Monthly Archives: October 2012

New script: Find Orphaned Home Folders

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I recently uploaded a new script, Get-OrphanHomeFolder.ps1 to the TechNet Gallery. The script is designed to get a list of all folders in a path and for each of those folders it will query AD to verify if there is a matching Sam account. If this property is not found the script considers this to be an orphaned home folder. If the -FolderSize property is specified the script will retrieve the size of the orphaned folder and display the results as an array of objects.

The script is available here: Technet Gallery: Get-OrphanHomeFolder.ps1

This portion of the script will grab the folder name and query AD for a matching samaccountname, to do this I utilize the [adsisearcher] accelerator so there is no dependency on the AD Cmdlets in this script:

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$CurrentPath = Split-Path $_ -Leaf
$ADResult = ([adsisearcher]"(samaccountname=$CurrentPath)").Findone()

If a matching account is not found the script will display the error, in this case the ‘Account does not exist and has a home folder‘ message and the full path to the folder. This information is stored in a hashtable. The code for that look like this:

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$HashProps = @{
    'Error' = 'Account does not exist and has a home folder'
    'FullPath' = $_.FullName
}

The information gathered in this hash table is then used to build a custom PowerShell object with the hash table as its properties:

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New-Object -TypeName PSCustomObject -Property $HashProps

For more information about this script or any of the other contributions, drop me a line and I will be happy to discuss this further.

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Restoring an Object from the AD Recycle Bin

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Using the Active Directory Recycle Bin I will demonstrate the consequences of deleting and restoring an Domain Administrator user account and display which properties are affected or changed.

First off we create a new user which we then add to the Domain Admins group with the following PowerShell commands:

New-ADUser -Name Admin_Jaap -SamAccountName Admin_Jaap -Enabled:$true `
-AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText 'Secret01' -Force)
Add-ADGroupMember -Identity 'Domain Admins' -Members Admin_Jaap

Then we capture output of Get-ADObject with all properties in a variable:

$BeforeDel = Get-ADObject -LDAPFilter "(samaccountname=Admin_Jaap)" -Properties *

The next step is to delete the user using Remove-ADUser:

Remove-ADUser -Identity Admin_Jaap -Confirm:$false

Now the account can be restored:

Restore-ADObject -Identity $BeforeDel.ObjectGUID -Confirm:$false

Now that the object has been restored, the password that we originally set has been recovered as well. This can be verified by running the following PowerShell command:

Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock {whoami} -Credential admin_jaap -ComputerName dc1

We capture the information stored in AD to the $AfterRes variable:

$AfterRes = Get-ADObject -LDAPFilter "(samaccountname=Admin_Jaap)" -Properties *

Now that we have captured both the account information when the account was just created and after the account was restored we can use this information to have a look at which attributes if any have changed. To make this comparison the Compare-Object Cmdlet can be used. To be able to compare these AD Object, the variable is first piped into Out-String and then split up into an array of strings.

Compare-Object -ReferenceObject (($BeforeDel|Out-String) -split '\n') `
-DifferenceObject (($AfterRes|Out-String) -split '\n') -IncludeEqual

The results show that most attributes are completely unchanged. Attributes containing information related to either replication, or when the object was last changed will be the only changed objects.

Continue reading →

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AD queries and the Active Directory Recycle Bin

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Lately I have been playing around with the AD Recycle Bin on Windows Server 2012. It is a  useful feature that was introduced in Server 2008 R2 and has been improved in Server 2012. New features include:

  • AD Object restore from GUI
  • Password restore
  • Restore of a entire OU
To enable this feature using PowerShell the following line of code should be executed:
Enable-ADOptionalFeature -Identity 'Recycle Bin Feature' `
-Scope 'ForestOrConfigurationSet' -Target 'dmn.com' -Confirm:$false

Note that this feature can never be disabled after it has been enabled. To test its functionality we will create a user:

New-ADUser -SamAccountName Jaap -Name Jaap -Enabled:$true `
-AccountPassword (ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText '$ecret01' -Force)
This command creates a new account named Jaap with $ecret01 as the password. To be able to set a password this string is first converted into a SecureString. To verify that this account was created we can query it using Get-ADobject:
Get-ADobject -Filter 'samaccountname -eq "jaap"'
An alternative, and my personal preference is to utilize [adsisearcher] to query for AD object. It has the advantage that it is available natively in PowerShell, in any version. Here is the syntax to query for the account that was just created:
([adsisearcher]'(samaccountname=jaap)').findone()
We have now established that the account can be found and, so let’s remove the account so it moves to the Active Directory Recycle Bin:
Remove-ADUser jaap
So now we can try the same query again:
Get-ADobject -Filter 'samaccountname -eq "jaap"'
([adsisearcher]'(samaccountname=jaap)').findone()
Get-ADobject will return an error and [adsisearcher] will not return any results. This is because the user account is Tombstoned and placed in the Deleted objects container. To get the desired results, the -IncludeDeletedObjects switch should be used:
Get-ADobject -Filter 'samaccountname -eq "jaap"' -IncludeDeletedObjects
For [adsisearcher] a slightly different approach should be used, the following query will retrieve the deleted user account:
$Searcher = [adsisearcher]'(samaccountname=jaap)'
$Searcher.Tombstone = $true
$Searcher.FindOne()

And that how to query accounts have been deleted and stored in the AD Recycle Bin.

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New article on PowerShell Magazine: Working with [DateTime] Class

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My brief article on working with the [System.DateTime] .Net Class has been posted on PowerShell Magazine. It contains some quick tips on how to utilize this class to work with DateTime objects and how to convert strings to a DateTime object.

For example when converting the ‘accountexpires’ property of an AD account. This can be done as follows:

$Expires = ([adsisearcher]'(samaccountname=jaapbrasser)').FindOne().Properties['accountExpires']
[DateTime]::FromFileTime($Expires)

For more tips regarding this topic, please refer to the article on PowerShell Magazine:
http://www.powershellmagazine.com/2012/10/04/pstip-working-with-datetime-objects-in-powershell-using-system-datetime/

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