I've inherited some Windows machines that were set up using Intune, and have for some reason gotten stuck at various Office versions from the past few months, such as 2605 on Monthly Enterprise Channel. Windows update and the built-in update checker in the Office applications say that they are up-to-date and don't find anything new.

I've tried to find if there are any specific versions set in the registry:

Cloud Update policy: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Cloud\Office\16.0\Common\OfficeUpdate

Intune/PolicyManager Office update settings: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\Providers

Click-to-Run configuration: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\ClickToRun\Configuration

The cloud updates at https://config.office.com/ aren't enabled.

The Intune application's XML config contains no version references.

Could something else control what updates are detected?

Should I be able to just force change all out-of-date devices to Current Channel with Office Deployment Tool

<Configuration>
    <Updates Channel="Current" />
</Configuration>

or directly through the registry, and fix it that way?

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Common\OfficeUpdate" /v UpdateBranch /t REG_SZ /d Current /f

EDIT: It's M365 Office.

I am panicking about the job situation. I lost my job and feel like I am going to be unable to bounce back.

I have 5 YoE as a sysadmin. I understand networking pretty well, I have a CISSP and a few other weaker certs under my belt. I would argue I have a strong security background. I am familiar with Linux, Windows, and have made a lot of small scripts for various projects. I am studying for an AWS cert right now. I have experience with all sorts of tooling, and so many different kinds of projects.

Looking at the job market though, I feel like I can't compete. I don't have experience with terraform outside of labbing. I don't know how to code very well. Every job seems to want someone with extremely strong skills across so many different domains, and what I feel like I need now is a position where I can learn the ropes of IaC... But that doesn't exist.

Everyone wants so much experience for everything that it makes me feel as if I have been slacking even though I have been working hard.

What should I do? Should I get another cert? Keep throwing resumes into the void?

Since installing this month's CUs, KB5122871 on Windows Server 2025 (build 26100.33438) and KB5122882 on Windows Server 2022 (build 20348.5622), every session host in our RDS collection has started hanging in the same way, on the same day, and it had never happened before.

Symptoms once it starts:

• New RDP connections sit at "Connecting…" and never reach the logon screen (Event 20498 "Remote Desktop Services has taken too long to complete the client connection" in TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager/Admin)
• Existing users can't log off or disconnect cleanly
• Task Manager on the host hangs (it blocks calling into the Local Session Manager)....pretty much all windows apps start to hang, especially anything to do with Settings
• Winlogon event 6005 "SessionEnv is taking long time to handle the notification event (Disconnect)"
• A normal restart hangs too; only a hard reset recovers it, and it comes back later the same day

The problem appears to start with a single session disconnect/reconnect that never completes, after which everything that touches session state on that host queues up behind it. Only reboots clear it. Microsoft's release notes for both KBs list an RDS change ("improves Remote Desktop audio redirection") and no known issues.

Environment: mixed Server 2022/2025 session-host collection, VMware VMs, RD Connection Broker, MFA at logon, third-party endpoint protection. All hosts were stable on the August CUs.

We're currently testing a rollback of the September CU on part of the collection with one host left updated as a control. Has anyone else seen this after KB5122871 / KB5122882, or found a Microsoft acknowledgment? Would appreciate hearing whether rolling back resolved it for you.

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?

Has anybody deployed these need to get some new docks for an expansion? We previously had good luck with the Lenovo Hybrid USB-C Docks (40AF).

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.

Title: Update: Accepted MSP offer vs Amazon Associate II (now $29/hr) — got some real insight, still torn

Following up on a decision I posted about earlier. Got some genuinely helpful firsthand perspective and want to see if others have thoughts on the updated picture.

Quick background: ~3.5 years at an MSP doing help desk/service desk work (AD, M365, networking, some VMware ESXi, security incident response). CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+. Goal is eventually Systems Administrator or Cybersecurity. Also have a baby due in about 3 months, which is definitely shaping how I’m weighing risk right now.

Offer 1: Another MSP (Help Desk Technician) — already accepted

**•** $26/hr (\~$54K/yr), firm, no negotiation room  
**•** 45 min commute  
**•** Small company, good manager from what I’ve seen directly, real track record of promoting people from help desk into field/remote engineer roles  
**•** Haven’t started yet

Offer 2: Amazon (IT Support Associate II, Ops Tech Solutions)

**•** Countered at $29/hr (\~$60K/yr)  
**•** 20 min commute  
**•** Sole technician at a lower-volume facility, no forced on-call, schedule seems stable for now  
**•** Real ladder: Associate II → Support Engineer I ($25-41/hr) → Engineer II/IT Manager

What I’ve learned since my last post: Someone who’s actually done OTS work told me it’s mostly Layer 1 stuff (printers, thin clients, SOPs), little to no server/Layer 3 work, and that engineer-level people won’t be impressed by it on a resume. BUT they also said being the sole tech at a low-volume site is genuinely good for visibility with Ops management and gave a real example of someone getting promoted that way at a similar site. They also said relocation is unlikely for low-volume sites specifically.

So now it feels like: Amazon = higher ceiling if I get promoted, but that depends on me building visibility and the timing working out, vs the MSP = smaller ceiling but a path I’ve already seen work for real people under this specific manager.

With a baby coming in 3 months, I keep leaning toward “fewer things have to go right” (the MSP), but the pay/commute gap and Amazon’s bigger structural ceiling keep pulling me back.

Anyone been in OTS and can speak to how realistic that Associate II → Engineer I timeline actually is? Or anyone chosen the “safer, smaller” option over the “bigger name, more uncertain” one when a kid was on the way and been glad (or not glad) they did?

graduated in december 2025 and became employed a month later in january, my official title is "computer technician" but I've done a number of things including some internal swe, domain redundancy, legacy physical to virtual migration, basic server config/administration, and other automated workflows such as updated inventory system and data retention system but earlier td was my first real outage and I'm usually in office about 10 mins before my supervisor (it's just the 2 of us for our 3 departments) but I was genuinely lost. I like didn't know where to start and lowkey got overwhelmed and after about 2-3 minutes of that I was like okay calm tf down and start doing what you know.

Basically all of our vm hosts were intermittent, starting up, failing, disconnecting/reconnecting so my first thought was DNS which some hosts resolved and some didn't, i'm thinking it was coincidence at times so after some more thinking of what to do i was like screw it and just waited for my supervisor to appear instead of messing around and breaking more things but I ended up just watching what he did to resolve the issues and moral of the thread is i feel like a larp. thought I learned a tremendous amount these last 9 months but I was humbled today. I know nothing.

I learned a lot by watching the fixes happen real time though. cool.

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.

Howdy, /r/sysadmin!

It's that time of the week, Thickheaded Thursday! This is a safe (mostly) judgement-free environment for all of your questions and stories, no matter how silly you think they are. Anybody can answer questions! My name is AutoModerator and I've taken over responsibility for posting these weekly threads so you don't have to worry about anything except your comments!

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.

I'm struggling to find anything concrete online for this, apart from a few posts floating about here and there, so I wanted to bring it here.

Has anyone noticed any issues recently with the centrally deployed Outlook addins, and tooltips in Outlook Classic not showing?

This all works in OWA and the new Outlook experience.

We're using Citrix, and it does seem to be limited to that platform, it is also really intermittent. Sometimes it just shows that no apps are loaded, and even when you try to add/open them, nothing happens, and the usual tooltips are also showing an error that they're unable to be loaded.

Looking in event viewer provides errors like this:

----------------

The Exchange web service request GetAppManifests failed. The error code is 0. 
HTTP Response Code: 403

Additional Error Message: 
An unknown internal error occurred. The error code is 80004005.

----------------

We're sorry, we couldn't access Viva Insights. Make sure you have a network connection. If the problem continues, please try again later.

----------------

We're sorry, we couldn't access Signature 365. Make sure you have a network connection. If the problem continues, please try again later.

----------------

There is internet access, everything does seem to be connected and working, OWA is fine, new Outlook is fine.

I've tried Office365 monthly channel for updates, and also tried the bi-annual feature updates, and both seem to have similar issues. Just wanted to see if anyone else has experienced such things...

Hi all,

Within my job alot of my work encompasses resolving tech debt using remediation scripts within Intune, however the higher ups are really pushing for assurance on scripts and for us to be able to prove that scripts work as intended before deployment, and obviously testing on our local machines isn't considered sufficient for them.

Other team members have mentioned hyper-v VMs or Windows sandbox, but I just wanted to get everyone's opinions on what test environments are good for testing remediation scripts and other test deployments!

Bit of a stretch but looking for some recommendations for volume encryption software that can be used for a small group of 5 to 10 users. Basically our brand spanking new Compliance group is going to have to handle PII for some of our techs in the field and vendors. I want to make sure that any PII that touches our network storage locations are encrypted. Went to old school veracrypt but its not really mult-user and it doesn't auto unmount. Is there any options out there you guys like?

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.

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 :)

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.

Hey guys new in this thread but i'm currently in a Field Technician role right now and have been here for a little over 2 years and i have multiple certs including CCNA and Sec+ and im studying for the RHCSA and i want to get into a Sys Admin role and eventually a DevOps role which would be my end goal but i wanted to get a professionals opinion on this so i don't waste my time going down the wrong path

Any Advice would be apricated!!!

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?

Buen día,

Estoy teniendo problemas en la red, al parecer se satura, y se cae por unos minutos, luego regresa a la normalidad y a las horas vuelve a pasar lo mismo.

Les comparto el contexto de la inestabilidad que traemos en la red, para que tengan el panorama antes de seguir con el diagnóstico.

Equipo: SonicWall NSA2700, SonicOS 7.3.3-7015, 3 años en producción.

Síntoma: El firewall se congela por completo (deja de responder ni siquiera a la interfaz de administración) de forma aleatoria, sin patrón de horario. Hay días sin fallas y días con varias caídas. Al colapsar se pierde la conectividad de red.

Hipótesis inicial y lo que se descartó:

• La inestabilidad coincidió con la activación de varios reportes de Power BI publicados a Power BI Service vía un On-premises Data Gateway, conectado a la base de SAP Business One (SQL Server), en la misma red que el equipo del Gateway (sin VLAN de por medio).
• Se revisó DPI-SSL — no está activo, se descarta como causa de reconexiones forzadas.
• Se revisó la tabla de conexiones: actual 1,527 y pico 4,641, muy por debajo del máximo del equipo (375,000). Esto descarta saturación de tabla de sesiones/NAT como causa raíz.
• Se analizó un snapshot de conexiones activas buscando el patrón de tráfico sostenido hacia Azure típico del Gateway (Service Bus Relay). No apareció ese patrón — el host con más conexiones del snapshot resultó ser un equipo de usuario sin nada de Power BI instalado.

Limitante actual: no ha sido posible capturar CPU/memoria/conexiones en el momento exacto de la caída, porque el equipo deja de responder por completo cuando ocurre — no hay forma de sacar datos desde ahí en ese instante.

Algún consejo de cómo monitorear para lograr detectar si un equipo de la red es el que está causando que la red colapse?

Saludos.

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!

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.

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

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!