How to: Deploy Microsoft LAPS and Windows LAPS

We’ve all heard of Microsoft LAPS. This stands for Local Administrator Password Solution and is already available from Windows Server 2008 R2. With Microsoft LAPS it is possible to periodically and fully automatically change the password of the local administrator account.

Microsoft recently launched Windows LAPS, as a successor to Microsoft LAPS. A number of new functionalities have been added and it is now also part of the Windows Server operating system (from Server 2019 April Update) and Windows 10 and 11.

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How to: Change computername in Windows Explorer on Windows Server 2012 R2

When you’re are using a lot of virtual machines or environments, it’s somethimes realy usefull to see in what environment or on what server you’re logged in. If created a really nice solution for my servers, basically Remote Desktop Services in different environments, that does exact my I need! I’ve changed the displayname in Windows Explorer to the value “user on server”, for example: “mark on prod-rds-01”.

You can set this new value with Group Policy Preferences or some other scripting.

1.) Create a new GPO in the Group Policy Management Console
2.) Navigate to “User Configuration / Preferences / Windows Settings / Registry
3.) Create a new registry item and browse to the following registry key:
HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/CLSID/{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
4.) Change the default REG_SZ value to “%username% on %computername%”
5.) Login to the specific server where you targeted the GPO and open Windows Explorer
6.) The name of your computer has changed to “username on computername”

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