Monthly Archives: December 2013

Backing up Active Directory in Windows Server 2012 R2 with Powershell

  By craig | December 22, 2013 - 8:56 pm | ,
2 Comments

Backing up Active Directory in Windows Server 2012 R2 with Powershell is now really easy thanks to the Windows Server Backup cmdlets provided in Powershell. Windows Server Backup allows you to create a Scheduled backup or a one time backup. In this example, I’ll be doing a one time backup but scheduling via a scheduled task to allow for more flexibility and I’ll be backing up the system state of the server.

The first thing that you will need to do if you haven’t done so already is to install the Windows Server Backup feature.

Once that is done, below is a little script that I created for myself that will backup a server’s system state. If this is a domain controller, you could use the system state backup to restore Active Directory if needed.

Here are some screen caps of what it looks like when it is running.

To finish things off, you can then create a scheduled task to run the script at a time you would like.

I’ve already created a post to show how to create a scheduled task using Powershell. You can find that here.

For further information or to checkout the material I used to create this script please click on the following links: -

Windows Server Backup Cmdlets in Windows Powershell
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj902428.aspx
Using Windows Server Backup Cmdlets
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd759156.aspx
Windows Server Backup Step by Step Guide for Windows Server 2008 R2
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee849849(WS.10).aspx

 

 

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Skydrive Error 0x800705B4 on Windows 8.1

  By wolffhaven | December 21, 2013 - 8:48 am | ,
3 Comments

Every now and then I get a Skydrive error 0x800705B4 on Windows 8.1. It seems to happen with Word or Excel documents a lot. It’s a little painful because I normally then have to fire up another computer to access the file that I need. I searched the web and found various mentions of this issue in forums but no definitive answer on really how to fix the 0x800705B4 error specifically.

In this post, I outline what I did to rectify the 0x800705B4 error. These steps worked for me but your mileage may vary :D. Fingers crossed it works for you too. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that I changed my Skydrive directory from the default to another drive letter, but that seemed to be unrelated.

Below is the 0x800705B4 error that I received.

I checked the Skydrive FAQ website and found that they have a troubleshooter available for download. I ran the troubleshooter, it took a few minutes.

The Skydrive Troubleshooter then prompted to run a maintenance task.

It then let me know that it had indeed found an issue and that it had fixed that issue.

I clicked on View Detailed information to see that it had restarted Skydrive and ran scheduled maintenance tasks.

I then tried to open my excel document and low and behold it worked. This is the first time a troubleshooter that I’ve downloaded from Microsoft has ever worked! Kudos to them!

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