With all Microsoft Active Directory Module for PowerShell, it doesn’t have an cmdlet to simply search a user or group in AD to find it exists or not. Get-ADUser or Get-ADGroup spits an ugly error message if it doesn’t find the object. I wrote an PowerShell function to do exactly what I wanted. Simple search … Continue reading Find a user (or any object) exists in Active Directory →

The issue with Get-ADUser JohnDoe –Properties MemberOf cmdlet is it doesn’t list Domain Built-in groups like Domain Users. I am not sure why Microsoft wants to hide built-in groups from listing user group memberships. So I have written a VB Script style function. To use this function, copy & paste this function to your PowerShell … Continue reading PowerShell: Check the user is member of a Group (including Built-in Groups) →

If you copy and paste multi-line text into a Excel cell, Excel pastes into multi-row or multi-column data. This blog tip is to show how to paste a text into a cell and preserve the tabs and paragraphs into the same cell. Solution: 1. Copy your multi-line text (Control-C) 2. On Excel, Select the cell … Continue reading Excel: Paste multi-line text into a cell →

Microsoft ditched the start-menu in Windows 8. I get that. BUT we used to get to the start-up folder using start-menu, so we can place few shortcuts to start automatically when we log in.  How the hell am I going to find it in the GUI? No where. I searching around and found where the … Continue reading Windows 8.1: Where the heck is Start-up folder? →

Pre-requisites: 7-Zip software (Download it from here: http://7-zip.org/), Windows 2012 (R2) ISO (or Windows 8.1 ISO), 8GB or more USB disk Open Command Prompt in elevated mode (Run as Administrator) Type diskpart and press Enter Type list disk and press Enter. Note the list of existing disks. Insert the USB Disk Type list disk and … Continue reading How to Create a bootable Windows 2012 R2 USB Disk? (applies to Windows 8.1 also) →

In Outlook 2013 (& 2010) if you paste or insert an picture (e.g., Logo) in Signature Editor, it is not resizable. You are stuck and not able to do a correct sized picture in Logo. But No worries. There is an very simple trick that you can make the signature however you want. Click New … Continue reading Outlook 2013 (&2010): Pictures in Signature–How to? →

WebSSO is great and it works beautifully if configured correctly. If you go https://rdwebserver.company.com/RDWeb, you will be presented with form based authentication page. What if we present the published apps/icons without presenting form-based authentication page, meaning use Kerberos or NTLM authentication with logged of user. This makes sense for internal corporate users, they are already … Continue reading RDS 2012 R2–Single sign on using Windows Authentication for RDWeb page →

If you liked how OS X have an Applications folder, you can do that in Windows 8.x also. It’s very easy. 1. Open Explorer 2. Go to a location where you want to create Applications Folder (e.g., Documents) 3. Create a new folder and rename the folder to Applications.{4234d49b-0245-4df3-b780-3893943456e1} 4. That’s all. Open the Applications … Continue reading Windows 8: All installed Applications in one folder like Mac OS X →

The straight forward method of shutdown the Windows 8.x tablets is bring the charms bar (slide from right to left on the right side of the screen), click Settings, Power and then Shutdown. (Well, you can press and hold the power button too). To make things little easier you can place a tile/icon on the … Continue reading Windows 8.1: Easy Shutdown method for touch screen computers →

When you lock your Windows 8.1 computer/tablet, it shows the your default logon screen picture. You can enable photo slide show on your lock screen. To do this, make sure you have some photos or picture readily available on your Pictures folders (or anywhere on the computer hard disk). Open PC Settings (Move your mouse … Continue reading Windows 8.1: Photo Slide Show on your Lock Screen →