Thursday, February 25, 2016

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

RDP client did not see the correct SSL certificate

Renewed and installed the SSL certificate for our RDS 2008 server, however the RDP client kept receiving the invalid certificate error as below:
I first updated the SSL certificate in Gateway server properties, but it is no good. Eventually google and found out I missed one more step which is documented beautifully by MS here, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2000960

1. Open the "Terminal Services Configuration" windows in Windows Server 2008 or the "RD Session Host Configuration" in Windows Server 2008 R2.

2. Open the properties dialog of the "RDP-Tcp" connection.

3. On the "General" tab, check the selected certficate. Ensure that you select a correct certficate to make Terminal Server sessions or Remote Desktop sessions.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Dell Latitude E5550 Boot mode - HASSLE

Re-image Dell Latitude E5550 is a hassle comparing to older generations. The problem has something to do with the UEFI boot mode.

Here is what I found out to have a successful process to re-image the OS from an external CD-ROM drive. My case is using Dell Windows 7 Professional CD media.


  1. Press F12 on Dell logon screen to get into the boot menu.
  2. Change the Boot mode to enable legacy mode. UEFI boot will not work - no matter secure boot On or Off.
  3. Boot to F12 again, select "Legacy CD/DVD drive" from the boot menu. (Booting from UEFI will result a failure during the Installation)
  4. The installation will reboot the first time and it would fail. So remove the CD and select boot from the Internal hard drive.
  5. Do the same step above for the 2nd reboot, and the installation this time.



Azure MFA NPS extension stopped working due to expired certification

 Users complained they were unable to log in VMware Horizon Client portal and the logon stuck at "Authenticating...." screen. So I...