Tips & Tricks | Title (Required)

Windows Server 2012 Essentials : Media Streaming Problems?

May 3, 2013 by Robert Pearman 2 Comments

I recently got myself a Nokia Lumia 820, and one of the benefits of having this Windows phone, (apart from looking like the coolest kid in school) is that i get to use the very funky My Server App. This App is nothing new of course, and SBS Essentials (and lest we forget, Home Server) also had similar Apps, very useful they are too, if like me, you are completely unable to function unless you have access to your server, from everywhere. The 2012 Era App has some differences over the 2011 version, but my post today is not really about the App itself. I was just using the App as a nice way to show off about my new phone.

So, to business. I was reading a forum question about Media Streaming, and how to go about troubleshooting.

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Filed under Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with App, DLNA, Media, MP3, Phone, RWA, SSL

Windows Server 2012 Essentials : After Transmog SILSVC Error

May 2, 2013 by Robert Pearman Leave a comment

Back in November, a chap in the Forum had dipped his toe into the world of Transmogging, and encountered an error that was being thrown up in the logs after the process had completed.

The SILSVC should be started automatically but it is stopped.

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Filed under General, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with 2012, Error, Essentials, SILSVC, Transmog

Windows Server 2012 Essentials: Shutdown client machines after a backup

November 23, 2012 by Robert Pearman 3 Comments

A client of ours who is running a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials on their SBS 2011 Standard network (for client PC Backup) likes their machines to shutdown each night after a backup.

This could apply to any of the Essentials Server SKUs including SBS 2011 E, WHS 2011 or Essentials 2012.

We schedule the backups to run between 7pm and 11pm so all the machines will have time to backup. It is really simple to set this shutdown task up, of course some people prefer their machines to go to sleep or hibernate but in this case we actually want to turn off those machines.

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Filed under Backup, SBS E, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with 2008 r2, 2011, 2012, Client Backup, Essentials

Windows Server 2012 Essentials HP Printer Unspecified Device

November 2, 2012 by Robert Pearman Leave a comment

I recently did a post about adding a Printer to an Essentials server, i thought i had covered all the bases, however i have seen several questions pop up on the forum regarding HP Printers appearing as unspecified devices when connected via USB. This presented me with a unique challenge as all my lab kit is on HyperV. However i do have a USB HP printer in the office, so i hooked it up with a long USB lead to a MicroServer, and set about trying to repro the problem.

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Filed under Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with Essentials, Printer, Server 2012, Unspecefied Device, USB

PowerShell, Make it do something useful!

October 29, 2012 by Robert Pearman 7 Comments

$users = ((Get-ADUser -filter * | where-object { $_.GivenName -ne $null }) | foreach{ $_.Name})
foreach ($user in $users)
{
        $FirstName = (Get-ADUser -filter {Name -eq $User} | foreach {$_.GivenName}).ToString()
        $SurName = (Get-ADUser -filter {Name -eq $User} | foreach {$_.SurName}).ToString()
        $DisplayName = ("$Firstname" + " " + "$Surname")
        $DisplayName
        Set-ADUser $User -DisplayName $DisplayName
        Set-ADUser $User -Description "User Created by Windows Server 2012 Essentials Dashboard"
}

You might be wondering what the hell that means?

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Filed under PowerShell, Tips & Tricks, WSE Tagged with Dashboard, Essentials, Power Shell

Windows Server 2012 Essentials : Add a Network Printer

October 24, 2012 by Robert Pearman 2 Comments

I have seen and heard of people struggling to install printer drivers in mixed x64 and x86 environments, it has been a problem for a long time now, probably as far back as XP x64, certainly it was an issue with SBS 2008.

The problem being in order to install a printer on the Server, you need the x64 bit driver, but on a client pc you may be on x86 (32Bit) Windows, so you need a different driver.

Essentials 2012 is no different. So, i thought i would just get an example together using a printer i have here in the office, an HP Laserjet 3055. This is a good example actually because when you install it to WSE12, it picks up a valid driver, but there is no equivalent driver for Windows client available from HP.

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