Here are two straight-forward ways to create Scheduled Tasks within Windows using PowerShell. One script creates a PowerShell Scheduled Job, and the other creates a classic Windows Scheduled Task. You can read about the differences here. PowerShell v3 and above required.

Create a Scheduled Job

The following script …

After a December 2013 patching downtime, I noticed an abrupt decrease of almost 50% in the performance of 2 SQL Servers.  Both servers were running on HP DL580 G7s.  After many hours of testing and data collection, we finally updated the BIOS firmware from 7/01/2013 to 10/31/2013.

The issue immediately resolved itself. …

This is sort of a continuation of my earlier post, Importing Windows Forwarded Events into SQL Server using PowerShell, where I mentioned that I was unable to get the script to work on Windows 2008 R2 due to a known bug in Get-WinEvents. I had to end up deploying my solution to a Windows 2008 R2 Server and was required …

So it seems like the best way to go about centralizing Windows Events in an Enterprise is to use GPO, but if you can't or don't want to involve Active Directory GPOs, here's a guide on using one server to go out and collect Windows Events from other servers on your domain.

Things you'll need: Windows Server 2012 or …

Over the past couple weeks, I've looked into a number of ways of parsing and importing Windows Forwarded Events into SQL Server: from using SSIS to LogParser to PowerShell to setting up a linked server to the "Forwarding Events.evtx" file.

Ultimately, the only thing that worked was PowerShell's Get-WinEvent …

Read this updated post instead. It's superior in a number of ways ;)

Alright, so I've wanted to setup a Remote Desktop Gateway for years, but the configuration seemed so.. time-intensive. Then I moved to Belgium, my living situation changed and I didn't want to setup a whole new VPN server to access my virtual lab. …

I recently installed BizTalk 2006 and 2009 on a few servers at work. I found the process to be very painful for some reason.

In regards to the BizTalk 2006 installation, I was running into an issue where the installer would error out. I eventually tracked it down to my Virus Scan software blocking the installer from …

UPDATE: Omg, awesome! Use PowerShell's Reset-ComputerMachinePassword, then reboot. Hat tip: Don't Rejoin to Fix.

Don't do what I did below. Just run Reset-ComputerMachinePassword in PowerShell and reboot.

Recently, my workstation was suddenly unable to logon to my Windows 2008 domain. After entering my domain username …

Recently, SQL Server 2008 was uninstalled from a Windows 2008 Server machine due to some configuration issues with Reporting Services. Attempts to re-install SQL Server with the Reporting Services option would fail. I was tasked with the re-install and as always, I welcome this type of work because there is something …

Earlier today, a colleague told me that she doesn't like using my servers because I don't have FTP setup thus, she couldn't map my server as a drive. Well, I showed her. I stand firmly against using FTP as any type of web-related solution and thus, decided on WebDAV to address my colleague's demanding needs.

Initially, …