Restoring Exchange on SBS2008/SBS2011 after moving databases to new drive

We had a client lose power and for some unknown reason it decided to trash the C: Drive of the SBS VM.  So after recovery of the C: Drive using shadow protect, the system booted fine.

I was expecting an issues but this one annoyed me a bit.

After starting up i noticed the exchange databases were not mounting, after trying to mount it and it saying that there were missing committed transaction logs i realised that i had only restored the C: drive which restored older logs and the main database being on another drive was the current version and had already committed logs that now didn't exist.  This occurred because we had to restore from 11am and the power loss occurred at 11:50am which meant that the 12pm backup didn't run.

After figuring this out for 2 hours (OMFG 2 hours), i then mounted through SP both drive and exactly the same point in time from the backups.  I then copied both the log folders and the database folder to their respective places in the system and SUCCESSFULLY mounted the databases, unfortunately there was a loss of email, but a small loss is better than no database.

So to sum up when restoring an exchange database that is split on 2 different drives make sure you are either restoring ALL Hard drives or restoring the entire database directory and the log directory from the SAME point in the backup.

-Fr33ze

Installing an older verion of Flash Player.

We have a software product that we distribute called IdealPOS (http://www.idealpos.com.au/)  this software requires a particular version of Flash depending, i think, on the version of the software.  So today i had a client call regarding this software crashing when starting up, i knew i had to install Flash 10 but after uninstalling Flash 11 i couldn't install version 10.

After about a second googling the issue i cam across this article:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1557125/how-do-i-install-an-older-version-of-flash-player

Briefly it tells you to delete the registry key:

HKLM\Software\Macromedia\FlashPlayer\SafeVersions\

This will allow you to re-install the older version of Flash.

-Fr33ze

Hewlett Packard ML350 Gen8 System Insight Display (SID) plug.

We have a client getting new ML350 Gen8 Rack Mount server and everything was going good until......i could not for the life of me find where to plug the SID in.  Now normal people probably wouldn't have thrown the instructions away, but i'm a man i need no instructions........Nek Minnit

A few hours later of blah this Google that i thought i would look a little bit deeper....

Inside the machine on the front cover between the Optical drive and BOX 2 the front LED's have another cable tied around the main LED cable for the front panel, this cable is the cable to plug the SID into.

ZzzzZZzz why is it not easily visible  some little HP worker is laughing at me now hes probably the same guy who screw in the ML350 bottom cover that i had to take off for the RACK mount kit, i couldn't unscrew it so it just drilled it out...That'll teach you to mess with me.


-Fr33ze

Renewing Certificate on 2010 Exchange Server

So i had an issue with my certificate expiring, so i'd better write this up since i ALWAYS forget how to do this since i do it ONCE a year.

So after many attempts at renewing the cert through the CA website and from within exchange and IIS, I decided to have a harder look in the Exchange Management Console.  I clicked on "Server Configuration" then highlighted the expired certificate and clicked "Renew Exchange Certificate".

After supplying a file name for the .REQ file it produced this .req file that when i tried to open it was unreadable so i thought well i'll go into my CA and issue it through there.

So i connected to my CA opened up "Certification Authority" and right clicked on the CA name and clicked "All Tasks -> Submit New Request".  I found the file that Exchange had created and then let the CA process the file.  After it had processed it the certificate was put in the "Pending Requests" folder so into there i go, i proceed to right click the request goto "All Tasks -> Issue", from there the Certificate is issued into the "Issued Certificates" folder.

From here i needed to export the certificate so that i could import it into Exchange.

In the "Issued Certificates" folder right click the certificate and click "Open" then click on the "Details" tab and then click "Copy to File".  Click "Next -> select Base-64 .CER -> click Next -> Give it a Filename -> then Click Next and Finish"

We have now exported our certificate and are ready to import it back into Exchange.

If we look in the Certificate section of Exchange we should see a pending request for a certificate, we need to right click on this and point our newly created .CER file to this request.  Once done we should see that we have a certificate that matches the old one with the correct Name and important details like "issued to".

There is one more thing we have to do.  We have to assign services to the certificate now i have all my services on one Cert excluding Unified Messaging which i dont use.  So right click the Cert and click "Assign Services to Certificate" and ad the services that you will use, mainly IIS and SMTP.

After that you're all done and you shoudl see your certificate in there with all its services and so on.

-Fr33ze

Cannot connect to printer 0xe7

It seems that this error has numerous fixes and one thing in common windows Vista/7.  After fixing this issue a number of times at different client premises this one was the easiest to resolve yet just as awkward to troubleshoot.  Its seems that this error was occurring even when the administrator was logged in.

I'll list the symptoms below which some of these led me in the wrong direction:

Windows 7 Is installed

Administrator Logged in

All other printers working fine on server

Can connect to printer from Windows XP

Different drivers tried and tested

Can load printer locally via IP and via SHARE-NAME and print successfully from Windows 7

Cannot load printer from server via point and print on Windows 7

All these aspects drove me every which way possible from loading different drivers, service packs, fixes and GPO editing.  Finally i stopped blaming Windows 7 for the problem and blamed the server.

Server was running Server 2008 x86 the printers had been migrated from Server 2003 although no major issues had occurred from this other than 2 missing drivers and a missing print processor.  I decide to bite the bullet and go all out.

FIX: I deleted the printer from the server and recreated it using an updated driver.  This then made it able to connected to the printer from a windows 7 machine without having to load anything or change permissions.

So if you are having this issues and you have tried everything but deleting it, then go for it.  Make sure you note down the exact share-name and other aspects so you can reconnect to the printer from PCs that have it already connected.

p.s If this solution doesn't help there are a million more.

-Fr33ze

One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server - Migrating from Exchange 2003 to 2010

We have a client who is gettign rid of their 2003 Exchange server.  This is a good thing because 2010 is pretty good.  After following all the Migration steps here, i attempted to uninstall exchange 2003 and i got this message

"One or more users currently use a mailbox store on this server"

After a google i found this article from Microsoft.  If you discover that you have a regualr user (Not the SMTP User) then either move their mailbox or delete it/remove their Exchagne attributes.

Now in my case i had moved all users and none of the results i got helped me, until i found this article below.

http://msexchangetips.blogspot.com/2008/04/exchange-one-or-more-users-currently.html

So briefly, we use an advanced LDAP AD search to find users that have had exchange attributes added to their accounts but they have not opened their mailbox.

Below is the LDAP command with what you need to change in RED so you can get results:

(msExchHomeServerName=/O=myexchangeorgname/OU=myorgname/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=myexchangeserver)(objectClass=User)

Also make sure there are no spaces in the command.

-Fr33ze

Blackberry Desktop 6 and SchoolZone Proxy

Now if you're like me and have a client wh has SchoolZone but would also like to have some control over what traffic goes out of the system and also have ISA server in the mix, chaining to an up stream proxy (schoolzone), you may have encountered an issue with BB desktop 6 and its requirement to connect to the internet before it will sync to the users outlook.

WELL it took me a little while but once i reviewed the logs from ISA i notice that schoolzone authentication was dropping off after a few minutes and wasnt asking for reauthentication.

So what i had to do to fix it was in the chaining properties for the up stream proxy i needed to enter static credentials into the isa server so that it wouldnt ask for authentication, after this blackberry desktop manager worked 100% and after the first sync it never needs to connect to the internet again.

I'll edit this blog with screenies so you can find your way, although its ISA and not that hard.

-Fr33ze