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Noob needs help with RDP Services
I am new to Windows server management. I setup a 2019 Server in a VM (Hyper-V). I installed the licenses we got for RDP from MS after installing the Remote Desktop Services. I am getting an error about Remote Desktop Licensing Mode is not configured. Tells me to use Server Manger to specify RD Connection Broker. Either I neglected to install it or configure it, not sure. Articles I find say go to Server Manager -> Remote Desktop Services -> Overview... BUT, that tells me I am logged in with a local account but must use a domain account to manage servers and collections. Again, not using a DC. This server is not part of a domain. We do not run AD internally only AzureAD online. We have 1 program we still run internally and users RDP to it. Should I remove the service and reinstall? What about the licenses I added already? How to I keep them? Any assistance will be greatly appreciated... J
Windows Server OSConfig and DSCv3
Introduction I wanted to formalize putting a post out here to get some discussion going on the attempts at modernization of Windows configuration, and importantly, infrastructure-as-code. Hopefully this is a healthy discussion that others can engage in. Much of what I'm going to try and post about is stuff we already are aware of, but I want to highlight how this is an ongoing concern with the Windows Server platform that makes it difficult to encourage people to even consider Windows in their environment other than for extremely legacy purposes. I want Windows Server to be the best it can be, and I encourage others to join in on the conversation! Problem Statement Windows Server needs a modernized configuration-as-code system. Must be capable of orchestrating without cloud tools (offline orchestration) Must provide for regular validation and attestation Ideally should be easily available to 3rd party configuration tools. Since Microsoft appears to have little interest in building their own modernized system that isn't Azure-based, this means that this MUST be orchestrated easily and securely by 3rd party tools. Should be as robust as GPO at maintaining and enforcing state. Security configurations in Windows are a right pain to manage with any 3rd party tooling, with the closest coming to it being the SecurityDSC module which wraps secedit.exe and security policy INFs. Why is OSConfig not the answer? OSConfig doesn't provide for me, as an engineer, to clearly define what the state of my machines are based on my company's business requirements. While the built-in Microsoft policy recommendations are great, there are reasons to deviate from these policies in a predictable and idempotent manner. Applying an OSConfig Baseline -> Then changing settings as-needed with special PowerShell commands This is not the answer. This is a bunch of imperative code that serves nobody. And it makes implementing this feature extremely challenging in today's modern world of Kubernetes, Docker, etc. I encourage the Windows Server team to engage with the PowerShell team on DSC 3.0. I think that team has it right, but they are a small group of people and do not have the resources to implement everything that would make DSC 3.0 a first-class configuration as code platform on Windows. And this is where the Windows team should come in. Steve Lee and crew have done a bangup job working on DSC 3.0, including taking feedback from folks to leverage Azure Bicep language for configuration. Security Policy Challenge The way to access security policies need to change. Even if I were to take DSC 3.0 I'd end up having to create a similar security policy INF file to import into Windows. It just seems so silly to me to have to write all of that out when Windows really should just provide an interface for doing this. In fact, security policy remains to be one of the largest problems to getting a good platform stood up. Windows Firewall Policy and GPO - The reason why host-based firewalling is painful to manage at scale in a Windows environment. GPO is definitely not the right place to be managing Windows firewall policy at scale. Particularly when you often have a core set of management rules you want to implement and application-specific needs. Making robust changes becomes a challenge since each policy is separate, preventing you from doing things like inheriting rules for higher level policies. While this is an inherent limitation of Group Policy, it highlights the need to get off of GPO as the core policy configuration tool for Windows. My recommendations I'd like for the Windows team to implement DSC 3.0-compatible resources for managing all core functionality of Windows. If you can do it in a GPO, you should be able to do it with Configuration as Code. Please stop relying on the community to make this work. All of this should be first party to the platform itself. Furthermore, I'd like to recommend that Microsoft either work with 3rd party configuration systems (Chef, Ansible, Puppet, Octopus, etc.) OR to also provide a way to hit the ground running. Perhaps something that integrates visually into Windows Admin Center would be nice. Conclusion This is a huge problem in the Windows world and continues to seem to fall on some deaf ears somewhere in the organization. While I no doubt am confident that the engineers on all of these teams very well know these issues and maybe even have discussed fixing them, clearly there's a breakdown somewhere.
Connect a Workgroup device on 802.1x Network with NPS
We have an 802.1X-secured Wi-Fi network using EAP-TLS authentication with machine certificates. Domain-joined devices connect and authenticate successfully. However, we have a scenario where some non-domain (Workgroup) Windows 11 devices must connect to this network — and they fail to authenticate. What we've tested so far: User Certificate Approach: Created a duplicate of the User certificate template. Set Compatibility to Windows Server 2008 (to enable key storage provider support). Set Application Policies to include only Client Authentication. Set Subject Name to Supply in the request. During enrollment, we ensured the UPN in the certificate matches the AD user's UPN (e.g., mailto:user@domain). We verified the certificate appears under Published Certificates in the AD user's account. Machine Certificate Approach: Created a certificate with: CN=host/hostname.domain.local in the Subject DNS=hostname.domain.local in the SAN Client Authentication EKU Ensured the certificate is installed in the Local Machine store with private key. In AD: Created a Computer object matching the machine name. Added the ServicePrincipalName (SPN): host/hostname.domain.local Added altSecurityIdentities: "X509:<i>CN=CA Name,DC=domain,DC=local<s>CN=host/hostname.domain.local</s></i>" What we observe in NPS Event Viewer: Each connection attempt from a Workgroup machine — even with valid certificate, and proper mapping — results in: Reason Code: 16 Reason: Authentication failed due to a user credentials mismatch. Either the user name provided does not map to an existing user account or the password was incorrect. We also ensured that: NPS has a valid certificate with Server Authentication EKU The authentication method used is Microsoft: Smart card or other certificate (EAP-TLS) The policies are configured for certificate-based authentication only The question How can we make NPS map a client certificate (from a non-domain device) to a user or computer account in Active Directory, so that authentication succeeds? Are there additional requirements for altSecurityIdentities, or limitations for Workgroup clients that we're missing?
Comp GPO file copy running as system using DA
Hello, I’m trying to fix an issue of copying files (fonts and themes) from a network share to clients using the computer GPO policy Preference > Windows Settings > Files. Forcing an update has no errors and claims all policies applied. The event log errors saying that the account being used is disabled, so thinking all computer policies run on the SYSTEM account started looking into this. From a post I found then started looking at service accounts that may have been disabled and determined that the policy is running as the original default domain administrator. (recently disabled as inherited the network and am working through improving security). Proved it by temporarily enabling the account and the event log changed to say incorrect password. Few points of note Removing PC from domain, deleting object and rejoining doesn’t help. Policy is applied to OU containing computer object. Domain computers, authenticated users have access to the share. (also tried everyone). GPO scoped and delegated to Auth Users (also tried domain computers). Other settings in GPO work such as creating shortcuts. Newly domain joined computers it works for. Have tried deleting any cached GP folders on client and registry. Force cleared Kerboros. Rather not script the file copy as user, as the destination folders are system. Scheduled tasks running a script have the same error. Rebuilding clients is not ideal as there are many and it would be great to know why this is happening or how to fix. I’m running out of ideas, so any help appreciated. Thanks in advance. Chris
Should "Don't be afraid..." be the title for DNS Scavenging in the Windows Server doco?
I was reading about DNS scavenging in Windows Server and AD today (2025-05-18, as a newbie to this topic), and came across the main "Learn / Troubleshoot / Windows / Windows Server / DNS scavenging setup" article here. (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/networking/dns-scavenging-setup) The HTML title for this page is "Don't be afraide of DNS scavenging, just be patient - ...". Is that really what you want to go with here? That's a rather more conversational tone than many of the other articles in the Windows Server or Azure documentation. And when displayed in a web browser tab, it's a little inconvenient, because those are truncated on the right, so when you have many tabs or are browsing on something with a small screen like a laptop or tablet, you might get a tab that says just "Don't be afraid of...", which IMHO is less useful for distinguishing tabs than e.g. "DNS scaveng...".Add Passkey support to Active Directory
Everyone, Please go to the feedback hub and upvote my suggestion to add passkey support to Active Directory Domain Services: https://aka.ms/AAw8z54 The reason I am recommending this is because there needs to be a standard way to use passkeys in an AD environment.
VPN on Windows Server 2016 not working
I followed the stand procedure to set up VPN on Windows Server 2016. Let me jump to where I am now. The event viewer has the following two entries when a client connects to the VPN server: A connection between the VPN server and the VPN client 72.74.70.135 has been established, but the VPN connection cannot be completed. The most common cause for this is that a firewall or router between the VPN server and the VPN client is not configured to allow Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) packets (protocol 47). CoId={23FC7BC4-0885-5E63-715B-8EFAD37B9E15}: The following error occurred in the Point to Point Protocol module on port: VPN2-127, UserName: <Unauthenticated User>. Negotiation timed out I am not familiar with GRE, so add rules for both inbound and outbound GRE on both the Windows Server 2016 and the client machine (Windows 11 Pro). Could anyone offer a direction to guide me in diagnosing this?
