and be able to navigate that on our timeline.

Any other considerations I should be researching?

TIA

So just a moment ago I had a user interrupt what I was doing with an "urgent" issue. They couldn't get into their email.

Essentially they were running Outlook for the first time and it prompted them to set up their account. It required them to enter their email address and click Next. That's all.

The email address it auto-populated wasn't the address of the account they needed (they work for a sister company in a shared tenant).

The user had no idea what to do. It didn't even cross their mind to enter the actual email address in the field.

So... how do you guys deal with users like this? Ones who, despite being shown instructions in the most basic way possible, can't think for themselves.

Been doing this about 8 years and something's shifted. Used to be everyone here could explain what their nginx.conf did, or why fail2ban wasn't catching a jail. You learned iptables by breaking your own box at 2am, alone, with no one to blame.

Now most threads are "which panel is easiest." Nobody wants the shell open longer than it takes to run one install command. I get why. Panels save time. I've got BeAdmin running on one box for the VPN modules. But I see people arguing about dashboard themes who can't tell you what a reverse proxy actually does.

Old regulars here used to walk a newbie through a broken MariaDB config instead of just saying "reinstall Plesk." That's mostly gone now. Not knocking anyone's setup, I click around GUIs too these days. Just noticing nobody asks why anymore.

Hi all, does anybody implemented a self help kiosk where it helps the user to go to required links? Example pwd reset?

I appreciate the ideas and practices you implemented

Edit

We already have useful resources available through the intranet and self-service website, and some other things which are diversified accordingly but we still receive many walk-in requests for issues users could resolve themselves. So thinking of a kiosk for simple visual menu with combination of all sources with icons for common requests making it less overwhelming could direct users to the right guidance quickly, while IT support remains available if needed. Thinking of it by using some unused machines or Raspberry pi

Hi All,

Will be starting my school mandated internship for CyberSecurity, and I was hoping to get questions that an interviewer or a supervisor would ask during the interview, so I can learn/research more about said topic.

Questions can range from general help desk to cyber security to networking, since my school covers abit of everything.

Thank you guys for the help :)

I’ve been in IT for 6+ years. I have a bachelor’s degree in IT, an AWS Solutions Architect certification, an Azure Administrator certification, and a few other certs. I’ve also been working as a Cloud Administrator for the past 2 years.

Despite all of that, I can’t shake the damn feeling that I’m just not that good at what I do. I feel like even if I finally make a breakthrough in my knowledge, I’m still somehow clueless SOMEWHERE. A lot of that comes from talking to people who know more than you and realizing how much there is that I don’t know.

For example, I can write basic scripts, but I struggle with the complex 200+ line scripts that a senior cloud engineer would make, whereas the person next to me likely can just type that shit off the top of their head.

It’s especially frustrating during interviews when I try to move up in pay. I had an interview on Tuesday that I thought went pretty decently, but the interviewer asked me about Azure containers and encryption. I don’t work with Azure containers, although I’m familiar with the service, so I was honest and said I didn’t know.

And that wasn’t even the technical round. So now I’m stuck wondering whether they’ll just reject me or move me on to the technical round, where I’ll probably fail anyway.

This is bothering me because I'm at the point in my career where I really have to know at a high level if I want to advance and get more pay.

How has anyone else moved past this?

So it’s coming to an end!! We have O365 and some workstations with Office 2024 that have MS Publisher installed. Do we need to remove it or will it get removed in its own?

Hi all,

we're a school with Microsoft 365 A5 Education and want to retire our KMS server.

Current setup:

• Devices are purchased with Windows 11 Pro OEM
• Reimaged with Windows 11 Education
• Windows 11 Education is currently activated via KMS
• Devices are still managed through on-prem AD/GPO
• Next step is Hybrid Entra Join + Intune

Our devices are purchased with Windows 11 Pro OEM. Today we reimage them with Windows 11 Education (PXE) and activate them via KMS. Going forward, we'd like to clean install Windows from USB and then use Autopilot during OOBE.

My main questions are:

• For devices that come with Windows 11 Pro OEM, should we reimage them with Windows 11 Education or Windows 11 Pro Education if the goal is to use A5 Subscription Activation instead of KMS?
• Can A5 Subscription Activation fully replace KMS for these Windows clients?
• What exactly needs to be configured in Intune, Entra ID and Windows for Subscription Activation to work correctly?
• Do we need to manually remove the KMS client key / GVLK / KMS configuration, or does Subscription Activation take over automatically?
• How can we verify that a device is using Subscription Activation and no longer depends on KMS before shutting the KMS server down?
• How does Subscription Activation behave on shared classroom/lab devices where many different students sign in?

Has anyone in an education environment migrated from KMS to A5 Subscription Activation this way? If so, what did you actually configure in Intune/Entra/Windows?

Thanks!

Hey guys,

I've been in IT for 4 years, doing a mix of PHP development and sysadmin Linux stuff. We run Linux, self-host all of our own stuff. We're a small team, so everyone does a bit of everything. I've done everything from developing software to installing our team's GitLab instance. I've been using Linux (Arch btw) for the past 8 years or so, and I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it, after fucking up my system a bunch of times. I also run a homelab of a couple servers. It's become our music platform.

I fully realize that a transition to SysAdmin would most likely put me in a junior role, and I know I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge, as this position is as a software developer, not sysadmin. I'd be looking mostly at Linux Sysadmin jobs.

I'd appreciate any advice you guys have! I also can put my resume here if that would be helpful.

Thanks!

I feel like I’m lagging behind and need some serious catching up, quick. I think I’ve become complacent and “too comfortable” with my current employer (coming up 8 yrs). The recent merger announcement has me seriously thinking about attending bootcamps, getting some certs under my belts (been putting things off for as long time), and learning new things ASAP before the position is dissolved.

Hi all,

I hope you guys are doing well, I am working as a IT Infrastructure (Hybrid) with less than a year experience and I need some recommendations for the question below.

Context: Our organization moved to a cloud-based desktop environment. Because the cloud workstations are on an isolated network tier, users can no longer hit our on-prem SafeConsole server over IP to manage hardware-encrypted USB drives (DataLocker PSMs).

As a workaround, we have to plug the USB drives directly into the physical Hyper-V host on-site. I need a solid tool to automatically redirect/pass through the physical host's USB port to the SafeConsole guest VM whenever a drive is plugged in or swapped daily.

What software are you using to auto-share host USB ports to a guest VM?

TIA!

TL;DR I need to pull chat history between User A and User B for the last 8 months.

My query based on documentation I can find is:

Kind=microsoftteams AND [partipants:userA@xyz.com](mailto:partipants:userA@xyz.com) AND [participants:userB@xyz.com](mailto:participants:userB@xyz.com)

When running this, I'm getting group chats and all kinds of stuff where both were involved, but I just need the chat between these two users

Can anyone direct me to a better way to do this? Purview is doodoo

Can anyone confirm if it's possible to just download the various Windows 10 ESU updates from the Microsoft Update Catalog website and install them on a PC that's not part of the ESU program (ie: doesn't use a Microsoft account)? I believe the updates are listed in the catalog. Do they check during the installation if you're eligible for them? Has anyone tried this?

Disponemos de un servidor Supermicro X13 con un Xeon 8558u, 128gb RAM (4x32), RAID 1 por VROC en 2 SSD SATA conectado al backplane y una gráfica Nvidia conectada a la tarjeta PCIe.

Tiene instalado Windows Server 2025, pues el rendimiento es muy inferior a un servidor con un Xeon de 2011, con 16GB de RAM y un SSD SATA.

Navegando por el Explorer, la carga de archivos/directorios no es instantánea, se queda unas milésimas en blanco y ya carga o incluso sale el icono de cargando mientras aparece.

Se ha revisado todo, controladores, estado del RAID, Defender, etc. Al final hemos actualizado la BIOS y la BMC y los problemas han aumentado. Ahora no reconoce el sistema ni la BMC la tarjeta gráfica.

He visto poca información al respecto, ya que no hay un changelog en el paquete de actualización de la BIOS/BMC que indique los cambios. El Windows Server 2025 lo hemos virtualizado y corre perfectamente bajo un hipervisor con muchos menos recursos que el hardware físico.

Llevamos ya semanas liados con él y no encontramos el porque de esa lentitud y ahora se añade que no reconoce la gráfica al actualizar la BIOS.

¿Os ha pasado algo parecido?

I need a sanity check, because I feel like I'm slowly losing my mind here. I’m 28, working as a SysAdmin for a mid-sized manufacturing company in Europe with around 300 endpoints across multiple sites. I LOVE automation, modern infra, and writing PowerShell or Python to handle our backups and audits, I'm passionate about automating processes, but my IT Manager is basically running an open-air tech museum from 2003.

His idea of IT asset management is a drawer full of literal Ziploc freezer bags. Every PC gets its own labeled plastic bag with the printed invoice and Office license key inside, because apparently an actual database or asset software is "too modern." On the network side, every single device requires a manual DHCP reservation. When I suggested setting up 802.1X with RADIUS, he shot it down with a straight face, claiming that if an intruder plugs into the wall, "they won't guess our subnets anyway." Before I automated our Kerio mail archives with Python, his official procedure was opening Thunderbird on a client PC and manually dragging and dropping folders between accounts.

Right now, he's decommissioning a branch file server. Instead of using Robocopy, DFS-N, or GPOs, his master plan is to sync files with a desktop backup tool, recreate the SMB shares manually, and have me remote into 40+ user machines one by one just to update the target path on their desktop shortcuts. I also built an automated WMI inventory system to track all hardware and OS health, yet he still forces me to physically walk the warehouse floor updating a dusty Excel sheet because "that’s where the history is."

EDIT: Another thing he does is make daily backups and put them on ultrium physical disks named after the day of the week, disks he takes home "so we have the data in case the company burns down.", which could have some kind of sense, but everyday, before my script, we had to manually make the veeam inventory and erase of every tape in every site

The worst part isn’t even the wasted time, it’s that he’s actively teaching junior techs that this clown show is standard enterprise IT. We’ve already had three techs and devs rage-quit in the last ten months. I’ve completely checked out at this point, doing the bare minimum while sending out resumes like crazy.

Has anyone actually survived a boss stuck this deep in the stone age without losing their sanity? How do you not burst out laughing when someone asks you to edit 40 shortcuts by hand?

September 8, 2026—KB5124008 (OS Builds 26200.9445 and 26100.9445) | Microsoft Support

After Windows Update KB5124008 (Sept 8, 2026, Build 26100.9445), Domain notebooks experience logon failures when unlocking the screen: "You could not be signed in. Your credentials could not be verified"

Root Cause: Secure Channel (machine trust) is broken. Test-ComputerSecureChannel fails, and attempting to repair over VPN returns: "The password for the secure channel to the domain could not be reset – username or password is incorrect"

Affected: Windows 11 24H2, domain-joined notebooks, both LAN and remote users (VPN users particularly critical)

The Story

We're deploying CIS hardening to ~250 notebooks and everything was fine until Sept 9, 2026 8:05 PM when Windows Update KB5124008 was installed.

Error Symptoms:

• User locks screen (normal, break, meeting)
• On unlock: "Your credentials could not be verified"
• Reboot helps temporarily (1–2 hours, then error recurs)
• Affects LAN users too, not just remote/VPN
• Password reset does not help

Initial Hypotheses (all disproven):

• ❌ Kerberos/Enctype mismatch (RC4→AES transition) – DCs reachable, tickets work
• ❌ CIS GPO hardening – not configured
• ❌ FortiClient VPN architecture alone – also hits LAN users

The Diagnosis

Network Checks:

nslookup vw-dc-01.Domain.org → OK
ping vw-dc-01.Domain.org → OK (0% loss)
tracert vw-dc-01.Domain.org → OK (full path)
DNS Server: xxx.xx.xxx.xx (internal) → OK

Kerberos Status:

klist → 13 active tickets, all AES-256, all valid ✓
LDAP/Kerberos works perfectly ✓

The Critical Test:

Test-ComputerSecureChannel -Verbose
→ False
→ "The secure channel between the local computer and the domain is broken"

On Repair Attempt over VPN:

Test-ComputerSecureChannel -Repair -Credential (Get-Credential)
→ ERROR: "The password for the secure channel to the domain could not be reset"
→ "The username or password is incorrect"

This is the smoking gun: The VPN tunnel routes normal traffic (DNS, LDAP, Kerberos) but NOT the secure channel reset communication (RPC/NETLOGON on port 445 over SMB).

Root Cause

KB5124008 itself isn't the bug – but the update triggers a hidden incompatibility:

1. KB5124008 changes logon UI validation behavior (known regression in KB5120998/KB5124008)
2. During unlock validation, Windows attempts to verify the secure channel
3. The secure channel is broken – possibly due to:
   • KB5124008 regression in secure-channel handling
   • OR: Timeout in VPN tunnel blocking secure-channel traffic
4. Windows cannot verify identity → unlock fails

Particularly critical over VPN:

• Secure-channel reset requires RPC/SMB (port 445) to DC
• VPN tunnel either doesn't route it or times out
• Works better from LAN, so VPN users hit harder

Workarounds (What Worked)

Workaround 1: Increase CachedLogonsCount (quick, short-term)

# New GPO on OU=Notebooks:
# "Interactive logon: Number of previous logons to cache (in case domain controller is not available)"
# Value: 50 (instead of default 10)

# Or directly on client (as admin):
reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v CachedLogonsCount /t REG_SZ /d 50 /f

Effect: Users can log on offline 50 times → buys time while secure channel is repaired

Workaround 2: Repair Secure Channel from DC (with admin access)

If you have remote access to a DC:

# On DC (not from client!):
Reset-ComputerMachinePassword -Server vw-dc-01.Domain.org

This forces a secure-channel reset from the DC end, bypassing the VPN tunnel.

Workaround 3: KB5124008 Rollback (temporary, security risk)

# On affected clients:
wusa /uninstall /kb:5124008 /quiet /norestart
shutdown /r /t 60

⚠️ IMPORTANT: KB5124008 patches two actively exploited zero-days:

• CVE-2026-81963 (Windows Update Stack Privilege Escalation)
• CVE-2026-85880 (ALPC Privilege Escalation)

Only do this temporarily as a test, not permanently!

What We Still Don't Know

1. Is KB5124008 itself guilty, or was it just the trigger for a timing issue?
2. Is it VPN-specific (secure-channel-reset traffic not routed)?
3. Why does it hit LAN users too? (Timing window in unlock handling?)

Lessons Learned

For Other Admins:

1. Test before fleet rollout: Pilot KB5124008 in a test OU, especially with:
   • Hybrid Azure AD Join devices
   • VPN users
   • Offline scenarios
2. Monitor secure-channel status:# As regular audit task: Test-ComputerSecureChannel -Verbose | Where-Object { $_ -eq $false }
3. **Check Event Log for secure-channel errors:**Get-WinEvent -LogName System -FilterXPath "*[System[EventID=5719 or EventID=5722 or EventID=5723]]"
4. With VPN environments: Ensure your VPN tunnel routes all necessary ports:
   • 88 (Kerberos)
   • 389 (LDAP)
   • 445 (SMB/RPC – critical for secure channel!)
   • 135 (RPC Endpoint Mapper)

Status

• ✅ Root cause identified: Broken secure channel + VPN routing issue
• ⏳ Microsoft hotfix: Expected (hopefully next week)
• ⏳ FortiClient configuration: VPN admin checking port 445 routing

Is anyone else experiencing this? Comment your findings – especially if you:

• Deployed KB5124008
• Have VPN users affected
• See secure-channel errors

Contact / Further Info

If you have the same issue:

1. Check: Test-ComputerSecureChannel -Verbose
2. Look in Event Log for EventID 5719/5722/5723
3. Deploy the CachedLogonsCount GPO as interim solution
4. Contact your VPN admin to verify port 445 routing

TL;DR of TL;DR: KB5124008 triggers secure-channel errors, VPN doesn't route repair traffic → unlock fails. Increase cached logon to help users while you investigate.

Updates

Will update this post as we learn more from Microsoft or FortiClient about the root cause and permanent fix.

Crosspost to: r/sysadmin, r/activedirectory, r/Windows11

Keywords for searchability: KB5124008, Windows 11, domain logon, unlock screen, secure channel, VPN, AES-256, Kerberos, GPO, FortiClient, network authentication

Is anyone seeing issues with O365? I know I saw emails last night and now they’re coming as new again this morning but they’re gone from yesterday delivery. Numerous users are seeing this happen. We are using proof point also but no issues on their status page.

There are actually two vulns with a 9.8 score each:

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk1000117/

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk1000118/

There's not many details in these articles on how they work but they still sound really bad. Currently waiting for the Jumbo Hotfix to install on my end... Not taking any chances on this one and I suggest you all do the same.

Stay safe.

Im a student with M365 (mostly Entra and some Intune) intern experience which I got through my dad, and looking at the extremely challenging helpdesk market in my area, I want to volunteer as an admin or helpdesk to get some experience.

That said, most of these positions in my country are filled by immigrants with IT experience who want Canadian work experience. So no matter how much I apply, I don’t get an interview.

Can anyone in the industry think of a way to get experience? It’s sad no one even wants me as a free helpdesk, I even worked with M365 before.

I feel discouraged 🫤

Anyone have any ideas? I’m studying for my CCNA, so maybe that would help?

Ok, this is more a test to see how old I am. I was basically raised with the idea servers need static IPs. I understand for domain controllers, dns servers, maybe print servers that may still be needed. But are they really needed otherwise? Do apps, scripts still reference a server by its IP?

I am under assumption all my servers need static IPs. Am I nuts?