Microsoft released the January 2022 patches and for Server 2012r2 and Windows 8.1 patch KB5022352 seems to result in errors while downloading/installing this patch.
You will most likely notice this, when your Update only gets downloaded until 95% and even after waiting multiple hours nothing changes. If you stopped and restarted the download, it will directly move up to 95% and stay there.
After rebooting the affected machine you will most likely be greeted by the errorcode 80070570.
Many older posts on technet and other sources for general errors with windows update recommend deleting/renaming the windows update catalog folder. In this situation the solution is much more easy:
We tested the above procedure with multiple machines and it seems to solve the errorcode 80070570. Please let me know if that solved the problem for you as well.
Microsoft is rolling out the new feature called ‘Outlook Roaming Signature’ since the beginning of November 2022. For many users this feature will be very handy but if group mailboxes are configured for multiple different users this will cause confusion and problems.
To disable this feature on one computer a registry key needs to be set:
We need to open the registry (regedit) and navigate to the following path:
Here we need to create a new DWORD (32bit) with the following name: DisableRoamingSignaturesTemporaryToggle . The value needs to be set to ‘1’
After the value has been set Outlook needs to be restarted. Already made changes to the signature settings are still active. This is why we need to set the signatures once again and this changes shouldn’t be synced to the cloud.
If we need to make these changes to multiple computers we can use GPOs.
First we need to add a new GPO in our OU and add the correct security groups or users.
Now we highlight the newly added GPO, do a right-click and chose ‘Edit’. Here we need to navigate to the following path:
User Configuration -> Preferences -> Windows Settings -> Registry
Right-click on ‘Registry’ and chose ‘New’ -> ‘Registry Item’.
Now we need to set the following:
Action: Update
Hive: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key Path: Software\Microsoft\Office.0\Outlook\Setup\
Value Name: DisableRoamingSignaturesTemporaryToggle
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value Data: 1
After the computers have synced the GPOs the setting will be updated. Afterwards Outlook needs to be restarted.
Microsoft seems to roll out Windows 11 Upgrades to all Users, even if they have no admin rights on their account. If we want to prevent users from upgrading by mistake, we should make use of a Group Policy Object (GPO).
The Group Policy Object can be set on the following path: Computer configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Windows Update for Business. The template is called Select the target Feature Update version.
Unfortunately the Group Policy is outdated on Server 2019 and 2022 and is missing the option “Which Windows product version would you like to receive feature updates for”. Since Windows 10 and Windows 11 have the same names for their Feature Updates, we need this option to make sure, we are staying on Windows 10. In Server 2016 we are missing the GPO is even missing completly.
GPO without updated Admx-Template
To get the full options available we need to update our Admx-Templates. You can download the newest version (as of 2022-05-27) from here.
The Admx-Templates need to be extracted to a local file location. After the files have been extracted, open Explorer and navigate to the path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Group Policy\Windows 10 November 2021 Update (21H2). Copy the folder “PolicyDefinitions” and paste it to the following UNC-path: \\domain.local\sysvol\domain.local\Policies.
After the files have been copied, open the group policy editor and once again navigate to the path Computer configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Windows Update for Business and open the Template “Select the target Feature Update version“.
We need to enter “Windows 10” into the first box and “21H2” into the second box.
GPO with updated Admx-Template
Please note: As soon as you want your PCs to upgrade to a newer Feature Update than 21H2 you need to change the value in this GPO. Otherwise the PCs will stay on 21H2.
After the clients have rebootet they should not show any signs of Windows 11 anymore.
Block Windows 11 Upgrade on a single computer without domain
With help of the GPO we can even tell a single computer to not upgrade to Windows 11 (and stop showing us the Windows 11 Upgrade stuff in Windows Updates and in our Taskbar). Just open “gpedit.msc” from Windows Search and navigate to the path Computer configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Windows Update for Business and open the Template “Select the target Feature Update version“.
Similar to the GPO for domains we need to enter “Windows 10” in the first and “21H2” into the second box. One reboot later the Windows 11 Upgrade information should be gone.
It comes the day when you finally migrated all your users and mailboxes from onprem to the cloud. This article show the steps needed to disable Azure AD sync from your local domain to Azure AD.
The first step will be to uninstall the Azure AD Sync tool. Uninstall the tool from the server/machine its running on.
In the next step we need to connect to Azure AD via Powershell. This does not work with Linux, that’s why we need a Windows machine. Open Powershell as admin and type the following to install the required cmdlets:
Install-Module -Name MSonline
If you are prompted chose “Y” for yes to install the module.
In the next step we are connecting to Azure AD:
Connect-MsolService
Type in your credentials when the prompt opens and hit Enter.
Now we are going to check whether Azure AD Sync is enabled:
If you receive “True” as answer, Azure AD sync is enabled. If you receive “False” it’s disabled. In the case of “False” you don’t need to do anything further!
Now we are going to disable the synchronization:
Set-MsolDirSyncEnabled -EnableDirSync $false
If we now check the Azure AD Sync status it should show “False”:
DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) should always be enabled on all of your domains used for email. If you do not enable DKIM your mails may inadvertently get treated as spam. The following tutorial shows you how to enable DKIM for your sending domain(s) in Microsoft365 / Office365.
As the first step we need to connect to our M365 Powershell. The last paragraph in this article describes how to do this.
The following command shows a comprehensive list of DKIM related information for domain “domain.com”:
If we just want to check the DKIM status of our domains we can use the following command:
Get-DkimSigningConfig
cmdlet Get-DkimSigningConfig
My example shows that DKIM is enabled for our Microsoft tenant domain but isn’t for our primary sending domain. Before we are able to enable DKIM for our sending domain we need to setup DNS records for verification:
Now we need to set the CNAME records in our dns. Copy selector1 and create a new CNAME entry in your DNS settings. Repeat for selector2 (Destination is just an example, use the output generated in the previous step):
At this point we need to wait until the dns records have been propagated. Wait at least 10 – 15 minutes until you proceed. Chose on of the options below:
Option 1: Via Powershell
Open a Powershell session to your M365 tenant and type the following command:
Login to M365 Admin center (https://admin.microsoft.com)
Go to Security Admin center
Go to Threat management -> Policy
Click on DKIM
Click on your domain
Turn the disabled slider to enabled and save
Option 3: Via old Exchange Admin center
Login to M365 Admin center (https://admin.microsoft.com)
Go to Exchange Admin center
Go to Classic Exchange admin center
Go to Protection -> dkim
Double click your sending domain and click on Enable
If you encounter an error in on of the above steps make sure that your DNS records are set properly. You can check the entries with the following command for Linux:
The output should include the CNAME entry for selector1/selector2 you created in your domain name settings. If you are using Windows you can use the following cmd command:
Both selectors must be correctly set before Microsoft allows you to enable DKIM for your domain. If both entries are correct wait another 15 -30 minutes and try to enable DKIM via one of the above options again.
If you need to move a specific mailbox in Microsoft 365 to a different database server, Powershell is your friend. Open a Powershell session and connect to your Microsoft 365 tenant. If you dont know how to connect to M365 via Powershell, check out the last paragraph in this article: Powershell on Linux
First we should check the actual database server the mailbox is located on:
Get-MailboxLocation -Identity user@domain.com
cmdlet Get-MailboxLocation
As you can see in the above image, the field “DatabaseLocation” shows the hostname of our database server. We are now going to set up a move request for this mailbox. In Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online we are not able to chose the desired server we want to move our mailbox to. Microsoft will move the mailbox to a random, different server:
New-MoveRequest -Identity user@domain.com
cmdlet New-MoveRequest
Once we created the move request we need to wait for the moving provess to finish. We are able to check the status with the following command:
cmdlet Get-MoveRequestStatistics, status CreatingFolderHierarchycmdlet Get-MoveRequestStatistics, status CopyingMessages
It took this 18GB mailbox about1.5 hours to finish. That depends most likely on the usage of source and destination server. After this operation has finished the user should restart their Outlook.
Did you know Powershell is available for Linux too? Sometimes you need the Windows Powershell features available on your Linux machine, e.g. for M365, Exchange Online or Azure AD administration. Powershell can be easily installed but not all features are available.
Linux derivates officially supported for Powershell 7.1:
Ubuntu 16.04/18.04/20.04
Ubuntu 19.10 (via snap-packages)
Debian 9/10
CentOS/RHEL 7/8
Fedora 30
Alpine (from 3.11)
Installation example (Ubuntu 20.04)
You can directly install Powershell via repository:
# Update the list of packages
sudo apt-get update
# Install pre-requisite packages.
sudo apt-get install -y wget apt-transport-https software-properties-common
# Download the Microsoft repository GPG keys
wget -q https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/20.04/packages-microsoft-prod.deb
# Register the Microsoft repository GPG keys
sudo dpkg -i packages-microsoft-prod.deb
# Update the list of products
sudo apt-get update
# Enable the "universe" repositories
sudo add-apt-repository universe
# Install PowerShell
sudo apt-get install -y powershell
# Start PowerShell
pwsh
Connect to Office 365 Powershell
After Powershell has been installed, it’s very easy to connect to Office 365. Open the Powershell terminal and type the following (First step will ask for O365 admin credentials)
