ServerWatch Articles by Marcin Policht

Marcin Policht writes primarily about scripting and Windows management with a focus on Windows 2000. His articles discuss his (more interesting) real-life experiences with the products.

Policht has a number of Microsoft certifications, including the MCSE, MCSD, and MCT, as well as solid familiarity with majority of MS BackOffice products (SMS, SQL, Exchange, IIS), programming and scripting languages (VB, C++, VBScript with wsh), and several years of practical experience with Windows environment administration and engineering.

He is reachable via e-mail at polichtm@hotmail.com, and his articles, along with other Windows 2000 issues, can be discussed in the ServerWatch Discussion Forum.

The following articles are available on ServerWatch:

Windows Patch Management, Software Update Services - A tool for the admin seeking a high level of customization for the deployment infrastructure and patches.

Windows Patch Management, Office Update Inventory Tool - A tool for scanning multiple computers to determine if upgrades are needed.

Windows Patch Management, Looking Beyond Windows - We cast an eye on offerings from Shavlik Technologies and on Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer.

Windows Patch Management, Options in Windows Update - A discussion of admin configuration options in Windows Update.

Windows Patch Management, Free Solutions -- An Overview - General techniques for querying registry and launch processes on local and remote systems as well as various scripting solutions.

Windows Patch Management, Introduction - Recent history about patch-related technologies and an overview of general patch management concepts.

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Hardware-Based Security -A look at hardware-based cryptography options, with an emphasis on products from Rainbow-Chrysalis and nCipher. Exploring Windows 2003 Security: IIS 6.0 -Discussed IIS 6.0 and its role in keeping the operating system safe and secure.

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Authorization Manager - Authorization Manager's roles-based approach to combining authorization with access control

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: RRAS and IAS - Examines security-related enhancements made in Routing and Remote Access Service and Internet Authentication Service

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: IP Security - Details the improvements made to IPSec on Windows Server 2003 and offers a general overview of the technology

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Networking Functionality - An overview of networking functionality enhancements in Windows Server 2003

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: More About Certificate Services - A continuation of our discussion of certificate management tools

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Certificate Services - A discussion of certificate management tools support for Certificate Templates version 2, iproved autoenrollment and autorenewal capabilities, and smplified private key archival and recovery

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Additional Active Directory Authentication Improvements - A discussion of Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), Credential Manager, and InterOrgPerson compatibility

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: More Active Directory Security Improvements - The conclusion of our discussion of Windows Server 2003 Active Directory related security improvements

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Active Directory and Authentication Security Improvements - Security-related improvements in Active Directory and other authentication areas introduced in Windows Server 2003

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Configuring Code Access Security - A how-to guide for configuring code access security

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: The .NET Framework - A detailed overview of the .NET Framework, which serves as the basis for all .NET-related topics

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: SID Filtering and Software Restriction Policies - A discussion of the new Active Directory security-related features, with a focus on SID filtering and software restrictions policies

Exploring Windows 2003 Security: Overview - An overview of the major changes designed to offer higher levels of security in Windows Server 2003

Windows Server 2003 Group Policy Enhancements, Part IV - Learn how to use Group Policy Management Console to simplify group policy management

Windows Server 2003 Group Policy Enhancements, Part III - All about the Resultant Set of Policies in Windows Server 2003

Examining Windows 2003 Server Group Policy Enhancements, Part II - A continuation of our look at Windows 2003 Group Policy Objects with an axamination of WMI Filters

Examining Windows Server 2003 Group Policy Enhancements - An overview of Group Policy Management in Windows Server 2003

Windows Terminal Services in Windows Server 2003: A Preview - An overview of the offerings and licensing changes in Windows Terminal Services

Hacking for Everyone - A review of Syngress Publishing's "Hack Proofing Your Network"

How to implement Restricted Groups in Windows NT - Windows 2000 offers a feature called Restricted Groups, applied via Security Settings in Group Policies

How Secure Is Encrypted File System? - Considerations to keep in mind when deploying Encrypted File System in a Windows 2000/XP Professional environment

Windows Services Management With WMI (Part 3) - Examines methods that enable users to install and remove Windows services

Windows Services Management With WMI (Part 2) - Discusses methods that allow parameters of Windows services to be modified

Windows Services Management With WMI (Part 1) - Learn how to manage Windows services using WMI scripting; also offers a variety of basic scripts to better manage the Win32_Service class

Testing IP connectivity With WMI - Using properties of Win32_PingStatus class to test network connectivity

Setting Network Parameters Using WMI (Part 2) - WMI makes setting scripting configuration of network parameters easier than ever; the Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration class is one way to do this and is overviewed in this article

Setting Network Parameters Using WMI (Part 1) - WMI makes setting scripting configuration of network parameters easier than ever; the Win32_NetworkAdapter class is one way to do this and is overviewed in this article

Troubleshooting Group Policies - Tools and techniques for troubleshooting Group Policies in Windows 2000 and XP

Windows 2000/XP and hard drive size limits - The size does matter...

Accessing Active Directory via Active Server Pages (Part 3) - Caveats of IIS Authentication

Accessing Active Directory via Active Server Pages (Part 2) - About delegation for non-managers

Accessing Active Directory via Active Server Pages (Part 1) - Listing AD Groups via Web Pages

Managing Windows Registry with Scripting (Part 4) - Modifying Registry Permissions

Managing Windows Registry with Scripting (Part 3) - Displaying Registry permissions

Managing Windows Registry with Scripting (Part 2) - Creating, deleting, and enumerating registry keys and values

Managing Windows Registry with Scripting (Part 1) - About limitations of Windows Script Host and how to get around them

WMI for Everyone - WMI without scripting (well, almost ...)

Managing Local Group and User Accounts in a Domain environment - How to automate resetting local account passwords and modifying membership of local groups

Inventory of Users and Computers using ADSI - How to automate collecting information about users and computers

Scripting NTFS permissions with ADSI (Part 3) - Time for a change ...

Scripting NTFS permissions with ADSI (Part 2) - Showing all your ACEs

Scripting NTFS permissions with ADSI (Part 1) - Let's start with acronyms - SDs, DACLs, SACLs, ACEs ...

Searching for the Missing Link - or how to avoid AD sizing problems

The best ways to get Thin - Diet tips? well, not exactly...