Active Directory

With Windows XP, you could set your own login background colors and/or wallpaper by modifying the values found in the following registry location: HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop. Windows 7 no longer reads this registry key. Instead you’ve got to complete the multi-step process described in [this article](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee ostensibly). While the steps to set a login wallpaper are not complicated, one challenging limitation is the fact your background wallpaper needs to reside on the workstation’s hard drive. Interestingly, this is not true for the user’s wallpaper, as there are GPO settings to point to a network location. ...

Here’s a quick tip for running a service pack report against your Active Directory servers using PowerShell. Method 1 The first approach retrieves all computer accounts from Active Directory, then filters results: 1 Get-ADComputer -Properties OperatingSystem, OperatingSystemServicePack -Filter * | Where-Object {$_.OperatingSystem -like '*server*'} | Format-Table name, oper* -autosize This technique retrieves all computer objects before filtering. Method 2 The improved approach applies filtering at query time: 1 Get-ADComputer -Properties OperatingSystem, OperatingSystemServicePack -Filter {OperatingSystem -like '*server*'} | Format-Table name, oper* -autosize By making smarter use of the -Filter switch and filtering before retrieval, this can lead to a significant amount of time saved. ...

PowerShell one-liners for both the native AD module and Quest tools to identify users missing UPN attributes and assign them automatically.

The long-awaited Active Directory Migration Tool v3.2 is released for Windows Server 2008 R2, providing integrated toolset for AD domain migration and restructuring.