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UK SBS Lead Blogs
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  • Adding a Windows 2008 Server Core box as a Domain Controller into an SBS2003 domain

    We've installed a Server Core box into our network here so we can run Hyper-V as well as VMware ESX. We have also set it up as a DC and DNS server so that of our SBS box is offline things might continue to work a bit better than they have up until now :-) Instructions on how to do this are a bit sparse and my Technician got this information from the SBSC Newsgroups: From your description, I know that you want to add Windows Server 2008 Server Core to SBS domain. If that's not correct, please don't hesitate to let me know. Unfortunately there is no article talking about how to add Windows 2008 Core to SBS domain. You can add Windows 2008 Server Core to SBS domain with the steps below on the SBS server: 1. Open a Command Prompt window. To do this, Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. 2. Perform the following commands in the sequence noted: Note In these instructions, "drive" represents the letter of your DVD drive on SBS server with Windows 2008 DVD inserted. 2. At the command...

  • HMRC CD

    If any of you are struggling to get this paragon of brilliantly written software to run on your PC, just unplug the network cable. Seriously. You couldn’t make it up.....
    Filed under:

  • Installing SQL reporting Services and getting "SetDialogs" and "error 1603"?

    Just been trying to install SRS on my replacement desktop and was getting an error about SetDialogs and Error 1603. I've installed SRS on an XP SP2 box before with no problems, so a bit puzzled. A hunt around found me this thread: http://sqlforums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/messageview.aspx?catid=92&threadid=34274&enterthread=y and running aspnet_regiis -i from the %windir%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v1.1.4322 folder seems to have done the trick. Good old Google The reason I think I had problems this time was because I had IIS installed on this machine so I can run Virtual Server. Previously IIS wasn't installed. Hope this helps someone else.......

  • SVCHOST.EXE taking 100% CPU - Windows Update Service

    We've just had an issue at one of our non-mmanaged clients where they have had a number of machines running at 100% CPU due to the Windows Update Service going bonkers. The solution we have used on all machines is as follows: On the machine in question carry out the following: Log in as administrator. Download updates from step 1 and 2 from KB927891 into C:\ http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927891 Go to Start>Run, type net stop wuauserv. Kill the process ‘svchost.exe’ using 100% CPU if service fails to stop. ------------------- Install updates ------------------- Reinstall WUA 3.0 with option /WUFORCE from step 2. Install update 927891 from step 1. ----------------------- Re-register DLLs ----------------------- Open Notepad and copy/paste the following text: regsvr32 wuapi.dll regsvr32 wuaueng.dll regsvr32 atl.dll regsvr32 wucltui.dll regsvr32 wups.dll regsvr32 wuaueng1.dll regsvr32 wucltui.dll regsvr32 wups.dll regsvr32 wuweb.dll regsvr32 wups2.dll regsvr32 msxml.dll regsvr32 msxml3.dll regsvr32 msxml2...

  • Moving CompanyWeb

    Our internal SBS2003 box and one at a clients were starting to get a bit short of space on the C: drive. One of the culprits were the Sharepoint database files which were well over a gig on our system and .5 gig at our clients. I read up various documents on the MS site and a few NG and blog posts before trying this and I have now successfully moved both sets of Sharepoint databases. I would strongly recommend you read the document at http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/1/6/11671e4d-fb21-489c-870f-db36fd21a7d2/SBS_MoveDataFolders.DOC before doing this. Because I'm basically lazy by nature and prefer to do things the easy way and I really don't like typing in obscure OSQL commands I decided to write a batch file that would do it all for me. Here it is: -------------------------------- @echo off rem Move CompanyWeb rem Based on MS document and posts on newsgroups rem YOU MUST CHANGE THESE SOURCE AND TARGET FOLDERS TO MATCH YOUR OWN rem DON'T FORGET THE TRAILING "\" EITHER OTHERWISE NASTY...

  • Enabling Log on as a Service for a local user

    I came across a situation on our network where we needed to give a local user the right to "Log on as a Service" on one of our servers. This was to support a LOB application that we run on a server here in our office. The problem I had was that for both the "Log on as a service" and the "Log on as a Batch job" the "Add User or Group" button was greyed out. This is because our SBS 2003 box has a Domain Group Policy which sets the rights to these services at a Domain level and stops any changes being made elsewhere. To get around this I did the following: 1) Logon to the server in question as Domain Administrator. Open up the Active Directory Users & Computers (ADUC) snap-in. 2) Right click on the Domain and choose Properties. Click on the Group Policy tab and open the group policies. You have to do this unless you install the GPMC on the server. 3) Create a new Group Policy and name it something appropriate. 4) Navigate to Computer Configuration / Windows Settings / Security Settings / Local Policies / User...

  • Possible issue with Outlook 2007 SP2 and access to GAL with RPC/HTTP

    Sandy Donald has recently reported on the UKSBSG Yahoo! group that he has seen an issue with Outlook 2007 connecting to the GAL over RPC/HTTP (or Outlook Anywhere if you prefer). He reports the following in his post: "I did some more digging and testing. My conclusions are that after the application of Office 2007 SP2, Outlook cannot reconnect to directories over http. It can reconnect to mailbox and public folders but not directories. So, GAL is not available and the offline message appears. I have restored a client to the pre Office SP2 install status using System Restore (having proven the issue on this client by installing SP2) and after the rather lengthy process of Office 2007 having to do a lot of reconfiguring when Outlook is started (after the System Restore) including an apparently necessary reboot, and error 1719 Windows Installer, - but no reboot occurred. Anyway Outlook 2007 is back to SP1 and, hey presto, Gal is visible and directories are connected over http. You know, on the Outlook client...

  • Connect iPaq to Motorola L6

    Just had to replace my aging (and totally horrible) Sony Ericsson T610 phone when it decided that life was no longer worth living. Basically I traded it's corpse in for the cheapest bluetooth phone the local Orange shop had, a Motorola L6. As I use my iPaq and Outlook Mobile Access to read email whilst I'm out of the office I needed to get the iPaq to talk to Orange GPRS via bluetooth and my phone. Basically the procedure is as follows: 1) Pair the iPaq and the phone. I won't go into that here. Look in the phone and iPaq docs on how to do that. 2) Open the Connections applet (Start, Settings, Connections tab). Click on Connections. 3) Add a new modem connection 4) Choose a meaningful name for the Connection and select "Bluetooth Dialup Modem". Click on next. 5) Enter *99# in the number field. Click on use dialling rules and ensure Use dialling rules is unchecked. 6) Enter "user" and "pass" in the username and password fields (without the quotes). 7) Click on Advanced. Change the baud rate to 57600 and enter the...

  • Installing Sophos Small Business Edition in a workgroup

    Sophos is a great anti-virus, anti-spam etc product but installing the Small Business Edition on a workgroup can be something of a challenge . The Sophos Knowledgebase is deafeningly quiet on the issue too. I had to install Sophos SBE on a client's network this week where they don't have a domain and I decided to write a batch file to do all the stuff that I believe is necessary to get it to work. For this batch file to give the Sophos Update user the correct rights on the local system you need the program NTRIGHTS from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. I copied this into the same folder as the batch file for ease. This is the batch file: rem Create Sophos User for workgroup computers c: cd\ md temp cd temp net use x: \\<servername>\data\admin\batch copy x:\ntrights.exe rem Change the bits in <> below to your choice of username and password net user <Sophos Update User> <password> /ADD /COMMENT:"Sophos update user" /EXPIRES:NEVER net localgroup administrators <Sophos Update User> /ADD...

  • Proliant Support Pack 8.0 is a bit broken.....

    We have one HP ML350 G4p server that we have just started providing full Managed Service for. As a matter of course we install the HP Proliant Support Pack. The latest version is 8.0, but there appears to be a problem with it where it breaks the System Management Home Page . Only solution according to HP Support is to downgrade PSP to previous version 7.91 which does not require a server reboot. According to HP there is a fix due RSN, but I'm not holding my breath :-) Hope that helps someone avoid the same pain!

  • Hello and welcome.....

    Hi! Welcome to my blog...... I am hoping to use this to drop bits and pieces of information that I come across as I do consultancy work for my SME clients here in Peterborough. Partly so that I can pass those things on to all and sundry, but also somewhere where I can find them when I need them again!! A bit about me...... I run an IT Consultancy in Peterborough, UK working with a wide range of SME companies in the area. Our main focus is on Small Business Server 2003, but we have clients running on a wide range (both in size and age!) of Microsoft platforms. My passion is to see real business benefit come out of my client's investment in IT. Hope you enjoy what you read!

  • Microsoft Licencing as Religious Enlightenment.......

    I'm fairly convinced that there only a select few who Truly Understand MS Licencing. These are the High Priests. They are the only ones who are privy to The Inner Secrets. The Prolitatriat and the bog-standard Priesthood (who are on the Licencing Desk or who work for Distributors) are left to struggle on in the dark as best they can. Occassionally a member of the Priesthood or Redmond Forbid one of the Prolitariat have a flash of insight into the inner workings of Licencing. However the feeling of Enlightenment and Well-Being soon dissolves when one the High Priesthood gently explains that it really Isn't Like That At All. Gloom and Despondency then returns to those who are not so Enlightened.......

  • Sharepoint, metadata and OneNote 2003

    I've just been out and bought myself a Tablet PC. I decided to go for an HP TC4200, but that's another blog post at some point or another. One thing that I have now started using is Microsoft OneNote 2003 so I can scribble notes when on client's sites. I've also found that if you are talking to clients they are less intimidated by it than if you opened your laptop up and started typing away. One thing I wanted to be able to do was upload these OneNote scribblings to my Sharepoint site in a Document Library and at upload time add some metadata to the document entry such as Client, Product or whatever. However I couldn't get it to work I could save the OneNote document to the Sharepoint site (no problem with that) but I couldn't get it to ask me to update the metadata. It works beautifully in Word and Excel, but not in OneNote <sigh> It would appear that it doesn't work in OneNote by design. Yet another one of Microsoft's bizarre design decisions. This document was very helpful in sorting this out: http:/...

  • London Small Business IT Pro Group meeting 8th May - CRM with Julian Sharp of Vigence

    The next meeting of the London Small Business IT Pro Group will take place this coming Monday 8th May. We have another special guest this month. Julian Sharp of Vigence will be talking about implementing and helping clients to use CRM 3.0. Vigence are one of the leading Microsoft CRM consultancies in the UK and I know that Julian has lots of tips and tricks up his sleeve that he's going to share with us. The meeting will be start at 5:30pm Monday 8th May at Microsoft House, 10 Great Pulteney Street, London, W1F 9NB. Drinks and pizza will be served and the meeting will finish around 8:30pm in time for those who travel any distance to get away and for the locals to retire to the pub If you could let me know you are coming that would be appreciated. Look forward to seeing all of you who can make it!

  • Creating a "reminder" appointment for the next day in Outlook

    I don't know about you, but I often need to put a quick reminder in Outlook for tomorrow. Such things as "Phone Bill", "Feed the Guinea Pig" and "Get son to have bath" are the sort of essential things that make life slip along that little easier. A while ago I wrote a quick VBScript to do just that. Here it is: ' Written by Ian Watkins September 2002 ' This script creates an Outlook Appointment item to act as a reminder to the user Dim ol Dim olns dim olAppt dim olAppointmentItem olAppointmentItem = 1 ' Set the Application object. Set ol = CreateObject("Outlook.Application") ' Set the Namespace object. Set olns = ol.GetNamespace("MAPI") ' Create an appointment item and populate it set olAppt = ol.CreateItem(olAppointmentItem) olAppt.start = date + 1 & " 09:00am" olAppt.duration = 0 olAppt.ReminderMinutesBeforeStart = 0 olAppt.subject = inputbox("Please enter a subject", "Reminder Appointment") olAppt.BusyStatus...

  • Ping a remote host then if it times out run a TRACERT and send an email

    Recently I needed to find out why a connection to a server was failing every so often. I knocked this script up from a few pieces of old wood and a couple of tin cans I had lying around to do just that. It was nicely indented until I pasted it into here :-) Run it using the following command line: cscript <filename.vbs> Setup a scheduled task to run it when you need to. ' Created by Ian Watkins - Oxbridge Technology Ltd - May 2007 On Error Resume Next Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell") strComputer = "host.domain.com" vbCRLF = Chr(13) & Chr(10) strPingStatus = PingStatus(strComputer) If strPingStatus = "Success" Then Wscript.Echo "Success pinging " & strComputer Else WshShell.Run "%comspec% /c c:\windows\system32\tracert.exe " & strComputer & " > c:\belfry\testlog.txt" , ,1 Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 8 Dim fso, f Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject") 'Open...

  • Puzzle of the week......

    Why does it take so long to prepare the desktop on a Windows 2008 Core server when you RDP to it? I mean it's only a command prompt.....

  • London Small Business IT Pro Group meeting 10th April - SPECIAL GUESTS

    One of the things I do for my sins (many and varied the must be) is lead the London Small Business IT Pro Group. We have a great treat for you all this month! We have two guest speakers this month hot on the heels of their presentations at SMB Nation, Amsterdam. - Karl Palachuk (Sacramento SBS Partner Group leader & author of the “Network Documentation Workbook”) - Matthew Dickerson (one of Australia’s leading SBS partners & rated as #1 in Harry Brelsford's bright blue “Making it Big in Small Business” book covering 15 of the top SBS partners worldwide) Basically, these guys are some of the best SBS partners in the world (up there with Harry Brelsford) & will be giving their time freely as special guests at the London, Thames Valley & Midlands SBS Partner Groups. Perfect opportunity for us to learn from the best (about their business models, not just technical stuff). Both Karl and Matthew are experts in providing Managed Services to their clients as well as having a wealth of experience in running...

  • Remote Assistance - funny how you stumble across things isn't it.......

    One of the groups I read is the MSSMALLBIZ group on Yahoo! Groups...... Someone posted up today on how to offer Remote Assistance. Well, whadya know? This is one of those things I'd never clicked existed in Small Business Server 2003. <fx off>Tut, tut</fx off>. Vlad Mazek (of SBS Show fame) then posted on how he'd been alerted to a really cool way of offering Remote Assistance without having to go to Server Management. He's blogged about it here: http://www.vladville.com/2006/04/neat-way-to-offer-remote-assistance.html (BTW there are some extraneous spaces in the URL on Vlad's site. Remove those otherwise it doesn't work!) Not knowing about Remote Assistance <fx off>Tut, tut</fx off> I hadn't realised you can use it to help some one in a Terminal Server session as well as on a desktop. Is that good or what As I said, funny how you stumble across things isn't it........

  • You know those pesky Blue Screens?

    Dana Epp has written an excellent article on how to interpret them for fun and for profit http://silverstr.ufies.org/blog/archives/000761.html Next time you get a BSOD this should help you work out the root cause ASAP.

  • Installing CRM 3.0 on an SBS2003 PE Virtual Server image

    Fun and games I am still using CRM 1.2 in my business because all the horror stories of upgrades from 1.2 to 3.0 around and about. Reading Larry Lentz's blog at http://ts2community.com/blogs/larrylentz/default.aspx is enough to turn your hair grey So I decided to install CRM 3.0 on a VS image of SBS2003 PE SP1 that I have here. NB I don't have ISA2004 installed My standard way of setting an SBS box up is to have the domain name as domainname.local and then when I run the CEICW to give the machine name as server.domainname.co.uk. This means that it works when somone wants to use RWW and you can update the external DNS for your domain to point to the external IP address of your server. So what did I have to do to get CRM 3.0 installed on SBS2003? Setup a forward lookup zone for domainname.co.uk in the SBS server DNS and create an A record for server.domainame.co.uk pointing to the internal IP address of the SBS server. Fix the loopback problem as outlined in this KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/default...

  • These guys rock.....

    Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra that is Went to see them at The Broadway Theatre in Peterborough last night. An incredible night out. If you get the chance to see these guys live, grab it with both hands - they are amazing.......

  • Using Certificates to secure Wireless Access

    The guys at Microsoft have released a paper for comment on how to use Certificates to secure wireless access on an SBS network. Read about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/sbsdocsteam/archive/2006/05/16/599362.aspx They want your comments. I have already installed something similar in our office and at one clients. Having an Official Microsoft How-To will be very useful.

  • Ways to find the Service Pack levels of products in SBS

    After a thread on the Yahoo! SBS list Don Murphy has put together a page of info on how to find the Service Pack level of the different components on SBS. You can find it here: http://reloadnuggets.com/archives/14 Thanks Don!

  • Sophos Puremessage and ActiveSync

    If you are using Sophos Puremessage and are having problems getting Server-side ActiveSync to work with either your PPC or your Windows Mobile 5 (WM5) device then you might need to do the following: In the Puremessage console go to Jobs / Exchange Information Store / Databases tab and check Public Store Background Scanning and Private Store Background Scanning. Click the Apply button at the bottom of the console. I've never been able to get Server-side ActiveSync working since I bought my iPaq a year or so ago, but haven't had time to work out why not. A chance comment by someone in the UKSBSG Yahoo! group put me onto it. Thanks to James and Alexandre! Since I found this out I've discovered there's a Sophos KB article about it - www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/3186.html . It's great when you know what to look for isn't it
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(c)David Overton 2006-23