IT's Kris Haynes

Pheww... I finally got round to this exam today; following in the footsteps of others as it were but all in all a great day, passed with a pretty good 823 out of 1000 :) MC TS: SBS 2008 :) A tip for anyone taking this exam by the way; mine mainly consisted of Migration questions with a few basics slapped around it. I'd advise watching the technet SBS 2008 training webcasts that were released although they can be a bit monotonous at times they are well worth the watch. Kris

A feature that took me a little while to click onto was the process of purging Mailboxes. In Exchange 2003 it was simple, delete the user, enter the exchange console, run the cleanup agent and then purge or reconnect. In exchange 2007 this ability seems to have left the Exchange console and entered the shell world... Should you face this scenario of having to rebuild an Exchange Mailbox the process of purging is as follows, firstly remove the mailbox in the Exchange console as normal then enter the Exchange Management Shell. You need to run two commands (Remember - Case Sensitive): List all of the disconnected mailboxes in the domain so you can find the GUID. Get-MailboxStatistics | where-object { $_.DisconnectDate -ne $null } | Select DisplayName,MailboxGuid Then modify the following command with the GUID of the Mailbox you wish to delete: Remove-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database" -StoreMailboxIdentity -confirm:$false Be careful though when deleting Exchange

If you are using Outlook 2007 with an SBS 2008 server you may notice the above error message when you try to enable Out of Office. The Out of Office feature will work correctly in Outlook Web Access and in older versions of Outlook, it will only be broken in Outlook 2007. Although not entirely sure we think the issue may occur if Microsoft Framework 3.5 SP1 has been installed on the Small Business Server. The issue is caused by a problem with the Framework package and is described in KB article 958934 To resolve this issue you have to obtain the hotfix from the article 952883

I guess the main reason for this posting is more informative than to help people solve this but I was astounded when I did more digging into it. I had users calling me saying they were receiving Exchange dialogue boxes telling them the certificate was invalid or had expired. Following up I found the below in Event Viewer: Event Type: Error Event Source: MSExchangeTransport Event Category: TransportService Event ID: 12014 Date: 16/02/2009 Time: 09:18:53 User: N/A Computer: SERVER2K3-SBS Description: Microsoft Exchange couldn't find a certificate that contains the domain name server2k3-sbs.DOMAIN.internal in the personal store on the local computer. Therefore, it is unable to support the STARTTLS SMTP verb for the connector Default SERVER2K3-SBS with a FQDN parameter of server2k3-sbs.DOMAIN.internal. If the connector's FQDN is not specified, the computer's FQDN is used. Verify the connector configuration and the inst

Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 Beta is now available on the Microsoft Download Center . Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 enables IT pros to manage roles and features that are installed on remote computers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2 (and, for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003) from a remote computer that is running Windows 7. It includes support for remote management of computers that are running either the Server Core or full installation options of Windows Server 2008 R2, and for some roles and features, Windows Server 2008. Some roles and features on Windows Server 2003 can be managed remotely by using Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7, although the Server Core installation option is not available with the Windows Server 2003 operating system. Role Administration Tools: Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Tools Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) Tools Active Directory

With the ever growing Windows Mobility market showing no signs of slowing down, Microsoft have begun developing a new service to be announced at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona next week called MyPhone (Currently codenamed "SkyBox") According to the My Phone Web site, "If your phone is lost or stolen, or if you upgrade to a new phone, you can easily restore the contacts, calendar appointments, photos and other information that you stored on My Phone to a compatible new or replacement phone." Users will be limited to 200MB of storage space for the service, which will initially be available in a limited, invite-only beta for Windows Mobile http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/myphone/

Quite an interesting and technical video by Mark Russinovich where he describes the changes to the Windows 7 kernel and how it is know capable of supporting 256 processors! It is quite extensive though so sit comfortably before you click the link! Video here: Link

Google latitude the new and very cool feature from Google in association with Google Maps. Simply download the latest version of Google maps and from the right hand menu select Latitude. You are asked to sign into your google email account; from which point you can add friends as easy as searching for there email addresses. It's that easy to setup! Once connected to your friends, although not 100% accurate you can see your friends locations...the best i've seen so far using GPS is a distance of 40metres. No more sneaking off to the pub though after work guys if your wife has a smart phone eh... Download and More Info here: Google Latitude

Clicking "Restore My Desktop" just will not do anything, how many times have I seen this one... to be honest there are probably a fair few fixes to this I have used a couple in my time yet the best I have found has to be this: Go to Start > Run Type "regedit" Modify the following entry: HKeyCurrentUser\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\SafeMode\Components Change the DeskHTMLVersion key (Decimal) from 272 to 0, press ok, close down regedit and press Ctrl + F5 together. The original desktop should now be back to normal.

A great little application designed by the guys at Kraft Software Solutions , it quite literally does 'what it says on the tin' and well. Home Page & Download Link

This is one of my personal favourites, It's a combination of NTBackup (For Active Directory, System State and Registry etc) Robocopy (For file shares) and SendEmail (for confirmation the backup worked). All instructions come with my script; it's ideally suited for companies with USB external drives although it could be customised for tape drives or external FTP drives. I wrote it for a few of my smaller clients and it seems to do the job quite well; it also backs up Exchange by stopping the services and copying the Priv1 + Pub1 databases, this provides easy restore access in the event of a disaster. Simply rebuild the server and then remount the Exchange databases and voila. I'd be interested in people's opinion's on this... Download Link Here: Download

I have seen this error often the resolutions tend to be quite simple though either: 1) The IUSER anonymous account password is corrupt or has been reset. To Fix: Go to Active Directory, All Users, Right click IUSER_*SERVERNAME* and reset password. The go to IIS Manager, Right click the default web site, go to properties, select Directory Security Tab, then click "Access and Authentication". Replace the password with the new password you reset the account to then apply to all subcontainers when requested. Restart IIS and this should resolve the issue. OR 2) The IUSER doesnt have permissions to view the Authentication module in OWA To Fix Start IIS Manager. Expand Server_Name, expand Web Sites, expand Default Web Site, and then expand Exchweb. Right-click bin, and then click Properties. On the Virtual Directory tab, verify that the Read check box is checked. Expand bin. Right-click auth, and then click Properties. On the Directory tab, verify that the Read chec