SBS licensing Reset

A runaway process on SBS2003 decided to fill up all the disk space on C: in the early hours of the morning. The fallout from this was the System log was corrupt and the SBS license data was reset to the default 5 CALs.
The System log was easy to fix – reboot the server.
The SBS license data was an absolute pain. I’d never run the “Back up licenses” utility in the Licensing section of Server Management. Microsoft have KB article 888818 discussing this, which is either re-enter the licenses, restore the C:\WINDOWS folder or restore a backup of the licenses.
The first wasn’t an option as I was offsite and the person with the key to the safe wasn’t in. The second was just not viable – why Microsoft couldn’t specify which file/folder needed restoring I don’t know. The third would have been OK if ever I had run it.
After much stuffing about I found that the SBS2003 licenses are kept in the licstr.cpa file in the WINDOWS\system32 folder. Thankfully, Microsoft actually keep an automatic backup of this in autolicstr.cpa. The simple process was to stop the License Logging Service, rename licstr.cpa to licstr.cpa.old, then copy autolicstr.cpa to licstr.cpa. After this I started License Logging Service and used Server Management to confirm that the licenses had been restored.

Posted in Exchange | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sonicwall – Configure for secure WIFI. Seperate X2 from X0

As I understand you want to configure x2 as wlan subnet 10.0.0.x and you do not want to allow x2 subnet to communicate with x0 subnet.

Please configure firewall access rule from wlan>lan
Click on Add tab:
From General tab>Select Action as deny>From Zone :WLan>To Zone:Lan.
Service:Any
Source:x2 subnet
Destination:x0 subnet

And may I know what is the x0 subnet on the sonicwall.
If you are not able to browse to internet on x2 subnet we need do a packet capture and determine this.
Make sure that you have this outbound nat policy.
Original Source:Any
Translated source:Wan primary ip
Original Destination:Any
Translated Destination:Original
Original Service:Any
Translated Service:original
Interface inbound:x2
Interface Outbound:x1

Posted in Exchange | Leave a comment

Group Policy to Publish MSI

Create a Group Policy Object
To create a Group Policy object (GPO) to use to distribute the software package:
Start the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in. To do this, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
In the console tree, right-click your domain, and then click Properties.
Click the Group Policy tab, and then click New.
Type a name for this new policy (for example, Office XP distribution), and then press ENTER.
Click Properties, and then click the Security tab.
Click to clear the Apply Group Policy check box for the security groups that you want to prevent from having this policy applied.
Click to select the Apply Group Policy check box for the groups that you want this policy to apply to.
When you are finished, click OK.
Back to the top
Assign a Package
To assign a program to computers that are running Windows Server 2003, Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows XP Professional, or to users who are logging on to one of these workstations:
Start the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in. To do this, click Start, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers.
In the console tree, right-click your domain, and then click Properties.
Click the Group Policy tab, select the group policy object that you want, and then click Edit.
Under Computer Configuration, expand Software Settings.
Right-click Software installation, point to New, and then click Package.
In the Open dialog box, type the full Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the shared installer package that you want. For example, \\file server\share\file name.msi.

Posted in Exchange | Leave a comment

Copy a short cut to a users desktop with a login script

Copy \\ServerName\SharedFolder\Shortcut.lnk “%userprofile%\Desktop” /Y

Posted in Exchange | Leave a comment

Jump lists and Recent Opened in WIndows 7

At times Word, Excel, Adobe, etc might stop showing their “jump list” when you press the start bar. Try the below fix, but note that it will clear the existing shortcuts from the list.

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations
and delete any suspiciously large files. For example, I deleted a 175kB file, and now Firefox lists recently opened web pages in its jump list.

Posted in Exchange | Leave a comment

SBS 2011 Exchange 2010 SP1 – Outlook Web Access HTTP 500 Error

Microsoft Exchange Forms-Based Authentication service: Not Running.

Posted in Exchange | Leave a comment

BES Troubleshooting – Missing MAGT Log??

So when of my BES servers lastnight seemed to get struck by lightning and go offline. The users turned the server back on this morning when they entered the office. However, Blackberrys didnt work!!? No mail was sent or received on the devices. The strange thing was my trusty MAGT log was missing. How am I supposed to troubleshoot without it?

Long story short after digging through just about every log I could find I didnt find any smoking guns. I did however find lots of errors similar to this one:

Posted in Exchange | Leave a comment

Google Apps Migration – GAM for groups

Google unfortunately doesnt allow you to create groups for secondary domains.

However using GAM you can work around this with the following commain

gam create group groupemail@secondarydomain.com name “groups name” description “groups description” permission anyone

Posted in Google | Leave a comment

BES Installations and SQL Instances

BES and SQL can be annoying to setup the first time if the settings are not correct.

Make sure of the following:

1) Make sure the account your doing the installation with (lets say BLACKBERRYADMIN) has the dbcreator permission in SQL and any others that might be needed.

2) Make sure that named pipes and TCPIP are enabled in the SQL server configuration manager

If not sure, logon to the server with the administrator credentials, logon to SQL and create the BES service account (BLACKBERRYADMIN) and assign the proper permissions

Posted in Blackberry | Leave a comment

Google Apps migration – Multi Domain awesomeness using GAM

Team,

Google Apps used to be somewhat painful when it came to multiple domains registered under the same account. Now that GAM is around (http://code.google.com/p/google-apps-manager/) this process is now much easier.

Simply download and extract GAM to a directory. Enable the Provisioning API. Run GAM.

GAM runs from the command line. Once you load it up the first time you need to authenticate using the API. Quite simply you type in: “gam info domain”

You then enter the domain, the user alias, and password.

Posted in Google | Leave a comment