Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Windows 8–Useful Links

Windows 8 is the hot news on every technical news portal and blog, here is a collection of links that will help you get more info on anything related to Windows 8. Watch the keynote from yesterday during BUILD Conference. If you just want to watch Windows 8 related bit in the keynote use the link below:

Everything You Need to Know About Windows 8 in Eight Minutes

Download ISO

Download Windows 8 ISOs Right Now

Feature Talks

Windows 8: classic desktop features [video]

Windows 8 requires less power than Windows 7

Windows 8: What's new on the desktop experience

Windows 8: Introducing Windows 8's tablet interface, Metro

Windows 8 app store approval policy outlined

Windows 8 Metro apps and Windows Store [video]

Hands on: Windows 8 input options and pen computing

Windows 8: A look at Internet Explorer 10

Windows Live SkyDrive Integration in Windows 8

Reviews

Welcome to Windows 8 – The Developer Preview

Windows 8 developer preview UX in pictures

Windows 8 really does change everything, it’s mind-blowing

Hands on: Windows 8 review

Microsoft blows up Windows with Windows 8

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Microsoft download from The Garage: Mouse without Borders and Others

Microsoft have released a great little app for users us with multiple PCs. The addin comes from a Garage project at Microsoft which is a program designed to encourage incubations of ideas and projects.

With the application it treats all your Windows PCs as if they were one single desktop, so if you have two machines side by site (as I do at work) you can use the mouse as though they were one PC including dragging files between them. It’s a great idea and if you have a dedicated Media Center machine connected to your TV as well a laptop it would be a great way of controlling it from one place.

Source: link

Download: link

There are other applications that can be used to achieve the same and even better in some cases.

http://inputdirector.com/

http://synergy-foss.org/

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Exchange 2010 SP2 on its way

“..With the release of Exchange Server 2010 SP2 later this year, we will add a new feature known as Address Book Policies . Following this addition, hosters who wish to deploy the standard on-premises configuration of Exchange and use ABP will be supported. As you may have read in a recent post over on the Exchange Partner Marketing blog, our view on whether to host Exchange using Hosting Mode or the standard on-premises configuration is changing in response to feedback we’ve had...”

Read more

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Exchange 2010 SP1 - Rollup 5 is released

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) that is dated August 23, 2011...

download from the link below

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=27193

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Why was Exchange 2010 sp1 Rollup 4 recalled?

Here are some details on why Exchange 2010 sp1 RU4 was recalled.

An Update on Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Rollup Update 4

I really hope that Microsoft makes some proper changes to avoid this in future. Having a reputation for recalling updates for something as critical as Exchange or anything for that matter is not a good sign. Industry learns and inherits standards from such companies so they have to be very diligent in their offerings.

Well I wish the Exchange Team well for future rollouts. 

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Emails stuck in submissions queue–Exchange 2010 sp1

While checking the message queue on a hub transport server I found many messages stuck with status retry and last error read something like the following

 400 4.4.7 The server responded with: 550 5.6.0 CAT.InvalidContent.Exception: InvalidCharsetException, Character set name (ISO-8859-6-i) is invalid or not installed.; cannot handle content of message with InternalId….

I always like to have the mail queue clear and specially submission (local deliveries), which can be a nightmare if clogged.

Resolution

by looking at the details of these messages one could tell that they are either spam of Exchange server cannot process it because the FromAddress field is <> empty.

to get rid of these messages from the queue, I just used the following cmdlet.

Get-Message -Filter {FromAddress -eq "<>"} -Server htserver | Remove-Message

Monday, August 1, 2011

Missing Manage Send as Permissions option in Exchange Management Console

In Exchange 2010 RBAC allows you to grant permissions to Helpdesk or Administrators in a very granular manner.  There are built in groups that one can use for Helpdesk and Recipient Management that one can add User Support team to be able to manage permissions on a mailbox, create and delete mailbox, mail enable public folders, manage permissions on mailbox etc.

Issue

I used the built in groups to grant our user support team permissions that they required. All works fine but User Support was unable to see or grant send as permissions. When any of them right click a mailbox they don’t even see an option to view or change send as permissions. They do see an option for managing full mailbox permissions.

Resolution

In Toolbox of EMC go to “Role Based Access Control (RBAC) User Editor”

Double click Recipient Management Role and in the Roles add “Active Directory Permissions” click on Save.

image

Friday, July 29, 2011

Announcing the re-release of Exchange 2010 SP1 Rollup 4

“….The review completed by the Exchange CXP team determined that the issue identified in 'KB 2581545: The copy or move operation on a folder that contains subfolders does not work as expected after you install Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 SP1 dated June 22, 2011’ introduced a serious regression in the original release of Rollup 4. As a result, a new version of Rollup 4 dated July 23, 2011 has been tested and released with the change that caused the regression removed. The re-release of Rollup 4 is tracked by 'KB 2579150: Description of Update Rollup 4 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1'…”

Read More

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Microsoft Says Happy Birthday to Linux

Microsoft wishes Linux kernel happy 20th Birthday!

Microsoft just want to say

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

“Windows Server 8” sneak preview

“….

If you’re in IT you are likely pulled between an almost infinite need for more computing power to deliver business solutions and the ever increasing demands for greater agility, higher efficiency and lower costs.  Fortunately, you can now deliver on these seemingly contradictory demands by leveraging the benefits of cloud computing with our public and private cloud solutions.  And they are only going to get better.

Today we are excited to give you a sneak peek at the next step in private cloud computing by showing you just two of hundreds of new capabilities coming in the next version of Windows Server, internally code-named “Windows Server 8.”…”

Read More

Click here to Watch - go to 36:50

Monday, July 18, 2011

Glad we waited! - Exchange 2010 SP1 RU4 Removed from Download Center

“…We have discovered an issue impacting some customers who have installed Exchange 2010 SP1 RU4 into their Exchange environment and as a result have removed SP1 RU4 from Download Center and recommend customers do not proceed with any planned deployments of SP1 RU4.

A small number of customers have reported when the Outlook client is used to move or copy a folder that subfolders and content for the moved folder are deleted. After investigation we have determined that the folder and item contents do not appear in the destination folder as expected but may be recovered from the Recoverable Items folder (what was previously known as Dumpster in older versions of Exchange) from the original folder. This behavior occurs due to a customer requested change in SP1 RU4 which allowed deleted Public Folders to be recovered. Outlook and Exchange are not correctly processing the folder move and copy operations causing the folder contents to appear to be deleted. OWA and Exchange Web Services clients are not affected by this change and process the folder move or copy actions correctly….”

Read More

Friday, July 8, 2011

Upgrade All Distribution Lists to Exchange 2010

To make use of Exchange 2010 distribution list features and make way to decommission your legacy servers upgrade you all your distribution lists to Exchange 2010 by running the following cmdlet

Get-DistributionGroup –ResultSize Unlimited | Set-DistributionGroup –ForceUpgrade

In Exchange 2010 management of distribution lists has changed a little due to exchange design. To manage permissions of who can edit membership of members of a group and who can manage groups see the following post.

http://mykbit.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-to-manage-distribution-lists-with.html

How to manage Distribution Lists with groups in Exchange 2010

Issue

When User1 tries to add a new member to the DistributionGroup1 distribution group, she gets this error:

Changes to the distribution group list membership could not be saved. You do not have sufficient permissions to perform this operation on this object.


Figure 1: User gets a permissions error when trying ot modifying a distribution group membership in Microsoft Outlook

In the past, User1 was able to add/remove members to the distribution group by using Outlook and didn’t need to call the help desk for assistance. What has changed?

You know that you had previously configured SecurityGroup1 to be able to manage this distribution group. Did someone make a change to User1’s security group membership? You look at ADUC first. No change – the user’s still a member of SecurityGroup1.


Figure 2: The user’s still a member of the security group that’s configured to manage the distribution group

Next, you check the distribution group configuration in ADUC to verify that DistributionGroup1 is still being managed by SecurityGroup1.


Figure 3: The user’s still a member of the security group that’s configured to manage the distribution group

Okay, so what’s the deal here? You know you recently migrated to Exchange 2010. So you take a look at DistributionGroup1 in EMC (which reveals that it’s managed by SecurityGroup1, but also displays an ‘Object Not Found’ error).


Figure 4: EMC displays the security group with an ‘Object not found’ error

Why is Exchange 2010 doing this?

This behavior is by design. In Exchange 2010, distribution groups can’t be managed by groups – only individual users can manage groups. So it’s possible that using Exchange 2003, you used groups to manage a distribution group. Group ownership was handled at a different level. Now that these mailboxes have been moved to Exchange 2010, members of these groups can’t modify the group.

So are there any workarounds?

We’ve created a script to work around this limitation. Download Set-DistributionGroupOwners.ps1 from the Script Center.

The script will allow you to simulate a group having ownership of a distribution group in Exchange 2010. The script can be run in three different modes depending on the switches you pass.

  1. Mode 1 – Set Ownership for a particular distribution group. Modifications to the ManagedBy attribute are not set at this time. It will simply modify a Custom Attribute to have the information needed later when the script sets the ManagedBy attribute.
  2. Mode 2 – Modify the ManagedBy attribute of a specific distribution group so the members of either a security group or distribution group can manage it.
  3. Mode 3 – Is designed to be run as a scheduled task and ensure individual members of a group have ownership of the Distribution Group which they are set to own. This mode is used if you prefer to automate the process and perhaps run it nightly to look for any changes to security group and distribution group membership.

Read More from the Source: http://msibrahim.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/how-to-manage-groups-with-groups-in-exchange-2010/

Now available: Co-author documents in the Word Web App

'”…We designed co-authoring in the Word Web App on SkyDrive accordingly:  When you’re co-authoring, you always have a real time view into who is making changes and where these changes are occurring.  As soon as you begin typing, the corresponding section of the document is locked and others are notified, placing you in control and freeing others from distraction.  Contributors can hit “save” at any time to see an updated view of all changes…”

Read More

Coming Soon: PST Capture Tool

Can you believe it! Finally!!!

Well done Exchange Team!

“…We're excited to announce that later this year we'll be adding a new tool to our already rich portfolio of planning and deployment tools. This new tool, PST Capture, will be downloadable and free, and will enable you to discover .pst files on your network and then import them into both Exchange Online (in Office 365) and Exchange Server 2010 on-premises. PST Capture will be available later this year. It doesn’t replace the New-MailboxImportRequest cmdlet that exists already for importing known .pst files into Exchange Server, but instead works in parallel to enable you to embark on a systematic search and destroy mission to rid yourself of the dreaded .pst scourge <*pirate growl*>…”

read more