Quick Activation of Server 2016 via Command Line

Having problems activating Windows Server 2016, (or previous versions Windows 8, or Server 2012) one of these three solutions below should get you through:

1.    Command Line to launch activation GUI:

This is handy if the GUI won’t start and you want to skip some steps to get it to work.

1. Click START – type RUN
2. Type slui 3 and press ENTER
   1. yes, SLUI: which stands for SOFTWARE LICENSING USER INTERFACE
      1. SLUI 1 brings up the activation status window
      2. SLUI 2 brings up the activation window
      3. SLUI 3 brings up the CHANGE PRODUCT KEY window
      4. SLUI 4 brings up the CALL MICROSOFT & MANUALLY ACTIVATE window
3. Type in your product key

     2.     To Activate Windows via Command Line:

   

 1.  Launch a CMD as an Administrator

 2.   Type: slmgr.vbs /ipk xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

 3.   Press Enter

If your key is valid and you are connected to the internet, it should activate within a second or two.

 3.     If above steps points failure, then call Microsoft Activation Center; direct support line at 1 800-936-4900

 

Granting Calendar Access via Exchange Control Panel (ECP)

Ex: Add-MailboxFolderPermission -identity "Managingdirector:\Calendar" -user "personalassistant" -AccessRights Reviewer

 

To change permissions on a Calendar item, type the following command:

 

This command will grant Calendar access, with level reviewer to his Personal Assitant. You can use Editor instead of Reviewer for more access.

 

If Managing director had PA in the past, you may want to remove that access. To that you can use the following command:

 

Ex: Remove-MailboxFolderPermission -identity "ManagingDirector:\Calendar" -user "oldPA"

Desktop Wallpaper Group Policy doesn't work for Win 10 clients: workaround

 

Windows 10 does funky things with wallpapers. It likes to make a cached copy in  %appdata%\roaming\microsoft\windows\themes\cachedfiles

and it will sometimes make a copy under  %AppData%\roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper.jpg as well.

 

There is different behavior on Windows 7 and Windows 10 on desktop wallpaper. In Windows 7, when we log into the system, the cached wallpaper file will re-generated automatically.

But in Windows 10, if the wallpaper path didn’t change, the cached wallpaper will not re-generate.

After I deleted below file and log off/log on I can see the desktop wallpaper automatically changed on Windows 10.

 

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper

So I applied this deletion operation to the domain controller as a log off  script, the script which is as below.

I created a .bat file and the content is:

del %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\TranscodedWallpaper

 

Replication to all domains

Replicate to all domains via command prompt:

repadmin /syncall /AePD

Quickly replicate to Azure AD via Azure ADConnect using PowerShell from Azure AD Connect server (if you have hybrid mode)

Start-ADSyncSyncCycle

  

via Replmon GUI: