January, 2009

Exchange 2003 Server SP 2 Install Error

One of our techs had a Exchange 2003 SP2 server that the OWA quit working and I suggested that he do  a Exchange 2003 reinstall. That usually clears up any of these quirky Exchange 2003 problems if you can’t get it correct and of course when he went to install SP2 got the “there is an earlier version of the exchange intelligent message filter installed” So I had this fix for a SBS 2003 Server which it is still Exchange 2003 and this allowed him to get SP 2 installed. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/935916

He got this all done and the OWA would come up but with a 500 error inside and from the outside I would get a “The requested resource is in use.” Error so I did a quick search and found this and this corrected the problem for him regsvr32 %windir%/system32/vbscript.dll life was good and now he has his weekend back.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2008 and Intermittent Outlook Anywhere Problems

We had a tech working on a migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 and everything was going good for him with his first migration. His customer relies heavily on Outlook Anywhere for the users and for the users connecting off the remote TS Server. I got called in and he had found a article on what it could be but wanted to make sure. I did some cleaning up of DNS and the Certs on the servers and then verified and corrected the client access server.

Still no luck so I looked over the article and thought well it was either this or calling PSS so what I ended up doing was going to C:\Program Files\Windows Small Business Server\Bin\webapp\SBS Web Applications and then editing the web.conf file below

<modules>
<remove name=”HttptoHttpsRedir” />
<add name=”HttptoHttpsRedir” type=”Microsoft.WindowsServerSolutions.IWorker.IIS.Modules.HttpToHttpsRedir,HttpToHttpsRedir,Version=6.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″ preCondition=”” />
</modules>

to:

<modules>
<remove name=”HttptoHttpsRedir” />
</modules>

I had to open notepad as a administrator then browse to this file to be able to edit the file. Saved the file and then had the onsite tech restart the server. Last I heard things was back to normal and working ok.

SBS 2003 with ISA 2004 Internal Client VPN Problems

I had a customer who has a SBS 2003 SP1 Server with ISA 2004 who uses a VPN off their client machines to a site that they submit claims too using the ATT Global Dialer. Well I got the sheet from them on Ports and IP’s that needed to be allowed to do there certain parts and got them all added but the workstations still would not connect. They keep getting error 223 VPN port in use. I finally tracked it down to on the SBS Server I had to go to the registry and add Port 4500 to HKey_Local_Machine\system\CurrentControlSet\Service\Tcpip\Parameters  in the Reserved Ports and I had to add 4500-4500 and then I could allow a VPN to initiate from the inside out. It seems to be the problem that a certain Windows Update allowed something else to take over this port. Once I defined this as reserved then the Clients was good. When I get the exact article I will post that info also.

Til later just Roger

Server 2003 and HP c3000

Had a customer bring in there HP ML 370 server on Monday I happened to be in the office working on setting up our new HP c3000 that we will be rolling out in-house with a couple of BL 480c’s and a couple of BL 465c’s and moving some of our in house servers over to the HyperV world. Ok back to the customer. One of the other techs had stopped onsite and said not much he could do it was motherboard or RAM so they sent it to the office.

I got it on the bench and tried the memory we had on hand and found nothing that would work. To me it was looking like motherboard issues to me. We had a couple of ML 350 G4’s that we was going to sell of do something with setting around so I just moved the hard drives and RAID controller over to the ML 350 booted the server updated the HP Drivers and life was good server booted customer bought that server and they was back in business. It is not everyday you can do this but that was very handy having that server sitting there.

We also did a password change at another site for the administrator password and you know for the amount of planning and identifying of places that passwords need changed you always miss some place. Which we did but it all worked out in the end. But when your dealing with 18 or 20 servers you better have it all wrote down so a procedures are good in this case.

I did a quick check on my wife’s SBS 2008 Server and the thing is just running and operating away just like it should. That is good to know I know when I put her SBS 2003 server in place the support calls went way down which is a good thing and I am glad to see SBS 2008 is not letting me down also. I did put a lot of work into that from the Tap and the Betas and all the way to the finished product and it is good to see it is doing what it is suppose to. Well it is off the the State All State Jazz Band which my wife’s son is playing in so I better hit the road. I ill have more on the c3000 and that business next week.

Till later just Roger

Random Thoughts Day

I watch my bosses blog and know he travels a lot around to everything he has going on from the HTG Groups to HTS business. Looks like he was over in England this last bit and enjoying himself over there. Maybe we should start a Where is Arlin game like that Where is Waldo. Come to think about it they do kind of resemble each other.

Reminds me back to the days in a previous life when I traveled all of the 48 states and 6 Canadian Providences is what I ended up hitting before I did a 180 and traveled a different direction in my life. I know I enjoyed the travel all over and seeing the country and not just flying over it and looking down and wondering gee what does that look like down there. I’m not a flier and never will be so i will leave all that kind of travel to Arlin but hey either coast or Canada is just a car ride or train ride away and that is just fine by me.

I have been really enjoying my xBox 360 right now I am on a Grid and Need for Speed Underground kick and have been ignoring other items like playing more with Windows 7 and some other things I should be doing but it is nice to rest the mind once in a while. My wife and I was talking last night about all what is going on around and was comparing notes so to speak she has a trucking company and they have not noticed any kind of slow down yet and I know I have been staying really busy hopefull it all stays that way.

Ok I know enough of this stuff and give you something that can help you out in your everyday Techie stuff but hey we all have to stop and kcik back once in a while don’t ya think?

Til Later just Roger

Ok where did the week go.

Ok where did the week go here, is it really Friday already. It has been another busy week for me and I have been battling a network slowness issue for a customer and it is like finding a needle in a haystack here on the problem. I think what I am fighting more than one problem here, I can copy a 1 gig file between the different servers and the speed seems pretty good on the file copy.

One thing I found was that Office 2007 on a 2003 Terminal Server with Office 2007 SP1 on it will have problems with opening just a basic email which I can most definitely attest to opens very slowly. And it might only have 3 words on it what the heck? I did some searching and found that yes others have been having this and what was found was uninstalling SP1 fixed them up. Ok I tested this by installing Office 2007 on a Virtual TS Server and yes it was most definitely quicker than the production server. So OK what else can I find here well I found the page file was limited to 2 Gig for whatever reason. Fixed that and now what can I do to get this tracked down. Like i said many different little things. I guess this will be a work in progress as I wade through this. I hate little issues as some think it is the network and I think it is a combination of both. Awwww!!!!!!!

Til later just Roger

That was lucky

I got a email Monday night from one of my best customers their main LOB App Server was dead and unresponsive. Drives would go through start up and then no more activity. This was sent at midnight and I happened to check my email at 4:15 this morning so I showered and headed down that way. Got on-site and yip turn the machine on nothing so I still had my wife’s old server in my car so I brought that in and put the drives in and booted the server and it blue screened, ok this is looking promising it is needing RAID controller drivers but they couldn’t keep the server so what I did was attach a USB Drive to the server and then booted with my copy of Shadow Protect Server and once it got through the process I could see partitions. Good so I did a backup of the drives and then copied them over to the customers HyperV Server and then turned the backup files into iso files and then restored the server into the HyperV and away they went. They was lucky I checked there backups and the only good one they had was the year end backup so we went through that about keeping them checked and life was good again.

Till later just Roger

SBS 2003 to Exchange 2007 migration Part 5

Well the server from hell started to blue screen this week. It was a SBS 2003 server that someone had decided to treat the server as one would for a Enterprise Server and had it all messed up. This server had many issues and that was one of the reasons that this customer decided to spilt off the parts onto Full Server Servers. Last week when I had been onsite I had done a Sharepoint backup and what I could so we could remove the Exchange 2003 Server and demote this server down. Well that was not the case as the server started to Blue Screen come Monday so the onsite IT guy said no more and shut it down.

I got onsite yesterday and made sure that was what we was going to do for sure and I then went through the process of cleaning AD up from the failed DC and seized the roles over to the Main 2008 DC and cleaned AD and DNS and all those fun parts that are still there. I have the matter of cleaning the orphaned Exchaneg server out of AD so the Exchange 2007 server don’t think it is there anymore. Ya know there is really no good articles on this process and I am still trying to find that article that will help clean up the Exchange 2007 Server from the reminants of the Exchange 2003. When I get that tracked down I will let you know but for the most part looking back on this whole deal it was really simple to do other than all the problems had with the SBS 2003 Server. I did get the Sharepoint restored onto a 2003 Server running in HyperV and that went over real good as the customer had figured it was gone. Now it is getting the new ISA 2006 server in place and publishing either 2008 TS Gateway or a Terminal Server they was still kicking that one around will see where that goes for sure. Well it is off to a weekend of fun at the Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City with all my children except for my oldest he and his son. They will be missed but the rest of us sure will be thinking of them as we will be playing in the 84 degree warm swimming area.

Til later just Roger

SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration Part 5

I was real pleased with the way this migration worked. The key to a sucessful migration is that your source server is healthy AD wise which makes it very important to use the SBS 2003 BPA on the source server until the reports are clean and your event logs are clean. Also to use the Exchange 2007 BPA to make sure the Domain is ready for Exchange 2007. DNS setup correctly and clean and the source server updated with MS Updates. Take your time and get your server ready don’t just dive in and expect to be able to fix anything that don’t migrate correctly on the other end because as of right now a lot of the fix is to call MS or to restore you source server and start again or both calling MS to find out you have to restore. SO Backup, Backup, and Backup your server before you start and do the rest to be sure your source server is ready…. I can not stress that enough because if you don’t think you need to worry about it better think again if the BPA or the Ebent logs are not clean. Here is the time it took me for a 20 user office with SBS 2003 and ISA involved.

1.      Setup parts in server 30 min

2.      Moved TS Licensing over to the TS Server. 15 minutes

3.      Removed ISA and ISA Client Settings and updated the Server with all Windows Updates and Run the SBS BPA on the server and also the Exchange 2007 BPA on the server till both was clean and ready to go.    3 and half hours

4.      Setup 2 Backups to run on Sunday and once these finished I Ran the Migration Tool on Source Server. 1.5 hours

5.      Checked everything over and then created answer file and then started upgrade process on server. This took 4 hours

6.      Updated new server with HP Updates and Windows Updates and Setup Drive partitions and folders to match source server for structure 1 hour

7.      Started Migration list and configured Exchange to move email automatically and created robocopy script to copy data and I scheduled this for during the night to run. 3 hours

8.      Day 2

9.      Moved Exchange parts to new server 30 minutes

10.  Moved Public Folders and those pieces to new server 1 hour

11.  Finished Migration Wizard except for removing Source Server 2 and half hours

12.  Setup Printers on new server and install 32 bit drivers and moved QuickBooks pointer on workstation and then DCPromoed Source server end of day. 4 hours

As you cans see it took me about 22 hours give or take to do this process and I took my time and did not rush anything.

Til Later just Roger

SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 Migration Part 4

Houston we have a problem here…….. When testing the RWW connect to computer it would work once and then the rest of the time the login box would keep prompting for a login. Ok what is going on here I ran the Fix network wizard and it would show this error.

Component ID #3If the Fix My network wizard shows that component ID #3 is broken, this
means that within IIS the RPC virtual directory settings are incorrect.
Continuing to fix this error within the wizard will correct the RPC virtual
directory to support both Basic and NTLM authentication to this virtual
directory.

I could see that the permission would get changed on the RPC Virtual directory but couldn’t keep it set. I finally posted this on the SBS 2008 connect newsgroup and got the fix for this issue from thomasds. I went to http://sbs.editme.com/sbs2008rww and on there was this

Another common problem on xp SP3 is that RWW keeps on prompting you for login details even though you enter the correct info.
Here is a possible solution for that issue:Authentication issues with Outlook Anywhere and Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway)

Use the procedure that follows to fix these authentication issues:

    * Microsoft® Outlook® repeatedly prompts you for credentials through Outlook Anywhere (previously known as RPC over HTTP)
    * Remote computer log on fails if you are using the Connect to Computer feature in Remote Web Workplace

You can encounter these issues if you open the TS Gateway Manager administrative tool. When you open TS Gateway Manager, the server turns off basic authentication for the RPC virtual directory. Because of this, there is a delay in accessing Outlook Anywhere. To prevent future authentication issues of this type, install the hotfix that is described in Knowledge Base article 954034 on the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=124578).

To immediately repair authentication issues with Outlook Anywhere and TS Gateway, perform the steps in the following procedure.
To fix the authentication issues with Outlook Anywhere and TS Gateway

      > Click Start, click Administrative Tools, and then click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
      > In the User Account Control window, click Continue.
      > In the Connections pane, expand <your server name>.
      > Expand Sites, and then expand SBS Web Applications.
      > Click Rpc, and then in the /Rpc Home pane, in the IIS section, double-click Authentication.
  
      Verify that Basic Authentication and Windows Authentication are enabled. If either authentication is disabled, click it, and then in the actions pane, click Enable.

I applied the hotfix and life has been good. The main reason I really needed this to work correctly was my wife uses this a lot for work and one of the others also use this daily so it had to work. I also found that 443 was bound to the default website and this was causing a problem with the windows updates. I removed it from the default website and made sure it was applied to the SBS VD and then the WSUS started working. Simple enough and I then continued on and demoted the old server and away we went.

Til later just Roger