Restoring Windows shares after migrating data from one server to another

Situation:  An office used robocopy to copy files from a Windows 2003 file server to a Windows 2008 R2 server.  Permissions were copied but shares were not.

Follow the steps below to restore the file shares.  Note: the drive letters and paths must be the same on the two systems or this procedure will not work.

This procedure applies only to NetBIOS shares and not to Macintosh volumes.

1.  On the SOURCE server that contains the shares that you want to transfer launch regedit
2.  Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares
3.  Export the registry key by going to the File menu and clicking on Export
4. Save the file to a location that is accessible from the new server
5. On the TARGET server launch regedit
6. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Shares
7. Import the saved registry key by going to the File menu and clicking on Import
8. Enter the path to the saved registry key that you exported in step 3
9. Restart the server

 Full details of this procedure can be found in this MS KB article.

Changing the Machine Password Interval on a Mac and Windows

Sometimes when a user can not log into their computer (shaking login) the problem is with the machine password and not the user account password.  By default Windows machines reset their machine password every 30 days but Macs do so every 14.  If a computer is on the network but can not connect to a DC at its password change interval it can subsequently prevent the user from logging in and/or changing their password from the computer. 

To change the machine password interval on a Mac you must first unbind the computer and then follow these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3422

Setting the passinterval to "0" is the recommended fix.

Keep in mind that having a computer never reset its password poses a potential security risk because the security channel between the computer and the DC will never be reset.  This means that if someone discovers the machine password they could perform pass-through authentication directly to a DC.

Here is a good article describing the entire machine password change proces:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askds/archive/2009/02/15/test2.aspx

And here is Microsoft's KB on the process for PCs:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154501

Windows and Mac users unable to access server shares and printers

We received a report from several offices that users were unable to access server shares or print until their passwords were reset in AD.

Users were able to log into their computers and send/receive mail.

The users were receiving a "user name could not be found" error when attempting to connect to servers and the printers were showing "Unable to Connect".

The problem was that the User Principal Name (UPN) was holding old cached values. Logging into the computer using the full UPN (first.last@domain.com), restarting and logging back in with the normal AD name (first.last) resolved the issue.

This problem seemed to only affect users who had had their UPN updated recently.