How to delete an organisational unit (OU) that is protected against accidental deletion

When a new organizational unit (OU) (object) is created in ‘Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC)’ there is an option called ‘Protect container from accidental deletion’. If this is ticked at the point of creation then you will receive the following message when you try to delete the OU at a later point.

“You do not have sufficient privileges to delete <OU Name>, or this object is protected from accidental deletion”.

Although, this is a useful safe guard it may become necessary to delete an OU that is no longer required. In order to do this, the following work around can be used :

1. Open ‘Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC)’.
2. Click on View > Advanced features (ADUC will refresh)
3. Navigate to the OU that is to be deleted > Right click > properties > Object tab
4. Untick ‘Protect object from accidental deletion’ >Click Apply > click OK.
5. Highlight the OU and delete

The OU will now be deleted from ‘Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC)’.

How to check the Microsoft Server 2012 Product key and Windows activation status on your server

It may be necessary to check the licensing status of a server after it has been configured and activated. As an administrator you may also need to check your current list of product keys against the actual entries registered on the server.

To access this information, do the following :

1. Go to the Home Screen of Server 2012 (if you are on the desktop) by pressing the Windows key or point to the lower-right corner of the screen, and then click Search.
2. Type Slui.exe
3. click the Slui.exe icon
4. This will show the status of the activation and also show the last 5 characters of the windows server product key.

Win 7 XP Mode – Integration features unavailable

A user today complained that she was unable to open an application that was installed via XP Mode. The error being produced was “Integration features unavailable”.

After trying to start the VM from the Win7 program menu it produced the error and gave the option to retry or continue. If you retry it produces the same error, if you continue the VM opens with a blank (black) screen.

I managed to resolve the issue, so if you receive the error “Integration features unavailable” or "Could not enable integration features" here is the fix.

1. On the Win7 machine, go to All programs > Windows Virtual PC > Windows Virtual PC.
2. Right click the Windows Virtual PC icon > Select ‘Settings’.
3. Under the ‘Close’ option (on the left), Change the ‘Automatically close with the following action : ‘ from ‘Hibernate’ to Shutdown’ and click OK.
4. Try to open the Virtual PC again and wait until it produces the error, when it gives you the option ‘Retry’ or ‘Continue’, select continue until the Virtual PC with the blank screen is displayed.
5. Go to the top left of the window and choose Action > Close. It will ask if you want to force the shutdown. Select Yes.
6. Once the virtual PC is showing as ‘Shut down’, try to re-open the application and it should work !.
If this helped you or you have an alternative fix, please leave a comment for others.

How to rename an email account on iPad or iPhone

One of my colleagues had configured a new exchange email account on their iPhone but hadn’t changed the name as they were going through the setup.

As a result the name of the email account showed up as ‘Exchange’ rather than ‘Support’ which is our IT support inbox. The way to change this is not immediately evident so once I had changed it for him I decided to write this post for others.

So here is how you rename an email account on iPad or Iphone.

Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Tap your Exchange account (in this case it was ‘Exchange’) > Tap on your exchange email address (i.e. ‘support@supportingtechblogspot.com’) > scroll down to Description (past Username and Password), then enter the new name in there (in this case it was ‘Support’).

Yes, it is slightly strange that the ‘Name’ of the email account is actually labelled ‘Description’ in the UI but I guess Apple can’t get it right all the time !.

How to access the BIOS on a HP PC

I recently had to work on a Windows 7 PC that required XP Mode enabled. In order to do this I had to access the BIOS and enable virtualisation. Theoretically this was easy to do but when I

rebooted to access the BIOS, the HP start up screen didn’t have any option to enter ‘Setup’ or ‘BIOS’ like you would expect to see. The only option I had was ‘Press Escape for start up menu’, which I did with little success.

The PC in question was a HP Pro 3405 tower but this shouldn’t be any reason for it not to have the option. The usual method would be to use F1 but it turns out that the answer is :

TO PRESS F10 WHEN THE PC IS BOOTING UP

I don’t know why HP don’t display this as an option but thankfully it still works anyway.

How to unregister and register a DLL or OCX file in Windows

If you work as an IT professional or system developer you would have encountered DLL (Dynamic Link Library) and OCX OLE Control Files files. Typically you have discovered them as a result of problems.

Although, these files are extremely useful providing functionality within the operating system (OS) and providing custom functions for applications, the OS can get confused at times and you will need to remove them from the mix (not deleting them) and re-apply them.

Thankfully, this is a very easy process :

1. Open up a command prompt. You can do this by going to Start menu > Run or using the keyboard shortcut of Winkey + R.

2. Type “cmd” (without the quotation marks) .

 

3. Press enter and a Windows Command Prompt will be displayed.

4. Navigate to the exact location of the DLL or OCX. A DLL has been used for this example.

5. Type “regsvr32 /u filename.dll” where “filename” is the name of the DLL that you are trying to unregister.

6. Press enter.

7. There will be a brief pause after pressing enter and then you will receive the message : “DllUnregisterServer in (File name) succeeded”

To register a DLL or OCX file

1. Repeat steps 1-4

2. Type regsvr32 filename.dll” where “filename” is the name of the DLL that you are trying to unregister.

3. Press enter

4. After a brief pause you will receive a success message.

Allow/Enable copy and paste between PC to server via VMware vSphere client

We recently virtualised our systems and noticed that by default we were unable to copy and paste from our PCs to the virtual servers via the vSphere client.

Some quick investigation revealed that this feature is actually disabled by default for security reasons.

You can get around the problem by using RDP to get onto the server in question but if you want to allow copy and paste within the vSphere client you can do so by following the steps below :

1. Log into a vCenter Server system using the vSphere Client and power off the virtual machine.
2. Select the virtual machine and click the Summary tab.
3. Click Edit Settings.
4. Navigate to Options > Advanced > General and click Configuration Parameters.
5. Click Add Row.
6. Type these values in the Name and Value columns:
   Name Value
   • isolation.tools.copy.disable    false
   • isolation.tools.paste.disable   false

7. Click OK to close the Configuration Parameters dialog, and click OK again to close the Virtual Machine Properties dialog.
8. Power on the virtual machine.

You will now be able to copy and paste directly to the server.