Thursday, April 28, 2011

New Prices for Microsoft Certifications Exams

Microsoft certificate price is changing as of July 1, 2011, read the article below for more information

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/cert-pricing-FAQ.aspx

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Error Mounting–Newly Created Mailbox Database in Exchange 2010 SP1

When you create a new database in a new Exchange 2010 environment following error occurs when trying to mount it.

Event ID – 15, Source – MSExchangeRepl

Active Manager failed to mount database DB2 on server servername.domain.org. Error: An Active Manager operation failed. Error: The database action failed. Error: Operation failed with message: MapiExceptionNotFound: Unable to mount database. (hr=0x8004010f, ec=-2147221233)

Resolution

Make sure that the database points to the correct Public Folder Database and has the Offline Address Book selected. After you have do the above, the database will mount correctly.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Windows 7 + RemProf = Windows XP + Delprof

It has been a while since I have been looking for a remote profile deletion utility for Windows 7. Microsoft provided Delprof for Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003 but it doesn’t work on any OS beginning with Vista. We are in the process of transitioning to Windows 7, out user support guys make heavy use of Delprof as we use Roaming Profiles which get corrupted or have other issues at time or we simply need to clean a workstation. So in the absence of Delprof our user support needs to login to the workstation to clear profiles on a workstation or login to a XP virtual machine and use the command prompt for remote profile deletion.

While  looking for a solution I found the following freeware utility

RemProf download and look at the help file for more info.

Using it with PsExec one can achieve what Delprof does and more. It makes a better Delprof alternative.

for example if you need to delete only one users profile from a workstation, you can user the following command

psexec \\computername \\uncpath\remprof /L username

there are many more options, following is from the help file that comes with it.

Usage:
REMPROF [/LIST|username|/A|/D:days|/AD:days] [/EXCLUDE:usernames] [/?]

/LIST - List all user profiles currently not in use (Default).
username - Delete user profile based on username.
/A - Delete all user profiles that have no username association
including abandoned profile folders.
i.e. The username has been deleted in Active Directory but
a profile still exists in form of a SID or the profile did
not unload correctly and a residue profile folder exists.
/D:days - Delete all user profiles equal to or older than the number of
days specified. NB: /D: without a number is equal to /D:0.
/D:0 will remove CURRENT user profiles not in use.
/AD:days - Delete all user profiles that have no username association
and are equal to or older than the number of days specified.
NB: /AD: without a number is equal to /AD:0.
/EXCLUDE:username/s - Exclude particular users from being deleted.
Can accept multiple entries, seperated by comma.
Must be last command line argument.
Unassociated profiles cannot be excluded.
Do not include the Domain Name.
/? - show this help file

REMPROF without parameters will execute the /LIST switch by default.

I find it a very useful tool, hope it helps you too.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Installing Exchange 2007 SP2 Management Tools on Windows 7 SP1

We recently deployed Windows 7 SP1 64bit to all the IT staff and the user support team required Exchange Management Tools installed on their workstations.  I just asked them to go ahead and copy the installer on the local disk and fire up the installation as administrator and choose management tools in a custom installation. I was told that there was a compatibility  issue error while doing the installation.

Resolution

I installed the following features just to make sure that the perquisites are met.

  • IIS 6 Management Console
  • IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
  • IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration Compatibility
  • IIS Management Console

ScreenShot411

I tried the installation again as administrator and checked the compatibility mode to Vista SP2, got the following error.

ScreenShot412

So trusting in the good old restart trick Smile I restarted and ran the same setup as administrator and compatibility mode (right click > Properties > Compatibility) Vista SP2. It worked like a charm!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange – Java virtual machine is not installed

After a successful installation of ScanMail on our Exchange 2010 sp1 servers, when I tried to login to the Management site, I received the following error

image

Server had Internet Explorer 8 installed, I though I should try it from my Windows 7 64bit machine just to make sure that its not just the server. I received the same error on my workstation as well.

I am sure Java was installed correctly and was enabled for IE and Firefox, I tried opening the site in Firefox and got same error on all 64bit machines.

Resolution

Fix was simple

I had to install 32bit version of JRE on all 64bit machines. That solved the issue for all browsers.

thought this might be helpful for some out there.