Chris Driver's questions

I have a laptop (Dell XPS-15 9560) running FortiClient 6.x SSL VPN which connects through to a Fortigate firewall.

Over the past 18 months, the FortiClient VPN has been incredibly stable and unexpected VPN disconnections were rare. By rare, maybe once a week.

A few months back, the laptop had a Windows 10 feature update from 1909 to 2004 and from that day onwards, the VPN has started to behave unreliably. Disconnections are totally random, I can last 8 hours uninterrupted one day and the next day 10 disconnections throughout the day, some within 5 mintues of each other. I usually experience around 6 disconnections per day. Each time, the WiFi is still connected and I can immediately reconnect the SSL VPN with no issue.

I understand that a VPN relies on a solid uninterrupted network connection and if that fails, even briefly, it can cause the VPN to drop. What I cannot work out is why the VPN is dropping and why it started after my upgrade to Windows 10 2004.

I have investigated the usual stuff:

• My WiFi connection is stable, with strong signal and it does not ever drop out.
• My router is a high end ASUS model with the latest firmware
• I have tried 2.4 and 5 GHz WiFi connections with no improvement
• I have uninstalled/reinstalled the FortiClient software
• I have upgraded to the latest version of FortiClient
• I have uninstalled/reinstalled my WiFi adapter (Killer Wireless-n/a/ac 1535 Wireless Network Adapter)
• I have checked on Dell's website for newer network drivers
• I have run diagnostics on the FortiClient. It identifies a disconnection, but offers no real information that points me to the issue
• I have checked Windows Event Logs for any relevant issues at the time of VPN disconnection

I have another laptop, also connected through WiFi to the same ASUS router. This is running the same FortiClient, and this has a solid, reliable SSL VPN connection with no random disconnects. This is also a Dell laptop running Windows 10 2004, but with a different brand of network adapter.

I am convinced the issue is related to the Windows 10 feature upgrade to 2004, because the issue started within hours of the upgrade, but I cannot think of any resolution.

Any help or troubleshooting suggestions would be really appreciated. Thank you!

I have a non-domain joined Win 10 computer which accesses shares on a domain joined Win 2016 server. At first connection with one of these shares, the Win 10 client is challenged and I supply domain credentials. Everything works as expected.

If I understand this correctly, a connection in this scenario will use NTLM rather than a more secure protocol such as Kerberos. Is this assumption correct? I have a valid use-case for this computer not to be joined to the domain, but would like to avoid using NTLM due to hacking tools such as Mimikatz. Are there any best practices to ensure non-domain joined computers can securely access shares on a domain?

I have a Scheduled Task running on a Windows 2008 R2 server.

The task calls a .bat file that performs a file copy.

Everything works perfectly except for one thing. I want the task to terminate if it takes longer than a certain period of time. When I enable 'Stop the task if it runs longer than:' (in the Settings tab) and enter a time limit, this just gets ignored. To test whether the stop works, I have added a delay in the batch file to cause it to sleep for a while.

The task is configured to run as a local user (not the administrator) and as mentioned earlier, everything works perfectly except for the termination of the job if it takes too long to run.

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

I will soon be purchasing a number of laptops running Windows 7 for our mobile staff. Due to the nature of our business I will need drive encryption. Windows BitLocker seems the obvious choice, but it looks like I need to purchase either Windows 7 Enterprise or Ultimate editions to get it. Can anyone offer suggestions on the best course of action:

a) Use BitLocker, bite the bullet and pay to upgrade to Enterprise/Ultimate

b) Pay for another 3rd party drive encryption product that is cheaper (suggestions appreciated)

c) Use a free drive encryption product such as TrueCrypt

Ideally I am also interested in 'real world' experience from people who are using drive encryption software and any pitfalls to look out for.

Many thanks in advance...

UPDATE

Decided to go with TrueCrypt for the following reasons:

a) The product has a good track record

b) I am not managing a large quantity of laptops so integration with Active Directory, Management consoles etc is not a huge benefit

c) Although eks did make a good point about Evil Maid (EM) attacks, our data is not that desirable to consider it a major factor

d) The cost (free) is a big plus but not the primary motivator

The next problem I face is imaging (Acronis/Ghost/..) encrypted drives will not work unless I perform sector-by-sector imaging. That means an 80Gb encrypted partition creates an 80Gb image file :(

I have a strange problem with the (built-in) fax server on my Windows Small Business Server 2003 box.

Everything works perfectly (i.e. the fax server can send and receive faxes) but after a period of time, anything from 4 to 12 hours, the server stops receiving (incoming) faxes. I tried telephoning our fax number and it just rings without ever being answered.

The only resolution I have found is to restart the fax service at which point everything works again.....for a bit!

I have tried to diagnose the problem myself but there are no entries in the event log to indicate anything is wrong even after I change the fax logging level to high. Windows also appears to be happy with the fax hardware, driver, fax service etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

I have a Windows SBS 2003 R2 server that has a strange problem. If the server is left running for approximately 4 days, I cannot get the login screen to appear at the console - all that displays is a blank grey screen. Weirdly I have no problem logging into the server remotely (using RDP) and in every other respect, the server is performing faultlessly. This inability to login at the console continues until the server is restarted at which point everything is fine for about 4 days and then it happens again!

I have researched this problem on the internet and although there are lots of cases of people experiencing the GSOD (grey screen of death), they seem to get this both at console and remote login.

This problem only started to occur recently and changes to the server during this period have been minimal - only Windows Updates and some maintenance patches for Backup Exec 12.5.

I have also examined the Windows Event Log and cannot find any error relating to this problem.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.