Listing local users with PowerShell is easy: A reference to the local computer object can be created with $computer = [ADSI] "WinNT://." and then user and group accounts can be accessed through the Children property ($computer.Children).
There is only one problem with this: On Windows Server 2012 R2 (and also on Windows 8.1 according to here and here), the process will hang indefinitely when trying to iterate over the children. Even canceling the action with CTRL-C will not work. The only way to get out of this is closing and restarting PowerShell.
Luckily there is a workaround for this bug: When explicitly filtered for user and group objects, the children can be iterated. So before iterating over the Children property, you should configure the schema filter by calling $computer.Children.SchemaFilter.AddRange(@("user", "group")) and everything should work nicely.
PS: I would have posted this solution to the two site discussing this issue. However, both force you to register before posting anything. In my opinion this is a great way of keeping people from participating.
I have been using
Bacula as our main backup system for years. While Bacula works perfectly for Linux systems, bare-metal recovery (also known as disaster recovery) of Windows systems has been an open issue ever since.
The
Bacula manual describes some procedures, but they only apply to systems running an operating system not newer than Windows Server 2003 R2. Even these procedures remain a bit unclear. If you look for solutions that cover Windows Server 2008 and newer versions of Windows, you will only find a few mailing-list posts that discuss using Windows Server Backup in combination with Bacula. However, none of these solutions sound very appealing.
I believe that you do not have a backup unless you tested the restore, I wanted to find out the best way for backing up a Windows system with Bacula. So I spent some time and installed a Windows Server 2012 R2 system in a virtual machine, made a backup with Bacula, and then tried to restore this backup in a new virtual machine. I actually succeeded without using Windows Server Backup or any other third-party tool. It really seems to work with a Bacula-only solution.
I
documented the steps I used in the wiki, just in case I might have to restore a Windows System from a Bacula backup in the future. Maybe this guide is useful for you as well.
