Saturday 31 January 2009

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 now available!

Internet Explorer 8 is now available in RC1 format for Windows Vista, Windows Server and Windows XP.

Download here

Tuesday 27 January 2009

Vista Can't Log In - Credential Manager Server

I have now seen this a few times and so thought I would save a fair few people a few hours of head scratching, when logging on to your laptop / PC with Vista you get a message along the lines of "Cannot logon to the credential manager service."

My resolution that worked for me several times goes as follows:

1) Boot the machine up in safe mode by hitting F8 at boot

2) Log on as the Domain Administrator (Or Local Admin)

3) Enable the Local Admin Account (Not Enabled By Default In Vista) by right clicking My computer, selecting Manage and then clicking Users.

4) Reboot the machine and log on using the Local Administrator account (which will now work)

5) Go into HP Security Protect Tools Security Manager for Administrators
6) On the Left go to "Setting"

7) Uncheck "Use credential manager to log onto windows"

8) Log off the machine and logon as the normal user again.



If this doesnt work for you there are some other suggestions regarding the TPM drivers etc in the following link:
http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/868873.htm

Monday 26 January 2009

ActiveSync error: 85010004 / 80072f12

Synchronising WM5/ WM6 to a SP1 Server 2003 running Exchange server 2003 SP2 you receive one of the above error messages or one of the following:

"Your Microsoft Exchange server does not have permission to synchronise with your current settings. Contact you exchange administrator "

You are most likely to see this message if the following Conditions are true:
* The Exchange virtual directory on an Exchange back-end server is configured to require SSL.
* Forms-based authentication is enabled.

The following Article helped me resolve this issue, simply re-create the Exchange virtual container without SSL limited to only access from the system itself and then one short registry change later you will find it works.

See link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817379

Thursday 22 January 2009

SMTP: message submitted to categorizer

Messages just appear to be falling into the realms of Cyber space with this error, when running the tracking console in ESM you simply see the message:
SMTP: message submitted to categorizer

To Resolve:

I've found this to be two seperate issues, most commonly issue one will work.

Resolution 1
It is Anti Spam that is causing the issue - submitted to categoriser is not a standard entry in exchange, meaning its been sent out of exchange to be sorted for spam. I can't stress enough that checking your quarantine or your instant delete settings will solve this issue.

Resolution 2
It's an issue with the listing in exchange for the GC, follow the below steps to resolve.

Step 1.
Open ESM, expand "Servers", right click on the server and select "Properties", click "Directory Access", select "Global Catalog Servers" from the dropdown and uncheck "Automatically discover servers" (Bypass the warning) and add the GC (Servername in SBS environments) manually.

Step 2.
Then Restart exchange services to find that all mail begins to deliver to store as per normal.

Monday 19 January 2009

Remote Desktop Connection - Fatal Error 5

When connecting to another machine using Remote Desktop (RDP) you may experience the error "Fatal Error 5" as per general google search instructions: although you can continue working by opening another RDP connection window, most people would agree this is more of a workaround than a fix!

After some troubleshooting it looks like this issue is caused by corruption in the default.rdp file usually located in My Documents, simply renaming this file to default.old will do the trick...

Wednesday 14 January 2009

Server 2003 - unable to establish any network connectivity

An un-official state of emergency was declared when receiving this problem!!

Microsoft Windows Standard server 2003 (presumably also applies to SBS 03)with two network cards was unable to access the internet and the local network even though both cards are showing connected in the Status panel.

After checking all of the IP services and settings were correct, I tried a Network connection repair to get the message "Windows was unable to repair the connection, unable to clear the arpcache" Seeing this error before, I cleared the cache manually in DOS and repaired the RRAS Service...Still no joy.

The actual resolution was in relation to the IPSEC service not starting correctly and upon manual startup you are presented with:

"only one usage of each socket address (protocol/network address/port) is normally permitted."

As you may or may not know if the IPSEC service fails to start, the server will be running in Block mode and it will block all network connectivity to the server.

To fix this you must enter the registry and correct the following:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\

Select ReservedPorts

and make sure the entry reads as follows:

1645-1646 - Used by IAS
1701-1701 - Used by L2TP
1812-1813 - Used by IAS
2883-2883 - Used by AUTD
4500-4500 - Used by IPSEC

Please note a reboot is required once making the change

For further details see this related link.

Monday 12 January 2009

Windows 7: Problem Steps Recorder

A great new feature to Windows 7 is the; “Problem Steps Recorder” is an advanced variation of screen capture software.

The software records your interaction with the system by means of stages, keystrokes and it also gathers additional technical info in the background. Once finished compiles all of this information into one single MHTML report for the user to send off to their helpdesk.

You can view the report as a web page, a slideshow, or even dig into the raw XML to expose greater detail like the X&Y coordinates of the mouse.

To try the “Problem Steps Recorder” for yourself, type and select “psr.exe” in the Windows 7 start menu.

Saturday 10 January 2009

Exchange 2003 to 2007 Migration (Exmerge)

Just some little handy tips to share around in regards to migrating users from a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server to the all new singing and dancing Exchange 2007.

As most of you will probably know just from looking at the new Exchange management console it isnt quite as easy as copying and pasting the priv1.edb or Exmerging in and Exmerging out the old data.

The techniques are now slightly different:

Although the method is the same there is a slight change if you are doing this for a Server 2003 with Exchange 2007 or an SBS 2008 with Exchange 2007. If you are runnning SBS 2008 then you must download the Exchange Management Tools and the Windows Powershell add-on from the Microsoft site and run this on a 32-Bit machine seperate to the SBS box. (Please note that if you are doing import mailbox procedures then you need to download Exchange 2007 SP1 from the site)

So first step then is the data extraction; from 2003 this is very basic and straight forward using Exmerge from Microsoft you can take out all of the previous mailboxes into PST's and store them on the new server.

The second step is to go into the Exchange management shell and enter the following commands bearing in mind that all scripts are case sensitive.

Grant the Administrator Account full access to all Mailbox's:
"Get-Mailbox | Add-MailboxPermission –user Username –AccessRight FullAccess –Inheritancetype all"

Begin the import procedure for all users
"Get-Mailbox -Database “SERVER\Mailbox Database” | Import-Mailbox -PSTFolderPath "

This will then go through the motions for importing all of the pst files into their correct user accounts.

If you want to look at importing an individual mailbox to an individual user then the process is again very similar but the command is as follows:
"Import-Mailbox -Identity -PSTFolderPath "




TIP:
Typing -whatif at the end of a command in Exchange powershell runs a simulation of the command without actually doing anything with the data.



Did I solve your problem? Buy me a virtual beer by clicking on a Google ad :). Thanks!

Friday 9 January 2009

Microsoft Windows 7 Beta Available for Download

Just in case you havent already heard the new Beta release of Microsoft's Forthcoming Operating System: "Windows 7" has today been officially released to MSDN and Technet subscribers.

You can find the Beta download link via the following link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/default.aspx

Thursday 8 January 2009

"Command line error." When installing Web Parts into WSS 3.0 with stsadm.exe

This is an odd problem that I came accross when deploying a new Web Part solution to my training server through the command line. After pasting the command that I had copied from the web I received "Command Line Error". The solution is to write the command without pasting it!

A too easy to be true solution...but I assure you it works. The logic behind this is that when copying from one source to another you lose the true encoding in the pasted text and so (The hyphen in particular) doesnt get read by the command line.

The explanation originates from the blog in the related links.

http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2007/02/24/updated-installation-guide-for-the-20-server-admin-application-templates-for-wss-3-0.aspx

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