While there are a few different ways to transfer the certificate to a mobile device, I have had 100% success with the following method each time I have used it. Hopefully it will be of use to you, whether you have the self-signed SSL cert from SBS or a third-party cert that is not recognized as valid by all mobile devices.

And no, I don't have to replace mine...

The new part number is Q56-00232 Entourage Mac 2004 Mac English Disk Kit CD (this is listed on http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/evaluation/faq/prodinfo.mspx). I'll post an update when I have a better idea that it is actually available. I now have on good authority that not only is the new part number available for order, but someone has actually received their copy of the media. Well, it seems that even though someone was able to order the media, it still has yet to get delivered to that person. Plus another person was having difficulty getting the media ordered. So, it's back to "I'm not sure what the status is" status on the Entourage media.I received confirmation on 10/23/2006 that the Entourage media is happily in the hands of the person who ordered it in mid-September. I think it's finally out there...

Looking in the logs, we found the following error lines:

Error 0x8007042c returned from call to Installing RRAS (LAN)().
Error 0x8007042c returned from call to CNetCommit::Common().
Error 0x8007042c returned from call to CNetCommit::Commit().

Googling on this error returned no useful results.

We looked up the error in err.exe (part of the Exchange Admin Tools download) and got the following output:

ERROR_SERVICE_DEPENDENCY_FAIL winerror.h
# The dependency service or group failed to start.

At that point we did a service-by-service comparison on that box to a known good SBS server and found that the Telephony service had been disabled. Once we re-enabled the Telephony service, the CEICW completeld successfully.

Lessons learned from this experience:

• Not everything is in Google (yet)
  
• icwlog.txt is a good place to start when troubleshooing CEICW errors
  
• err.exe is a really useful tool for making some sense out of cryptic errors
  
• the Telephony service is used as part of the CEICW

But what if the Exchange SP2 installer tells you that IMF is still installed, even after you uninstall it from Add/Remove Programs? Or what if you don't see the IMF listed in Add/Remove Programs to uninstall it?

Here are a few suggestions to get around this, followed by instructions for manually removing the IMF so Exchange SP2 can install.

Having had to go through this again this weekend, I rediscovered an old trick and learned a new one. Here they are:

Permanently Turning Off the Reading Pane:

1. Open the properties of the shortcut used to open Outlook (I modify the shortcut in the QuickLaunch toolbar)
   
2. In the "Target" field, add "/nopreview" to the end of the string used to launch Outlook.
   
3. Click Apply, then click OK.

Permanently Turning Off Grouping
[WARNING: the following describes a modification to the registry. Improper editing in the Registry can lead to a dead machine. If you don't know what you're doing in the registry, stay out. You have been warned.]

1. From Start->Run, type "outlook /cleanviews" and press Enter (Outlook should not already be open first).
   
2. Quit Outlook as soon as it comes up.
   
3. Open regedit and navigate to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Setup.
   
4. Create a new DWORD named AutoArrangeViews and set it to 0 (zero).
   
5. Close regedit and launch Outlook. No more arranged in groups!

Any chance the SBS community at large has to communicate through official channels with the product team at Microsoft is something we should jump on. Especially when the feedback has been officially requested.

Details of the process follow (taken directly from the official blog post - you can link there directly and follow the instructions from there if you choose). Please note that even though a Passport is required to get into the survey, it is there simply to validate access to the survey. It is not used to track what your responses are. The survey is completely anonymous.

The Small Business Server Product Team would like to hear from the SBS User Community. This direct anonymous survey of the SBS User Community is brought to you by the SBS Product Team.

You are invited to participate in the Windows Small Business Server Community program on the Microsoft Connect Web site at http://connect.microsoft.com. This site has been set up to directly gather feedback anonymously from the SBS User Community.

Your role in the SBS Community is important to us. Microsoft Connect enables you to connect with Microsoft developers, product managers, and other development team members to help us make our products the best they can be.

To accept this invitation and become a member of this program, please follow these steps:

1) Use your Internet connection to visit our Web site at http://connect.microsoft.com.
2) Click on "Invitations" on the left-side menu.
3) You will need to sign in using a valid Passport and before you can continue to the "Invitations" page.
4) Enter your Invitation ID in the blank.
Your invitation ID is: COMM-GKXK-WJKV
5) Click "Go."
6) If you have not previously registered with Microsoft Connect, you may be required to register before continuing with the invitation process. This a light registration and we will not use any information that you provide to contact you later unless you tell us otherwise.

Please follow the steps shown to you by that program to become an active participant. Once you complete the steps, you will be automatically approved. From that point forward you should be able to log into this site using your passport account and take any surveys that are available to you.

Here is the link to the survey: SBS Community Survey. You will find this link on the main page of the http://connect.microsoft.com site under Small Business Server Community Site.

I have to admit that when I heard Apple was releasing a new series of Macs based on the Intel chip, I was a little befuddled. For years, one of the claims to fame of the PPC and G-series CPUs is that they ran circles around the Intel equivalents in terms of performance. Soon enough, I started hearing about how Apple had, once again, done a fabulous job of porting their entire solution to a completely different hardware structure (ala Motorola 68000 CPU architecture to PPC architecture) in a way that was seamless to the end user. Then there were reports that you could actually install Windows XP and run it on one of the Intel-based Macs, some reports indicating that Windows even ran better on an Intel-based Mac than on your average name-brand Windows-only PC.

Then two announcements caught my attention. The first came from Apple, introducing a public beta of a software known as Boot Camp. The second came from a company I had previously not heard of called Parallels, announcing a solution that would allow you to run non-Mac operating systems in a virtual environment on Intel-based Macs.

Needless to say, my curiosity was piqued, and I started my research. That, combined with several queries from my mixed environment clients, prompted me to acquire an Intel-based Mac and do my own research. What follows are my initial observations of the solutions.

Today, I ran across another reason to keep Out Of Office replies from going outside of the network.

A client needed assistance installing an SBS 2003 server into an existing Windows 2003 domain. He had looked at the documentation in the Microsoft KB 884453 but decided he wanted my assistance with the process. So I get to the site and start going through the process.

There's one key piece of information missing from the KB, however, when you use the SPS 2003 SP1 integrated installation media. When installing the server portion, the setup enables the Windows firewall on the NICs in the server so that no bad stuff can get in. This is a wonderful change from the original install media where you really had to disconnect the NICs from any live network when doing the install to make sure that the box didn't get hammered by Blaster of Slammer or any other other threat that was protected against with SP1. But I overlooked it. So when I did the dcpromo, the box came up into the network correctly. When I installed DNS, it installed correctly. But I could not get the two DCs to replicate.

Fortunately my friend Wayne helped me find what should have been an obvious step in the process for me - can you ping both machines by FQDN from each other? I could ping the existing server from the new server, but the old server could not ping the new server. When I went in and disabled the Windows Firewall on the NIC in the new server, replication started happening immediately and the remainder of the installation process finished successfully.

So add this one to your hat - when you follow MS KB884453 and you're using SBS 2003 SP1 integrated installation media, you need to turn off the Windows Firewall on the NICs to let replication complete.

Apple released a tool called Boot Camp that will allow the new Intel-based Macs to install Windows directly onto the Mac and boot either into Windows or into Mac OS. This is currently a beta product, but it's expected to be a free tool available to users of the new Macs. This will allow Macs to run Windows and Windows-based apps directly on the Intel chipset, bypassing any virtualization, which will increase the speed of the Windows side. Reports say that Windows XP on the Mac Intel hardware runs faster than on other Intel-based PCs. The downside is that you cannot run both OSes at the same time. If you boot into Windows, you will not be able to run Mac apps or possibly access the Mac data that's on the drive.

Parallels has released a beta of their product, Parallels Workstation, which will run Windows on an Intel-based Mac in a virtual session. This will allow you to run both OS platforms at the same time, although neither OS will run quite as fast as if it were the only app running on the system (ala Boot Camp).

The Microsoft Virtual PC product for Mac currently will not run on the Intel-based Macs and I am unaware of any expected updates to the current product to allow that. Possibly in a future release, but with the Parallels Workstation price point of $49, it'll be hard to beat.

Keep your ears open for more developments on this front...

Batch files can use the system variables %DATE% and %TIME% to get the current date and time of the system. These variables return data in the following format: