Bob's questions

I want to automate the deletion of Outlook 2010/2013 Suggested Contacts for a bunch of Exchange users but only for addresses in a particular mail domain.

I can find a lot of information on purging this folder but not a lot on parsing it with a script. I know that the Suggested contacts are a special form of folder stored in the users mailbox, so is Outlook scripting the best answer here? Can I interact with the Suggested Contacts folder like I would interact with a mail folder? Should I be doing this on the Exchange server side instead?

What is the best way to turn on HTTP Strict Transport Security on an IIS 7 web server?

Can I just through the GUI and add the proper HTTP response header or should I be using appcmd and if so what switches?

Do Local Security Policy settings, specifically those under User Rights Assignment, replace or append the existing settings when applied through a Group Policy Object? What about the settings applied through other GPO's?

Is there a way I can check the date that a linux group was created and/or modified? It would be even better if I could pull the last user to modify the group.

I've got a 2k3 functional level domain environment. I'd like to use group policy to deploy a few registry settings.

I know that this can be done through GP Preferences client side extentions (which means deploying and validating the deployment of that CSE installer, which I'd prefer to avoid) and through a GP deployed start-up script (which feels a little clugey, and will take forever to apply). I'd much rather create a central admx or adm template that I can use to manage the settings I need.

Group policy in a lot of cases is just a happy interface for a lot of different registry settings. Can I just take a random admx file and modify it for my needs? What are the syntax pitfalls I should be concerned with? Is there a reference guide that I'm just missing?

I'm curious about the file formats of attachments moving through an Exchange 2007 mail environment. For instance the number of .doc vs. .docx files on average. Exchange Profile Analyzer seems more geared to message size than anything else. Is there anything that can provide this information without being hugely intrusive?

If I run the following command:

netsh advfirewall reset

The windows firewall will get flushed back to it's defaults and looses any program specific rules.

Will programs that require firewall access start prompting the user after the reset is triggered?

I'm working with a WSUS SP2 server, and I'm looking for ways to generate better reports. The built-in reporting system, is almost (but not quite) useless.

My reading suggests that WSUS stores it's data in a SQL database, is anyone out there writing custom queries for WSUS or are there any 3rd party tools out there to help generate useful reports?

I'm looking back at some old MS security bulletin for distribution to new clients and when I look at downloads for the last set of MS ActiveX killbits, KB article here, under each platform I see links with the term IDX. For instance there will be an entry that says "For Windows 7 for 32-bit versions" and then one a few rows down that says "For Windows 7 IDX for 32-bit versions".

What's the difference between the two? I understand from a little digging that idx is one of the field names for the database that ActiveX controls are stored in, but that's not really helpful.

I'm curious as to how many active Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTPS) connections a server has active vs. normal RPC connections.

I've looked through the results out of the get-logonstatistics commandlet and none of the fields seem to show what connection type is in use.

Can an Exchange 2007 distinguish between these connection types and if so what commands are available to pull that data?

I need to get the last password change for a group of account in an Active Directory security group, and I feel like this is something PowerShell should be good at.

Right now, I'm already stuck at how to read the pwdLastSet attribute from the AD account I'm looking at. Even running something simple like this:

[adsi] "LDAP://cn=user1,ou=Staff,ou=User Accounts,dc=ramalamadingdong,dc=net" | Format-List *

gives results for pwdLastSet that appear like this:

pwdLastSet            : {System.__ComObject}

I feel like I'm go about this the wrong way, so what's the best way to query and then format the output (the value is based on the Windows Epoch and not very human readable) of the pwdLastSet attribute?

I'm looking to automate the printing of PDF's from a Windows 2008 Server to an IPP Printer.

• Are there any options for PDF printing built directly into the OS?
• Does anyone have experience with good PDF printing command line utilities?
• Is it possible to automate this using Adobe Reader?

I'm trying to connect a Windows Vista client to a Lanier LD445c (scanner/copier/printer) using IPP over SSL/TLS in order to provide an encrypted channel for printing. The LD445c that I setup for testing is using a self-signed certificate and I'm using the drivers straight from the manufacturer.

Windows XP clients work fine when I set up the printer using https, but when I attempt with Vista Enterprise client it flat out refuses to map the printer. I've done packet captures that show that the client makes a succesful connection to the printer, but after a brief exchange of packets the client sends a RST.

• Does Windows Vista support IPP over SSL/TLS?
• If so, is there a straightforward guide that explains how to get it set up?.
• If not, what options of encrypting print jobs do I have?

I'm looking for ways to encrypt Microsoft SMB data traffic between a client and Windows server or filer appliance. This is not about encrypting the authentication but the actual data transfer.

Is IPSec from the client to a Windows Server my only option?