The year was 1983. A new set of APIs called NetBIOS was introduced, used by the IBM PC Network LAN software. That API established a device naming convention that allowed for 15 […]
What’s in a (Windows computer) name?
Michael Niehaus
Setting up independent environments in Hyper-V
It seems like I’ve always got a few different environments running in Hyper-V, each with their own DNS, DHCP, Active Directory, etc. running in them. And in today’s cloud-connected world, they can’t […]
“Something went wrong” with OOBEAADV10
Maybe you’ve seen this error before: The explanation is somewhat simple, even if the cause might not be: It means that there was some sort of error while loading the Azure AD […]
Need for (disk) speed
The speed of computers has come a long way since I first started working with them. And while we can all appreciate that CPUs are orders of magnitude faster and that we […]
Network tracing during OOBE with Fiddler
Sometimes you need to see what’s going on as a device is joining Azure AD and enrolling in an MDM service. Since that process is typically done during OOBE, that means capturing […]
I’m not dead yet
I (somewhat) quoted Douglas Adams when I posted that I was leaving Microsoft after 16+ years. And after reading enough comments on that on LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. that sounded more like eulogies, […]
Tech-related podcasts to follow
Initially, I started listening to podcasts for a way to relax during the daily commute. Then that daily commute disappeared (permanently for me, but I suspect many others will eventually return to […]
Windows 10 and a PC’s real-time clock
I’ve written enough about the challenges of Windows devices and the real-time clock that you’ve probably heard this one before: Windows stores the time in the real-time clock in the local time […]
So long, and thanks for the Coke Zero
It might be a corny take on the Douglas Adams book title and quote, but there is a point to it. Friday was my last day working for Microsoft. In these odd […]
30 years in the industry, many more to go…
It occurred to me over the summer that I missed a significant milestone: As of May 2020, I had been working in IT and technology for 30 years. That started with my […]
