How to Stop Background Windows from Popping Up in Windows 8

Recently I purchased a Windows 8 laptop as part of my normal 3 year hardware refresh. Love it. It is nice and fast. I installed Office Professional Plus 2013 without any issues. When I was asked to deliver a virtual class using Lync, I had an issue. A quick fix was to uninstall Lync 2013 and just use the web based client. That is when it all started.

Out of the blue, windows in the background, or even minimized, would pop up and take focus. It was very embarrassing to have to deliver a class when I could barely maintain control of my own system. Here is how I fixed it.

Open Programs and Features.

Select Microsoft Officer Professional Plus 2013 and then click Change.

Select to Repair your installation.

I am happy to say, no more issues.

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Adding a Comment to a GPO with PowerShell

As I'm writing this article, I'm also writing a customization for a PowerShell course I'm teaching next week in Phoenix. This customization deals with Group Policy and PowerShell. For those of you who attend my classes may already know this, but I sit their and try to ask the questions to myself that others may ask as I present the material. I finished up my customization a few hours ago and then I realized that I did not add in how to put a comment on a GPO. This is a feature that many Group Policy Administrators may not be aware of. This past summer I attended a presentation at TechEd on Group Policy. One organization in the crowd had over 5,000 Group Policies. In an environment like that, the comment section can be priceless. I always like to write in the comment section why I created the policy so I know its purpose next week after I've completed 50 other tasks and can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago. In the Group Policy module for PowerShell V3, th

Return duplicate values from a collection with PowerShell

If you have a collection of objects and you want to remove any duplicate items, it is fairly simple. # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2 # Remove the duplicate values. $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 What if you want only the duplicate values and nothing else? # Create a collection with duplicate values $Set1 = 1 , 1 , 2 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 1 , 2 #Create a second collection with duplicate values removed. $Set2 = $Set1 | Select-Object -Unique # Return only the duplicate values. ( Compare-Object -ReferenceObject $Set2 -DifferenceObject $Set1 ) . InputObject | Select-Object – Unique 1 2 This works with objects as well as numbers. The first command creates a collection with 2 duplicates of both 1 and 2. The second command creates another collection with the duplicates filtered out. The Compare-Object cmdlet will first find items that are diffe

How to list all the AD LDS instances on a server

AD LDS allows you to provide directory services to applications that are free of the confines of Active Directory. To list all the AD LDS instances on a server, follow this procedure: Log into the server in question Open a command prompt. Type dsdbutil and press Enter Type List Instances and press Enter . You will receive a list of the instance name, both the LDAP and SSL port numbers, the location of the database, and its status.

Jason Yoder, MCT

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