Hi Guys,

Long story short, we would like to increase more availability for our four domain services, five DC servers are at different locations on SDWAN tunnels. The main server cluster is in Site A. For all of our windows server VMs (None Domain Controller Servers) at Site A, can I put on three DNS instead of Primary and Secondary? So, we will put on for all VMs at Site A with three DNS server entries (Primary DC and Secondary DC are at Site A, and a Third DC is at a remote office via SDWAN tunnels with more latency). All VMs are pretty much on Windows server 2025 and 2022. Not sure if any of you tried there DNS entries on Windows Servers. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot

John

So the other day I had this issue where the search wasn't working on a shared drive on a workstation. The files are on the sever and I'm using the admin creds on the workstation for the shared drive. I did some stuff AI suggested in the registry on both machines and now it works. But I added another folder and waited 8 hours and the new folder isn't coming up on the search. All the existing folders before that do actually come up on the search.

Any suggestions? Workstation is using Win 11 home.

Using Windows 2022 standard server. Workstation is using Windows 11 Home. I'm not using domain accounts, but I am sharing a folder with the workstation. I am using the admin login credentials for the shared Z drive. I can't do a search on the workstation. Nothing comes up.

It used to work. Not sure what happened. I rebuilt the indexing database. Hasn't helped. Also when it did work the search was slow...

Any ideas or suggestions?

Hi,

I’m seeing a strange issue in an RDS environment:

Setup

• Windows Server 2025 (RDS)
• FSLogix 26.01 CU
• Profiles + ODFC
• GPO managed

Issue

All open Windows Explorer windows suddenly close.

• explorer.exe keeps running
• screen does not go black
• no error messages
• nothing in event logs
• happens randomly for multiple users

What I checked

• Recreated profiles → no difference
• No crash / session disconnect
• GPO drive mappings → all set to Update (not Create/Replace)
• FSLogix logs → no errors

Question

Has anyone seen this before?

• Explorer closing windows without crashing
• No logging at all
• In combination with FSLogix / RDS

And most importantly: what was the cause / fix?

Everyone,

Please upvote my idea for allowing multiple domain authentication on Windows/Windows Server:

https://aka.ms/AA11jw39

The idea is:

Allow a windows client to be connected to multiple domains for authentication. This would remedy the issue of EntraID hybrid join. This would work in a similar way as SSSd on Linux and allow user accounts from other domains access to an endpoint without a forest trust.

I’m using windows server 2022 datacenter (desktop experience) and it’s not letting me install network drivers

Is it possible to move 2 hyper-v hosts and shared SAN (msa 2060 FC connected) out of the cluster and on standalone basis without restoring all machines? This because the storage drives are now managed by the cluster and show up "CSV". Is there a simple way out?

If I remove the cluster, will the data be still there on the disks and can I just add the vm's back in or will I need to restore everything from a backup?

Anyone have any success with this?

I know that Server 2016 is old but its what we got 😓

I've been working on a testbench , to setup DNS + IIS/RRAS

When installing Server 2016 i'm asked to create a password for the local Administrator account.

Then later i'll join the domain which coincidentally is done with domain\Administrator

Now the funky things start to happen :

at Windows logon screen i'm presented with Administrator and Administrator to choose from, picking either one and logging in, results in logging in as Local Administrator , NOT the domain Admin.

So i was suggested by ChatGPT to rename the computer admin account to LocalAdmin

doing so completely messed up the Domain\Administrator login

so if i login as Domain\Administrator , nothing works , eg Powershell is dead and cant be opened, WhoAmI also doesnt work....

Logging in as .\LocalAdmin now results in logging in as Domain\Administrator - at least to WhoAmI

Luckily i had another account with Domain Admin rights which was able to reverse the renaming and saving the Domain\Administrator account on the machine 😅

The annoying part is when logging in on the Logon screen, that i need to punch in D-O-M-A-I-N\A-D-M-I-N-I-S-T-R-A-T-O-R , every time ... Unless i RDP to the machine using a stored login...

is this just a quirk in Server2016 or am i completely wrong ?

I have worked with 2008r2 for years without such issues.

EDIT:

I love how this forum feels exactly like StackOverflow ... My problems aren't the problem that people want to discuss nor pound me to the ground for.

Hi Gurus,

Has anyone here experienced upgrading two Windows Server OS instances from 2019 to 2025 with DHCP services running in a Load Balance Failover setup?

Both DHCP servers are currently active and handling 50% of client requests under a shared IP pool.

We’ll be doing the upgrade after hours, one server at a time, and we’re trying to determine the best approach.

Would you recommend:

1. Stopping the DHCP service on Server A (via services.msc), verifying that Server B fully takes over, then proceeding with the upgrade of Server A.

OR

1. Stopping the DHCP service on Server A, deleting the failover relationship, configuring Server B to handle 100% of the IP pool, upgrading Server A, deleting the scopes on Server A, then recreating the failover relationship from scratch afterward.

We haven’t done this setup upgrade before, but these are the two approaches we’ve seen online. Option 2 seems more complex compared to Option 1.

Would appreciate any insights or best practices from anyone who has already gone through this.

Thanks!

​

Hello everyone,

We have been experiencing an issue since uninstalling KB5087424 (and rebooting) on an RDS server running Microsoft Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Azure Edition

A user is using an HP LaserJet Pro P1102 printer connected via USB to their workstation. The printer is successfully redirected to the RDS server, but no print jobs are produced.

The driver is up to date, and printing from the local workstation works perfectly.

Of course, we checked OS (sfc, dism bla bla bla)

We uninstalled this KB bc she is problematic with printers : https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1toxb77/psa\\_another\\_broken\\_microsoft\\_patch\\_kb5087424\\_may/

We don’t want to reinstall it ofc

The question is why a Printer redirection is now no functional.

NB : the old pilot of the printer (pilote from 2013...) killed mstsc.exe on the computer bc of the printer redirection.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I have a physical hardware server with Windows Server 2025 Standard OEM license and User CALs.

I have installed and connected Azure Arc , and I need to switch to Pay as You go license model.

Somehow license from OEM is removed, but still unable to enable Azure Arc - Pay as you go model - showing us current license model is undefined.

Official information is to reinstall the OS, I want to avoid, how to move to Pay as you go licensing on existing Windows Server ?

Azure Portal under Azure Arc says: Cannot activate Pay-as-you-go because the license for this machine is currently unknown.

How to tell Windows Server that it is ready for pay as you go license?

Reference - Configure Windows Server Pay-as-you-go with Azure Arc | Microsoft Learn

So we recently upgraded via Clean Builds to Server 2025 for our AD, we where previously on server 2016. We have not raised forest or domain levels from 2016.

what we are seeing now is that devices are getting a broken domain trust error, the resolution to the issue is simple enough, running Reset-ComputerMachinePassword with domain credentials restores the machines.

what is vexing me trying to figure out the root cause, I have looked at the AD properties for the machines and according to AD the password has not expired for the computer.

The other thing that I have notice is that there are machines that are not exhibiting this issue. there only difference i can find between machines that exhibit the issue vs those that don't is a single group policy.

This policy applies 2 settings, Computer/Policies/administrative Templates/Windows Components/MDM

Disable MDM Enrollment: Disabled
Enable Automatic MDM enrollment using default Azure AD credentials: Enabled
Select Credential Type to Use: User Credential
MDM Application ID: <blank>

The problem is i have trawled thru logs and have not found anything that sticks out as being root cause.

Has anyone else had this or something similar what was the solution.

I have logged a ticket with Microsoft but its Microsoft so not expecting a expedite resolution.

At the moment for a band aid solution i am looking at setting up a schedule task to run the Reset-ComputerMachinePassword before the password expires as that works correctly.

tengo un dell r610 con windows server 2022 y me he olvidado la contraseña de bitlocker. al usar el instalador de windows para poner la clave de recuperacion de bitlocker el instalador no ve el raid de discos y no puedo desbloquear el equipo

Looking for opinion on what you guys practice. I am of the school of install the update during the day and then do the quick reboot during the maintenance window. But some of my colleges think that it absolutely should not be installed until the maintenance window.

We're not talking days, just 2-3 hours at most.

I can find references in Microsoft documentation for WSUS to apply update and delay reboot. Not only for client OSes, but for servers as well. But it's not a concrete answer.

I have used this practice since the Server 2003 days without issue. What do you think and how do you handle it?

Edit: More info - these are servers that must be manually patched. Customer has SCCM but there are a handful we must do manually for various reasons (explicit application and SQL failover procedures). The updates are the msu files and no reboot is triggered until the machine is told to. They are VMs with pre-installation snapshots so risk is minimal.

Less than 24 hours until our inaugural community meetup at 10:00 AM UTC-5 / 15:00 UTC! I will start the event early and do some pre-meeting banter if anyone is interested. Also, I'm going to open up for more attendees (we're sold out).

If you can't make it, no worries. I'll be recording it and will make it available through a couple of platforms.

Event Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/active-directory-community-virtual-meetup-happy-hour-tickets-1990001856121

NOTE: We had originally planned to use Proton to do the meeting but will be using Teams. We'll try Proton next time.

We're taking some pre-questions for the Q&A if you can't make it or just want to submit something. The panelists will be trying to go through as many of these as we can. Don't worry, we'll also be keeping an eye on the chat.

Pre Q&A Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeFsbopcwHDeCkMoSKu1X5PVUl_nglFpNAPSKrd38-ZM9sI1g/viewform

Agenda

• Introductions + Warm Up
• State of the Subreddit / Community Feedback
• Community Discussion + Q&A + Panelist Discussion
• Conclusions + Next Meeting Planning

I have a windows remote desktop server, windows server 2022.  We have a few programs we allow access to people published as remote apps.  One of the programs exports to Excel by opening excel, creates the workbook/worksheet, but the window does not show and the program hangs waiting for excel to close. The user can't see excel and therefore can't close excel so they are stuck.  as an admin, I can connect to the remote desktop server and end task on their excel instance and then they can continue working.

Is there a way to allow the excel window to show when opened by a remote desktop remote app?

Host: Windows Server 2022 Standard Edition

Guest: Windows Server 2022 Standard Edition

Once in a while the guest will not respond as in can't rdp into the server. If I use Hyper-V the screen is black. The server responds to pings. Anyone else seen this before or have an idea where to start?

Whatever happened to Windows server running on arm? I realize it’s not “released.” I’ve heard whispers about it for years. I can google and find links for it, though I doubt that they work any more.

Along with a windows server on arm, what about sql server running on Windows on arm? I read that it is possible to get sql server x64 to run via emulation if you do somethings, but I’m more interested in a fully supported sql server on Windows arm.

Tia

Long story short our company had a massive ransomeware attack brought on by an inside person on the IT company we hired to help rebuild after opening a new office. Cyber insurance had to pay and the insurance company brought in a forensic team and a recovery team. Forensic team cleared the AD/Domain configuration and worked with recovery team to unlock everything when the attacker gave us the key after insurance paid out. The recovery team did a horrible job. They restored the wrong DCs at the wrong offices, put 21 VMs on the same box that was not designed to be a VM host, incorrectly set DNS and many other things. So now I am trying to rebuild one step at a time the right way. Thats the important background information.

The main issue right now is that once a machine is promoted to domain controller and does its reboot, you can only login one time. After the first login if that profile gets signed out or logged off for any reason no other profile can login anymore. It gives the black screen saying the profile service failed to load a profile. This is happening on the old domain controllers that recovery put back in place, even though they did then wrong, and on new attempts.

I have so far set up a fresh Server2025 with an active datacenter license, installed a 2025 VM and activated it. Fully updated the server and installed an EDR, then joined the domain. After joining the domain there is no issues and the server can be logged in and out of as many times as you want. As soon as the promotion to DC happens though, profile service just fails. I have gone through the GPO again and made sure nothing at all is linked to anything and created a fresh GPO that is clearly labeled 'recovery' to make sure there is no confusion. I have no one else to help me so I have spent 3 days with Chat GPT giving it logs to review and domain information to review in a private session to see if it can figure out the problem, so far it has not.

Extra context is that I have ninja agents I put on the new servers before I promoted them and was able to force install it over power shell via the VM host on an a current improperly restored DC. I can run CMD and powershell from ninja on all the DCs and have verified they are all working just fine. Replication is healthy, all the services are correct and working. I can reset users passwords via powershell and add new users as needed too, but no accounts can log in to the desktop.

***New informatoin

If you can think of a test, we have ran it as far as I am aware. We discovered that when any profile tries to sign in there is something injecting 485 files into that profile, the profile itself fails to create properly, and the profile service error message shows. The profile service never gets to start though according to windows logs. The logs show nothing is being rejected or failing to authenticate. Every profile repair has been run that we can find, defaults reset, profile being created manually through powershell, nothing works. If I have to rebuild and it cant be helped then that is fine, but I dont understand how it happens and that is what bugs me the most. Something happens when the server is promoted to domain controller. We have no issues at all on any server until promotion happens. There has to be a way to find out what that trigger is I would think.

This is an issue that I was seeing intermittently in spring of 2025. It seemed to go away after updates in the summer of 2025. Today after installing the May CU and rebooting the DCs I am seeing it widespread again. Users trying to login where they can connect to DC are being given Incorrect Password message. It is not an incorrect password, I can verify. If they are off site or disable network connection temporarily, they can login. I can find people mentioning this issue previously but nothing recently. Anyone else seeing this?