I’ve setup our GPO’s on Windows 2003 and 2008 R2 servers.

1) Download
You will need to download the following files from Microsoft.
Administrative Template Files:

Office 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=9035

Office 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3795

Office 2010
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=18968

2) Extract the Files:
I extracted the files to a new local directory called GPO_Templates

3) Office 2003 Templates

Copy the 11 x.adm files to your Windows 2003 AD server under C:\Windows\INF

Within Group Policy Object Editor you need to import the Templates by right-clicking “Administrative Templates” and selecting Add/Remove Templates

4) Office 2007/2010 Templates

Go to the ADMX folder within Office 2007/2010 Templates and copy all the admx files onto your Windows 2008 R2 Server under C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions

Under the ADMX\en-us folder, copy all files onto Windows 2008 R2 server under C:\Windows\PolicyDefinitions\en-US

The templates are automatically loaded when opening up Group Policy Management Editor under Windows 2008 R2

The policies are located under User Configuration\Administrative Templates\

If your computer is logged on to an Active Directory, here is some code to get to your domain controllers. Note that this will raise errors if you are currently not logged on to a domain.

PS> $Domain= [System.DirectoryServices.ActiveDirectory.Domain]::GetCurrentDomain()
PS> $Domain.DomainControllers

This lists all domain controllers. To find just one, try this:

$Domain.FindDomainController()

And to find all the domain controllers in your forest, simply retrieve all forest domains:

$Domain.Forest.Domains

In traditional batch files, you can use “&&” to execute a second command only if the first one worked. In PowerShell, the same can be achieved by using the try/catch construct. You just need to know some little tricks. Take a look at this:

try {
$ErrorActionPreference=‘Stop’
  # commands follow
}
catch {}

Now, if you want to execute a group of command and abort everything once an error occurs, simply place the commands inside the try block. If the commands are native console commands, add a “2>&1″ to each command.

try {
$ErrorActionPreference=‘Stop’
  netusernonexistent
2>&1   # this
raises an error
  ipconfig
2>&1               # this
will not execute due to the previous error
}
catch {}

Try and replace “nonexistent ” with an existing local user account such as “Administrator”, and you’ll see that ipconfig will execute.

If anybody has any ideas about this, please post below.

Log Name:      Application
Source:        MSExchange SACL Watcher
Date:          15/05/2012 10:13:23
Event ID:      6004
Task Category: General
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      DBNEX**********
Description:
The SACL Watcher servicelet encountered an error while monitoring SACL change.
Returned error 1726 enumerating group policies for account S-1-5-21-1530080316-570038229-1734353810-9451.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event”>
<System>
<Provider Name=”MSExchange SACL Watcher” />
<EventID Qualifiers=”49152″>6004</EventID>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>1</Task>
<Keywords>0×80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=”2012-05-15T08:13:23.000000000Z” />
<EventRecordID>400188</EventRecordID>
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>DBNEX**********</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data>S-1-5-21-1530080316-570038229-1734353810-9451</Data>
<Data>1726</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

WMI is organized into namespaces which work similar to sub-folders. Here’s a line that lists all namespaces you got:

PS> Get-WmiObject -Query “Select *
from __Namespace” -Namespace Root | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name

Next, you could investigate all classes that live in one of these particular namespaces:

PS> Get-WmiObject-NamespaceSecurityCenter2
-List

And then, once you know the classes, you could retrieve information, for example, about your installed AntiVirus protection:

PS>  Get-WmiObject-Namespaceroot\SecurityCenter2-ClassAntivirusProduct

__GENUS                                             : 2
__CLASS                                             : AntiVirusProduct
__SUPERCLASS                                :
__DYNASTY                                        : AntiVirusProduct
__RELPATH                                        : AntiVirusProduct.instanceGuid=“{108DAC43-C256-20B7-BB05-914135
                                                                     DA5160}“
__PROPERTY_COUNT                      : 5
__DERIVATION                                 : {}
__SERVER                                            : TOBIASAIR1
__NAMESPACE                                    : ROOT\SecurityCenter2
__PATH                                                 : \\TOBIASAIR1\ROOT\SecurityCenter2:AntiVirusProduct.instanceGui
                                                                      d=“{108DAC43-C256-20B7-BB05-914135DA5160}”
displayName                                     : MicrosoftSecurityEssentials
instanceGuid                                  : {108DAC43-C256-20B7-BB05-914135DA5160}
pathToSignedProductExe        : C:\ProgramFiles\MicrosoftSecurityClient\msseces.exe
pathToSignedReportingExe : C:\ProgramFiles\MicrosoftSecurity
                                                                        Client\Antimalware\MsMpEng.exe
productState                                   : 397312
PSComputerName                              : TOBIASAIR1

Here’s a cool little XML formatting tool. It takes the path to any XML file and allows you to specify an indent. Then, it saves the file as new XML file with the indentation you specified.

Here’s the code for the function:

functionFormat-Xml  {
param($PathXML, $Indent=2, $Destination=“$env:temp\out.xml“, [switch]$Open)
$xml=New-ObjectXML
    $xml.Load($PathXML)
$StringWriter=New-ObjectSystem.IO.StringWriter
    $XmlWriter=New-ObjectSystem.XMl.XmlTextWriter$StringWriter
    $xmlWriter.Formatting=“indented”
    $xmlWriter.Indentation=$Indent
    $xml.WriteContentTo($XmlWriter)
$XmlWriter.Flush()
$StringWriter.Flush()
Set-Content-Value ($StringWriter.ToString()) -Path$Destination
    if ($Open) { notepad$Destination }
}

And this is how you’d use it:

PS> Format-Xml-PathXMLC:\Windows\Ultimate.xml-Open-Indent 1
PS> Format-Xml-PathXMLC:\Windows\Ultimate.xml-Open-Indent 5

Because of -Open, the result is opened automatically in Notepad, and you can see the results of the different indentation settings. To save the formatted XML to another place, use the -Destination parameter and specify a path and name for the XML file to be created.

Went to Cafe Sofia restaurant in Cavendish Square this afternoon at around 3pm with my partner and son, restaurant was empty and perhaps I should have seen this as taste of food to come.

Service from our waiter was friendly and easy to talk to.

My partner ordered from the two pages of tapas sampler six @ R102 and I ordered a Beef Fillet Medallions @ R119 and two cokes @ R13 each. The waiter returned a couple of minutes later and advised that the dish I ordered was not available and then pointed out which were, only about 50% of the menu, so I chose the Beef Bocata @ R64.

When the food was presented it appeared appetising but I tried a chilli popper of my partners, tasted okay but the texture was like it was refried and I did not finish it. My dish consisted of the beef wrap and chips; the chips were very good but the beef mince was really oily in a bad way but tasty, though I was very hungry at the time.

When we asked for the bill, we mentioned our dissatisfaction of the food to our waiter; he went to talk to the manager but came back a couple of minutes later and just preceded to finalise the payment and the manager never came to speak to us.

So the whole experience was very disappointing and would not recommend the restaurant, and I will not be going back again either.

[Noticed the date is incorrect, should be 09 May 2012]

Communicating Between Multiple PowerShells via UDP

Assume you want to send some information to another PowerShell session, or you’d like to have one session wait until another is ready. Here are two simple functions that allow you to send and receive text information across PowerShell sessions using UDP:

functionSend-Text($Text=‘Sample
Text’,
$Port=2500) {
$endpoint=New-ObjectSystem.Net.IPEndPoint ([IPAddress]::Loopback,$Port)
$udpclient=New-ObjectSystem.Net.Sockets.UdpClient
    $bytes=[Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($Text)
$bytesSent=$udpclient.Send($bytes,$bytes.length,$endpoint)
$udpclient.Close()
}

functionStart-Listen($Port=2500) {
$endpoint=New-ObjectSystem.Net.IPEndPoint ([IPAddress]::Any,$Port)
$udpclient=New-ObjectSystem.Net.Sockets.UdpClient$Port
    $content=$udpclient.Receive([ref]$endpoint)
[Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetString($content)
}

Try it and launch two PowerShell consoles. Execute this code in both of them. Then, in one session call Start-Listen. Optionally you can change the network port.

The session now waits on the port specified. In your other shell, call this to wake up the listening shell and send over some text:

PS> Send-Text‘Hello
Wake Up!’

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Parsing a date and/or time information is tricky because formatting depends on the regional settings. This is why PowerShell can convert date and time based on your regional settings or in a culture-neutral format. Let’s assume this date:

PS> $date
=’1/6/2013′

If you convert this to a datetime type, PowerShell always uses the culture-neutral format (US format), regardless of your regional settings. The output is shown here on a German system:

PS> [DateTime]$date
Sonntag, 6. Januar 2013
00:00:00

To use your regional datetime format, use the Parse() method which is part of the DateTime type, like this:

PS> [DateTime]::Parse($date)

Samstag, 1. Juni 2013 00:00:00

Alternately, you can use Get-Date and the -date parameter:

PS> Get-Date-Date$date
Samstag, 1. Juni 2013
00:00:00