Windows 11 25H2 Long Path support

Has anyone used the long path regedit recently? I tried it on a few computers recently and it doesn't seem to work. Both notepad and Office applications are unable to open files when the combined length is longer than 260.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/fileio/maximum-file-path-limitation?tabs=registry

The documentation seems to support that it should only work with applications specifically designed to be compatible, but I remember it working with Office apps before. Anyone have any insight on this? Was there a recent change?

https://redd.it/1p7c153
@r_systemadmin

What is a special habit you have in your everyday sysadmin life?

I'll go first. Every time I press restart during server patching, I salute the VM or host in the hope that they will come back online quickly and I won't have to work any longer in the maintenance window.

https://redd.it/1p7gfi7
@r_systemadmin

What happened to the IT profession?

I have only been in IT for 10 years, but in those 10 years it has changed dramatically. You used to have tech nerds, who had to act corporate at certain times, leading the way in your IT department. These people grew up liking computers and technology, bringing them into the field. This is probably in the 80s - 2000s. You used to have to learn hands on and get dirty "Pay your dues" in the help desk department. It was almost as if you had to like IT/technology as a hobby to get into this field. You had to be curious and not willing to take no for an answer.

Now bosses are no longer tech nerds. Now no one wants to do help desk. No one wants to troubleshoot issues. Users want answers on anything and everything right at that moment by messaging you on Teams. If you don't write back within 15 minutes, you get a 2nd message asking if you saw it. Bosses who have never worked a day in IT think they know IT because their cousin is in IT.

What happened to a senior sysadmin helping a junior sysadmin learn something? This is how I learned so much, from my former bosses who took me under their wing. Now every tech thinks they have all the answers without doing any of the work, just ask ChatGPT and even if it's totally wrong, who cares, we gave the user something.

Don't get me wrong, I have been fortunate enough to have a career I like. IT has given me solid earnings throughout the years.

https://redd.it/1p7hmjn
@r_systemadmin

I remember when digicert didn't suck.

That is all.

https://redd.it/1p7jwzm
@r_systemadmin

How has Dell Command Update worked for you?

We recently did a slow release by installing Dell Command Update in new images (so not directly from Intune) and configuring it to update itself via the Intune ADMX. So right now, only about 5% of devices have Dell Command Update. We have it configured to update once per month.

How has it worked for you? Do you have any horror stories? Do you have any config recommendations?

https://redd.it/1p7m6dg
@r_systemadmin

Help desk tools for mid-size teams? (college project + real life need)

Doing a project on ITSM tools, and at the same time I’m helping a mid-size company part-time with internal IT ops.
Their current help desk setup is super outdated..

What tools do you guys recommend for 100–500 employees?

https://redd.it/1p7o9r0
@r_systemadmin

How do I get a sharepoint activity list (as shown when you go to "restore this library")?

Audit log reports and unified audit log are empty, looks like they weren't started before and I have now started them...

When I go to "restore this library", however, it gives me a chronological list of every change made to the sharepoint site and I can choose to restore to any given point/change.

Is there a way to export that list for the last 7 days, or to otherwise get that data?


Edit: If you go to the library and go to details -> activity you can see the history too... but I can't find any way to export it...

https://redd.it/1p7tfzr
@r_systemadmin

Our dev workflow feels like a group project gone wrong

Design uses Figma PMs use Sheets devs use Jira QA uses something called Testy dont ask. We spend more time syncing tools than shipping builds. There has to be a better way.



https://redd.it/1p7umve
@r_systemadmin

Thickheaded Thursday - November 27, 2025

Howdy, /r/sysadmin!

It's that time of the week, Thickheaded Thursday! This is a safe (mostly) judgement-free environment for all of your questions and stories, no matter how silly you think they are. Anybody can answer questions! My name is AutoModerator and I've taken over responsibility for posting these weekly threads so you don't have to worry about anything except your comments!

https://redd.it/1p7yid3
@r_systemadmin

Teams governance

Hi,

How is everyone else governing Teams these days? The general lifecycle management, self service, governance and overall experience of Teams from a sysadmin point of view seems really lackluster and annoying to deal with.

 


We have been scouting for a proper solution to govern our Teams and Sharepoint setup and allow for our end users to create Teams, with guard rails and governance such as a naming convention, forced ownership, automatic archiving and thing like that, but it is difficult to find the right solution, or perhaps i am just getting hit with this "FOMO" where if i pick a solution and find a better one the next day, i am dug in for at least a year.



 

So far we have looked at Teams Manager from Solutions2Share and gotten a quote on it. Seems a bit Pricey 17.000€ for a year for 1000-4000 users. We only have around 3000 users at the moment, which is why i hate the 1000-4000 tier, as you pay the same regardless of having 1000 users or 4000 users.



 

It seems like a good product though, and mayb it is the right choice. Maybe not, i was hoping for some recommendations for other products or some feedback from others using Teams Manager, pros, cons, what is annoying, what works well, what does not work well and so on.


 

Hopefully we are not the only organization using Teams and are tired of the manual workload of keeping it tidy heh.

https://redd.it/1p7zazg
@r_systemadmin

We need one view for everything. Is that too much to ask?

I need ONE platform that unifies everyone and lets us track dependencies in a way humans can actually understand. Design, product, marketing, and dev teams all contribute to our releases, but no one sees the same information. Marketing launches features before they’re done. Product teams write requirements no one reads. Devs don’t know what’s blocked until it's too late.

https://redd.it/1p7zmik
@r_systemadmin

How many of you have done AI related projects?

Interested if anyone has had any projects to implement AI in their environment.

Setting up a LLM (in cloud or on-prem), integrating AI into an app that you host, creating an AI tool for your m365 services, etc.

Not trying to make a point, just curious if anybody in the real world has had to do this.

https://redd.it/1p7y3fc
@r_systemadmin

Cleaning up a decade of user-level ACL chaos… I ended up building a tool to survive it

We had one of those “beautiful” environments where every department insisted on per-user NTFS permissions “for traceability”, inheritance disabled everywhere, and 500+ folders with unique ACLs.
You know the type... the kind where only the guy who left the company few years ago actually had Full Control on most of folders.

Auditing was a nightmare.
Figuring out “what does this user have access to?” was a nightmare.
Transitioning to groups was even worse because you first have to discover the full effective footprint of each user before you can rebuild anything cleanly.

I got tired of manually walking through Explorer, checking advanced security on every folder, and trying to piece together what actually exists. So over the last several months, I built a PowerShell-based GUI tool that lets me:

search any domain user or group and instantly see all explicit ACLs across shares
detect all unique ACL paths
compare two identities (“give me the same perms as that guy”)
and most importantly: use it to migrate from user-based ACLs → group-based structure much faster (find the user who represents the role, create a group, clone the ACEs onto the group, add the right members, remove the users)

I posted about it yesterday on r/PowerShell and the thread blew up... lots of debate, but also tons of admins saying they’re stuck in similar legacy environments and that visibility tools like this would have saved them days.

A few people asked if I could share the viewer part, so I published the read-only version, it’s just the ACL discovery / auditing engine with no write functions at all.
No credential storing, no privilege tricks, just reading explicit ACEs the user already has rights to read.

If anyone wants to take a look or give feedback, it’s linked on my profile (FSWorks Lab).

This whole thing came out of pure survival instinct, so if it helps someone else drag their file server out of permission hell, great.

Curious how many of you are still dealing with user-level ACL legacy… because based on yesterday’s reactions, it’s more common than I thought.

https://redd.it/1p82ll2
@r_systemadmin

How do you handle frequent password resets for students and teachers?

Hi everyone, I am new to the sysadmin community and I'm dealing with a pretty annoying problem.

I work with students and teachers who seem to lose their passwords all the time. We have about 30 students and 10 teachers calling us every 1 or 2 months because they've lost their password, or worse, they don't tell us and lose access to their sessions and Teams.

We currently have a 3-month password expiration policy (I don't make the rules, and personally I think this policy is bad). Students and teachers don't really understand why we ask them to change it every 3 months.

Passwords are already synced between Office 365 and Active Directory, but I don't know how to handle these lost passwords efficiently to save time and make users more independent. Does anyone have advice?

https://redd.it/1p81hlk
@r_systemadmin

"Stress, anxiety, depression, and other negative mental health effects can result from lack of transparency, continuous surveillance, and productivity monitoring" - GAO report on bossware

The GAO has a new report on digital surveillance in the workplace ("bossware"): https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107126. 

Do you administer a tool you would consider "bossware" in your workplace? What has the response been?

This stood out to me too:

>When employers misinterpret or misuse data collected by digital surveillance tools, workers’ employment opportunities could be negatively affected, according to stakeholders we interviewed. These negative effects could include reprimands, low performance evaluations, lower pay, reduced work hours, or termination.

https://redd.it/1p85cf2
@r_systemadmin

Full admin access on wifi?

We are currently implementing 802.1X on wifi and ethernet and we had a discussion if the admin VLAN should be extended to wifi or not.

Right now, there is sort of admin access if you pop on VPN while being connected to wifi, which I find strange but I didn't see that many wifi setups.

So, how do you handle it? Admin access only wired? Or with wifi too?

https://redd.it/1p854b2
@r_systemadmin

Compliance is slowly choking actual work

Trying to add anything new to the stack now feels like punishment. I’m not proposing a bank merger, I just want to test a tool. But no, gotta do a security review, risk form, data flow diagram, legal sign-off, “how does this map to our framework”, three Jira tickets and sacrificing your first born

By the time it’s “approved”, the problem it was supposed to solve has either been worked around, forgotten, or replaced with an external agency for 4x the cost.

Compliance was supposed to stop stupid decisions, not make every small improvement feel like a six-week project. At this point, the process doesn’t keep bad tools out of the stack, it just kills any motivation to improve it.

https://redd.it/1p8728z
@r_systemadmin

Deprecation and removal of WINS after Windows Server 2025

It's official; Microsoft has announced that WINS is now deprecated, and *will be removed* from all Windows Server releases after Windows Server 2025 and will remain under the standard support lifecycle through November 2034.

No flowers

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/topic/wins-removal-moving-forward-with-modern-name-resolution-f00381f0-7237-4f7b-8e78-aa6f9c5b279f

https://redd.it/1p885nv
@r_systemadmin

How do you handle IAM access visibility and access reviews?

Hey all,

Curious how other sysadmins handle access visibility and access reviews across Okta / Entra-connected apps.

I see approaches ranging from fully manual spreadsheets to automated review cycles, and I’m curious how teams here structure this in practice.

Nothing commercial, just trying to compare real-world practices with others who deal with this stuff daily :)

Would love to hear how you handle it in your environment.

Thanks!

For anyone who is up to share their experience with more background, I put together a very short 3–5 min form. Link: https://forms.gle/RtK1jjpKjyPh67bf8

Happy to share the aggregated results back with the community once enough responses come in.

https://redd.it/1p89vo1
@r_systemadmin

Personal Keyboard

I’m trying to look for a wireless keyboard for me to use at the office. I currently have a Logitech MX650 that I’ve been using for a few years. I’m not a huge fan of it as it just feels cheap. I think I want a mechanical keyboard but I want a more silent option. I’m moving to a more automation/programming role and I’m worried that it could get loud. The space I work in has two other people and at times I can hear my current keyboard in the background of our call recordings. I’ve looked at Aula F108, keychrone, Cherry kc 200, among others. All the YouTube videos I find they like to do the full ASMR which doesn’t help. I want to be able to swap keys and make it my own at some point if possible. What are you all using and does anyone have any recommendations? I’m trying not to do trial and error as I tend to be forgetful about returns lol

https://redd.it/1p8d1dl
@r_systemadmin

DFS - Sharing Folder

Hi

Hoping you can help or point me in the right direction.

I’m trying to setup a shared folder via DFS Management.

The folder itself gets created on the C drive of Win Server Core which I’m accessing through File Explorer and I can see it but when I double click on it errors with either permissions and DFS tab shows it as inaccessible.

Any advice or pointers or a simple guide to get this sorted would’ve greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.



https://redd.it/1p8af7z
@r_systemadmin