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​Stop “installing” autonomous AI agents on your daily driver. You are doing it wrong. Our hero, Jolty (Zoë Roth AKA Disaster Girl) being told to ‘gonnae no dae that!’ a beautiful Scottish expression (please don’t do that) as a fire blazes in the background. This phrase perfectly sums up my feelings on MoltBot and the…

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  • Manually Update GAL in O365 or Exchange16

    There is the odd occasion that may require you to manually update GAL in exchange – whatever version or platform you may be using it on.

    In Exchange 2016 this is very easy. Simply open Exchange powershell on the server and enter the below:

    Update-GlobalAddressList -Identity "Default Global Address List"

    For O365 – it’s a little bit more complicated, first we need to make sure that the Admin has the ‘Address List’ role.

    You can either do this through the Exchange portal:

    Update GAL in Office365

    Or can do this Via powershell with the command below:

    $dispName="ADMIN NAME"
    $roleName="Address Lists"
    $userObject=Get-MsolUser | Where DisplayName -eq $dispName
    $userUPN=$userObject.UserPrincipalName
    Add-MsolRoleMember -RoleMemberEmailAddress $userUPN -RoleName $roleName

    Finally – once the permissions are set we can move and finally update Gal by

    Set-AddressList -Identity "All Users"

  • The Windows Death command – Kill a Windows PC

    Sometimes in the IT world you just need to let off some steam – sometimes a pile of old PC’s through in the PC ‘Graveyard’ are a fun way to do so.


    Kill a Widows PC

    Often we will play with various ways to kill off old PC’s before they are then securely wiped and recycled, and this command we are about to go into is one of the basics.

    del /S /F /Q /A:S C:\windows

    Thats it.

    Yes it really is that easy to kill a windows PC!

    Lets go through it and some of the pitfalls you may find.

    del – This is the windows command to delete an object, pretty self explanatory
    /S – Deletes specified files from the current directory and all subdirectories. Displays the names of the files as they are being deleted.
    /F – Forces deletion of read-only files.
    /Q – Specifies quiet mode. You are not prompted for delete confirmation.
    /A:S – Deletes files based on the following file attributes, in this case: s = System files
    C:\windows – The destination we are deleting.

    Why does this work? – Well most people reading this know already, but if you didn’t – the Windows folder simply put is the heart of the Windows operating system. Killing it will stop the OS from booting.

    Most users readers will be asking “Why put the C:\Windows” at the end of the script, should it no logically be put in front of the other switches? Well this is to do with personal preference really, and to do with the fact that it is convinient to then go about and delete more contect using the same script, by hitting up arrow, then simply backspacing and changing your destination. Lazy much? You bet you!

    Bonus post of to Kill a Windows PC and to make this more effective coming next week – little hint:
    takeown /f C:\Windows /r /d y

    p.s. This is for information only – be responsible!

  • Stop/kill a hung service [SOLVED]

    Occasionally you will come across a hung service

    Most likely when you are updating, upgrading or restarting a section of a program. Exchange is a prime culprit of this, hanging information stores and the likes. So;

    To kill the service you have to know its PID (Process ID). Finding this is easy in an administrative command prompt:

    1: lookup the process ID

    sc queryex *service name*

    (Hint: you can find the service name by loading up services.msc and then opening the services properties dialog)

    Step 2: Identify the PID
    Halfway down the list will be the services associated PID

    Step 3: kill the process with the taskkill command

    taskkill /f /pid *PID*

    This will force kill the hung service, which you can then re-start in services.msc

  • Change message size limits in exchange 2016

    There is the odd occasion that you may need to change the allowed message size limits in exchange, either to send or to receive – below we look specifically at self hosted Exchange 2016

    First, open up Exchange powershell, and and enter any required domain credentials.

    Next we are going to view the current message limits on the server by the following multiline command:

    get-transportconfig | ft maxsendsize, maxreceivesize
    get-receiveconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize
    get-sendconnector | ft name, maxmessagesize
    get-mailbox Administrator |ft Name, Maxsendsize, maxreceivesize

    Once armed with this information we can proceed to string together a command in order to get the desired messages allowed through the system. The main command is the below:

    get-transportconfig | Set-TransportConfig

    This calls the transport layer configurations and allows you to pipe changes to it. Next we have the different set commands for different limits;

    -maxsendsize 30MB -maxreceivesize 30MB; get-receiveconnector | set-receiveconnector -maxmessagesize 30MB; get-sendconnector | set-sendconnector -maxmessagesize 30MB; get-mailbox | Set-Mailbox -Maxsendsize 30MB -maxreceivesize 30MB

    From the above, you can pick and choose what you need to change the message size limits, as in the example, this will set ALL connectors ingoing and outgoing to 30MB. The full command will look something like the below:

    get-transportconfig | Set-TransportConfig -maxsendsize 30MB -maxreceivesize 30MB; get-receiveconnector | set-receiveconnector -maxmessagesize 30MB; get-sendconnector | set-sendconnector -maxmessagesize 30MB; get-mailbox | Set-Mailbox -Maxsendsize 30MB -maxreceivesize 30MB

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