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Windows and other products coming End of Support information

Microsoft has an industry leading support lifecycle for it's products with business software generally getting 10 years support and consumer products 5 years, but even then the end of support surprises some individuals and you need to be aware to ensure you are not caught out. Our support also requires people to adopt service packs within 12-24 months of them being released, depending on the products. here along with all the obsolete products here. Why do I mention all this now, after all, this is...

Published Thu, Feb 4 2010 8:26 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Windows 7, Vista and XP, Support and Tools, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft, Windows Client, Windows XP, Partner, Windows 7, Windows Vista and XP, Windows Vista
How to get SBS 2008 to "fix" managing WSUS after you have manually upset it

Today's post covers what to do when SBS says it no longer can change the WSUS settings from the console. The exact message is "Windows Small Business Server Update Service is not running because it automatically turns off if you customize Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)". One way round this problem is to manually change all the settings in the WSUS console (from Administrator Tools, select Microsoft Windows Update Services 3.0 SP1) and change the settings as per instructions found at...

Published Wed, Jul 22 2009 9:08 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Security, SBSC, Microsoft, Tips, System Update, Windows Essential Server Solution Family, SBS 2008
SBS 2008 Migrations from SBS 2003 – Keys to Success from the Official SBS Blog

I started to write about this at SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration thoughts and issues and Active Directory Health Checks , but after some discussion with the SBS team at Microsoft we now have much more: The Official SBS Blog : SBS 2008 Migrations from SBS 2003 – Keys to Success The purpose of this post is to help you complete your SBS 2003 migrations to SBS 2008 successfully on the first attempt. ……………… much, much more Use this information if you have a non-standard...

Published Thu, Feb 26 2009 2:05 AM by David Overton

Filed under: SBS 2003, Support and Tools, Community, SBSC, Microsoft, SBS 2003 R2, Tips, Small business, Partner, SBS 2008
Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) not working or slow with SBS 2008

I’ve been working with the Microsoft support teams to diagnose non-connection and very slow syncing for someone who uses SBS. The team came up with a fix and while there is no KB article on this yet, below is a link to a workaround that made logging on go to a few seconds from what was about 5 hours :-) Slow Connectivity for Outlook Anywhere and Sites that use the SBS Web Applications App Pool [Today's post comes to us courtesy of Wayne McIntyre, Justin Crosby, and Damian Leibaschoff] We are currently...

Published Thu, Jan 29 2009 9:08 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Exchange, Microsoft, Office 2007, Outlook, SBS 2008
Catalog of Windows Small Business Server 2008 Installation Error Messages

So there I was talking about migration issues and Chris Pucket pointed to this GREAT store of error messages and resolutions for SBS installs. I've copied the links for now, but expect them to be updated over time!! Still let me know Migration issues on the link above! Catalog of Windows Small Business Server 2008 Installation Error Messages This topic links to information about errors that you might encounter while installing Windows SBS 2008. If you encounter an error that does not appear on this...

Published Fri, Jan 23 2009 5:05 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Windows SharePoint Services, Community, Exchange, SBSC, Microsoft, Documentation, Outlook, Small business, Partner, If you only read one post today, SBS 2008
SBS 2008 Update Rollup 1 Released to fix Vista AV reporting issue and GoDaddy domain registration issue

Hi everyone, the first roll-up of fixes for SBS 2008 shipped today. It addresses some minor issues, which is good, but always worth being aware of. From the Official SBS 2008 blog SBS 2008 Update Rollup 1 Releases Today Windows Small Business Server 2008 Update Rollup 1 releases today. This rollup package addresses the following issues in Windows Small Business Server 2008. Issue 1 The Security tab in the Windows Small Business Server 2008 Console incorrectly reports the spyware and malware status of Windows...

Published Fri, Jan 23 2009 12:02 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Community, SBSC, Microsoft, Windows Client, Vista, Malware, Small business, Partner, System Update, Windows Essential Server Solution Family, SBS 2008
Active Directory Health Check - Make sure your AD is healthy before you migrate SBS 2003 to SBS 2008

Given the recent comments about AD validation I thought I would share this excellent document on verifying your AD before you begin a migration (or at any other time) Active Directory Health Check - Active Directory This document outlines a basic procedure for validating the health of your domain and is a good practice for iterative maintenance and an excellent pre-check before doing any potentially dangerous domain operations I would add a couple of extra tests to the list in this document, which would be placed...

Published Mon, Jan 19 2009 11:30 PM by David Overton

Filed under: SBS 2003, Support and Tools, Community, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft, SBS 2003 R2, Tips, SBS 2008
SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 migration thoughts and issues

I've been part of a lively debate on the Yahoo UK SBS Group about how to migrate from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 and what the issues are. The information I have so far is good, but I need much more to take it to the product teams. For sure, the issues so far are: Concerns around the "state" of AD before a migration is started - how do you check it - look at this blog post Concerns around the Exchange migration in terms of time taken and failure scenarios - how to remove the chances of this? Concerns...

Published Mon, Jan 19 2009 9:03 PM by David Overton

Filed under: SBS 2003, Support and Tools, Community, Exchange, Windows Server 2003, SBSC, Microsoft, SBS 2003 R2, Small business, Partner, If you only read one post today, Windows Server 2008, SBS 2008
How to upgrade (migrate) from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 on the same system without using a swing migration

Someone posted this question on a discussion group at work and it got me thinking. If you bought a nice new system over the last 2 or so years in preparation for SBS 2008 (Cougar as was or even SBS v.Next) and had it installed with SBS 2003 you've probably heard that SBS 2003 to SBS 2008 is a 2 box migration and needs the Swing technique to do an on box migration. I've come up with a much simpler solution, but your hardware might need some additions to make it work. So here is what you need: Box with...

Published Sat, Jan 10 2009 5:33 PM by David Overton

Filed under: SBS 2003, Support and Tools, Virtualisation, Community, Personal, SBSC, Microsoft, SBS 2003 R2, Tips, Small business, If you only read one post today, Windows Essential Server Solution Family, SBS 2008, Hyper-V
Hyper-V Management console stops working after a month or so with error “Cannot connect to the RPC service on Computer ‘xxx’. Make sure your RPC service is running.

[updated with net accounts command 20/2/2009] This can help diagnose and resolve the issue if like me, it was running fine and then it suddenly stops about 4-5 weeks after it all got started. My initial thought was that some update had changed things as the blog post here documented the initial setup where the same error was seen. The error once again looked like this: However checking all the same firewall and other settings revealed nothing. Finally I discovered that the user I had created had a password setting...

Published Sun, Dec 21 2008 9:47 PM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Community, Microsoft, Windows Client, Tips, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V
SBS 2008 Forefront Virus protection for e-mail Errors or Warnings - “At least one of the engines enabled for update has not been updated in the last week” – how to solve

My SBS 2008 installation is pretty good, but one area I’ve noticed some problems was with ForeFront. I either had errors or at best warnings all the time about the scan engines. I would go and hit a manual update, but the bar would be 30-90% across and suddenly stop. When I looked in the event log I could see errors like these below. Searching the internet delivered me the KB article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939411/en-us which talks about timeout issues, however even with the recommended change...

Published Sun, Dec 21 2008 2:18 PM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Security, Community, SBSC, Microsoft, Small business, SBS 2008
How to resolve errors like "Cannot connect to the RPC service, make sure your RPC service is running" with Hyper-V Server and Hyper-V Manager

In my last post on installing Hyper-V for my home setup I said I had a number of issues. One was that the Hyper-V Manager kept on showing the error "Cannot connect to the RPC service, make sure your RPC service is running". This turned out to be several issues. To start with my Hyper-V box is in a workgroup, so security is manually configured. Then there is the connection ID security - by hand and finally there is the client setup too. I spent a long time with John Howard's...

Published Wed, Dec 3 2008 1:04 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Virtualisation, Microsoft, Documentation, Tips, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V
Get a RSS feed from Microsoft about what is new for partners (UK at the moment)

I saw this RSS Hub and decided it had to be shared. Go to https://www.microsoft.com/uk/partner/rss/default.aspx . [updated with fixed url - thanks for the comments] It enables the following segmentation: What roles are you interested in? Management Sales and Marketing Technical What areas are you interested in? Partnering Events Programme Information Public Sector Sales and Marketing Small Business Specialist Training West Midlands Type of Business Hosting Independent Software Vendors System Integrators Web...

Published Thu, Nov 27 2008 12:00 AM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, Microsoft, Marketing, Partner
Nick King – Microsoft corp SBS God in the UK on 7th November!!

Hopefully you have seen this elsewhere, but if not….. 7 th November 2008, Reading: TechNet Exclusive! Hear from the guy that brought you Microsoft’s enterprise computing to small and medium businesses An exclusive opportunity to meet Nicholas King, Technical Product Manager from Microsoft Corporation before the launch of the Windows Essential server solutions offerings, Small Business Server 2008 and Essential Business Server 2008 on November 12 th . Hear Nicholas and Jamie Burgess advise on why...

Published Wed, Oct 22 2008 11:09 PM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, SBSC, Microsoft, Marketing, Small business, Windows Server 2008, Windows Essential Server Solution Family, SBS 2008
SBS 2008 now available for download on MSDN

Hi there folks, so following on from my recent post on the fact that SBS 2008 has released to manufacturing (which means it will be in the shops soon), I saw today that SBS 2008 is now available to download from MSDN : I did notice that there is currently a slight mis-print in that it appears there are two disks for the x86 Windows Server 2008 disk, where as the 2nd one is actually the x64 disk (as noted in the ISO number). It is also worth stating that for SBS 2008, to remove any issues around “Compatibility...

Published Tue, Sep 16 2008 12:35 PM by David Overton

Filed under: Support and Tools, SQL Server, SBSC, Microsoft, Demo, Small business, Partner, SQL Server 2008, SBS 2008

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