windows server

Infopackets Reader Jarold K. writes: " Dear Dennis, I own a small business and have eight PCs running Windows 10, including an already unsupported Windows Server 2012 machine. I had a tech that managed this for us but he's moved on, so I am looking ... for someone else to manage this for us and came across one of your older articles. At any rate, we keep receiving messages that Windows 10 will reach 'end of life' in October 2025 and will no longer receive security updates . I ran the 'PC Health Check' app, and none of the devices are able to upgrade to Windows 11. I understand upgrading is ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ginny S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am running Windows 10 Home and all the sudden it is telling me that I need to change my password and that my Windows password must meet complexity requirements . I have never had this issue ... before. To make matters worse it tells me that the password needs to be minimum of 8 characters and contain both upper and lower case, plus digits. This has happened twice already and I have a hard enough time remembering my passwords. How can I disable the Windows 10 Home password complexity and expiration ? All the posts I've come across all mention ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I hope you can help! I own a small business and we recently purchased a new, refurbished Server computer running Windows Server 2012 R2 DataCenter. I have set up the server as a domain controller, and ... now I'm trying to connect to the domain using my PC here at work - however, every time I try to connect, it gives me the error ' DNS name does not exist. (error code 0x0000232B RCODE_NAME_ERROR) '. Of course the error message is much longer than that. I am not a network administrator and admittedly not very knowledgeable when it comes to Windows ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jeff L. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a Windows 7 machine I'm trying to virtualize, which is connected to a Windows Server 2012 network. The issue I'm having is that the newly created virtual machine works fine after it's been ... virtualized but later it won't work. Whenever I try and login to the network, I receive an error message ' The security database on the server does not have a computer account for this workstation trust relationship. ' I am using VMWare Workstation as the hypervisor. I have tried everything I can think of to fix this but there is absolutely no way for ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Fabian A. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a very old Dell Windows 2003 Server with a PERC RAID card set up for storage. We are trying to convert this old server into a virtual machine, then migrate to Windows Server 2016. I tried ... using the utility Disk2VHD to image the C drive into a .VHD file, then run the .VHD file using Oracle VirtualBox. Unfortunately, I keep getting 'a disk read error occurred' every time I try to boot the virtual machine. I have read your credentials and am very impressed with your knowledge, and was wondering if you could help us convert this server? ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Michael B. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thank you so much for helping me to patch my Windows 2003 Server against the SMB attacks and for removing Windows_Update.exe virus a few weeks back . A have yet another problem that is causing ... high CPU usage! In Task Manager of Windows Server 2003, I see two processes that are eating 50% of my CPU each, namely: SystemTask.exe and SystemTaskInfo.exe . If I try and delete either process, it simply comes back and starts eating my CPU again, which makes everything else on the server painfully slow. Can you please help? " My response: I asked ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Mike B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I run a Windows Server 2003 box that has been fine until two days ago. Now, my CPU usage is 100% with multiple 'Update_Windows.exe' processes running. I've deleted the Update_Windows.exe tasks in ... Task Manager, but it keeps propagating. I did a virus scan, but it did not find anything; Malwarebytes antimalware also is not reporting anything. Prior to the infection, I installed the emergency May 2017 update to avoid the Windows SMB exploit / WannaCry ransomware infection . I understand Windows Server 2003 is no longer supported by Microsoft and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader David F. writes: " Dear Dennis, Our company is running Windows Server 2008 Standard edition. One of the things that has been broken for a very long time is the right click context menu. For example, if we login as the ... Administrator on the server and try and right click an icon on the desktop, nothing happens. The right click context menu is also missing on all of our machines connected to the domain. Can you help? " My response: Admittedly I was not sure why this was happening but had a suspicion it was related to a group policy object setting. Group Policy Objects (or GPOs ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Giovani S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I happened to stumble across your website the other day -- very informative! I am using Windows 10 as my main PC, but I also installed Windows Server 2012 as a virtual machine. I am trying to ... connect to the Windows Server 2012 via Remote Desktop, however, the the UNC path of the Windows Server (\\server2012r2) will not resolve when I try and access it. I have googled this question a million times with a million different 'solutions', but I can't seem to find the answer. The only way I can connect to the Windows Server 2012 using remote ... (view more)