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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Cannot install an application over the network on Windows 7 or Server 2008 R2

When you try to install of run an application from a network share you get the following error

Application Error: The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000000f). Click OK to close the application.

to resolve this issue, download the following hotfix. Install it and restart the computer.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978869

Shared Mailboxes and Sent Items Saved Location

 

This has been a big design issue with Outlook. Following are the issues.

• When you have multiple mailboxes and send from a secondary mailbox, the sent item gets saved in the default mailbox of Outlook profile.
• If the mailbox is shared between multiple people, it is hard to keep track of sent communication by that one mailbox.

To fix this issue two things need to be done.

1. Apply the hotfix below

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970944

2. Apply the following registry settings.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972148

MSI Manager–Redeploy Software Assigned by GPO

MSI Manager is a simple and great tool that allows you to reinstall a software assigned by group policy. This is very useful when applications were not installed correctly due to timeout or some other issue. If the install gets interrupted in the middle it will not try to reinstall the software again.

To force a reinstall one can manually do the following

in the registry editor navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy\AppMgmt.  There will be a key for each software that has been assigned.  To force a reinstall, simply delete the associated key and then run gpupdate/force on the target computer.

To achieve this quicker user MSI Manager – click her to download and read more details

Microsoft Certification Pack–Up to 20% Discount

Click the poster below to request your Certification Pack.

There are five Career Certification Exam pack options for you to choose from, each serves different certification needs and with different discounts:

• The 2 Exam Pack (Get 15% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• The 3 Exam Pack (Get 15% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• The 4 Exam Pack (Get 20% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• The 5 Exam Pack (Get 20% off + a Second Shot on Every Exam)
• Single Exam with Second Shot for an additional 15% (for total $143.75 USD in the United States)

The Exam Packs are not restricted to just a certification path. You can use them for any Microsoft certification exam.

Email me to get your certification pack

Adding or Deleting Company Holidays to/from All Users’ Calendars–Exchange 2007

I was recently asked to figure out a silent method of adding our organization’s holiday’s to all users calendars. Following was my approach.
First I thought of looking for a client side solution. Everyone in our organization uses Outlook 2007 and outlook uses a file name outlook.hol for holiday configuration. Following is the format of file, it can be created using a simple text editor and can be distributed by an email or commandline (outlook.exe /hol holidayfilename)
[Country or Description] ###
Event or holiday description, yyyy/mm/dd
Event or holiday description, yyyy/mm/dd
read for more details
Above is not very clean for a large environment, so I was not too happy with this solution and started taking a different approach.
Definitely it would be so much easier doing it with Exchange Management Shell and finally I found my answer.
Here is what's needed for a great solution

• Exchange Management Tools and Outlook 2007 installed on a 32bit machine
• Outlook 2007 to create a PST file
• Export-mailbox
• Import-mailbox

Solution

1. First of all create all events for all holidays in a mailbox Calendar and export it to a PST file or Create a Calendar Item in a PST file with the name “Calendar” and create all events in it.
2. On 32bit a machine where outlook 2007 is installed login with an Exchange Enterprise Admin account and open Exchange Management Shell then run the following
   
   $users=Get-Mailbox –ResultSize Unlimited
   Import-Mailbox $users –PSTFolderPath c:\pstfolder/pstfile.pst –IncludeFolders ‘\Calendar’
   
3. Above will add all items from the PST File Calendar to all users’ calendars.

Now what happens if someone comes to you and says hey there is an event we need to delete from all users’ calendars, simple!!
Get-Mailbox –ResultSize Unlimited | Export-Mailbox –IncludeFolders ‘\Calendar’ –SubjectKeywords “Subject of the appointment” –DeleteContent
Hope this is useful!! Please comment.

Cannot See Disconnected Mailbox Exchange 2007

If disabled or removed mailboxes don’t appear in the console.

Run the following cmdlet from EMS

Clean-Database -Identity SGName\DBName

Public Folder Item Count report

This can help compare public folder replicas on two different servers

Get-PublicFolder –server server1 -Recurse |Get-PublicFolderStatistics |ft Name, ItemCount, FolderPath > pfreport-sever1.txt

Replace SSL Certificate for Cisco Wireless Controller

I followed the process below:

• Received a .p12 pkcs#12 file from a 3rd party CA
• Imported it to a server that had IIS installd (this was just so I could export it to a .pfx file) this can be done using OpenSSL convertor.
• from IIS exported the certificate with all possible paths and the private key to a .pfx file
• converted the .pfx to .pem using the following command

OpenSSL> pkcs12 -in wlcssl.pfx -out wlcssl.pem

OpenSSL can be downloaded from the following link
http://www.slproweb.com/products/Win32OpenSSL.html
Version 0.9.8o is the only one that works for most WLCs – just this info would have saved hours for me.
Win32 OpenSSL v0.9.8o

more details: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_configuration_example09186a00806e367a.shtml

Run as Different User–Error–Service cannot be started.

Right click an app and chose run as option and provide correct credentials, following error occurs

“The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.”

To fix the above go to services, find Secondary Logon, change the startup type to manual.

Microsoft to drop Windows Live Spaces–Changing to WordPress as default blogging option

Microsoft and WordPress maker Automatic have announced that Microsoft will be ditching its Windows Live Spaces blogging technology in favor of using WordPress as the default blogging option for Windows Live. Considering the popularity of WordPress in the blogging scene…… read more from the source