Getting your IP back
By · CommentsSo you’re having trouble getting to the Internet? Can’t ping the Internet gateway? Can’t ping your own IP address? Have network adapters that refuse to enable or disable? Could be a corrupt IP stack. You can take a look at MSKB 299357, or you can follow these steps:
- Make sure you’re logged in with a local administrator account.
- Open a command prompt.
- Run the following command :
netsh int ip reset logfile.txt
where logfile.txt is the name of a file where the command can write its output. - When the command completes, run it again with a different filename for the output file.
- When that run completes, run it one more time, again with a different filename for the log file.
- Restart the computer in Safe Mode with Networking.
This will reset the TCP/IP settings back to sane defaults, which means all adapters in the computer will be set for DHCP. If you’re doing this on an SBS server, restarting in Safe Mode with Networking is absolutely crucial in order to avoid the dreaded 30 minute reboot. When the computer comes back up, set the network settings as needed, then reboot normally.
You may still have other issues, but these steps will get you a nice, clean, DHCP-enabled set of network adapters in the system.
Exchange 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2007 have options to require a security code on a device that will connect to the Exchange server using ActiveSync. This setting is optional in Exchange 2003 but is enabled by default in Exchange 2007. Without getting into the reasons why you might want to reconfigure Exchange 2007 so that ActiveSync devices do not require a device security code, if you do change the Mobile Device settings after an iPhone has already connected with ActiveSync and is requiring the password, you have to jump through a couple of hoops to actually get the iPhone to pick up the new security settings.
OK, they’re really small hoops, but it’s worth pointing out nonetheless because I had to Google quite a bit to uncover this tidbit. To remove the security code requirement from the iPhone, do the following:
- Remove the Exchange account from the iPhone configuration.
- Turn off the security code in the iPhone settings.
- Add the Exchange account back to the iPhone configuration.
That’s it. If you’re prompted to create a security code when you re-add the Exchange account, then the Exchange policy hasn’t been modified correctly, and you need to dig into that. But if the requirement for the device security code has been correctly changed, you will not be prompted to enter a security code in step 3 above, and no reset of the iPhone is needed.
SSL Certificate Validation
By · CommentsI put up a post this morning regarding SSL certificate request validation over on the Third Tier web site. If you’ve been wondering how SSL certificates work in SBS 2008 or if you’re about to renew an SSL certificate on an SBS 2003 box, you might want to check out that post.
Troubleshooting Tale: Remote Access Loss on Server
By · CommentsYou can almost always count on interesting things happening during Update Weekend. Sometimes a patch will yield unexpected results, sometimes you lose access to the server after initiating a restart (and yet the server doesn’t actually restart), and so on. Well, this past weekend was no different, but the types of issues encountered was.
As such, I’m going to start a new series of posts in the vein of demonstrating how troubleshooting was approached during a particular situation to help others identify other possible troubleshooting steps or avenues when encountering problems. We’ll start with a rather typical behavior (restarted a server remotely and could not get access back to the server when it should have come up) that had a very unusual root problem.
Remotely Installing This Month’s ISA Update
By · CommentsJust a heads-up for those of you who remotely install security updates for your customers. This month includes an update for ISA, and if you don’t know about it beforehand, you could end up in a bit of a jam.
As expected, when installing the ISA update, access to the Internet through the server is interrupted. Unlike some previous updates, however, when the installation of this update completes, Internet access is NOT restored. You don’t get Internet back until you restart the server.
So if you don’t have some mechanism in place for restarting the server automatically after updates install, you could find yourself, and your customer, in a rather unexpected place.
Excel Security Update Applies to Mac Office, Too
By · CommentsMicrosoft released a couple of updates for their Excel spreadsheet product in the slate of monthly updates for April 2009. The security issues addressed in the update also apply to the Mac version of Excel as well. As such, Microsoft has released updates for both Office 2004 and Office 2008 for the Mac. The files can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.mspx. Because of the nature of the update, all Mac Office users are encouraged to install this update as soon as possible.
Troubleshooting Delayed Message Delivery in Exchange
By · CommentsAs more and more anti-spam solutions start doing “interesting” things with SMTP and mail delivery, there is an increased chance of users reporting that mail messages to certain domains are delayed. Unlike a full non-delivery report (NDR) which will list the SMTP error codes for easy identification of the reason for the rejection, a delayed delivery report could be the result of an Internet connection issue, spam filter, offline server, or any number of other causes. The remainder of this post details how to track down possible causes for Internet delivery issues. Read More→
Restoring SBS 2008 to Different Hardware
By · CommentsWhile doing some testing on the restore capabilities of SBS 2008 using the native Server 2008 backup and restore tools, I ran cross an interesting tidbit regarding the restore process. Once I thought about it, it made sense, but not having tested a full system restore yet, I hadn’t run across it just yet.
When doing a bare metal restore of SBS 2008 using the native Windows Backup tools, your restore system must match the disk configuration of the source server as closely as possible. Specifically, if you have your backup from a server with two partitions on a single volume, you must restore to a single volume whose size is at least as large as the source volume. You cannot restore the two partitions from the original backup to a system with two volumes and expect that one partition would restore to one volume and the second partition would restore to the second volume. If your backup came from a system with a single volume and two partitions, you must restore to a system with a single volume so the backup can put two partitions on it.
I’m assuming that the reverse is true (if you have two volumes as the source for the backup, you must have two volumes for the restore) but have not had the ability to test this yet.
Again, this holds for a bare metal restore using the recovery method available when booting from the SBS 2008 installation CD. Using the native tools when SBS 2008 is running, you have the option to restore to alternate locations.
SBS 2008 and Companyweb Offline
By · CommentsOver the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen reports of companyweb not displaying on some SBS 2008 servers. Same when trying to load the SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration site. Poking through the event logs, we’re seeing errors and warnings like:
Error Windows SharePoint Services 3 3760 Database
SQL Database ‘ShareWebDb’ on SQL Server instance ‘np:\\.\pipe\MSSQL$Microsoft##SSEE\sql\query’ not found. Additional error information from SQL Server is included below.
Cannot open database "ShareWebDb" requested by the login. The login failed.
Login failed for user ‘NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE’.
Restarting the Windows Internal Database (Microsoft##SSEE) service restores access, at least temporarily.
Thus far, I’ve been unable to identify any commonality that might be triggering this behavior. If you have encountered this issue, especially if all you’ve had to do is restart the Windows Internal Database service to recover access, please post a comment back so we can try to collect additional information and see what might be triggering this issue.
SBS 2008 Unleashed On Sale
By · CommentsKarl Palachuk has a sale going on for the Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 Unleashed book at SMB Books. If you purchase SBS 2008 Unleased plus any other item and enter the promo code, you’ll get $20 off the total order. Other promotions are going on at the site as well. For more information, check out Karl’s post: http://smallbizthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/02/right-now-sale-at-smb-books.html.