Speed up your SBS 2008 slow shutdown

A new build of SBS 2008 can shut down really slow. I mean reallllly slow. 15 or 20 minutes. This is Exchange having problems shutting down while all the other services shut down as well. The fix is simple. Add a script to shutdown in group policy that will shutdown Exchange first.

First create a file named Exchstop.cmd and save it to C:\Windows\Exchstop.cmd. In this file needs to be the following.

net stop msexchangeadtopology /y
net stop msftesql-exchange /y
net stop msexchangeis /y
net stop msexchangesa /y
net stop iisadmin /y


Now in the Default Domain Controller Policy go to

Computer Configuration > Policies > Windows Setting > Scripts > Shutdown

Click Add and browse to c:\windows\Exchstop.cmd

Click OK

Now see how fast your server shuts down.

Office 2007 trial troubles when downgrading to Office 2003

HP desktops are now showing up with a trial version of Office 2007 installed. Since I still have a ton of clients that use Office 2003 the routines is to remove the 2007 version and load up 2003. This seems to work just fine if you don't open any Office 2007 products before you remove the product, BUT.... if you open any of the Office 2007 trial products it runs though a little installation wizard and installs some files on the new system. When you uninstall 2007 everything appears normal, but the uninstall doesn't clean up everything. When you install Office 2003 everything appears fine as well until you try to either configure Outlook or access the Exchange Global Access List (GAL). The symptoms are you don’t have access to the GAL and you can’t really do anything with the mail profile. The problem is that the Outlook MAPI service is screwed up because of some of the files the Office 2007 uninstall left behind. The fix is to do a search for the Mapisvc.inf file on the desktop and delete all instances. Then launch Outlook and recreate the mail profile.

Exchange 2003 clients being prompted for their password

I see a lot of Exchange 2003 clients being prompted for their password when they launch Outlook using RPC over HTTP. Here's a blog post on how to fix that.

http://www.andreasroom.com/blog/archive/2005/06/17/RPCHTTP.aspx

Exchange certificates starting to expire....

As our SBS and Exchange 2003 installations are getting older we are starting to the self-signed certificates we created expire. Here is a great guide o getting them renewed.

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/SSL_Enabling_OWA_2003.html

Look at all of these MMC snapins

This guy has taken the time to document them. Some you will say duh I know that. Some re a little more obscure. They can really shorten troubleshooting. End user go Start > Run and type lusrmgr.msc boom your straight into user manager.

http://www.wilsonmar.com/1mmcs.htm

Swing Migration Creates SceCli Event 1202 Errors in the Event Log

Problem: After you perform a Swing Migration your Application event log fills up with these little buggers.

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: SceCliEvent
Category: None
Event ID: 1202
Date: 2/12/2007
Time: 9:51:13 AM
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER
Description:Security policies were propagated with warning. 0x534 : No mapping between account names and security IDs was done.
Advanced help for this problem is available on http://support.microsoft.com. Query for "troubleshooting 1202 events".
Error 0x534 occurs when a user account in one or more Group Policy objects (GPOs) could not be resolved to a SID. This error is possibly caused by a mistyped or deleted user account referenced in either the User Rights or Restricted Groups branch of a GPO. To resolve this event, contact an administrator in the domain to perform the following actions:
1. Identify accounts that could not be resolved to a SID:
From the command prompt, type: FIND /I "Cannot find" %SYSTEMROOT%\Security\Logs\winlogon.log
The string following "Cannot find" in the FIND output identifies the problem account names.
Example: Cannot find JohnDough.
In this case, the SID for username "JohnDough" could not be determined. This most likely occurs because the account was deleted, renamed, or is spelled differently (e.g. "JohnDoe").
2. Use RSoP to identify the specific User Rights, Restricted Groups, and Source GPOs that contain the problem accounts:
a. Start -> Run -> RSoP.mscb. Review the results for Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignment and Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Restricted Groups for any errors flagged with a red X.c. For any User Right or Restricted Group marked with a red X, the corresponding GPO that contains the problem policy setting is listed under the column entitled "Source GPO". Note the specific User Rights, Restricted Groups and containing Source GPOs that are generating errors.
3. Remove unresolved accounts from Group Policy
a. Start -> Run -> MMC.EXEb. From the File menu select "Add/Remove Snap-in..."c. From the "Add/Remove Snap-in" dialog box select "Add..."d. In the "Add Standalone Snap-in" dialog box select "Group Policy" and click "Add"e. In the "Select Group Policy Object" dialog box click the "Browse" button.f. On the "Browse for a Group Policy Object" dialog box choose the "All" tabg. For each source GPO identified in step 2, correct the specific User Rights or Restricted Groups that were flagged with a red X in step 2. These User Rights or Restricted Groups can be corrected by removing or correcting any references to the problem accounts that were identified in step 1.

You could go through all these steps and identify which user is could the problem or you could just keep reading.

The problem lies in the IWAM and IUSR account that you deleted during the Swing Migration cleanup. These two account still are assigned rights in the Default Domain Controller policy. To fix the error you need to remove their rights from

Access this computer from the network
Adjust memory quotas for a process
Log on as a batch job

Now send me a Starbucks card for the time I just saved you!

AutoEnrollement 0x80040154 Errors After Performing A Swing Migration

Several times I have done a Swing Migration and come up with the following error in the application event log.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: AutoEnrollment
Event Category: None
Event ID: 13
Date: 2/12/2007
Time: 10:10:52 AM
User: N/A
Computer: SERVER
Description:Automatic certificate enrollment for local system failed to enroll for one Domain Controller certificate (0x80040154). Class not registered

There is not much out there on error 0x80040154, but I did find one news group post that solved the issue. Funny thing is I didn't find it by searching for 0x80040154 even though it was in the title of the post.

As a precaution I exported the certificates prior to deleting them.

1. Open mmc / add certificates snapin for local computer account.
2. Expand certificates.
3. Under Trusted root cert auth in certificates container you will find certificate that was created when you built you old server.
4. Select the certificate and delete it.

Norton Be Gone

I picked up this little download off of Digg! It will remove pretty much anything Norton

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039

Nice!! (spoken in my best Borat impression)

It's All About The Pentiums

Weird Al Yankovic cracks me up.

What's you password

Me: What's the admin password for XP
Client: I don't know.
Me: Any guesses?
Client: I have no idea.

Now 95% of the time password is blank so it's easy, but that 5% can be a real problem. Here's a nice little video on youtube about cracking a password in XP.

MSN Toolbar and Windows Desktop Search have gotten a divorce... and I'm glad

I just notices that the MSN toolbar and Windows Desktop search are no longer a bundled product. I can now have my desktop search without having to deal with the MSN toolbar. Yippee! For those who don't use a desktop search tool or are using Google's I would suggest you try the Windows Desktop Search tool. I have it setup to index my entire drive. I can find anything now. Here's the download link.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/downloads/default.mspx#A1

SonicWALL is killing my Exchange BPA Update

I've done this enough times to know that when something doesn't work right the first time you figure out a work around or just try it again. If it happens again you need to go after root cause. Well in this weeks installment of "What's my SonicWALL blocking" we join our firewall as it prevents Exchange Best Practice Analyzer from updating. Symptoms are that the BPA gets to the end of it's update and just sits.... and sits.... and sits. When you kill the update it corrupts the XML config file and you have to uninstall & reinstall Exchange BPA. To allow updates to complete you need to TEMPORARILY disable prevention of Signature 3182 (Internet Explorer Nested OBJECT Tag Memory Corruption) on the SonicWALL. Run the Exchange BPA update and it should complete. You will also see a ton of Threats logged in the SonicWALL. After the update is complete I would recommend that your re-enable the prevention of 3182 after you do the update so your protected if you actually run across this threat.

Class, repeat after me.... I will not upgrade my system

There are so many reasons why you should rebuild a computer rather that upgrade it from a prior version of Windows. If you think about it you could have a computer that was originally built with Windows 95 that is now running XP through a series of upgrades. Can you upgrade from 98 to 2000?? I can't remember.... Anyway, when you upgrade you carry with you all the junk that you installed with your last operating system. That also includes all the problems you were having. One issue that took me a bit to figure out was why I had a workstation that you could not connect to the event viewer or regedit remotely. After working through all the troubleshooting steps that MSFT has me do I finally hit Q892192 and that solved the problem.
There is a reason you have a garage sale before you move. You just don't need to take all that stuff to your next house.

SBS 2003 SP1 won't sync AD during a Swing Migration

I was working through a Windows 2000 to SBS 2003 SP1 swing migration this weekend and when we did the dcpromo on the temp server is just would not sync AD. After digging around google for a while I found a troubleshooting guide for RPC Endpont Mapper problems. Running thought this guide showed that a bunch of ports were shutdown on the server. What???? So I checked windows firewall and sure enough it was locked down as tight as can be. Now I'm glad MSFT is securing their servers, but if I run dcpromo on a server it should open the required ports to allow it to work as a domain controller. This was a SBS 2003 SP1 server so I don't know if it is the same with a standard Windows 2003 server.

SonicWALL TZ170 and Exchange MS06-019

Those of you using a SonicWALL TZ170 with intrusion Prevention Service may be having issues receiving mail right now. Seems that SonicWALL released a signature at 13:39 today that is trying to combat the Exchange security flaw. Well they fixed it. They managed to shutdown all smtp traffic. You will see an error like this in your log file.

IPS Prevention Alert: SMTP Exchange Meeting Request Attempt, SID: 3233, Priority: Medium

Normally you can just disable this one alert and things would be fine, but it seems that you have to disable IPS completely to get mail flowing.

I'm on hold with SonicWALL right now..........

Exchange Message Limits

In today's world the default size restrictions that Exchange imposes on messages cause more trouble than they are worth. I'm not saying the limits should be removed, just reworked a little. Here's a great article to help you remember the EIGHT different locations that restrictions are configured.

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/Set-Size-Limits-Messages.html

Offer your customers a backup mail service

Matthew Huynh posted a nice little how to on setting up a backup mail server for your clients on your server. It's a nice value add that I think we may start offering to our clients.

In addition to RBL's

One other helpful thing to prevent an open relay is to test using one of these free open Relay test sites

http://www.abuse.net/relay.html

http://www.ordb.org/ Be careful with this one because if you fail the open relay test they will add you to their black list.

Exchange store.exe is taking all my memory

Not really. MSFT has changed the way the memory usage is reported, so you need to make a little tweak to your monitoring. http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=867628

Windows Desktop Search tool doesn't play nice with network drives

Here's one that deserves a post.

A client was having a sporadic problem with files becoming locked or marked read when they tried to save them on their Small Business Server. The problem seemed to be much more prevalent with extremely large files. Thinking it was something with the server we move all the data to another server and remapped everyone's drives to the new server. The problem continued to exists. Okay it's either a network problem or a desktop issue. Even with a brand new fresh XP build with all service packs the problem existed. Alright! It must be a network problem. Lets just replace the switch and we will be done with it. Nope..... The problem still existed. Now we are scratching our heads. After numerous testing scenarios we realize that when a workstation first boots up it was going out and grabbing random files on the network share. What could be causing this? It turns out that Windows Desktop Search tool was configured to scan the mapped network drives. This inherently is not a bad thing, unless you have ten workstations doing this. What was causing files to get locked so people couldn't save them was when most applications save an open file they create a temp file to write all the changes to and then merge the temp file with the original file. The problem turned out to be when a user clicked save and the temp file was created there were nine other workstation just ready and waiting to index that new file. If any workstation was indexing the temp file when the application wanted to merge the data into the original file the app would throw and error that the file was locked by another user and could not be saved. The reason it was more frequent in large files is because they take longer to save; there for the temp file sits there longer and has a better chance of being indexed. We disabled the indexing of the network share and file saves are working great now.